This year is the 60th anniversary of George Orwell’s 1984. Much of Orwell’s projections in 1984 are with us today: "Big Brother" surveillance, control of history, and the corruption of language. Listening to our politicians, economic pundits and some media commentators, one is aware of the Orwellian manipulation of language in a number of ways. "Peace-keeping forces", for instance, is a coded terminology used to initiate war; invasions are described as ‘landings,’ or opportunities to restore democracy; "defense strategy" actually means planning for war; unemployed people made redundant are referred to as potential “micro-entrepreneurs; prisoners become stakeholders, protestors become threats to national security and the new democracy is indebtedness with a growing economy one that encourages spending and indebtedness of its inhabitants.
Language has indeed become so corrupted, abused and misused that one commentator notes that the mantra of New Labour “to deliver on the things that people want delivered” does not necessarily mean “to deliver it”. If anything – it means the opposite – not to deliver. [Jamie Whyte, Standpoint 17 (November 2009), p.10]! What have we become? Why the world of “unreality” and denial in which most of us live in and operate by?
Some contend that there is need to kill the plethora of jargons that have taken over our lives. They point especially to documents emanating from government offices that include words that not even a dictionary will be of any help. These words include: cohort; stakeholders, synergy, transformational, faith initiatives, outcomes, level playing field, improvement levers, coterminous, stakeholder engagement, revenue streams, slippage, can do culture, potentialities, quantum, subsidiarity, value-added etc. The list is massive! The concern is that such use of words is a real stumbling block to communication and create more confusion - perhaps conveniently playing into the manipulation of language that Orwell had in mind.
Churches have also bought into this trend of language manipulation: while on the one hand its liturgical and theological language is archaic, making little or no sense to many in its own midst; churches have also borrowed many of the above words. Our documents today are loaded with most of these jargons that doubly compound our inability to communicate.
Imagine being given permission to create a list of jargons or words to ban from the current vocabulary of our ecclesial institutions, government departments and community organs? What would you come up with? Would our lives be any better and would we have a clearer and more realistic view of our task together for the common good?
©copyright jagessar November 16th , 2009
