Jargon causes communication breakdown
In the Pacific, it is an unfortunate fact people are being increasingly subjected to public language that they can't understand. Bruce Hill explores the implications.

When government departments, aid agencies, NGOs and politicians talk about achieving synergistic buy-in from key stakeholders for their performance-based corporate vision statements; setting mission-critical performance indicators, strategizing with development partners about how to leverage a next-generation paradigm shift, in a culturally-sensitive, environmental sustainable and proactive manner ... well, what are people to make of this?

Communiques released in the aftermath of regional meetings are usually awash in a sea of indecipherable acronyms, like the EU, the ACP, and the ADB.

If you read in the newspaper that the FIC's are up in arms about an MOU over PACER, and that this might impact on the implementation of the RTFP, not to mention the implications for PICTA, how are you supposed to understand what's going on?

I don't understand it, and I have to wade through what seems like acres of this verbal sludge every day, trying to work out what various official bodies are trying to communicate.

Bureaucrats, aid agency officials, UN functionaries and NGO spokespeople all seem to be slipping into this way of speaking, and journalists are increasingly using this sort of language as well, leading to confusion and a lack of understanding.

Although it might be laughed off as just pointy-headed bureaucrats talking to each other in their own secret code, in fact the implications of this are quite serious.

The way we speak and write is the only way we can express our thoughts to others.

And if we can't, or perhaps won't communicate in a clear manner, then we're effectively hiding our intentions.

With this sort of cliche-ridden, impenetrable jargon so prevalent among people who make decisions with real impact on the lives of Pacific Island people, there is an increasing danger of a gap between those who make decisions and those whose lives they affect.

If people ask what is happening to them, and all they get back is undecipherable gobbledygook, after a while, they will feel helpless, confused, alienated, and, eventually, angry.

And who could blame them.

How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow to see a massive dredge bashing a hole in the reef just offshore from your village, and you asked the government what was going on, and they sent you a piece of paper saying something like:

"Due to sub-optimal financial results in the 2006-2007 year in the area of concrete supply for the construction sector, and to offset the cost of imported goods it has been decided after due consultation with the officially designated stakeholder representatives to increase the uptake of raw materials from local sources, in accordance with the resource management act passed three years ago. A notification to this effect was placed on page 37 of the local newspaper eight months ago and no one objected at that juncture, and the time-frame for objections having passed, it has been determined that your inquiry is without merit."

You would feel powerless, unhappy, even lied to.

But the organisation responsible for sending that message to you would probably insist that they were being "transparent" and "accountable".

This has got to stop.

And so I for one am taking a stand.

When I do interviews with people in the Pacific and outside the region who I suspect might try to use this kind of debased public language, I tell them before I start recording the interview that jargon isn't really suitable, and if they start using those sort of words, I will go "bzzz!", tell them what they did wrong, and ask them the question again.

So far I've only had to do that once, and the person I was interviewing took it in good spirit, and admitted that jargon is being used too much these days.

If more people take a stand against the debasement of language, complain when they see it, and refuse to accept that complex issues can't be explained in simple, easily understood ways, maybe the sort of people who use this language will realise what they are doing, and stop.

In his novel "1984", George Orwell had his all-powerful totalitarian political party change the language to make concepts like "freedom" literally unthinkable.

Newspeak, as he called this purged language, meant that if people didn't have a word for "freedom", then they couldn't think it.

The way we speak and write, shows the way we think.

If you can't explain in a clear, simple, easily understood single sentence what you're doing, then whatever it is, you're probably doing it wrong.

< back