Good communication doesn't depend on using babyish words and 'exotic' vocabulary is one of the joys of life.
There is a sniff of puritanism here which I don't like.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
Public Language or Jargon Must Go
The Local Government Association has announced a list of 200 forbidden words that must go if councils are to communicate effectively with the public. Quite how this ban will be implemented they don't say but anything that consigns the nasty, dishonest and duplicitous 'stakeholder' to oblivion will be worth any punishment they can devise. But the BBC report on this mentions 'taxonomy' as one of the 'horrors' that must go. With all due respect to the Plain English activists I don't find this horrific. It's actually quite a useful word for 'classification' which has every right to exist. I am all for plain speaking, lucidity, and clarity but let's not use it as an excuse to jettison perfectly valid words that enrich the language and give us more range of expression.
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1 comment:
"Priority", "dialogue" and "transparency" are also on the list. They're not getting rid of jargon as such, just words with more than two syllables.
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