Let’s think outside the box – maybe jargon isn’t a bad thing

IT can, at times, feel as though our precious language is under siege on all fronts.

Bombarded by jargon on one side and pummelled by contorted and minimalist “text speak” on the other, many people feel they can’t keep up with this ever-changing vocabulary and long for a world without “quantitative easing” or “malware”.

It’s not just that new words and phrases sound alien; there is a deep suspicion that jargon is merely used by people who feel the need to justify their own existence and is actually just claptrap.

Author Caroline Taggart attempts to get to the roots of all this in her new book Pushing the Envelope – Making Sense out of Business Jargon. “This is something that some people get very annoyed about, they write to their newspapers and call Radio 4 all the time as if the world is coming to an end,” she says. “But I wanted to look at why we say what we do and where the words come from, because if we take the concept of a living language that evolves, then you can see a lot of imagination goes into mobile texts and jargon.”

But that doesn’t mean some phrases and jargon aren’t irritating. “I hate some expressions, but although you and I might think they’re claptrap other people might not. Jargon can be a form of working shorthand. For instance, if someone says ‘customer service orientation’ you might think what on earth are they talking about? But it means doing what the customer wants. You might then think why don’t people just say that but that’s how jargon works.

“If you’re in a marketing meeting and someone talks about ‘crowd sourcing’ or ‘commoditization,’ the people in that room will understand, so it can be useful for small groups,” Taggart says. “In the early sixties at the height of the Cold War, an American analyst wrote a book called Thinking Beyond the Unthinkable, the unthinkable being a nuclear war and what would happen if the Russians attacked. But now we are told all the time to think ‘outside the box’ and are encouraged to do more ‘blue sky thinking’.”

But many people feel there is too much jargon, not enough plain speaking and gratuitous use of business jargon outside of the working environment, which just baffles other people. “It is escalating because life is escalating, and we need a vocabulary to keep up with it. Fifty years ago a phrase like ‘cyberspace’ didn’t exist because there was no need for it. But now with so many people using the internet it’s something we understand.”

So where do these words come from? “We often assume such words and phrases are modern, but quite often they date back to the 1920s or the end of the 19th century.” While others aren’t what we might think. “I found out that ‘pushing the envelope’ has nothing to do with stationery, but is actually about aeronautics and an aircraft’s capability, pushing it to go further or fly higher.”

For those wishing that jargon would just disappear she has bad news. “It’s here to stay and will only become more prevalent because everyone communicates so much more quickly. But I love the English language, it’s full of invention and excitement.” Even jargon. “My favourite is ‘wombat’ which means ‘waste of money, brains and talent.’ Full marks to the person who came up with that one.”

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Pushing the Envelope is published by Michael O’Mara Books on September 15, £9.99