It's official. Office jargon is to be banned.

http://journals.aol.co.uk/newsbloguk/blog/entries/2006/11/06/office-jargon-makes-working-life-a-misery/1229

And of course we have the standard lengthy and hugely one-sided discussion board la
menting the misery that office jargon has caused.

This highlights two interesting things :

a) Discussion boards on the net tend to be one-sided (people are too afraid to be flamed by posting an alternative point of view)

b) The role that language plays in driving our culture.

(a) is an interesting, but deep topic for another posting.

So I am going to rabbit-on about (b).

I think the main point is that the English language is NOT DEAD. ( or moribund for the pedants amongst us). Shakespeare himself used to make up words when he felt that something new was required.

New usage enters the language, and if it finds a strong foothold, then it is added to the language.

SMS-Texting is a fine example of the English language being extended.

Just because it is different, doesn't mean that it is wrong.

However, some of the Office-Jargon phrases are not all that useful. And some actually contribute to a degeneration of our feelings.

For instance, 'Have a nice day'.

Seems to imply that whilst today might (and should) be nice, the remainder of your life will likely be worse. That's pretty depressing.

Unfortuntately, 'Have a nice life' might be translated by some Americans as
'Get a Nice Life' or the more insulting form 'Get a life'.

Putting one's 'ducks in a row' is a nice phrase. It communicates having things (objects/projects/people etc) lined up in space/time/configurations so that something can be done efficiently.

Obviously, if you were from the duck-protectorate-league, and against duck-shooting (even at the local fun-fair) then you might find this phrase distasteful.

How about the shameful 'proactive' ?

When I was at school, I learnt about Isaac Newton's 3 laws of motion. One of which was 'Action and Reaction are always equal and opposite'.

So where does proaction fit in ? Is it a mysterious third force ? Does it explain the dark-matter miss-match in the universe ?

No, proaction is now an official word, which has wormed its way into our dictionaries as a result of over a decade of common usage. It means taking action before action is critically needed.

The saddest thing here though is that pro-action always existed, using the stem 'pro' , the hyphen glyph "-" , and the good old Newtonian "action" word.

But languages evolve. Some phrases come and go.

Some change a little before they stay. (for instance, consider 'a parting shot' which came from 'a Parthian shot' (the Parthians could shoot backwards from their horses)).

The 'moral of the story' is that , if you have a complaint to make about the world around you, offer a solution. Don't just whinge that it should be elimanted.

Otherwise you might remove language altogether from our culture.

Almost all of our language comes from the little phrases, cobbled together over time.

in next week's installment of 'the culture contribution of languages' we will examine the role of childrens' nursery rhymes in recording key events in our past, and lament the paucity of such rhymes celebrating recent events in our geo-socio-politico-multi-economico driven history.

God help us.