[wvns] Robert Fisk: Jargon Disease Choking Language
In the military sex-speak of the Pentagon, Iraq would endure a 'spike'
of violence
This Jargon Disease is Choking Language
Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2149736.ece
I once received an invitation to lecture at "The University of
Excellence". I forget where this particular academy was located -
Jordan, I think - but I recall very clearly that the suggested subject
of my talk was as incomprehensible to me as it would, no doubt, have
been to any audience. Invitation rejected.
Only this week I received another request, this time to join "ethics
practitioners" to "share evidence-based practices on dealing with
current ethical practices" around the world. What on earth does this
mean? Why do people write like this?
The word "excellence", of course, has long ago been devalued by the
corporate world - its favourite expression has long been "Quality and
Excellence", invariably accompanied by a "mission statement", that
claim to self-importance dreamed up by Robin Cook when foreign
secretary - swiftly ditched when he decided to go on selling jets to
Indonesia - and thereafter by every export company and amateur
newspaper in the world.
There is something repulsive about this vocabulary, an aggressive
language of superiority in which "key players" can "interact" with
each other, can "impact" society, "outsource" their business - or
"downsize" the number of their employees. They need "feedback" and
"input". They think "outside the box" or "push the envelope". They
have a "work space", not a desk. They need "personal space" - they
need to be left alone - and sometimes they need "time and space", a
commodity much in demand when marriages are failing.
These lies and obfuscations are infuriating. "Downsizing" employees
means firing them; "outsourcing" means hiring someone else to do your
dirty work. "Feedback" means "reaction", "input" means "advice".
Thinking "outside the box" means, does it not, to be "imaginative"?
Being a "key player" is a form of self-aggrandisement - which is why I
never agree to be a "key speaker", especially if this means
participation in a "workshop". To me a workshop means what it says.
When I was at school, the workshop was a carpentry shop wherein
generations of teachers vainly tried to teach Fisk how to make a
wooden chair or table that did not collapse the moment it was
completed. But today, a "workshop" - though we mustn't say so - is a
group of tiresome academics yakking in the secret language of
anthropology or talking about "cultural sensitivity" or "core issues"
or "tropes".
Presumably these are same folk who invented the UN's own
humanitarian-speak. Of the latter, my favourite is the label awarded
to any desperate refugee who is prepared (for a pittance) to persuade
their fellow victims to abide by the UN's wishes - to abandon their
tents and return to their dangerous, war-ravaged homes. These luckless
advisers are referred to by the UN as "social animators".
It is a disease, this language, caught by one of our own New Labour
ministers on the BBC last week when he talked about "environmental
externalities". Presumably, this meant "the weather". Similarly, an
architect I know warned his client of the effect of the "aggressive
saline environment" on a house built near the sea. If this advice
seems obscure, we might be "conflicted" about it - who, I ask myself,
invented the false reflexive verb? - or, worse still, "stressed".
In northern Iraq in 1991, I was once ordered by a humanitarian worker
from the "International Rescue Committee" to leave the only room I
could find in the wrecked town of Zakho because it had been booked for
her fellow workers - who were very "stressed". Pour souls, I thought.
They were stressed, "stressed out", trying - no doubt - to "come to
terms" with their predicament, attempting to "cope".
This is the language of therapy, in which frauds, liars and cheats are
always trying to escape. Thus President Clinton's spokesman claimed
after his admission of his affair with Monica Lewinsky that he was
"seeking closure". Like so many mendacious politicians, Clinton felt -
as Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara will no doubt feel about his bloodbath
in Iraq once he leaves No 10 - the need to "move on".
In the same way, our psycho-babble masters and mistresses - yes, there
is a semantic problem there, too, isn't there? - announce after wars
that it is a time for "healing", the same prescription doled out to
families which are "dysfunctional", who live in a "dystopian" world.
Yes, dystopian is a perfectly good word - it is the opposite of
utopian - but like "perceive" and "perception" (words once much loved
by Jonathan Dimbleby) - they have become fashionable because they
appear enigmatic.
Some newly popular phrases, such as "tipping point" - used about
Middle East conflicts when the bad guys are about to lose - or "big
picture" - when moralists have to be reminded of the greater good -
are merely fashionable. Others are simply odd. I always mixed up
"bonding" with "bondage" and "quality time" with a popular assortment
of toffees. I used to think that "increase" was a perfectly acceptable
word until I discovered that in the military sex-speak of the
Pentagon, Iraq would endure a "spike" of violence until a "surge" of
extra troops arrived in Baghdad.
All this is different, of course, from the non-sexual "no-brainers"
with which we now have to "cope" - "author" for "authoress", for
example, "actor" for "actress" - or the fearful linguistic lengths we
must go to in order to avoid offence to Londoners who speak Cockney:
as well all know - though only those of us, of course, who come from
the Home Counties - these people speak "Estuary" English. It's like
those poor Americans in Detroit who, in fear and trepidation, avoided
wishing me a happy Christmas. "Happy Holiday!" they chorused until I
roared "Happy Christmas" back. In Beirut, by the way, we all wish each
other "Happy Christmas" and "Happy Eid", whether our friends are
Muslim or Christian. Is this really of "majorly importance", as an
Irish television producer once asked a colleague of a news event?
I fear it is. For we are not using words any more. We are utilising
them, speaking for effect rather than meaning, for escape. We are
becoming - as The New Yorker now describes children who don't care if
they watch films on the cinema screen or on their mobile phones -
"platform agnostic". What, Polonius asked his lord, was he reading?
"Words, words, words," Hamlet replied. If only...
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