What the Frack?

You’ll soon be reading Words That Work, which focuses on how your choice of words can frame your message, make it more (or less) sticky, and incline your audience to accept or reject it. Here is a prime example from the realm of energy and environmental advocacy.

“Fracking” is a lot easier to say and remember than “hydraulic fracturing.” (Get the facts about it here.) Given the former's stigma and unsavory associations, the oil and gas industry probably needs to come up with a term or phrase that is as sticky as "fracking," but friendlier. If you were hired by the industry to rebrand the process, what would you recommend they call it?

 

Comments

[Aileen Aquino]

I've definitely heard the phrase "What the Frack?" somewhere before reading this article, but I did not know it was affiliated with the oil and gas industry.

After many thoughts, "deep shaling" came to mind, but finding a sticky name for hydraulic fracturing is pretty difficult. It seems like the industry dug itself into a deep ditch with this name. I doubt it'll ever be rid of "fracking."

[Carley Butcher]

The term "fracking" is definitely a sticky one but I do not really think it sounds as bad as people are making it out to be. (If it was called "frucking" I would understand.) Perhaps if the oil and gas industry slightly modified the word by adding a "t" and called it "fracting" instead, there would not be as much negativity surrounding the word. Also, “fracting” sounds more like fracture.

[Shouhei Senno]

It's interesting that President Obama did not mention the term "fracking" in his State of the Union speech. You know that the term is problematic if the President of the United States of America doesn't use it in his speech. The term definitely has a lot of negative connotations to it despite its attempt to sound hip and modern. The intention to make "hydraulic fracturing" simple was there but the end result was not great.
I would probably recommend something that encompasses the prefix "de-" because it essentially takes apart natural gas and oil from the deep shale formations. Maybe something like "deshaling" is more appropriate because you get an idea of where the natural resources are coming from.

[Samantha Eisen]

Although I've never heard the term "fracking," it definitely reminded me of other expressions like "fack" that obviously have negative implications.

Maybe they could do some sort of combination of the words like "hydrafracting"? I'm not sure how sticky that would be, but it is definitely simpler and easier to remember than "hydraulic fracturing". It has the potential to take the industry away from the negative connotations associated with "fracking".

[D]

I have heard of fracking and I think hydrafracting is interesting and it sounds and runs alot nicer than just fracting. I was thinking of "Spudding"

Post by:
Giana Lampreda

[Elleee3]

The term in itself is not appealing and is hard to remember. The full term "hydraulic fracturing" is long, boring, and not sticky in any way. I think a way to make the term more catchy would be to abbreviate it. Perhaps something like hydrafracting or even, hy-fracting, or hy-fract. I think by shortening the term and giving it almost a nickname it is much more appealing.

[Amani Butler]

I agree with elle the term "hydraulic fracturing" is way more complicated to say then "fracking". Our society loves when people use vulgar words its almost like christmas for us. Just as above he mentioned we try and change words so that were not exactly cussing but this is appauling because we are basicaly cussing. such as "fawk" and "shut the front door" ok we all know what your saying here. But again its the catchy words that draw our attention in the first place. So the more risky the more we like and grab on to it!

[Jake McCune]

I find it surprising that the article made no mention of the use of the word "frak" in the show Battlestar Galactica and it's recent resurgence in popularity that came along with it. In addition to not wanting a vulgar sounding word for their practice, the fact that a homonym of it is used as an actual expletive in a television show could create even more negative PR around the story.

I agree with the above that adding a 't' to the word could reduce harsh connotations, as 'fracting' has more in common phonetically with words like 'acting' than certain expletives. 'Shaling' is another term that has a softer connotation to it.

[Bob Martin]

I would recommend they call it something like fracting (as Jake said above), or fracturing if they don't mind two more letters.

[Jordan Keller]

First of all, I think people are way too sensitive to say that this word is "innapproprate", "controversial", or even "nasty". C'mon people.

If I understand the process correctly (extracting natural gas and oil from deep shale formations) I would call the process something like up-shaling. (kind of like uprooting?)

[Stefanie Anderson]

I agree with Jordan that it seems like people are overreacting over the term "fracking". I'm not even convinced there is a better term out there- this one obviously stuck and others didn't. "Hydrafracting" definitely doesn't seem as sticky. I like Shouhei's term, "deshaling" but this is also somewhat boring. Maybe the solution is for people to stop associating the term "fracking" with its negative implications and accept it as a good term!

[Jedrik Viray]

Like many of the responses above, I too believe that people are overanalyzing this term. When I hear "fracking" I do not automatically associate it with any negative terms that happen to sound vaguely similar. If one were to try and change it I would maybe add the word "rock" before it. The term would then become "rock fracking" and would be more concrete and less up for misinterpretation.

[Gordon Brink]

I think it would be interesting to see how people reacted to “fracktating” instead of “fracking.” But after everything oil industry has done the past year even would make it difficult to accomplish coining any term that would help the industry.