Thinking about the title for this week’s blog, I was also thinking of ‘Lingo Like Me’ it’s a poetic paraphrasing that harks back to my early days as an English teacher – one of the Poems from Other Cultures that was part of the syllabus at the time and a reminder of happy moments with a whole range of students. But Lingo doesn’t quite cover the level of language confusion that ‘jargon’ does, so that’s where I landed.

I’m well aware that jargon is part of any organisation, from acronyms to initialisms, it’s the language that speaks of different management groups, processes and sometimes legislation. There’s no escaping it, but it’s the language of power and, whether intentional or not, can serve to exclude those who don’t understand, making aspects of some organisations impenetrable. It was the subject of many of my lessons when Language and Power was an exam topic, but it pervaded a huge proportion of my teaching career, and something that never sat well with me. I sought out politicians statements, medical letters and financial communications to prove my linguistic point on many an occasion.

Being prepared to be admitted to acronym central, I was thankful for a list that was shared with me in my first week. The first layer of confusion was cemented when I saw that many of the acronyms I’d been familiar with in my previous environment, were repeated on this list, but they had different meanings. So I was thrown into another language that had tricksy familiarity; with wholly different definitions.

It’s challenging to write this without sounding critical of the people I now work with, and I took a step back from the keyboard to think about the best approach. Thankfully, I was presented with a perfect way in from an online conference I attended today. I’m not saying it was all prophetic though. The keynote speech held a lot of promise about how to undergo transformation in an organisation, but it was in the style of a politician’s delivery – a lot of grand words, a fair proportion of bluster, but nothing really concrete I could take away and act on. If I put it into the context of a lesson, and I was observing, I’d say it sounded impressive, presented a few bells and whistles, but did any learning take place? Not really, and that should be the main aim – as far as my teacher head is concerned anyway! Too much ‘hearts and minds’ and not enough ‘action and impact’, if I must match one grammatical structure to another.

Let’s take a quick look at the phrase ‘hearts and minds'(yes it was actually used in the speech). I’ve conducted some very brief research and although it is often accredited to British General, Gerald Templar in his strategy during the Malayan Emergency in 1952, it was used much earlier than that by French General and colonial administrator Hubert Lyautey as part of his strategy to counter the Black Flags rebellion during the Tonkin campaign in 1895. In both cases it refers to bringing a ‘subjugated population on side’ during a time of conflict. If I were to reduce it further, I would say it’s about getting your own way – and that way might not be the right one – depending on what side of the fence you happen to be sitting at the time. I was surprised by the etymology of this phrase as I’d attributed it to much more recent political administrations, but this revelation doesn’t make me dislike it any less. It’s over-used and meaningless, so when I hear it being bandied around in a speech that has little substance, it’s like an instant flick of the off switch in my brain.

This is just my reaction to this particular example of semantics, but how we respond to language is key to getting the right message across, and thankfully the conference rescued itself by appealing to the inner English Language teacher in me. The post-lunch session, affectionately termed the ‘graveyard slot’ is never an easy one to fill, and I admit to hovering between this one and a session about how AI could be used to update services for residents – thankfully I was sufficiently tempted by the lure of ‘Culture Change in Transformation’ (largely because I knew I’d be a bit blinded by the technical stuff in the AI session) and was treated to a speech about how one particular council had employed a company to undertake a linguistic analysis of their culture. From emails and social media posts, to infographics about soup of the day and how to use the hand-dryer. If this session had been any further up my street, it would have been battering down my front door. I fell into a comfort zone of semantics and semiotics, actually it was more about semantics, but I was aiming for some alliterative resonance!

I quickly found myself taking pictures of slides, so I didn’t miss the key points, and the cogs in my brain were spurred into action; thinking of how I could undertake some of this research myself in my new role. It’s the one thing that’s been bugging me, the lack of clarity in the language used and my concern that if people are being switched off by the words in the messages, the messages are never going to get through – in the same way when you have a really poor signal on your phone and you just can’t hear what someone’s saying to you, so you say it’s best to end the call. But when people switch off in work, it’s really hard to get them to be receptive to further attempts to get through – no matter how important the information is that you need them to engage with.

Which got me thinking, it’s not just the jargon that’s the issue – and believe me, it can be jargon HQ at times – it’s all of the grammatical structures that wrap that jargon up into a package that’s so tightly taped up that no-one can get into it. And yes, Mr P, I am alluding to the boxes you send to Music Magpie that mean we single-handedly keep the parcel tape manufacturers in business!

If you were expecting a list of jargon and my definitions, or critiques, then you’ll be sorely disappointed (or, quite possibly, relieved) but sometimes I start these blogs with no real idea of where they’ll end up – I just have to let the inspiration take me where it will. But in my meanderings through a linguistic labyrinth, I’ve hit upon a project that I’m well aware will only add to the to-do list, and potentially the priorities spreadsheet – although I’ve run out of colours to code my planned work each week, so it might have to be a slightly secret mission. I’ve already started analysing a couple of emails, which has entailed creating a word cloud to investigate the frequency of some vocab choices, an initial overview of the grammatical structures, largely declaratives with a couple of interrogatives thrown in, and a semantic field of construction in an email that has nothing whatsoever to do with the plans for the housing department. I hold my hands up though, I do love a metaphor myself, but I like to think I use them in a way that makes a story more accessible and easy to relate to, I mean, you know what having a switch turned off in your brain feels like, and you’ve all received a parcel that so covered in tape, you can’t even begin to find even the hint of an opening, but some metaphors just make you shrug and utter ‘eh?’.

The mission I’ve chosen to set myself and accept is to untangle the metaphorical jargon and give everyone a fighting chance of understanding what the hell we’re actually talking about and hopefully bring them along for the ride, rather than dragging them kicking and screaming by the parcel tape.

#Boroughbabe signing off for this week, with a renewed enthusiasm for making the world, well, borough, a better place, one word at a time. p.s. This week’s image is a word cloud of the blog – before I entered this closing post-script!