In the college where I once tried to teach journalism, there was a sign posted in one of the classrooms: Write to express, not to impress.
Most journalists, I think, try to do that, if only because many of us are kind of simple minded. But bureaucrats try not to. And usually succeed. Impressing, in fact, is the order of the day.
As has been long known and written about, the average paper pusher simply cannot help himself: He has to dream up and use fancy words that convey the impression that there is more going on in that announcement or new program than is actually the case.
Therefore, you get a Canadian health minister announcing that his department is going to “incent and reward” as a way of attracting the best health-care professionals to take jobs in the government system. It would be beyond him, I suppose, to “offer incentives”; that would sound too ordinary. So, make a verb out of a noun and you’re off to the races.
In your day-to-day life, have you ever heard anyone say they were going to incent someone else to do something (even though such a word does exist)? And the first rule of bureaucratese is always use two or three words where one would do. So, we have incent and reward. Is there much of a difference?
I can remember a time when we used to give each other gifts. No more. Now, we gift each other. “The employees pooled their resources to gift their retiring manager with a DVD player.” Press releases that cross my desk often use the word “gifting.” I would like to gift them back to their senders. I am not impressed.
Recently, school boards in my part of the world were given grants to enhance their programs aimed at “recapturing dropouts.” Strange language indeed and perhaps a subtle clue as to why there are so many dropouts in the first place. Why on earth would any bureaucrat talk of dropouts needing to be “recaptured”, as though they were lifers at a penitentiary who walked away into the bush when they were out working in the fields? If the people who run the education system use penitentiary-like terms to describe those who leave school, might it be that some of them left because it felt like a prison to them?
Another press release talks of seeking out community “influencers” to help out on a campaign. What, might I be so rude to ask, is an influencer? Not someone who goes around getting others under the influence, I hope. I suppose it’s someone who has influence in the community. My next question, of course, is what kind of influencers are being sought? Good influencers, or bad? Aren’t we all, sometimes, a bit of both?
Did you know that people who are successful in finding employment are now referred to, in some quarters, as “hires”? A recent board of directors’ report from a local organization announced that two people were the “successful hires” for a new mentorship program. The role of the two new hires is to mentor other new hires, the report says.
I remember a root beer called Hires, but how did a person who has been hired become a hire? Does it follow that someone who is fired becomes a fire? In the future, when a company says it had three fires last month, will it be referring to people who were walked to the door or to washroom wastebaskets going up in flames?
But, in a world where gravediggers are excavation technicians (not kidding), should anything surprise? In need of someone to prepare a traditional opening in the ground in advance of a funeral, who on earth would go directly to the “e” section in the Yellow Pages and not the “g”?
©2005 Jim Hagarty
