BENIGN TO FIVE
Although the vast majority of the mail I get from this column is of the effusive variety (a woman once sent me a $400 bottle of nine-tenths full cognac and said she didn't need it any more because my words were all the warming intoxicant she required now), not everyone agrees with everything I write. I'm sometimes told that while, yes, my holy crusade against management drivel is broadly meritorious, surely there are times where a light smattering of moderately tinny language is OK.
No. There is never a case for corporate bilge. Well, not never. If you're going to use it ironically, go for your life. It's kind of like text message abbreviations like "LOL" and "OMG" in that regard, except generally more inane.
But if you're going to use it earnestly, or even sheepishly, I condemn you with a seething fury that I usually reserve for public transport.
Is my hardline stance on "learnings", "actioning", "synergistic", "empowerment", "scalability", "alignment", "painpoint", "rightshoring" and "value-addeds" just the product of an obsessive mind? Well, maybe, but this is more than mere pedantry, I assure you.
These words serve only to obscure meaning and confuse those tasked with reading them. They are ugly. And, honestly, they don't even work as some lingua franca for the business community. Why? Because each one is so easily replaced with more solid words with honest intentions. Why, for example, use the verb "action" when "do" will do?
Everything in moderation? No. Not these intolerable linguistic atrocities. We should cast them out of our societies (or at least vocabularies), shunning them for eternity.
Jonathan Rivett wrote this one half drunk on $400 cognac. He blogs at haught.com.au
