The mother tongue

An infestation of weasel words ... Parliamentary draftsperson falls foul of post-modern abstractions ... Where was George Orwell when the Transport Integration Act was being drafted? ... From Yarraside, William Collins opines 

William Collins: a man of letters

DOWN the ages, lawyers have promoted the case that one of the keys in the never-ending struggle for the attainment of effective communication is the use of plain language.

That said, lawyers are as prone to error in the form of debasement of the English language as other mortals.

Every law library's collection of law reports contains tens of thousands of cases that record the never-ending struggle of superior courts to seek out the true meaning of the Acts, which our popular assemblies extrude from the legislative sausage machine.

There is a delicious irony in the fact that the most cited pronouncement of the High Court of Australia on the correct approach to the construction of statutes is to be found in the 1998 case Project Blue Sky Inc v Australian Broadcasting Authority. 

There is also a never-ending debate about where to draw the line between maintaining the elements of good and proper English usage and allowing for the relentless adaptation of language.

Robert McCrum's Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language (2010) is a lively account of the history of the mother tongue and how in recent times it has conquered the world.

However, the recent versions of English usage that McCrum surveys are likely to be influenced by the worst features of the ever-changing English language.  

In case I commit one of the sins I'm fond of condemning, I keep a copy of Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words, Contemporary Cliches, Cant & Management Jargon (Knopf, 2004) within easy reach. 

In 2003, the same Don Watson had published Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language (Knopf) in which he mercilessly surveyed the sorry state of the language of contemporary Australian public life.

In documenting the decline of the past six decades or thereabouts, Watson identified the two chief culprits - the spinmeisters of Australian public administration and their linguistic soul-mates in the era of Friedmanite/Thatcherite capitalism.

However, there is a third category in the debasement stakes which Watson failed to press.

Apart for passing mention of academicians Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and others of their ilk, Watson absolved sub silentio the academy in Australia, including law schools and the institutional sources of the grotesque post-modern/post-structuralist abstract verbiage that has done such lasting damage to the language of Australian public life.

So, where is all this leading? 

As that noted wordsmith, R.G. Menzies KC of the Victorian Bar, remarked in that grim first week of September 1939, "it is my melancholy duty to inform" Justinian readers that one of the most ghastly (compound) weasel words that has infected everyday language has now been given whatever official approval is bestowed by appearing in an Act of the Victorian Parliament. 

And, as far as it goes, the heading to s.6 of the Transport Integration Act 2010 (Vic) is, by George Orwell's standards a high-level shocker:

"Vision statement

6. The Parliament recognises the aspirations of Victorians for an integrated and sustainable transport system that contributes to an inclusive, prosperous and environmentally responsible State."

In his magisterial plea for plain English, Politics and the English Language (1946), George Orwell set forth five short passages, which he contended "illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer". 

The whole tendency of modern prose, Orwell argued, "is away from concreteness".

Orwell did not accept the inevitability of decline. He proposed the following six general rules: 

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous. 

Orwell had his own vision statement

Readers will see that your correspondent already has succumbed to contravening rule 5.

Let's return to the Transport Integration Act 2010. The parliament's preference for anything but plain language was there at the outset. Here is s.1:

"The purpose of this Act is to create a new framework for the provision of an integrated and sustainable transport system in Victoria consistent with the vision statement." 

In the case of s.6, all that needs to be said that it is probably unnecessary to consider any of Orwell's rules after the first.

Is it possible that there is a more over-used, tendentious and meaningless English adjective in the language of public life than "inclusive"?

Perhaps. But it would at least compete with "offensive" for a place in the top ten such adjectives, with "sustainable" shortening in the odds.

For readers sufficiently fascinated to discover what the Victorian Parliament was striving to impart when it passed the Transport Integration Act 2010, the next stop is s.8: 

"Social and economic inclusion

8. The transport system should provide a means by which persons can access social and economic opportunities to support individual and community wellbeing including by—

(a)   minimising barriers to access so that so far as is possible the transport system is available to as many persons as wish to use it;

(b)  providing tailored infrastructure, services and support for persons who find it difficult to use the transport system." 

The weasel-like combination of "should" and "as far as possible" does not strike me as revealing a command capable of advancing the cause of "individual and community wellbeing" in any concrete way.

As for "tailored infrastructure", if only Orwell could be resurrected to survey and report on the forces arrayed against the noble cause of preserving and promoting plain English.

In 1946, his opening words in Politics and the English Language, were:

"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it."

I hope that the foregoing provides a sufficient flavour of what the parliament has achieved. It is more of the same for "Economic prosperity" and "Environmental sustainability" in ss.9 and 10 respectively:

Sections 14-21 of the Act meet the latest requirements of contemporary political pieties. Take, for example, s.16: 

"The principle of triple bottom-line assessment means an assessment of all the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits taking into account externalities and value for money."

I rest my case.