On gobbledygook

Jargon is a necessity. The sciences, and mathematics, could not be discussed by their practitioners without it. When a mathematician points to the blackboard and says .. but when you pass to the derived category, this diagram commutes on the nose. she is using jargon. In principle, she could have expressed this in plain English, but only at much greater length, and with the concomitant penalty that the emphasis of her lecture would be distorted. Some jargon is better suited to its task than others. Some jargon is precise, some vague. The proper use of jargon is to express concisely, to an audience that is familiar with it, what cannot be otherwise expressed without clumsiness. As a girl's face seen briefly in a crowd, or a tune heard indistinctly from a distance, may seem beautiful, so what we do not understand often acquires a mysterious glamour. Intellectual curiosity draws nourishment from this mechanism of our brain, and strange jargon may play its part in making an unknown subject seem worth study. But intellectual excitement turns to crankery if it is not accompanied by discipline and analysis. Using jargon is not the same as understanding it. Another function of jargon is to signalize membership of a group. Schoolboy slang, thieves' cant, cockney, trendy neologism - all do this. I have known some mathematicians who, lest their wives feel excluded from the conversation, have primed them with one or two pungent interjections, such as .. but do you mean that globally? or .. did you mean trivially trivial or just trivial?. On the other hand there are people who, attending a specialist lecture by an expert and not understanding it, conclude that there is nothing to the subject except the jargon, and that if they can gibber it plausibly, why then - they too must be experts. I have even observed this in mathematics, but I believe it to be far more prevalent in softer disciplines - the social sciences, education and business studies - where the rigour of precise definition is less crucial and consequently less of an embarrassment to the bullshitter. Unfortunately, jargon is often misused. I do not refer to technical error, but to the conscious decision to impress or browbeat an audience unfamiliar with it, in the expectation that none will dare to expose his ignorance of it. Even worse is the case when the speaker himself does not understand what the jargon means, whether he has never learned to distinguish true comprehension from intellectual masturbation, or whether he so despises his audience that he knows he can take it for a ride. Bullshit - abuse of jargon - is a tool for the peddler of snake oil, for the man who sees the world divided into wise-guys like himself and suckers. It daunts the suckers, and keeps him on a pedestal. Management-speak goes beyond simple jargon. It is a special style whereby the banal and the bleedin'-obvious are re-expressed in a manner that is too vague to be challenged and yet portentous enough to excite those who lack the power to analyse it. Why else promulgate management-speak if not to weed out those stupid enough to fall for it, so that they deselect themselves from top management? The danger, of course, is that if top managers are stupid too, management-speak becomes the common tongue of the whole business, which ends up, like the tower of Babel, with nobody really understanding what anybody is saying, themselves included. This situation appears to have actually taken place in the educational establishment in the UK. Between those who teach and those who hold the purse-strings sits an ever-swelling cadre that speaks its own language, which is forced upon the very people who understand most keenly the educational damage that its adoption engenders. Please email to to let me know if you agree or disagree with this rant. In particular, I will be very pleased to receive any of the choicest tidbits of management-speak or education-speak that stir your bile, and I will display them on this site. I am indebted to Steve Vickers for telling me about a sign by the rail track just outside Bletchley station saying: Junction maintained by XXXXXX Focusing on Customer Needs Your comments count says a display with a smiling uniformed maiden at my local supermarket. For what and with whom? The only time I wanted to make a comment, that I would pay twice for most desserts if they would lower their sugar content to a point where they tasted of something other than sugar, nobody knew where the comment forms were kept. How many are the sides of vans, or the expensive billboards, that trumpet some self-congratulatory, information-free slogan? They are the essence of business speak - vaguely uplifting, impossible to challenge, infantile and a waste of time for all but the coxcombs who commission them. They insult the intelligence of the public and provoke cynicism and despair. Please send me any ripe examples that disfigure the public spaces that you frequent, and I will set up a gallery of shame. For anybody who loves the English language let me recommend MIND THE GAFFE , The Penguin Guide to Common Errors in English, by R.L.Trask, ISBN 0-14-051476-7. See also Weasel Words