David Taylor, a member of our writing team, recently helped us put together an analysis of BP’s ‘oil spill language’ using word clouds of two press releases surrounding the problem. It’s just been published in this month’s Communicate Magazine – here it is again!
\nHowever cack-handed and insensitive BP\u2019s media response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have been initially, these two announcements show that by mid-July the company was utterly focused on the source of all the trouble.
\nThere\u2019s none of that \u2018drop-in-the-ocean\/I want my life back\u2019 gaucheness that got CEO Tony Hayward into such a pickle back in May. It\u2019s now all about the \u201cwell\u201d.
\nThe first cloud is from BP\u2019s July 19 press statement describing tests on the cap it had installed over the leaking well four days previously. At last it looked as if the oil had finally stopped gushing from the ruptured well. Even President Obama welcomed the announcement as a \u201cpositive sign\u201d – probably the nicest thing he\u2019d said about BP since vowing to \u201ckick its ass\u201d back in June.
\nEven so, BP\u2019s press statement is careful not to make any rash claims. Prominent words like \u201ccontainment\u201d, \u201capproximately\u201d, \u201cexpected\u201d and \u201ccontinues\u201d signal the company\u2019s reticence.
\nThe language is busy and scattered liberally with dynamic words such as \u201cactivities\u201d, \u201csteps\u201d, \u201coperations\u201d, \u201ccapturing\u201d and \u201cresponse\u201d, reinforcing the message that BP\u2019s on the case.
\nThe three dominant words – \u201cwell\u201d, \u201coil\u201d and \u201ccontainment\u201d – sum it up perfectly. It\u2019s all about keeping the lid on the situation and it\u2019s clear that BP know it\u2019s not out of the woods yet. The words \u201ccertain\u201d and \u201cresults\u201d just about make the cloud – but then again, so does \u201caircraft\u201d.
\nThe second cloud tells a different story. It\u2019s from BP\u2019s August 4 announcement that there had been encouraging progress with the \u201cstatic kill\u201d operation to plug the well with mud and seal it for good with cement.
\n
\nA lot had happened since the July 19 statement: Tony Hayward had done the decent thing by announcing that he was going to step down as CEO; US scientists had made the surprise announcement that the massive slick from the ruptured well was dispersing faster than expected; and the capped well itself (which had been left unmonitored for several days while a tropical storm blew over) was holding fast.
\nThe language in this cloud is less cautious, more assured. We\u2019re still totally focused on the well – but look at those other big words: \u201cstatic\u201d and \u201ckill\u201d. These are blunt, uncompromising terms that suggest BP knows it\u2019s got this problem under control.
\nOK, the term \u201cstatic kill\u201d has a specific meaning in the oil industry. But whoever first coined the phrase clearly wanted to convey an uncompromising message of finality.
\nThe language in this cloud is less complicated than that of July 19. The four most important words (\u201cwell\u201d, \u201ckill\u201d, \u201cstatic\u201d and \u201crelief\u201d) stand out clearly from the body of the text. In the July 19 cloud, there\u2019s a steady gradient from the most prominent words to the least prominent, with \u201capproximately\u201d, \u201ctest\u201d \u201cgas\u201d, \u201csystems\u201d bulking out the cloud.
\nThese middle-ranking words are sparser in the later cloud and there\u2019s a bigger gap between them and the four key words. They\u2019re also mostly technical: \u201ccement\u201d, \u201cpumping\u201d, \u201cmud\u201d, \u201cdrilling\u201d.
\nBut the most striking feature of the August 4 cloud isn\u2019t what it contains but what it doesn\u2019t contain. The word \u201coil\u201d, which screams out of the July 19 cloud, is missing. And it didn\u2019t just miss the cloud; it\u2019s doesn\u2019t even appear in the statement. Not once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David Taylor, a member of our writing team, recently helped us put together an analysis of BP’s ‘oil spill language’ using word clouds of two press releases surrounding the problem. It’s just been published in this month’s Communicate Magazine – here it is again! However cack-handed and insensitive BP\u2019s media response to the Deepwater Horizon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[453],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-content-us"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n