From the archive: Jargon is a plague on all our houses

In honour of Art Basel which is about to open, and the Zurich Art Weekend, which has just closed, I’m re-posting this piece inspired by a piece on International Art English.

Apparently there is such a thing as International Art English (IAE), and it suffers from exactly the same problem as overblown corporate-speak. As this article in The Guardian points out:

“With its pompous paradoxes and its plagues of adverbs, its endless sentences and its strained rebellious poses, much of this promotional writing serves mainly, it seems, as ammunition for those who still insist contemporary art is a fraud.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find any corporate writing that strains for a rebellious pose, of course – quite the contrary. Endless sentences and plagues of adverbs on the other hand are all too common – as is pomposity of any sort.

So I’m both saddened and heartened by the idea that the business world isn’t alone in mangling language into new and unpalatable forms, or (as the piece makes clear) that its critics are often guilty of using it, even as they denounce it (naturally that never happens at Carrington HQ!)

What really interested me though is the suggestion that IAE is used as a means of exclusion – whether consciously or subconsciously.

“However laughable the language may seem to outsiders, to art-world people, speaking or writing in IAE can be a potent signal of insider status. As some of the lowest but also the hungriest in the art food chain, interns have much to gain from acquiring fluency in it.”

That’s all too often the mindset that dominates corporate communications, I think. The fear – or, on occasion, the knowledge – of being unimpressive drives people to write in the accepted code. That way they get to stay in the gang. But It’s a vicious circle – because the code simply degenerates over time, increasingly untethered from the language that every one else uses: hence the rise in boardroom bingo and other fun sports.

How to stop it? I have some ideas – but as they invariably involve violence, improbably medical procedures, and doing terrible things to the nearest copy of the OED, they probably won’t achieve much except my permanent incarceration.

In the meantime, ranting helps (in self-employment, no-one can hear you scream.)

But until we come up with the cure to the more virulent strains of management-speak (and seemingly art-speak) the only thing we can do is to keep writing with the intention of including more people than we exclude.