Is "Disaffirm" a Euphemism?

[Baker, John]

        It's more a matter of the facts than the lingo.  "Disaffirm" has
no special legal meaning, as far as I know.  Sjoblom was under a
disadvantage in choosing his words, because he was legally compelled to
say as little as possible.

        I suppose the implication is that Green thought Sjoblom was
saying he was one of the fraudsters.  I don't know of any facts to
support that conclusion, though.  As far as I know, there have been no
allegations whatsoever against him or his firm.

        In my original post, I was going to make some snide comment
about journalists, but it appears that Green is not actually a
journalist, just a management consultant indulging in public comment.


John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Mark Mandel
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 5:59 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Is "Disaffirm" a Euphemism?

Or because, if you don't know the technical lingo, it looks like a
weasely way of saying "I lied"? Substitute "retract" or "deny" or
"disown" in the Sjoblom quote to see what I mean. Journalists and
commentators should be held to a higher standard, but ISTM that this is
an easy first take on the line.

Mark Mandel


On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 4:03 PM, Baker, John <JMB at stradley.com> wrote:

>        Charles H. Green, writing in The Huffington Post, has nominated

> "disaffirm" as "the new leader in the "Mistakes Were Made" category at

> the forthcoming Creative Language awards ceremony," see
>
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-h-green/mini-madoff-scandal-scaleb
_168486.html.
>  My question is, why does he think that?
>
>        To give a bit of background:  In the midst of an SEC
> investigation into Stanford International Bank and its affiliates, the

> bank's lawyer, Thomas Sjoblom, withdrew from representation and sent a

> letter to the SEC in which he said, "I disaffirm all prior oral and
> written representations made by me and my associates to the SEC staff
> regarding Stanford Financial Group and its affiliates."  The SEC
> subsequently filed a high-profile civil complaint against those
> persons, alleging an $8 billion fraud.  It's been suggested that the
> withdrawal and the letter were the trigger for the complaint, implying

> that the SEC, at least, considered the letter's meaning to be entirely
clear.
>
>        This is the usage that Green thinks is "excusing $8 billion of
> malfeasance."  But was it really?  It isn't hard to tell what Sjoblom
> meant; he meant that he no longer had confidence in the veracity of
> his former clients, and because anything he and his associates had
> said about Stanford to the SEC in the past was based on information
> provided by them, he could not vouch for its truthfulness.  He could
> have said "You should not rely on any past oral or written
representations . . .,"
> not that this would have been likely to have made Green any happier.
>
>        "Disaffirm" seems to me to be a good a word as exists for
> conveying something that needs to be stated in as few words as
possible.
> Why, then, single it out for criticism?  Is it because it is an
> unfamiliar term, and therefore automatically assumed to be euphemistic

> bureaucratese?  Or is it simply that, in a large fraud, everyone in
> the room looks bad, even those who apparently were themselves deceived

> and played a large role in bringing the truth to light?
>
>
> John Baker
>
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