Posted 7:15 AM by Paul
Mind Your Language

Yesterday I took the train north to Loughborough to spend a day at the office where the company I work for is based. It's an early start but the journey is a comfortable one and a half hour trip which I spent fast asleep. I got in around 9.30 a.m. My boss Julian, a very straightforward man knows his stuff, was having a meeting with a women about how to encourage more construction companies to take on young people and give them work experience, or "work based learning opportunities" as the contemporary jargon would have it. Within 30 seconds the woman had used the expressions " it's a win-win situation" and " it's not rocket science". This kind of drivel would be admissible in a 20 year old but the woman was 55 if she was a day.

My mind drifted back to Orwell's 1984 and the section in the glossary describing the development of Newspeak. The parallels are striking. Gradually language is being used less to communicate ideas and more to share warm expressions of orthodoxy and belonging. To show that you are part of the tribe. Thankfully, I work for someone who hates management mumbo jumbo and likes to do things. Having said that both of us tend to drift off into the new language of public sector management occasionally. I even caught myself saying, "the process we are undergoing adds value". In fact I was making up as I went along and forming my ideas out of thin air.

Nine hours later I was on the packed train heading back south to London. Across the aisle was a hip young man working in the music industry who chatting away loudly into his mobile phone. Within a few minutes I had discovered that he was:

a) hoping to change record companies from Universal to Sony
b) planning to cut Tim out of a production deal worth around £100,000.

On at least four occasions he stated conspiratorially, "Between me and you mate." Between him and about 40 other people in the carriage would have been more accurate. I kept hoping that the soon to be ousted Tim would appear from three seats down and scream " You wanker. I knew you were planning something! " To add to the absurdity, the young man kept assuring his colleague on the other end of the phone " Yeh..I mean… I love Tim dearly but…" Which as we all know means Tim's a loser and I am going to walk all over him.

It wasn't the first time this has happened on a train. I have seen older men and women divulging the most sensitive business and personal information in a loud voice on their mobile. I even heard a barrister discussing a case.

Meanwhile back in London, the Government has decided to extract all accepted meaning from words in defence of their Iraq policy. Blair and co. have inadvertently formed common cause with the Jacques Derrida and the Post Structuralists. Language it appears means what they say it means and differs in meaning according to the context in which it was said at the time.