Words matter. And this is something that Carl-Henric Svanberg will never forget after claiming that BP "cares about the small people".

• BP chairman: 'We care about the small people'

“Words are not enough”, said BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, as he met the press in the White House Rose Garden after spending hours with a “frustrated” President Obama. “We understand that we will, and we should be, judged by our actions”, Svanberg continued.

Like the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. But without words, nobody would know of any actions, unless we witness them with our own eyes. Words matter. And this is something that Carl-Henric Svanberg will never forget, after claiming, in the same speech, that BP “cares about the small people.”

Apart from the not so obvious factual veracity of this statement, there’s the problem of meaning. In English, the term “small people” would normally refer either to people suffering from the medical condition dwarfism or poor people of a lower class. Since it’s unlikely that Svanberg was addressing the Gulf dwarf community, an American would assume that he was referring to the latter. The poor. The ones that are not like him, but lesser.

Svanberg has headed up international giants such as Ericsson and Assa Abloy for decades, and that’s the reason why his lack of English proficiency is so baffling. But what’s even more surprising is that he seems strikingly unfamiliar with American culture, values and self-image. There are no small or big people here, at least not metaphorically speaking – there are only people. Supposedly.

Svanberg should, or could, have chosen a variety of other, less controversial words. Such as “ordinary people”, “working people”, “all people”, or to use an example from the 2008 presidential election: “Joe the Plumber” (perhaps in this case adapted to “Bubba the Shrimper”). The key is that nobody in the U.S. would think of either Joe the Plumber or Bubba the Shrimper as “small people”.

The subsequent apology issued by BP, claiming that this was a translation error of Svanberg’s, doesn’t quite ring true. Talking about small people in Sweden would be equally condescending, at least coming from him. It doesn’t take a genius, or even an MBA, to figure out that a big shot executive like Svanberg, sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars, should avoid even the slightest scent of condescension around him.

This is especially true when he happens to be the chairman of a company that’s hit rock bottom when it comes to public confidence. Add a heavy European accent and a slight uppity nose, and you may soon see bullet holes riddling BP signs across small-town USA. Well, maybe not. But it still matters what you say.

Jonas Vesterberg is a U.S.-based journalist and communications consultant.