Jargon Hunting

Canberra is the national headquarters of stakeholder engagement, thought leadership and the run-on sentence. This city is awash with jargon, wherein words such as actionable, facilitate and silo are ceaselessly smashed into phrases like core competencies, value chain and driving innovation, to make even the most mundane task sound weighty with deliverables.

Unfortunately, this habit of loading sentences with empty emphasis has slopped over into every day conversation and is now the ambient noise of television. Here are six of the worst.


Passion

Unless you fight, fuck or breastfeed someone it isn't a passion. It could be an enthusiasm, it might even be a career or the sort of hobby that gets you a spot on Collectors but rarely does it require the dreaded 'P' word.


Paradigm

Is worth approximately 20 cents and if you really need to shift one I will happily put it in my pocket.


At the end of the day

It gets dark and I can go home without listening to any more of this bullshit.


Journey

It's not a journey unless you change your mailing address. Try using process, experience or, in the case of reality television contestants, 'transitory moment of lessened obscurity'.


Upskill

If you use this word it's a fair bet you haven't.


May I just say

Absolutely not. Just because you're in front of a camera, flanked by a journalist and sitting under television lights in no way indicates an interest in your opinion.

Meet the New Class

Overheard in a Manuka carpark: “No Gaspard! Stay with the trolley!”

I gawked at the woman giving the order because I expected it to have been directed at a large poodle instead of a small boy. Predictably, the kid ignored mum and tried to make a break for it - as would anyone whose parents had saddled him with the sort of name that is appropriate for a lecherous minor character in a play by Molière.

Of course the bourgeoisie has been slapping weird monikers on their offspring since Marx was in short pants and, as noted in an earlier post, while the creative spelling of bevan/westie/bogan/chav names has launched a thousand sneering blog posts, the naming habits of the chattering classes rarely seems to rate a mention.

All of which got me thinking - has the use of ‘prestige’ first names (those names that seem to be selected to make it clear the parents have read at least one Penguin classic) increased in the last 15 years? Are we seeing more little Agamemnons and Antigones, Desdemonas, grizzling Hamlets, Caspars and lippy Dantes, as well as the Thomas Hardy/scullery maid twofers of Daisy and Maisie?

The news that Wendy Were (the Sydney writer’s festival head sherang with an uneasy relationship with free speech) recently named her daughter ‘Juniper’ seemed to confirm these suspicions.

Then I came across the small, out of print gem Meet the New Class by the late Alex Buzo. Back in 1981 he wrote:

“Many New Class people are products of the post-war baby boom and have been over-educated to a new level of discontent... they have taken most of the jobs and set up most of the committees to inquire into everything. Their language has come to dominate the media... they have formed mafias, coined words, opened gulfs and influenced morals.”

And tellingly:

“Their children - if they have any - are called Tarquin and Beancurd.”

If you ditched the boomer reference and wedged the phrase “competed in triathlons” somewhere in the last sentence, the book could have been printed yesterday as a field guide to the inner south and north of Canberra. The more things change... or as Gaspard might say plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Tags:
Canberra, Alex Buzo,Wendy Were, first names.

Conversation starter

I live in Canberra. This simple phrase guarantees me conversation whenever I travel.

‘waste of a good sheep paddock’
‘nothing but roundabouts and public servants’
‘we’re subsidising you’
‘Australia’s most boring city’
‘souless’

You get the picture. Usually this stuff is served up by the sort of people who believe mild, parochial insults delivered in a slightly aggrieved, I’m-being-funny tone is witty.

I live in Canberra and one of the most enjoyable aspects of this is that absolutely no one expects you to love it here (you may have to move to Western Australia or Tasmania to fully appreciate how desperately some people need you to like where they live).

Lately, when the standard cliches come up I don’t even bother to try and change the subject. It’s far easier to agree and embellish.

Yes, it is shocking how in Canberra all our housing is fully subsidised and our rates are paid by syphoning off the GST.

Absolutely correct, public servants only work from 10am until 2pm with a two hour lunch break. And yes, there is a roster system where art works from the National Gallery of Australia are loaned out so locals can brighten up the family room. Bloody hard getting Blue Poles through the patio doors I can tell you.

That’s right, big-brained science grads from ANU are on tap to install our domestic PC networks and home cinemas, while the kids are au paired by exquisitely well-read MA students from the School of Arts, all free of charge.

You get the drift.

I live in Canberra and, just quietly between ourselves, I don’t mind it at all.

Tags:
Canberra, cliches.