Correspondent's Notebook
An argument for simple language
18 September 2009
Radio Australia’s Bruce Hill makes an argument for simple language from politicians and decision makers. Clear explanations are fundamental to democracy, and it’s up to regular people to demand that policy makers not hide behind jargon, he says.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who as it happens is this year’s chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, will be in New York shortly for the United Nations General Assembly meeting.
World leaders will each have their allotted time to get up and speak, but will what they say actually be understood?
Many of us in the Pacific have noticed an increasing tendency for bureaucrats, officials, aid agency personnel, diplomats, economists and anyone with the word “consultant” in their job description to use incomprehensible language.
And politicians are also catching the jargon disease – none more so than Mr Rudd, himself a former diplomat.
His tendency to lapse into bureaucratic language has been widely noticed in Australia, where it’s provided satirists with an easy target.
But if he imagined that derisive laughter was going to be the only consequence, he was recently disappointed when an article he submitted for the prestigious American journal, “Foreign Affairs” was rejected.
Why would a scholarly article written by an Australian prime minister with diplomatic experience not be fit for publication in a very serious periodical which many people just like Mr Rudd would be expected to study?
Could it be that he mentioned the threat from “incremental bifurcation” in the Asia-Pacific region between the United States and China?
Or his call to “remain vigilant against the possibility of alternative contingencies” while accepting the need to “work within the extant political vocabulary with China’s national discourse”?
Did you understand that?
Because it took me a few tries before working out that he’s trying to say that:
- having America and China working against each other could be dangerous
- people need to be aware that international relations can change very quickly
- the world needs to understand China’s internal politics if they are to deal effectively with Beijing.
There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
So why don’t the people who supposedly provide intellectual leadership, fail so dismally at communicating?
Often it’s a form of “credentialism” – using a secret language that only other people within an elite group understand, which excludes others.
It’s actually a form of snobbery – it says “If you don’t understand me, it’s because I have special, secret knowledge and you don’t, so you should do what I say because I’m clearly much cleverer than you are”
And it’s surprising how often that works.
But only if ordinary people allow themselves to fall for it.
Next time someone starts using jargon, or talks vaguely but plausibly, ask them what they mean.
They may say they want to implement a client-focused development strategy agreed upon by community stakeholders to ensure enhanced capacity building for civil society institutions in the agrarian sector.
When what they actually mean is: “We’re going to give the local farmer’s committee a computer and an internet connection so they can check the crop prices before sending their goods to the market in order to get top dollar” – then make them say that.
If an expert is asked to communicate something, but leaves listeners scratching their heads, then it’s the expert who is the dummy – not you the audience.
Speak up. If you can’t understand them, say so. They’re the ones who aren’t doing their job, not you.
If you let experts intimidate you into silence for fear of not appearing as clever as they supposedly are, you might be allowing them to get away with something.
It must have been a bit of a shock for Kevin Rudd when his jargon-packed article was rejected by “Foreign Affairs”, but in fact it might be a wake up call for that entire social class of experts who have become so powerful, especially in the Pacific.
Democracy is all about ordinary people making decisions, and to do that they need to have the facts.
If experts actually give people clear, comprehensible information, then democracy can work.
But if you don’t insist on them doing that, then how can you know what is really happening?
Instead of making things happen yourselves, you will become people who have things done to them instead.
Things you might not like.
