Do you like jargon? Are you a regular user? If so, prepare to have a brick thrown through the window of your soul.
You don’t have to be a Grumpy Old Man to find jargon, buzzwords and clichés irritating. Back in 1996, I attempted to do something about this problem in the public relations agency in which I then worked. I took the unorthodox view that there was no excuse for professional communicators to use such language. Jargon got in the way of effective communication because it made us sound pompous, silly or unintelligible. Disciplining ourselves to use plain English would make us better communicators.
To illustrate the problem, I translated the beginning of the Book of Genesis into PR jargon:
1. At the outset, God’s agenda was to basically focus on his core deliverables, namely two leading-edge products, (a) heaven and (b) earth.
2. However, the earth lacked an overall concept, and had a low profile in terms of its key audiences. Obviously the Spirit of God had to step back and benchmark the existing waters before his game plan could get the green light.
3. And God’s key message was that light was a strategic objective, and it was covered-off.
4. And God’s perception of the light was that it was fit for purpose. However, his desired goal was that light and darkness should be differentiated in the marketplace.
5. So God branded the light ‘Day’, and the darkness he branded ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Light’. And the evening session and morning session made up Day One.
6. Then God set out with the object of factoring-in a firmament to interface with the existing generic waters, to bring to the party two segmented brands.
7. So God tasked himself with the job of rolling-out a firmament, to supply a proactive vehicle for launching his two distinct waters products, and it was up and running.
8. And God branded the firmament ‘heaven’. And at close of play, the prioritised actions for Day Two were ticked off.
(From my essay, ‘Let’s run this up the flagpole and see who salutes’).
The problem is still with us and I have my own pet peeves:
• Business jargon – Currently the most pervasive and pernicious example is ‘going forward’. You can strip this phrase out of any sentence and the meaning remains unchanged. Simple use of the future tense does the job better. The Liberal Democrats are not immune; for example, the terms of reference for last year’s Bones Commission talked of ‘stretch goals’ and ‘step change’.
• American jargon – The use of baseball metaphors is wholly inappropriate in a country that does not play baseball. ‘Touch base’, ‘Stepping up to the plate’ and ‘Coming from left field’ are common examples. British people who use such phrases usually do not understand what they are saying themselves.
• Media jargon – Presenters who say, “At the top of the hour”.
• Young people’s jargon – Like, whatever.
• Trendy jargon – It’s a big ask.
• Blog jargon – Disagreeing with someone in a condescending manner by replying, “Erm, no.”
• Political jargon – In an echo of Richard Nixon’s ‘moral majority’, politicians of all parties try to identify with ‘hard-working families’. Not content with this, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander persist with dismal variations on the theme: ‘hard-pressed families’, ‘struggling families’, ‘ordinary families’ and now ‘modern families’.
• Liberal Democrat jargon – If I hear another Lib Dem councillor refer to something in his ward as “on my patch”, I shall remove his reproductive organs with a rusty boat-hook. Meanwhile, many Focus editors are using the same hackneyed phrases they were publishing 25 years ago.
Jargon is not a new problem. George Orwell analysed it in 1946, in his essay ‘Politics and the English Language’. Orwell’s view is that ugly and inaccurate English prose causes foolish thoughts and dishonest politics:
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”
Orwell offered this advice:
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?”
Jargon is not the preserve of Sir Humphrey Appleby and David Brent. It is not merely an annoyance to Grumpy Old Men. It is a serious political problem, as the Plain English Campaign has demonstrated. It has been campaigning against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information since 1979. If the Liberal Democrats use this sort of language, they are not only blunting their political effectiveness but also disenfranchising people who cannot understand what they mean. Getting rid of this tribal language is not about ‘dumbing down’. It is about being clear and concise.
If you are a Liberal Democrat councillor, check whether your council is one of the 300 local authorities that hold the Plain English Campaign’s Crystal Mark. If it is not, campaign to raise standards. And please note that a Crystal Mark is no excuse for complacency. Guess which Lib Dem-led local authority – both a Crystal Mark holder and a corporate member of the Plain English Campaign – recently won an award from the Financial Times for management twaddle.
Together we can fight and defeat jargon, buzzwords and clichés. Please leave a comment with the jargon words and phrases you find irritating, particularly those you wish to see banished from the Liberal Democrat lexicon. (If I were prone to Lib Dem jargon, I would invite you to “get it off your chest”).
With any luck, the result of our cruel mockery will be a party that communicates more effectively.
* Simon Titley is a Liberal Democrat activist who helps write and produce Liberator magazine.
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39 Comments
Going forward, from what I’ve read in the Liberator, perhaps its editorial team would benefit from learning the following ‘jargon’.
Loyalty – a term which needn’t be a contradiction with Liberal or Democrat or Political or Party.
Discretion – an underused ‘old fashioned’ value which enables in house arguments not to become easy attack fodder for your opponents.
Either strategy would mark a significant step change in the party’s outcomes-based approach, deliver value to the bottom line and engage key stakeholders in a more holistic manner.
Matthew – So you’d prefer a party of Stalinist discipline and unquestioning obedience, would you?
If you want to read Pravda, read Liberal Democrat News.
No can we get back to the topic of jargon, please.
Hm, I think that, like a lot of good writers on this subject, you’re missing a trick. There’s a tendency to think that jargon is the be-all and end-all of the problem.
Poor, unimaginative writing doesn’t necessarily contain jargon. Yes, it usually does, because jargon is an easy fallback for the poor, unimaginative writer. But trying to stamp out the jargon will only get you so far – it’s a symptom. If you want to arrive at Orwell’s ideal prescription, you’re better off teaching people how to be good writers – and let them use jargon if they can do it while not breaking any of his rules. It is possible. If you want to stamp out anything, I’d make it multiple exclamation marks.
Anyway, yesterday’s jargon is today’s mainstream speech. Much medieval legal jargon, for example, entered the mainstream and is now right at the other end of the spectrum from modern-day jargon – it’s now considered too rare and difficult for ordinary ordinary, rather than too lazy.
And as always with linguistic development, things only stick if they’re useful. So “leverage”, for example, much though one mightn’t like it, actually does introduce a new shade of meaning to the language, widening the choices available. Using “ask” as a noun is another example (Anthony Hook told me off for that one not long ago :-D) – “I know this is a bit of a demand/request” doesn’t work in quite the same way – one’s too strong and the other’s too light. There is a need for a noun of intermediate weight.
I also think the PEC go a bit overboard sometimes, and if you followed their rules to the letter you’d actually end up making less sense.
http://fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/fighting-for-crystal-clear-communication-since-1979/
Yes, loyalty and discretion are what matters in the ZaNuLibDem Party. Let’s tell Captain Clegg that there’s a small ice cube floating somewhere in the general vicinity of our Titanic.
Aaaaaaand David Allen gets in with a comparison of “Thatcherite” Nick Clegg to Mugabe at the same time just four comments into a completely and utterly unrelated post!
Well done, David, that’s a personal best for you. I’m not happy, though – I took 5-1 on your obsessive ranty personal attacks not making it until at least six comments in… I underestimated your dedication 😉
Apologies for use of betting jargon to reply to international politics / historical jargon. And before anyone says those were all analogies rather than jargon, Simon can’t tell the difference, so why should I?
Alix – I neither stated nor believe that jargon is “the be-all and end-all of the problem”. I could have talked about other facets of bad writing, such as poor grammar and punctuation. But jargon is a specific problem that needs addressing.
I don’t agree that much jargon becomes “today’s mainstream speech”. The process tends to work in the other direction. Freshly-minted turns of phrase degenerate into jargon and cliché.
The party needs to improve its communication. Getting rid of stale, hand-me-down phrases is one way (but not the only way) to achieve this.
Alex – I am pefectly able to distinguish between jargon and analogies. It is possible for an analogy also to be jargon.
I actually think the ‘modern families’ label is appropriate. It sets us apart from dusty old Tories who bang on about the ‘nuclear families’ – you know, mum, dad, two children, generally on Midsomer Murders killing each other – by bringing in single parent families, or families where the parents are gay, or whatever. It actually shows how tolerant (or whatever you want to call it – we are.
“The process tends to work in the other direction.”
Can you give an example? And, if that is the case, it must imply that you think there is a certain window of time in which it’s ok to use the “freshly-minted word or phrase”, up to the point at which it becomes jargon. I’d agree this is reasonable, but how do you tell? Is the degeneration literal, in the sense of some kind of shortening? And anyway can’t the same process also work for words that aren’t jargon? Plenty of words and phrases are old and tired, but still do a decent job of meaning what they say they mean. So it is with some of the things you have labelled “jargon”.
What I’m getting at, I think, is that I’m not sure what you’re categorising as jargon and how you’re deciding it’s jargon. In your list you’ve got analogies (“American jargon”), linguistic fillers (“Young people’s jargon” – there’s a technical name for this “filler” function of speech which I’ve now forgotten), and examples of recent linguistic evolution (“blog jargon” – or internet jargon as we might more widely term it).
I also think it’s a little odd to be that prescriptive about American sporting analogies. We can’t use the jargon of a sport because we don’t play it? We don’t have bear-baiting any more in this country, but “bearpit” is still commonly applied in these parts to the House of Commons as PMQs. Of course, you could object to this on the grounds that it’s lazy and cliched and be right (I thought I was winging it with “rabid dogs” the other day, actually) but that’s a different thing. And as for comprehension – how many people understand “to pass muster” when they use it?
Why is “on my patch” worse than “in my ward” or “in my division”.
The latter are correct but probably a lot less understood.
My bad.
Alix – I can think of several examples of phrases that were once freshly-minted but now sound hackneyed.
“The light at the end of the tunnel”.
“You don’t have to be mad to work here (but it helps).”
“When the rubber hits the road”.
The first time such phrases were used, they were effective because they had the power to evoke an image in the reader’s mind. But however creative such phrases once were, eventually they lose that power – what Orwell called a “staleness of imagery”. They become just verbiage.
As for an objective test for jargon, Kenneth Hudson put it well in his book The Jargon of the Professions: “The key test for jargon is the question: ‘Could this have been expressed more simply without communication suffering in the process?’ If the answer is ‘Yes’, then the probability is that one is faced with a piece of jargon.”
More generally, Alix, I am curious why my posting has clearly irritated you and you feel such a strong need to defend jargon.
Perhaps the explanation comes, again, from Kenneth Hudson: “It is difficult to be a regular user of jargon and to possess a strong sense of humour. Most addicts, in all fields, tend to take themselves very seriously, from which one may be permitted to deduce that jargon is to a considerable extent a matter of temperament. The irreverent are apt to find jargon funny, but those who live by jargon are usually unable to understand what the merriment is about.”
Um (sorry! that was puzzlement), no. No irritation here. I’m sorry if it came across like that. I’m just very interested in language. Possibly being a bit intense.
I agree on staleness of imagery and formerly meaningful phrases turning into cliches. I’d argue that’s a different thing from what most people understand to mean “jargon”, but maybe (gathering from the Kenneth H quote) you’re using the word in a more, er, holistic (sorry!) sense.
Actually, I was just about to thank you for such a thought-provoking post. Just blogged it.
http://fabulousblueporcupine.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/should-you-use-jargon-in-your-focus-leaflets/
Simon, you make a lot of good points, and of course a lot of politicians speak in terms that are incomprehensible to a lot of people… But by stuffing every single thing you don’t like into one term you go into wild self-parody. You conflate jargon, cliché, metaphor, analogy – surely there are other forms of speech and writing than a Manichean split between all plain speaking on one side and all jargon on the other. I’ve read a lot of your articles, and your turn of phrase has never seemed to want to pare everything down to nothing but the latest Newspeak Dictionary.
Of course you surely must know the difference between jargon and analogy. Why can’t you communicate that today, then?
Your self-styled “objective test” – and, before you say it, you didn’t invent it but you quote it in obvious approval, in a manner that in Internet parlance would be often be signalled as “quoted for truth,” which is not jargon but cliché, and while I’m at it, do you know what the word “objective” means? – seems to me just plain barking.
“‘Could this have been expressed more simply without communication suffering in the process?’ If the answer is ‘Yes’, then the probability is that one is faced with a piece of jargon.”
No, no, seriously. That’s the maddest thing I’ve read all day. Can you imagine how unbelievably bloody boring every piece of writing would be if every allusion, flight of fancy, piece of persiflage, moment of poetry, even every extra adjective has to be stripped out of it? Well, if we’re to be banned from any form of creativity, fun or even – shock horror – intellectualism because anything other than the blandest form of writing or speaking is “jargon,” obviously we won’t be allowed to imagine anything ever again. Kenneth Hudson’s one of those academics who found 1984’s arguments about language inspiring rather than horrifying, isn’t he?
“persiflage”
🙂
More bang for the buck.
Alex – Who is arguing against the use of “every allusion, flight of fancy, piece of persiflage, moment of poetry, even every extra adjective”? Not me and not Kenneth Hudson.
This is not an argument for Newspeak. It is an argument for effective communication. It is an argument against stale verbiage, trendy phrases and inpenetrable terminology.
When I wrote my original post, I never imagined so many defenders of bollocks would come out of the woodwork.
Our party has a real problem here. Most of our Focus leaflets are full of clapped out phrases that should have been pensioned off twenty years ago. Meanwhile, under the tutelage of John Sharkey, our leader trots out conservative tropes about “[insert worthy adjective here]-families” that are effectively meaningless.
You mention 1984 but it was written by George Orwell, the foremost critic of jargon, clichés and verbiage.
I am for creative language. I want to cut out the crap. Judging by the comments so far, it would seem the party prefers to lard it on.
Erm, and I think it’s safe to say that no one who understands the meaning of the word “panacea” would use the phrase “panacea to all our problems”.
Not at all! I just think there’s scope for using words in a creative way which would appear to fall into your “jargon” categories. You’ve cast your prohibition net a bit too wide is all I’m suggesting.
And maybe I’ve misunderstood, but I thought you were advocating Plain English? That’s not creative at all. It’s for credit card agreements, not political messaging. Make It Happen was mostly written in plain English (with the exception of the cringe-making “hard-working families”) and was rather dull as a result.
Simon, I was very glad to read your last comment, and I agree with almost anything in it.
But forgive me if my tiny brain now can’t understand your simple argument that you’re in favour of creativity and that, at the same time, everything but the simplest possible way of expressing something is jargon, which you’re attacking.
“‘Could this have been expressed more simply without communication suffering in the process?’ If the answer is ‘Yes’, then the probability is that one is faced with a piece of jargon.”
Look, Simon, you quoted it. You agree with it. It’s clear what it means. And it’s mad nonsense that goes completely the other way of what you’ve just said. You and Mr Hudson argue in favour of creativity and comedy and condemn it as jargon. You can’t have it both ways. You are not a defender of “bollocks”, but a practitioner of it.
Oh, wait! I’ve got it. It’s more from 1984, isn’t it? Where’s that definition:
“Doublethink – the act of simultaneously accepting as correct two mutually contradictory beliefs.”
Alix – You are confusing creativity with unnecessary verbiage. Plain English can be creative. Read Orwell, who achieved both.
Make it Happen suffers from many problems but plain English isn’t one of them. Inserting ‘going forward’ into the text wouldn’t have made it any better; stripping out ‘struggling families’ might have.
Oh, and if that’s not “simple” enough for you:
I’m not in favour of jargon.
I am in favour of creativity and fun and a good turn of phrase.
You quote as an “objective” truth that everything that isn’t the simplest possible way of saying something is jargon.
You then claim to be at the same time against jargon in favour of creativity and fun and a good turn of phrase, but that anyone else who’s in favour of creativity and fun and a good turn of phrase is in favour of jargon.
You are, in your own simple term, talking bollocks.
I’ve read Orwell, thank you. I agreed in my first comment that his rules are the ones to follow – and I made the point that they don’t preclude a lot of the things you do preclude.
I’m sure we can agree about the undesirability of unnecessary verbiage. But I had a specific example in mind – the use of “ask” as a noun, which is on your proscribed list. That seems to me to be a legitimate example of linguistic evolution. It fills an empty space. “It’s a big ask” is significantly different from “It’s a big demand” (too accusatory) and “It’s a big request” (too weak). And, since the latter two already act as nouns and verbs, there’s no logical reason why “ask” shouldn’t be pressed into the same service. It may be a little self-consciously “trendy” now, I grant you, but give it a couple of years and I’d happily advocate putting it on a Focus leaflet.
However, I’m starting to wonder why you’re getting irritated to be honest – that’s what your tone is now suggesting. There was me thinking I’d found someone to have a nice chat with about linguistic usage, but it seems you’d rather just shut down the conversation. Ho hum.
Alex – Calm down, calm down.
You are labouring under the delusion that creativity and simplicity are mutually exclusive. Orwell was a master of plain English yet was one of our country’s most creative writers.
I am glad you support creativity and fun and a good turn of phrase. All of these can be achieved using straightforward language. None require unwarranted or inpenetrable verbiage.
Simon, I largely agree with what you say, but can I just point out one bugbear of mine that you use: “Back in 1996”. As we have not yet invented time travel, 1996 can not possibly be forward in time. Just “In 1996”, please.
This thread could be called ‘When pedants collide…’
I agree with Alex and Alix that the original article is hopelessly confused about what jargon is. There is some overlap, but I think it’s important that jargon and cliché are different things. Jargon is almost always unimaginative and inaccessible, but most clichés are widely understood – even if some have stopped functioning as metaphors and become ‘sayings’ (whether meaningful or not).
The main thing I object to here is the suggestion that talk of ‘families’ is jargon. It plainly isn’t, although ‘hard-working families’ is probably a political cliché. (most successful political language probably turns to cliché in the end – it is, after all, written to be endlessly repeated)
It seems to me that Nick Clegg and others are trying to find a liberal way to talk about families – and to use that word in an inclusive way. I don’t agree with people who think that’s the wrong thing to do, but their grounds for objection surely aren’t that it’s jargon?
Family is, in politics, a contested idea – and I think it’s right that we should try to reclaim it. I’m not sure we’ve got it consistently right yet, but the families we talk about should be quite a sharp contrast with ‘hard-working families’. It has always seemed to me that the point of that phrase was to appeal to people’s sense of desert, partly by implying toughness on some others who in Victorian terms would be the ‘undeserving poor’ (perhaps also the undeserving rich…but New Labour hasn’t been so good at that).
Aren’t we trying to talk about families in a way which doesn’t divide people, but makes them think about their own interests in a broader way?
It’s an interesting discussion, but some of the reaction to our leaders using a word which is plainly a fully functioning, useful part of the language strikes me as odd and depressingly uncharitable about their intentions. All politicians do talk about families, yes. But all politicians also talk about freedom, fairness and a whole host of other terms which don’t offend the Liberator Collective’s staunchly liberal but grumpy-old-man-ish instincts.
“None require unwarranted or inpenetrable verbiage”
Strictly speaking no one “requires” Mozart, or Picasso, or Dickens (all of whom can be pretty “impenetrable” when the mood takes them) but that doesn’t mean the world would be a better place without them.
Stephen Fry speaks so much better than me on the subject of “unnecessary”, but it’s enough to say that it’s often times the very unnecessary bit that make something fun.
There is a place for more simplistic language but is a place for the type of over-complicated sentences you decry too. Can’t we be a bit more, well, Liberal and celebrate both?
Gavin, what’s wrong with just talking about ‘people’? And if the f-word does have to be used, why not just ‘families’ with no qualification?
Entirely agree with you Simon. As a former Officer at Stockport Council we were encouraged to use as much jargon as possible. Mostly to avoid difficult questions we couldn’t answer.
Car driving seemed to inspire many of the phrases
Lets just park that idea.
We need get off the motorway and onto the A roads.
Remember, it’s corporate.
Etc.
Sorry, the second last comment from Anonymous was actually me.
Simon, your article was fine and I agree with nearly everything except “my patch” – this is really quite old – 1930s or earlier, I would think. I am sorry the postings have been so irritable po-faced and reading down the messages made me think I would avoid most of them in the pub, should I ever come across them. As a Lib Dem member, I agree with your criticisms and have been worried about the way the party is going.
Phrases like ‘going forward’ are seriously irritating to many people, including Lucy Kelloway, and I wish they could be stamped out. I heard a radio interview with Lord Coe and he used the phrase 4-5 times within 10 minutes. Why do people act in such a parrot-like way? New words and phrases seem to spread, like an epidemic until it reaches screaming pitch. It is not jargon on the whole – jargon are specialised terms used in medicine, sociology, engineering or any specialist profession. It avoids the use of ‘thingumyjig’ and ‘widget’. ‘Going forward’ has replaced ‘in the future’ – a phrase with a pedigree as long long as it is noble. ‘Future’ is a fine word, full of resonances and even emotion. Corporations like to wring this sort of thing out of words except the idea of progress and exclude any hint of negativity, existing or not. Business-speak also has ‘one must move on’. Business-speak seems to want to deracinate ordinary language, like changing a mature cheddar into a Kraft cheese slice.
One curious phrase I’ve noticed a few times on the BBC – “a man handed himself in at the police station”.
Difficult, unless he was a contortionist …
“Our party has a real problem here. Most of our Focus leaflets are full of clapped out phrases that should have been pensioned off twenty years ago. Meanwhile, under the tutelage of John Sharkey, our leader trots out conservative tropes about “[insert worthy adjective here]-families” that are effectively meaningless.”
Plenty of jargon here:
“Focus leaflets” (many leaflets not called Focus and meaningless to many outside the party)
“clapped out”
“pensioned off” (arguable this one)
“trots out”
Trots Out – Stalinists In!
Comrade Allen, we didn’t know you were One Of Us.
Another irritant is the deliberate adoption of American usage in the UK. We use the verb, to meet, as a transitive one so we do not use a preposition after the verb. The Americans say ‘meet with’. Brits should use the British usage when in the UK. Another is in numerical ranges e.g. from 9 to 51. The Americans say from 9 through 51. I have heard this on the BBC, of all places. We say ‘named after’, they say ‘named for’ and I’ve heard this used by English people. Do people think it is ‘cool’ to do things the American way? But don’t they realise they are faintly ridiculous, aping another nationality?
In England, forms are filled in, not filled out.
Gavin: – “write me”, “aluminum”, “trash” etc etc
If you put this on your page, please do so without revealing my name, as I’m non-political and have been referred to your excellent article from elsewhere.
Two points:-
1. Could the phrase ‘negative growth’ please be abolished? There is no such thing. The economy has not ‘experienced two consecutive quarters of negative growth’. For two quarters running, the economy has shrunk.
2. Not only does Orwell’s fourth rule about not using the passive simplify text and make it easier to follow. People also use the passive to evade responsibility. ‘The decision was taken to ………’. No. Someone or some group of people decided to ….. .
‘I am instructed to advise you …’. No. Either ‘X has told me to tell you …… ‘, or ‘I am telling you but would prefer to evade responsibility for doing so.’
There are occasions to use the passive. An example, is where one wants to keep the same subject for two successive verbs, ‘Parliament passed 7 minor bills and was then prorogued’. But there are not many such occasions.