Less jargon, politicians told

2009-07-09 20:18

London - British politicians who speak in jargon about "core values" and "stakeholder engagement" were told on Thursday they are turning off the public.

A panel of journalists and language experts warned MPs that voters need clear and concise communication and have grown tired of pompous political jargon which often has little meaning.

"They are damaging their own credibility (and) damaging their profiles by talking in this language but I don't think the public are fooled," said Simon Hoggart, parliamentary sketch writer for the Guardian newspaper.

"Politicians are particularly vulnerable to not really knowing very much about anything in particular but wanting to sound more knowledgeable than they really are," he told a committee of MPs set-up to look into how language is used and abused by government.

'Beaconicity'

The public tend to glaze over words such as "level playing field" and "collateral damage", the panel said.

Frustrated by the babble and waffle used by politicians, Britain's Local Government Association in March drew up a list of 200 words for public bodies to avoid, including "cascading", "menu of choices" and "beaconicity".

David Crystal, professor of Linguistics at Bangor University in Wales, said politicians must learn to engage with the public in innovate ways, urging them to use social networking website Twitter as an example of a succinct mode of communication.

"One of the things that Twitter does is it gives you 140 characters to say what you mean. Now that is a knife over you to be succinct. Waffle actually is very unusual on Twitter," he said.

"I think if Twittering were part of the routine training of politicians things might improve considerably."

But the solution may be simpler than "building bridges in the community". Keep it simple was the advice.

"You don't have to go back to very tedious boring English to say what you need to say," said Matthew Parris, columnist at the Times newspaper.

- Reuters