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Troublesome words
Mar. 16th, 2010 09:43 amOne of George Orwell's most prescient predictions in 1984 was the development of a political language which could simultaneousy claim to be completely clear and forthright whilst actually managing to divorce people from thought and understanding. Personally, this has always troubled me less than I suspect it has many others - I enjoy playing with language in a Humpty-dumpty, words meaning what I want them to no more and no less sort of way. However, when I see Peter Mandelson on the telly burbling away about positive outcomes and equality agendas even I want to pop him one in the mush*.
In the same way that second-rate scientists, academics, religious leaders or teachers think that using plenty of fine-sounding and usually long words will impress people with how clever they are (whilst hiding the fact they actually don't have a clue), politics is using the same trick and hoping nobody will notice - which is especially noticable if you are ever unfortunate enough to deal with local Government.
Anyway, in a move to counteract this, the local government association has just released a list of 250 words which 'should not be used by the public sector when providing information to members of the public'.
Now, my first reaction is that 250 words is a suspciously round number; it feels like they made a list of the worst examples of this sort of language and then said "Hmmn. Two hundred and thirty-seven. Let's get it to two fifty", and so added perfectly normal, unobtrusive words like 'peer', and 'initiative' to make up the numbers.
I mean, how am I supposed to ask my local Roleplaying Outreach Worker** how to start a combat round now?
The thing about banning words is that it is, to my mind, worse than manipulating them to your advantage. It's like telling a painter they can't use a certain shade of blue or a composer that G flat is right out. Language is a tool and tools exist to fill a need, even if it is a specialised one and it doesn't come out of the box very often. Just to check that I wasn't the only one who felt like this I asked a team of Cheerleaders, and they unanimously agreed that if I'd just let them go they wouldn't tell anyone.
What's perhaps most depressing about all of this is the assumption by the Local Government Authority that people who have gone through the school system - and had 8-10 years of compulsory teaching in English - are going to go cross-eyed, dribble and say "I dun gone unnerstan' wot this meenz" when presented with words like 'Procure', 'Capacity' and 'Client'.
But what do you think?
*Some might say this is just because it's Peter Mandelson, but I get the same feeling of itchy knucles when I hear Harriet Harman's dulcet tones as well - I'm pursuing a mush-punching equality agenda of my own here.
**There's bound to be one. I've got rights, you know.
EDIT: Idea inspired by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
baloobas: a prize to the person who can create a meaningful sentence using the most words from the list!
In the same way that second-rate scientists, academics, religious leaders or teachers think that using plenty of fine-sounding and usually long words will impress people with how clever they are (whilst hiding the fact they actually don't have a clue), politics is using the same trick and hoping nobody will notice - which is especially noticable if you are ever unfortunate enough to deal with local Government.
Anyway, in a move to counteract this, the local government association has just released a list of 250 words which 'should not be used by the public sector when providing information to members of the public'.
Now, my first reaction is that 250 words is a suspciously round number; it feels like they made a list of the worst examples of this sort of language and then said "Hmmn. Two hundred and thirty-seven. Let's get it to two fifty", and so added perfectly normal, unobtrusive words like 'peer', and 'initiative' to make up the numbers.
I mean, how am I supposed to ask my local Roleplaying Outreach Worker** how to start a combat round now?
The thing about banning words is that it is, to my mind, worse than manipulating them to your advantage. It's like telling a painter they can't use a certain shade of blue or a composer that G flat is right out. Language is a tool and tools exist to fill a need, even if it is a specialised one and it doesn't come out of the box very often. Just to check that I wasn't the only one who felt like this I asked a team of Cheerleaders, and they unanimously agreed that if I'd just let them go they wouldn't tell anyone.
What's perhaps most depressing about all of this is the assumption by the Local Government Authority that people who have gone through the school system - and had 8-10 years of compulsory teaching in English - are going to go cross-eyed, dribble and say "I dun gone unnerstan' wot this meenz" when presented with words like 'Procure', 'Capacity' and 'Client'.
But what do you think?
*Some might say this is just because it's Peter Mandelson, but I get the same feeling of itchy knucles when I hear Harriet Harman's dulcet tones as well - I'm pursuing a mush-punching equality agenda of my own here.
**There's bound to be one. I've got rights, you know.
EDIT: Idea inspired by
baloobas: a prize to the person who can create a meaningful sentence using the most words from the list!
