Dwain Walden

I had no idea that a year ago a law went into effect which forbids federal agencies from using “gobbledygook” language. This discovery excited me.  I love “cut to the chase” English.

But a recent report says the law is off to a very spotty start.

And then it hit me why gobbledygook is still happening. This law offers no penalty for violation. In other words, federal agencies can still use what we call “fifty dollar words” without having to stay in at recess and clean the erasers.

Now when I say I’m all for “cut to the chase” English, I’m not promoting that we return to primeval grunts, although some people have metaphorically been blown back to the stone age.  Wasssup!

Mostly what I’m talking about is intense complicated language.

Some years ago I was covering a court case. A defense attorney was strutting back and forth in Clarence Darrow fashion in front of the jury with his back to the witness, seemingly perplexed over the response of the witness.

He said,  “Sir, in my opinion you have not replied adequately and appropriately to the question which I have propounded to you.”

The witness just stared in a deer-in-the-headlights fashion. The judge leaned over to the witness and said, “He said you didn’t answer his question.”

Over the years, people have come up with descriptions of complicated language. Some refer to it as “doublespeak.” In another venue, we have “technese” and legalese.

I recall a judge handing a brief back to an attorney and telling him, “It’s called a brief for a reason.”

Doublespeak is no better illustrated than in a program called “Agenda for Change”,  (Manchester Children’s University Hospitals NHS Trust, 2005.) “Where the combined value of the above payments before actual assimilation remains greater than the combined value of the payments after assimilation, the former level of pay will be protected. These protection arrangements apply to the combined value of payments before and after assimilation, not to individual pay components, excepting the provision relating to retention of existing on-call arrangements.”

Say what?

Quite often I will ask a technical person to “put it in layman’s terms.”

Not long ago a tech was on the phone trying to help me correct a computer problem. He referred to a particular icon that I should see on my computer screen. He used a term I had never heard. So I described to him what I was seeing. There was a green creature dancing across my screen, and there was something else that looked like a stack of pizza boxes. Well, it was the pizza box thing that I was supposed to click on. Lo and behold, we fixed the problem, and I had this sudden urge to  have pizza for lunch.

 So a Harvard graduate pulling a stint in the navy runs to the admiral and says, “Sir we’ve run abreast of an uncharted coral reef, the result being a large cavity below the water line causing a shortage of the electrical system and a serious conflagration must be addressed, lest our peril be imminent.”

A bosun’s mate, who dropped out of junior college to serve his country, runs to the admiral and translates. “Sir, we hit a damn rock, knocked a hole in the boat and we’re about to sink.”

Was this law necessary? I think a memo from people in charge would have worked just as well. And hopefully somewhere between primeval grunts, texting abbreviations and one of those William F. Buckley discourses on Kensington economics, we should find a happy medium that explains why we owe more than we’re bringing in. Or as my dad might have said, “The add’em ups should be more than the take’em aways.”

Here’s to your briefs!

( Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)