Write and badly wrong

The estimable Don Watson has popularised them as “weasel words” – those turgid, convoluted, self-important phrases and faux terminologies that have dragged official communication into its present day morass. Daily we are confounded by politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders who appear to be communicating while saying absolutely nothing, or just as likely the very reverse of what they appear to be saying.

Public language has become so debased and so wanton in its obscurity that every public or formal utterance is greeted with the derision and suspicion it deserves. Employees, consumers and voters are fed up with the constant obfuscation but their disdain is in vain. It has become impossible to escape mealy-mouthed jargon and flights of linguistic fancy.

It’s true that language is a living, breathing thing. Change and adaptability are hallmarks of a vibrant language as it courses its way through time. But when it comes to today’s jargon, the language of public discourse is barely in possession of a pulse.

Linguistic abominations come from many quarters but there can be no doubt about the true masters of debased language. Business is the heartland of gibberish. As Don Watson notes in his seminal 2003 book, Death Sentence: the Decay of Public Language , the scourge of management language has infected every reach of society to “vandalise the language” beyond recognition.

“Business language is a desert,” Watson wrote. “Like a public company, the public language is being trimmed of excess and subtlety; what it doesn’t need is shed, what is useful is reorganised, ‘prioritised’ and attached either to new words or to old ones stripped of meaning.”

Watson called for resistance to this vandalism, but if anything, in the years since he wrote the book business language has become even more of a wasteland.

One of the mysteries of jargon is that so much effort goes into so little benefit. Very little about business jargon is premised on communicating – which in a business context seems perversely counter-intuitive. Jargon junkies are not setting out to convey meaning; they’re out to impress.

Memos are rich with impoverished language and inflated egos. The preening self-regard of managers who favour management-speak fairly oozes from every meaningless word uttered. Were they not so hilarious they would be heart-breaking.

It’s unlikely that anyone was any the wiser when this executive wrote in his memo to staff: “Our strategy is singularly focused on the need to manage all areas of customer interactions, communications and sales in an integrated way.”

We can only imagine what, if anything, was in the mind of the human resources manager who noted that expected workplace “behaviours” had not materialised because “we have not optimised the dimensioning and incenting of the workforce”.

Managers with jargon habits are incapable of restraint. As with all junkies, too much is never enough. Thus the temptation to pack as much jargon into each sentence, as this memo illustrates: “To achieve our goals going forward we have had to restructure the business. In reviewing the business structure some changes have been made to provide a sustainable business model going forward.”

The point of this repetitive muck? Read on: “The new structure has meant that some positions will no longer be required.”

Management consultants, ever keen to invest their dark and dubious art with a vestige of science, have done more to demean business communication than any other sector of business. Yes, lawyers are infamous for their impenetrable verbiage but at least it has been largely confined to the halls of the legal profession. Management consultants, on the other hand, have infested the wider community with their arcane language.

“Moving forward, talent will be the most critical dimension an organisation will need to cultivate and thrive through change,” writes one management consultant.

Another consultant is taken with what appears to be a new entrant to the junk jargon annals: can you spot it among the other dross? “A more diverse workforce, well managed and enabled, can unblock performance and strengthen collaboration that helps the organisation achieve innovative breakthroughs in customer focus and process improvements,” the firm urges. “They [organisations] need to unleash the potential of their employees by enabling them for optimal productivity.” Stand by for more “enabling” in 2012.

One might imagine advisers to business to be precise and methodical in their language so that they may be easily understood. Instead, management consultants seem inordinately proud of their role as the standard-bearers for junk language.

Similarly, it is a reasonable assumption that the way a company describes itself is one of the most important pieces of internal and external communication – yet not even this essential piece of communication is free from stupefying jargon. One company boasts: “We are very professional in our external facing initiatives.”

“About Us” sections on company websites are always good for a laugh. One company takes particular pride in its record of “Upholding a reputation for honesty and reputability”. Mission statements are another hotbed of meaningless babble. These “positioning” statements turn the bleeding obvious into unfathomable mysteries. A long-forgotten government panel declares: “Our fundamental mission is to make a reactive response to industry’s needs” – who could even hazard a guess?

The problem with jargon is that it has a way of insinuating itself into everyday language despite its emptiness of meaning. The ubiquitous “in terms of” is one of the most redundant and grating terms in vogue but there are others vying for the top prize. “Solutions”, for example. Trucking companies no longer deliver freight, they provide “transport logistics solutions”; a human resources consultant claims to be a “provider of on-demand workplace planning, reporting and human capital analytics solutions”; while another claims to be a market leader in “end-to-end talent management solutions”. Some recruitment firms prefer to be known as providers of “workforce solutions”.

Why this mania to be providers of solutions, and preferably “strategic solutions”? These organisations have presumably convinced themselves, or been convinced, that it’s more “proactive” to be a provider of solutions rather than mere products and services.

Proactive would have to be one of the most pernicious, meaningless pieces of fluff to emerge from the business lexicon of junk language. Everyone’s saying it but nobody knows what it means.

Do the organisations and individuals who claim to be “proactively interested”, “strategically proactive” and “committed to managing complaints in a comprehensive and proactive way” have the same meanings in mind – or indeed any meaning – when they use this demonstrably silly word?

As for the consultant who urges clients to have “a range of reactive and proactive strategies up their sleeves” – clearly he wants the best of both worlds.

The “leading gender diversity expert” who describes herself as being “passionate about including men in the gender diversity strategy of leading companies” doesn’t explain how diversity would work without them. But the point is that she’s passionate and anyone worth their salt in business knows that to the passionate go the spoils.

There’s the consultant who has “a relentless passion for seeing things from different perspectives”, the public relations firm that is “passionate and strategic” and the management consulting firm that boasts: “Our passion is to help individuals recognise their core values and express them skilfully at work and beyond.”

The pity of it is that there is so little passion in the business community to speak plainly. Contrary to what some of these jargon junkies may think, Plain English is not a variety of tea.

BRW

Comments (0)