Never Mind the Bollocks: Why Can’t We Just Talk English?
Let’s dump the pretentious business speak and get real
Over the last forty years of working, I’ve seen language in the office go from something easy to understand to a pretentious cacophony of business-speak that is almost another incomprehensible.
And it makes me want to throw up.
Before I continue, let’s clear a couple of things up.
Firstly, I know language is evolving. Otherwise, we’d all be talking like Macbeth. Or maybe grunting and pointing at wall art we drew with our own poo.
Secondly, as proved in the famous Sex Pistols case, bollocks isn’t a swear word. It means nonsense. They fought the law, and the law lost.
Now I’ve got that out of my system, let’s get back to the point.
In the 1980s, when I started work, we were expected to know how to speak and write English correctly. The most radical use of a word I ever encountered was when I worked as a large UK retailer.
The word was ‘action’, as in, “Could you please action that Miss Scott?”
Quite revolutionary for those days, but I was a Management Trainee and accepted the jargon as a sign I was being initiated into the arcane art of retail. Seven years…
