Talk about jar­gon. Many years ago, in a galaxy far away, I was instruct­ed on edi­to­r­i­al content:

You want to stress con­tent sym­bio­sis, inno­v­a­tive, provoca­tive and objec­tive think­ing, assess­ment of oper­a­tional respon­si­bil­i­ties, spe­cif­ic para­me­ters tar­get­ed at a demo­graph­i­cal­ly mixed audi­ence with vary­ing tastes, dis­cern­ment and intel­lec­tu­al approach­es, ensur­ing that each medi­um reach­es tar­get­ed audi­ences, mak­ing it more cross-gen­er­a­tional­ly entic­ing, using more imme­di­ate and respon­si­ble elec­tron­ic media.[1]

Was that jar­gon? We report, you decide. Such an aston­ish­ing num­ber of words, all in one sen­tence, is liable to con­fuse some­body whose liveli­hood depends on com­mu­ni­ca­tion, not obfuscation.

Jargon versus clarity

I did won­der at the time how Churchill, that peer­less prac­ti­tion­er of Eng­lish, would react to this kind of lan­guage. “Short words are best,” he said, “and the old words, when short, are best of all.”[2] Well now….

We can imag­ine what he would think about sub­sti­tut­ing fash­ion­able jar­gon like “chal­lenges” for hand­i­caps or “issues” for dif­fi­cul­ties. (“I have issues with my hotel bill,” a guest in front of me said. No, she had prob­lems!)

What would Churchill make of that stand-by cliché “reach­ing out”? It is inten­tion­al­ly vague—meant to con­vey nice­ness. Would he won­der if it means a phys­i­cal ges­ture? Or does it mean con­vers­ing, tele­phon­ing, writ­ing, telegram­ming, fax­ing, email­ing or tweet­ing? Instead of “reach­ing out,” what’s wrong with com­mu­ni­cat­ing?

Churchill would snort at catch-all jar­gon like “the rich” (for any­one earn­ing a com­fort­able liv­ing), or ter­giver­sa­tions like “man-caused dis­as­ter” instead of “ter­ror­ism.” But even in his day he had his hands full. In 1950 he said:

I hope you have all mas­tered the offi­cial social­ist jar­gon which our mas­ters, as they call them­selves, wish us to learn. You must not use the word “poor”; they are described as the “low­er income group.” When it comes to a ques­tion of freez­ing a workman’s wages the Chan­cel­lor of the Exche­quer speaks of “arrest­ing increas­es in per­son­al income”….

[Homes] are in future to be called “accom­mo­da­tion units.” I don’t know how we are to sing our old song “Home Sweet Home”…. “Accom­mo­da­tion Unit, Sweet Accom­mo­da­tion Unit, there’s no place like our Accom­mo­da­tion Unit.”[3]

“Let us have an end of such phrases…”

Churchill learned Eng­lish from a Har­row mas­ter, Robert Somervell, who instilled in him a love of clar­i­ty and a hatred of dis­com­bob­u­la­tion. To his col­leagues in 1940 he said:

Let us have an end of such phras­es as these: “It is also of impor­tance to bear in mind the fol­low­ing con­sid­er­a­tions…” or “Con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of car­ry­ing into effect….” Most of these wool­ly phras­es are mere padding, which can be left out alto­geth­er or replaced by a sin­gle word. Let us not shrink from using the short expres­sive phras­es, even if it is conversational.[4]

Years lat­er he was still bang­ing away: “In this debate we have had the usu­al jar­gon about ‘the infra­struc­ture of a supra-nation­al authority.’”[5]

Alas, wool­ly jar­gon has a long shelf-life, and “infra-” and “supra-” are with us yet.

Protest­ing the Min­istry of Defence’s “bar­ren, dis­mal, flat­u­lent, plat­i­tudi­nous” 1947 White Paper, Churchill said:

It was one of those rig­maroles and gri­maces pro­duced by the mod­ern bureau­cra­cy into whose hands we have fallen—a kind of vague palimpsest of jar­gon and offi­cialese with no breadth, no theme, and, above all, no facts.[6]

“Spit all this rubbish from their lips”

In 1942, Sovi­et For­eign Min­is­ter Molo­tov wrote a turgid memo about the Roy­al Navy, say­ing, that Rus­sia “will be in a posi­tion to draw the nec­es­sary con­clu­sions as to the real state of affairs, par­tic­u­lar­ly in regard to cer­tain irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the actions of the respec­tive British naval authorities.”

Churchill react­ed to that remark with one of his favorite pejo­ra­tives: “This gri­mace is a good exam­ple of how offi­cial jar­gon can be used to destroy any kind of human con­tact, or even thought itself.”[7]

In Cardiff in 1950, Churchill added: “I hope to live to see the British democ­ra­cy spit all this rub­bish from their lips.”

Aye, and the oth­er democ­ra­cies with it. Any year now. There is still time, brother.

Endnotes

[1] It led to a long process end­ing with a res­ig­na­tion, which is some­thing you need to do at least once in your life. I have nev­er regret­ted resign­ing or being sacked.

[2] Win­ston S. Churchill (here­inafter WSC), The Times Lit­er­ary Award lun­cheon, Lon­don, 2 Novem­ber 1949, in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Win­ston S. Churchill: His Com­plete Speech­es 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowk­er, 1974), VII: 7885.

[3] WSC, Cardiff, Wales, 8 Feb­ru­ary 1950, In the Bal­ance: Speech­es 1949 & 1950 (Lon­don: Cas­sell, 1951), 181.

[4] Sir Mar­tin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Doc­u­ments, vol. 15 Nev­er Sur­ren­der, May 1940-Decem­ber 1940 (Hills­dale, Mich.: Hills­dale Col­lege Press, 2011), 636.

[5] WSC, House of Com­mons, 27 June 1950, In the Bal­ance, 291.

[6] WSC, House of Com­mons, 31 March 1947, Europe Unite: Speech­es 1947 & 1948 (Lon­don: Cas­sell, 1950), 53.

[7] WSC, The Hinge of Fate (Lon­don: Cas­sell, 1951), 516.

Related reading

“Speak­er Jit­ters: Churchill Had Them, Neces­si­tat­ing Strat­e­gy,” 2024.

“Churchill’s War Mem­oirs: Aside from the Sto­ry, Sim­ply Great Writ­ing,” 2023.

“Churchill’s Col­lect­ed Essays, Invalu­ably Com­piled by Michael Wolff,” 2023.

“The Most Impor­tant Thing About Edu­ca­tion: Churchill at Bris­tol,” 2023.

“Scaf­fold­ing Rhetoric: Churchill in Con­gress, 1941,” 2022.