The trouble with jargon
IT’S a peculiar thing, jargon. Everyone (except perhaps Professors of Jargonology) professes to hate it. Everyone uses it, just the same. What we tend to hate, in fact, is other people’s jargon, not our own. After watching JONATHAN MEADES ON JARGON (Sunday, BBC4) I’m wondering if it’s other people that are the problem, really, rather than the words they use.
The famously deadpan critic and writer certainly had a long list of people he didn’t much care for and he crammed them all in, rightly or not, under the heading of jargon and jargon-using.
Donald Trump, for example, monster or not, is a man who prides himself on being plain-speaking. Whether that plain speech is stupid and full of hate is another matter, it’s not what anyone other than Jonathan would call jargon.
He just wanted a go at the Donald, which is fair enough, but not when you’re claiming to present an argument.
The same was true for the empty phrases of our politicians, unsubtly turned into a cross-party montage of soundbite waffle.
“Hard-working families”, “green shoots of recovery”, yada yada yada (as my son says to me) might indeed be meaningless space-takers but what makes them like “detraining” or “deplaning” or “managing expectations”?
Meades not liking them, it seems, is what makes them jargon. By the same token, he likes slang, calling it the “poetry of the gutter”.
That’s the gutter he likes but not the gutter of the gutter press, or the people who read what he calls the gutter press. What makes the slang of thieves or drug dealers any less “clubby” or evasive than the jargon of business gurus? No prizes for guessing. Of course, like all good critics, Meades is a man who specialises in controversial points of view, wittily-argued (if not logically).
I’ve seen him do it better than last night, though. It’s not easy, to stick a monotonous man in a dark suit on a screen and make a good hour of telly out of it.
The visuals help and last night’s, a bulky assembly of shots and clips changing every five seconds, was one of the poorest.
As TV, as argument, in every way, it under-targeted, to invent a phrase. To put it another way, pony and trap.
To my surprise, I had more fun watching STEVE BACKSHALL V THE MONSTER MOUNTAIN (Sunday, BBC2). At least he got to the top of the rock he was scaling (the Eiger’s North Face) and, presumably, back down again.
On the surface a down-to-earth, physical sort of chap, Steve had a rather mystical explanation for taking on this notoriously dangerous climb. Having snapped two vertebrae on a climb in Gloucester a while back, he still wanted to do it, which meant he would succeed. I think some very pious Christians have a similar line of logic.
They are saved already, and the sign of that is the good lives they lead. Whatever gets you to the top, I guess. Having seen what Steve saw from the top, the odd bit of killer rock poking up through a swirling abyss of cloud, I wouldn’t say it was worth it for the photos. Far better was the train ride he took through the mountain at the start of his trip.
There’s a stop on the line with a hidden door. Step through it, clear the snow and you’re halfway up, gazing out at the north face. I’m amazed they’ve never used it for a Bond film.