Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 604, Harming a Professional Reputation.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 604.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
It is beautiful today, especially.
The sun is shining.
Another beautiful day in LA.
I hope the sun is shining where you are, unless, of course, you're listening to this at night.
Visit our website at eslpod.com, day or night, and download the learning guide for this episode.
Don't know what a learning guide is?
Well, go to our website and find out.
This episode is called Harming a Professional Reputation.
To harm means to damage.
One's reputation is what other people think of you.
Let's get started.
Good morning.
What's with the gloom and doom?
Have you seen this morning's newspaper?
No, I haven't.
You'd better read this.
It's an article about our company.
Let me see that.
This is outrageous.
How can anybody print such lies?
We're not on the verge of going under.
How did they get a hold of so much misleading and outright wrong information?
What I'm irate about is what it says about you as the owner.
The article is full of innuendos about your background.
It's nothing short of character assassination.
We'll sue the paper for defamation of character.
How are you going to do that?
After I call the reporter a no-good mudslinger, I'll give him the facts, the ones he neglected to include in this story.
Be careful what you say to him, especially in front of his coworkers.
You don't want him suing you for slander.
My dialogue begins with Alex saying good morning to Paige.
What's with the gloom and doom?
Gloom G-L-O-O-M and doom D-O-O-M is an expression that means that nothing good is going to happen.
It's a feeling that the future will be bad, that bad things will happen soon.
Gloom means sadness.
We sometimes talk here in Los Angeles about the weather in June.
We say it's June gloom.
That's because in the summertime there are often clouds that come in over the ocean and it is not sunny out like it is today.
Doom is bad things that will happen.
So gloom and doom means that you think bad things will happen in the future.
Page responds, have you seen this morning's newspaper?
Alex says, no, I haven't.
Page replies, you better read this.
In other words, you should read this.
It's an article about our company.
Alex says, let me see that.
This is outrageous, he says.
Something that is outrageous means it's very surprising, very difficult to believe.
Often it's used to describe something that is very unfair, something that is wrong.
Alex says, how can anybody print such lies?
Print meaning publish, in this case in a newspaper.
We're not on the verge of going under, he says.
To be on the verge of something means to be almost ready to something.
He is on the verge of asking her out on a date.
All he needs is a little beer to give him courage.
Well, here we're talking about being on the verge of going under.
To go under is a two-word phrasal verb.
That means to fail, to have a lot of financial problems, to go out of business, to lose your business.
Alex says that their company is not on the verge of going under.
He says, how did they get a hold of, meaning how did they obtain, how did they get money?
So much misleading and outright wrong information.
Misleading means that you are telling people something that will make them come to the incorrect, the wrong conclusions.
You're making people believe something that isn't true.
That's misleading information.
The prefix mis-, M-I-S, usually is related to a negative idea.
We could say something was mishandled, meaning it wasn't dealt with, it wasn't handled correctly.
Or you could say, I mislaid my watch.
Laid comes from the verb to lay, L-A-Y, meaning to put something down.
Well, if you mislaid your watch past tense, you put it somewhere and now you can't remember where it is.
Sort of like my brain, my wife tells me.
Alex says that the information in the newspaper is misleading and outright wrong.
Outright, one word, means completely, totally, entirely.
Usually something that is completely wrong or totally wrong.
Page says, what I'm irate about is what it says about you as the owner.
To be irate, I-R-A-T-E, means to be very angry, to be very upset.
Page says the article is full of innuendos about your background.
An innuendo I-N-N-U-E-N-D-O is an indirect statement that suggests something is true, but without actually saying it's true.
For example, you don't go to work one day because you say that you are sick.
The next day you go to work and your boss says, well, you recovered very quickly from your illness.
To recover means to get better.
But the boss is making a joke here.
He's really making an innuendo.
He's saying that you weren't really sick.
It's nothing short of character assassination, Page says about what the newspaper says about Alex.
The phrase to be nothing short of means to be something.
Used usually when we want to emphasize how extreme or inappropriate something is.
So it's kind of a strange expression.
Although you have a negative word, nothing, you're really saying the opposite.
You're saying that this is true.
What he did is nothing short of theft to steal something.
Nothing short of means it actually is theft.
He actually did steal something.
Here.
The newspaper printed or published some innuendos about Alex that Page thinks are nothing short of character assassination, meaning it is character assassination.
Character.
Assassination is when you attack another person because of who he or she is or what they may believe, even though it has nothing to do with their job or whatever it is that they are famous for or known for.
Politics is full of character assassination, where the political candidates try to say bad things about the other person, often using innuendos.
This is an excellent example.
Page says, To sue means to take them to court and have them pay money because of what they did, because it was wrong, because it damaged you, it hurt you, it harmed you.
Defamation comes from the verb to defame, which means to say bad things about another person.
Character describes who a person is, their honesty, their loyalty, and so forth.
So defamation of character is to harm someone's character, to say bad things, untrue things about them.
Alex says, I'm not worried about my personal reputation, what other people think of me.
I'm going down to that paper.
I'm going to get in my car and go over to their building and make them print a retraction.
A retraction is when a newspaper or magazine admits that they made a mistake, that they committed an error, and they publish that in the newspaper.
They put that in the next day or the next week's issue of the newspaper or magazine.
Retraction, as the expression to go under, is has different meanings.
Take a look at the learning guide for more of those.
Page says, how are you going to do that?
Alex replies after I call the reporter, the journalist, the person who wrote the story, a no-good mudslinger.
I'll give him the facts.
No hyphen good means a very poor quality, not very good, worthless.
A mudslinger is a person who says bad things about another person so that everyone will dislike that other person.
To sling means to throw.
Mud is, of course... the earth ground when you put water on it.
So we're saying that this person, just like someone who throws mud at someone else, is trying to do something harmful to them by saying false things about them.
Alex says he's going to give the reporter the facts, the facts that he neglected to include in this story.
To neglect means not to do something you should have done, to fail to do something.
Page says be careful what you say to him, especially in front of his co-workers, his colleagues, the people he works with at the newspaper.
You don't want him suing you for slander.
Slander, S-L-A-N-D-E-R, is when someone says something false about you.
Libel, L-I-B-E-L, is when someone writes something false and damaging about you.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Good morning.
What's with the doom and gloom?
Have you seen this morning's newspaper?
No, I haven't.
You'd better read this.
It's an article about a company.
Let me see that.
This is outrageous.
How can anybody print such lies?
We're not on the verge of going under.
How did they get a hold of so much misleading and outright wrong information?
What I'm irate about is what it says about you as the owner.
The article is full of innuendos about your background.
It's nothing short of character assassination.
We'll sue the paper for defamation of character.
I'm not worried about my personal reputation.
I'm more concerned about the company's image.
I'm going down to that paper and making them print a retraction.
How are you going to do that?
After I call the reporter a no-good mudslinger, I'll give him the facts, the ones he neglected to include in this story.
Be careful what you say to him, especially in front of his co-workers.
You don't want him suing you for slander.
I don't want to neglect to thank our wonderful scriptwriter, Dr. Lucy Say.
Thank you, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2010 by the Center for Educational Development.
