Say it in Style

[Harold Schiffman]

Say it in style
Why talk about 'sub-prime' or 'credit crunches' when our business
jargon could be more imaginative? It's time to look beyond the US for
our work-speak, says Adam Jacot de Boinod

Adam Jacot de Boinod The Guardian, Saturday December 15 2007

Ever since discovering the French expression for drudgery,
métro-boulot-dodo (literally "tube-work-sleep") I've been collecting
interesting foreign words about work. And, along the way, my hobby has
turned into a career. I was a researcher - well, Stephen Fry calls us
"elves" - on the QI quiz show, and now I write books on the world's
strangest and most intriguing terminology. But what makes my blood
boil (and makes me grateful to spend so much of my time nowadays in
quiet libraries reading dictionaries) is the slack soullessness of
jargon so casually spouted in the offices and workplaces of Britain.
How can anyone seriously invite their staff to take part in a
"thought-shower" - which is, by the way, BBC official policy since May
2004 when they banned the word "brainstorm" as potentially offensive
to epileptics - and actually expect them to come up with any new
ideas?

Likewise "chair" rather than chairman or chairwoman literally takes
all the humanity out of the expression. And then there are the
euphemisms designed to turn something unpleasant into something that
at least sounds positive, such as "decruitment" - taking a positive
word "recruitment " to describe its reverse - and "worklessness" - a
term preferred to unemployment.  Likewise, businesses borrow from
science and technology to provide a kind of pseudo-scientific
authority, with words such as "corporate DNA" and "infobia".

All too often, our corporate leaders borrow their jargon and imagery
from across the Atlantic. The American work ethic of
"rolled-up-sleeves" is becoming increasingly prevalent here, in a
"results-driven" world with the attendant sporting jargon where we
"cover all bases", "step up to the plate" and bow down to the "heavy
hitter". I welcome slang as a vivid and radical source in the
necessary evolution of language, the fact that "you" can become "u".
Slang can be so approachable and engaging. Unlike many, I don't share
the traditionalist's desire to correct the more casual and abbreviated
language of text messaging and emailing.

But it is in the workplace that, all too often, language goes through
its greatest risk of decline, where expressions become jargon and
often cliches. Email has replaced the letter, the formal composition
of which has been adapted to the demands of instant response. But has
it become acceptable to sign off "urs" rather than "yours" to an
important client, simply from a need to reply quickly?

Corporate jargon often appears either unimaginative or a
smoke-and-mirrors exercise. How often are we left deliberately on the
outside as we sit through meetings involving phrases that are hard to
follow just because the speaker's aim is either to baffle or impress
by sounding in the know?

How many company websites actually make it clear these days what
service or product they provide? The language is purposefully
impenetrable: "core aims", "crafting and interrogating a long-term
business plan", "creative and innovative thinking", "conscious
consumerism", "strategic goals", and "effective communications
solutions". What does any of this actually mean?

Like Catholic Mass still performed in Latin, jargon simply alienates
people: a cardinal sin in the communicative purpose of language. We
are notorious for our lazy reliance on English as the pre-eminent
international language and for simply repeating anything not
understood by non-English speakers more slowly and LOUDER, but the
languages of the world have so much to offer in terms of colour,
accuracy and, most importantly, fun.

In our multicultural age we should embrace the joy, glory and wonder
of foreign words and expressions. The evidence from the workplace
suggests that a less starched and testosterone-fuelled vocabulary is
needed. Forget acronyms and sporting slang; to pinpoint your working
life you need to go a little further afield.

We will all at some stage have worked with a kutu-loncat (a "jumping
bug" in Indonesian), who constantly moves from job to job to improve
their prospects. Japanese tends to distance itself from sporting
metaphors for the working environment, resorting refreshingly to
madogiwazoku (window gazers) for those who have little to do and mikka
bouzu, a person who leaves the monkhood three days after taking his
vows - a quitter, in other words. Meanwhile, German is ever graphic in
its range, with der Tintenpisser (ink-pisser) for a bureaucrat and a
Trittbrettfahrer (running-board rider) for a person who profits from
another's work.

Professions themselves are rife with inventive job titles, with the
French faiseur d'anges (angel maker), an illegal abortionist; the
cocotte-minute (pressure cooker), a prostitute who turns many tricks
very quickly; and the German seelenklempner (soul plumber), a
psychiatrist. Turkey has designated the degnekci a self-appointed
parking attendant. In Tibet a gardziiba can be either an astrologer or
the person in charge of the cups and dishes during parties, while the
Scottish dub-skelper is one who goes his way regardless of mud and
puddles - used light-heartedly of a young bank-clerk whose duty it is
to run about giving notice that bills are due.

Nothing demonstrates more the dubious excesses of working practice
than the Japanese sokaiya - a blackmailer who has a few shares in a
large number of companies and tries to extort money by threatening
trouble at the shareholders' annual general meetings, or the Indian
dhurna extorting payment by sitting at the debtor's door and staying
there without food, threatening violence until your demands are met.
And a number of us will need to beware of what Germans call the
Tantenverführer (aunt seducer) at this year's office Christmas party,
a young man of suspiciously good manners you suspect of devious
motives; or if you were in Spain, el pupo (the octopus) on the dance
floor, someone who likes to touch women inappropriately.

Many the bad workman blames his tools. In Spain they say El mal
escribano le echa la culpa a la pluma (the poor writer blames the pen)
or El cojo le echa la culpa al empedrado (the limping man blames the
pavement). And in Russia it's Plokhomu tantsory yaytsa meshayut (a
poor dancer is impeded by his own balls). So I welcome business
lexicons and imagery that will excite at the corporate meeting, lend
character to the "bullet point" and add colour and life to the more
prosaic aspects of administration. Slang and jargon work fine - but
only if they are fun and approachable.

· Adam Jacot de Boinod is the author of Toujours Tingo published by Penguin

-- http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/dec/15/businessjargon/print
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