Читать книгу Collins Improve Your Writing Skills - Graham King - Страница 19

The increase in £M3 was approximately equal to bank lending plus the PSBR minus net sales of gilt-edged securities other than sales to the banks themselves.

Nigel Lawson, The View from No. 11, 1992

. . . the cognitive-affective state characterized by intrusive and obsessive fantasizing concerning reciprocity of amorant feelings by the object of the amorance.

US sociologist’s definition of love, 1977

Most people recognise jargon when they see it: words and phrases that may have begun life within a particular circle of people, trade or profession, but which spread among others who merely wish to appear smart or up-to-date.

The Collins English Dictionary defines jargon as ‘language characterized by pretentious synatax, vocabulary or meaning; gibberish’.

But not all jargon is pretentious or gibberish. It includes the shop talk of technical terms, understood by those who need to know and who have no need to explain it to outsiders. It is for millions of people a form of time-saving professional shorthand. It is a specialist’s language designed for accurate and efficient communication between members of a particular group.

Fair enough. But too often, jargon and arcane verbiage are used by people to trick others into believing they know more than they actually do; or exploited as a security blanket to give them the feeling of belonging to an elite. This use – or misuse – can only interfere with meaning and understanding.

Hundreds of former valid scientific, technical. legal and technical terms have become more widely used as vogue or buzz words, and many of them are not properly understood. How many of us can hold hand to heart and say that we know precisely what these vogue words mean: parameter, symbiosis, quantum leap, synergy, dichotomy, post-modern? Yet despite our doubts we’re still tempted to use them.

In spite of the efforts of the Plain English Campaign, jargon is still very much alive and kicking when we read of:

a visitor uplift facility	=	a tourist mountain train
ambient non-combatant personnel	=	war refugees
enthusiasm guidance motivators	=	cheer leaders
an unpremised business person	=	a street trader
festive embellishments (illuminary)	=	Christmas lights *
an ambient replenishment assistant	=	supermarket shelf stacker
wilderness recreation	=	camping and hiking
frame-supported tension structures	=	tents
unselected rollback to idle	=	aircraft engine failure in mid-flight

* True. This is how the politically correct Northampton Council described them.