Broadcaster John Murray's campaign, on RTÉ radio, to name and shame those who confound listeners with buzz-word bingo, resonates with everyone who laments the demise of plain English, writes Frank McNally
IT'S NOT JUST that man in the TV ad - the one who admits sheepishly: "I don't know what a tracker mortgage is." According to the National Adult Literacy Association, most of us are on the same bus. Seven out of 10 adults struggle to understand even basic application forms for financial services. And no wonder: since such forms come from a world in which English does not appear to be the first language.
It's another planet entirely: where customers can be "revenue-generating units"; where staff are at constant risk of being "right-sized" - especially if they fail to jump (or make "paradigm shifts") when told to; and where managers will never discusses the "detail" of a plan if they can discuss its "granularity" instead.
So when John Murray, a former deputy government press officer (GPO), became a business journalist with RTÉ a few years back, he set himself a mission to expose such abuses and encourage plain speaking. It was partly from necessity. With no background in business, he was about as fluent in its terminology as the man on the bus. But this weakness soon became an advantage.
After toying with the idea of a hooter that would sound in studio every time an interviewee used gobbledegook on Murray's weekly radio show The Business- an idea that still has merit - he settled for a slightly gentler approach: just naming and shaming the worst offenders and encouraging listeners to do likewise.
The feature was an instant hit. "We never expected it to become a permanent part of the show, but it did," says Murray. Soon, half the calls and e-mails to the programme were from listeners gleefully citing their own examples.
Four years on, the campaign has spawned a book: Now That's What I Call Jargon. This is not just a compilation of greatest hits from The Businessand Morning Ireland(to which Murray's campaign, like the man himself, has spread): although there are plenty of those featured.
But the author has also taken a more analytical and thematic approach, with chapters on "Hiring" (ie job advertisements, an area in which claptrap is especially rife), "Firing" - a subject that has probably inspired more tortuous euphemisms than any other - and information technology, which really is a language unto itself.
For a prize example of what the campaign (and book) is about, consider the following description of a 2006 conference in Dundalk, on marine tourism:
Murray read that at least a dozen times when he first saw it, and still has no idea what it means. Pursuing action points in marine tourism, especially while using a "road map", sounds dangerous. But there is any amount of such drivel out there, and as the former government man knows, it's not confined to business.
Having started his career in journalism, Murray's political sojourn began in 1995 when he became adviser to Mary Harney. On the PDs' return to government in 1997, he was appointed deputy GPO. And when he left these shores in 2000 for a period in Beijing, he must have found the Chinese easier to understand than some of the people he had to interpret while working in the Dáil.
Certainly, politicians have contributed generously to his campaign. One of the winners of Murray's now annual awards for confusing the public was the then PD junior minister, Tom Parlon, for an interview about flood relief (featured in the book) after which listeners would have needed a life-raft.
When politicians talk like this, Murray suspects they have spent too long locked up with civil service mandarins. This is also the only explanation for the stuff Brian Cowen - one of Ireland's most articulate men - produces on occasion. As minister for finance, he once used the phrase "going forward" eight times in a seven-minute interview. Exposure of this habit seems to have had a reforming effect, Murray says. On the other hand, as recently as last weekend - talking about the banking crisis - Cowen spoke of "public comprehension of the paradigm": which can not have helped the comprehension of the man on the bus.
The author hastens to say that he doesn't "stay awake at night worrying" about the misuse of English. In fact, he and his listeners have derived so much entertainment from it that he'd be concerned if the source ever dried up.
But that doesn't seem to be a big risk at the moment. Business buzz-words are so infectious, he uses them himself all the time: "touching base" regularly, inviting people to "business card" him, and asking interviewees the "time-frame" of their plans rather than: "How long will it take?" His own son has had to pull him up for talking about "harmonisation of relations" ("I docked his pocket money," jokes Murray).
So the campaign for plain English looks likely to run and run, and the book may well have sequels. In the meantime, Now That's What I Call Jargonis being rolled out countrywide with a view to running it up the flagpole and seeing if any revenue-generating units salute it, going forward. Or put it another way, it's available in all good bookshops now.
• Now That's What I Call Jargonis published by New Island, €10.95
WORDS FRANK McNALLY
PORTRAIT FRANK MILLER
INTERVIEW