It always amazes me how many politicians, for all sorts of reasons, alienate their electorate through their use of language. You’d have thought that politicians would be experts in communication, but time after time they get it spectacularly wrong. Here’s my politicians' guide to linguistic pitfalls.
Classical references
So you know your Virgil from your Homer. Great. But classical references are probably the most effective way of alienating your audience. For example, The Sword of Damocles is a lovely classical tale about the responsibility of leadership and can be used as a very effective analogy. But if a politician is going to use it he has to explain what it means.
Angus Robertson (MP for Moray) in a debate about the military earlier this year said: “The MoD has already announced the closure of RAF Kinloss, with devastating local consequences in Moray, and the sword of Damocles is hanging over neighbouring RAF Lossiemouth”. From this sentence it seems that Angus feels the residents of Moray have a fairly competent knowledge of classical moral anecdotes.
I’m not entirely sure if Angus is correct in this assumption, but even if he was, why bother saying it? Does his reference to Damocles add anything to his argument? I’d suggest that his speech makes more sense if he just removed ‘of Damocles’ entirely. In fact a constituent who’d never heard of Damocles might ask why the reference had been included at all and quite reasonably conclude that its addition could only have been merited if it changed the meaning of the sentence in some way. Maybe Damocles had a magic sword or a pirate sword made out of foam?
Foreign languages
There’s something innately impressive about someone who can speak a foreign language. Perhaps this, in part, explains why we’ve borrowed so many phrases from other languages. Some are genuinely useful terms that simply don’t have an English equivalent. For example there’s no comparable word that I can think of for ‘verbatim’ or ‘cliché’. However, they should be used with extreme care.
Take Lord Kinnock for example. Generally a good orator and a self confessed man of the people. But listen to him talking about BSkyB in March: “Is it not clear that the secretary of state has accepted this arrangement as a quid pro quo for allowing Mr Murdoch to take complete ownership of BSkyB”. ‘Quid pro quo’ is not a phrase you find knocking around the average UK home. ‘Dad can I have a ride into town as a quid pro quo for washing your car?’ It sounds weird because no one would say it.
In this context Lord Kinnock isn’t using ‘quid pro quo’ as a way of economising language either. Surely ‘in exchange’ would have been shorter and (far more importantly) would have allowed everyone to understand what he was saying? For someone who talks about inclusivity and public engagement reciting Latin is a tad inconsistent.
Acronyms
The dreaded three letter acronyms (or should I say TLAs?). Do we really need them? How much extra effort is it to say the whole thing? In fact there are some acronyms that really are pointless. For example the NHS’ Workforce Review Team’s acronym (WRT) has exactly the same number of syllables as its full name.
But even if abbreviating the whole name does save you a second or two, is it really worth it? The Department for Transport produces a list of the acronyms it uses here, giving us plebs a chance to work out what the hell they are trying to say. But why is this list needed at all? Surely it would be easier to simply not abbreviate in the first place?
Political jargon
Politicians seem to hold two opposing views simultaneously when it comes to political jargon. On the one hand they are happy to scoff at hapless civil servants who use impenetrable phrases like ‘re-baselining’, ‘distortion of spending priorities’ ‘external challenges’, ‘coterminous comparisons’ or ‘holistic approaches’ and on the other, regularly use these phrases.
The Local Government Association has published a list of council jargon that you can see here. Type any of these words into Google followed by ‘Hansard’ and look at how many MPs have said them in the chamber. It’s really quite astonishing.
And the strangest thing about this language is that although it has, at least in part, been created by politicians it’s entirely unintellible to the average constituent. I regret having bothered to look up what coterminous means because I would never want or wish to use it, and unless MPs’ constituencies are made up exclusively of Guardian-reading intellectuals, I would suggest politicians wouldn’t want to either.
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The argument against taking the advice I’ve just laid out is that it would require a dumming down of politics – stooping to the lowest common denominator. And to that I would say – ‘yes, exactly’. Being a politician isn’t about trying to be an intellectual; it’s about trying to engage with your electorate.
One of the most respected speakers in the house is Sir George Young. His speeches have a reading age of a 19/20 year old (according to Flesch–Kincaid readability test). This is far too high. He may well impress his fellow politicians with his extensive vocabulary but he’s alienating part of his audience at the same time. David Cameron speeches have a reading age of 16/17. That’s not a mistake. He’s simply chosen to speak in a more accessible way, and it’s worked out for him. More politicians should follow his lead.
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