Management speak demystified

The land of small business is thankfully not as heavily blighted by meaningless management speak as the rest of the world of commerce, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t jargon-speakers in the world of entrepreneurialism.

The House of Commons Public Administration Committee met earlier this month to discuss whether or not there should be a ban on politicians using inane jargon. In an entertaining exchange, Simon Hoggart, sketch writer for the Guardian newspaper, imagined Winston Churchill’s famous war-time speech re-written by a local government employee. ‘We will fight on the beaches’ turned into ‘an ongoing programme of hostile engagement in littoral sectors,’ for instance.

Every single group has its own jargon, David Crystal, Professor of Linguistics, Bangor University, explained to the listening MPs. But it becomes a problem when this language forms a barrier between them and everybody else.