Why can’t we just say what we mean? It seems to me that the English language has developed an unfortunate habit of putting on a suit and tie before saying anything remotely straightforward.
Nobody gets sacked anymore. They are ‘let go’, ‘made redundant’ or, in particularly creative companies, ‘invited to pursue opportunities elsewhere’.
Nobody is late. They are ‘running behind schedule’.
Nobody makes a mistake. They experience ‘a learning opportunity’.
And nobody is incompetent. Apparently, they simply have ‘development areas’.
I once worked with someone who was described as being ‘not ideally suited to the role’. What this actually meant was that he was completely useless but presumably saying that would have been considered rather harsh.
Even death has acquired a vocabulary all of its own. People no longer die; they ‘pass away’, ‘leave us’, ‘lose their battle’ or ‘go to a better place’.
I understand the sensitivity, but it does occasionally produce some extraordinary sentences.
The business world is particularly guilty.
A company doesn’t increase its prices. It ‘adjusts its pricing structure’.
It doesn’t make a profit. It delivers a ‘strong financial performance’.
It doesn’t lose customers. It experiences ‘customer attrition’.
And when a company is going to sack 500 people, it doesn’t announce that it is getting rid of 500 employees. It announces a ‘workforce optimisation programme’. Optimisation sounds so much nicer. It makes you imagine someone improving the efficiency of a photocopier rather than 500 people updating their CVs.
Then there is customer service.
Try complaining about something and you will frequently be told: ‘We appreciate your feedback’.
This is generally interpreted as meaning: We have read your complaint and have absolutely no intention of doing anything about it.
If something has gone badly wrong, you may be offered ‘a gesture of goodwill’. This sounds wonderfully generous until you discover that the gesture is a £5 voucher which expires on Thursday and can only be used if you spend £50.
Politicians, naturally, have elevated this avoidance of plain English to an art form.
Taxes become ‘revenue measures’. Spending cuts become ‘efficiency savings’. Problems become ‘challenges’. And, when something has gone spectacularly wrong, there will almost certainly be a ‘review’.
The word ‘review’ is particularly useful because it doesn’t actually promise anything.
Of course, there is a good reason for some of this. Sometimes politeness matters. Sometimes blunt language is unnecessarily cruel. Nobody wants a doctor to say: ‘Well, you’re stuffed’ when there are more compassionate ways of explaining bad news.
But somewhere along the way we seem to have confused politeness with avoiding the truth all together.
Perhaps we should occasionally return to the old-fashioned habit of simply saying what we mean.
You’re late.
You’re fired.
That costs too much.
We made a mistake.
I don’t know.
I’m afraid I can’t help you.
It might be slightly uncomfortable, but at least we’d all know where we stood.
And if anyone disagrees, I would be delighted to hear their views.
Or, as I shall now put it:
Your feedback would be gratefully received by the GDN and carefully considered as part of our ongoing dialogue with key stakeholders.
Jackie@JBeedie.com
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