Yesterday I sat on the bus next to woman who was reading some course notes on How to write formal English. I had to restrain myself from snatching the papers off her and jumping on them.
As the bus chugged gently through the choked up streets of South London, I weighed up the options in my mind. I could ask her if she was doing a course and steer the conversation to find out if my suspicions were correct – that there’s a course somewhere teaching formal business English.
I could ask how she would feel if she got a letter including all the words on one of the so-called ‘resources’. I could find out why she was doing it, what had motivated her. I could find out where she worked, follow her from her workplace to the course, track down the tutor….
But I digress. My point is that this appears to be an unwinnable battle. This is the language Bush and Blair used when they talked about invading Iraq. I can’t tell you how much copy I’ve edited since 2003 that concerns itself with winning the “hearts and minds” of staff, residents, clients or whoever. This language isn’t appropriate for workforce reorganisation and resident satisfaction. What’s next? Shock and awe in customer services?
Another inappropriate, but less politically contentious, metaphor is much more common, and widely accepted. In the world of work we share a general – if subconscious – obsession with travel.
What exactly is an ‘improvement journey’? Surely it is nothing more than an ugly metaphor for progress.
But the metaphor is more popular than the very word that would say what we mean. Reports “signal the direction”. Ministers “launch” initiatives, so what choice do we have but to “embark” on yet another improvement journey – even if the whole thing is vague and nonsensical.
Could it be ‘them’ again, those others who invented the language of the trading floors, the conspirators who are secretly laughing at editorial staff everywhere?
Are they trying to fool us by talking about the hum-drum progress of our working lives as if it were an adventure? After all, many of the greatest stories ever told are tales of voyages.
But in these stories there is usually a return element – the traveller comes back to tell the tale. Will a company that has spent 125 years on its “continuous improvement journey” ever want to return to the point where it was shit? No. It’s a rubbish metaphor.
And don’t think that the journey has to stop with improvement. Oh no! Come off at the next exit and stop for a moment at the ‘knowledge café’? You can study the ‘road-map’ and discuss your ‘direction of travel’ over a coffee with a ‘critical friend’. Then off you go again – out onto the open road – only this time it’s a ‘knowledge journey’ you’re taking.
Odysseus encounters a Cyclops. Gulliver is tied down by tiny people, but the most exciting thing that you’re going to meet, lowly office worker, is a ‘barrier’.
Now we’re back to the language of, well, not so much war as civil unrest – rioters turning over cars in Brixton and Toxteth, making ‘barriers’.
It’s all so hideous. Is it any wonder that business people are obsessed by the language of getting away from it all?