Signing off on

Ned sometimes wonders what is happening to American English. The 300,000 or so words of the language seem sometimes to serve only to confuse and muddle most topics to which they are applied, or perhaps that is because most Americans' vocabularies are closer to 300 words (mostly monosyllable) than 300,000. However, what is angering Ned is not the poor vocabularies of Americans, lamentable as that is, nor even the increasing punctuation of what passes for conversation with "like" and "unh" and "you know", all of which simply serve as space fillers to be used when someone's desire to talk exceeds their ability to think.
No, Ned is talking about the advertiziation of speech--the tendency of our quotidian conversation to sound more and more like an ad for crotch-itch medication or the latest acne cream. This tendency has even taken over the pages of the nation's most staid organs of record, including the New York Times.
Ned is referring to such cringe-inducing complex words like "signed off on", which is perhaps the poster child of the entire dumbing-down vocabulary movement. Note the negation of the complex "off on", so the entire phrase simply means
"signed." Now, Ned's more perceptive readers will ask, why say "signed off on" when you can say "signed?" Since Ned cannot find a logical reason that would not be disrespectful to users of this abhorrent phrase, he will leave the analysis of motive to his readers. Ned will content himself with admonishing anyone using this term in his presence.
But there are many more: Ned would point out such annoying uses as "scrambling", for any activity when the perpetrators are trying to do more than chew gum and walk at the same time: to wit, "BP was scrambling to address government demands that it provide documentation of blah blah blah."
Another phrase which annoys Ned is "all new", which has become de rigeur ever since use of "new" has been applied to every product available, except for those that are "new and improved", an interesting if oxymoronic combination.
Ned also finds the use of such sanctimoniously hypocritical complex words as "brave troops" where in the past "troops" would have sufficed. Now, every mention of servicepersons must have the obligatory "brave" in front of it, even if the persons in question were paper pushers in some supply outfit. Such use, annoying as it is, has arisen Ned feels because this country no longer has a draft, and is thus seemingly content to have the children of poor and minority persons turned into cannon fodder for the amusement of presidents from Carter to Obama, most egregiously to settle scores by George Bush, whose explanation for the Iraq invasion and occupation included "(Saddam) tried to kill my dad."
But the debasement of the language has started more and more to include terms that would have made George Orwell proud. Whence the conversion of "War Department" into "Defense Department" in 1947. Since then we have fought no defensive wars, but that makes the name change even more lip-smacking good in its hypocrisy.
Lastly, let's see how the debasement of the language and the abandonment of any attempt to analyze complex issues to Ned's newest bete noire, the Gulf of Mexico oil blowout. Most stories use the phrase "up to" or "as much as" to describe the amount of oil entering the Gulf. This is standard misleading advertising fare, whence the use of "as much as 90% OFF!", when the actual discount if any is probably closer to 10%. Or the use of "starting at $99!" for a price range that may have one item at that price with the rest at hundreds more. Ned would argue it's one thing when advertisers do it since most of us know their job is to mislead, but when the users are NBC News and the New York Times, we are all in trouble.