The corruption of public language in Australia

In recent weeks I have re-read George Orwell’s ‘Politics of the English Language’ (1950), as well as read Don Watson’s Death Sentence (2003). The arguments of both writers are strikingly similar. Clarity and precision in language are essential. The plain language movement derives from Orwell. Watson (2003, 2004) argues that managerialism has corrupted public language. I understand managerialism to be the application of private sector management practices to the public sector and the preference for the free market. The language of business rather than the language of government is a feature of managerialism. While there needs to be a balance between clarity and precision on the one hand and personal taste on the other hand, I feel that managerialism has tipped the balance towards jargon and management clichés and away from clarity and precision.

Last week I consulted a style guide that omitted jargon, clichés, metaphors, and weasel words. While this omission is partly due to those who operate within a discipline not recognising that words specific to their discipline are incomprehensible to those outside it (like ‘governance’ or even ‘pedagogy’), it is important for me as a political scientist and an educator to understand how politicians use words and actions to obtain power. Part of our job as academics is to help fellow citizens decipher political spin. They need to see how John Howard, for instance, appropriated terms from the left such as ‘mateship’, ‘battler’ and ‘fair go’, and infused them with individualist ideology (Dyenforth 2007). It was ‘Howard’s rhetorical hegemony upon “Australian values” [that] contributed to his decade-long electoral success’ (Dyrenfurth 2007, p. 211) and to the collective desire to ignore inequality. Similarly, ‘benchmarking’, ‘core’ and ‘non-core promises’, and ‘key performance indicators’ are not going to provide citizens with better services because the language of business is not the language of government. Without clarity in language, the words of politicians might become words of mass destruction  (Watson 2003, 2004). Much of this analysis might be lost due to the growing number of academics who defer to jargon rather than to plain language. We do need to know the terms and concepts that structure knowledge in our disciplines, but we also need to communicate effectively with those outside our discipline.

References

Dyrenfurth, N. 2007. ‘John Howard’s Hegemony of Values: The Politics of ‘Mateship’ in the Howard Decade’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 42, 2.

Orwell. G. 1950. ‘Politics and the English Language.’ In Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays. Great Britain: Secker and Warburg.

Watson, D. 2003. Death Sentence: The decay of public language. Sydney: Knopf.

Watson, D. 2004. Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words, Contemporary Clichés, Cant & Management Jargon. Sydney: Vintage.

We must be eternally vigilant

Tony Fitzgerald is right – we must be eternally vigilant. The Crime and Misconduct Commission (initially the Criminal Justice Commission established out of a recommendation from the Fitzgerald Inquiry) and the Integrity Commission are significant aspects of our armoury. The role of lobbyists must be watched closely. Political donations should be declared in a very timely manner. A case could be mounted for election campaigns to be publically funded. This might be costly but it might very well be a small price to pay for openness, accountability and a more level playing field for minor parties.

On a related matter, in an interview with Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report on 29 July 2009, CMC Chair, Robert Needham, drew attention to a number of points. I want to deal with two. The first was that perception often matters more than the reality. Integrity systems might be thought of as important here and the way that the media reports certain actions is clearly significant. The perception and the reality are important in the conventions of ministerial responsibility, and the roles and values of public administration within this system of representative and responsible parliamentary government. Whenever we act we need to think of how our actions would be perceived by a member of the public. Would a citizen consider what we are doing as ethical, and, if not, don’t do it (eg., IPAA Queensland, 2008).

The further point that Needham raised was that of ‘noble corruption’. Those who hold this position could, to some extent, be thought of as articulating consequentialist ethics. Here the ends or the consequences could be ethical but it does not matter so much about the means. Needham pointed out that this position can, in time, result in more insidious forms of corruption based on self-interest. It might be opportune to remind ourselves that utilitarianism is perhaps the most prominent example of consequentialism and self-interest can be seen as a key element of utilitarianism. It could be argued that this form of ethics could be associated with the current economic rationalist/managerialist paradigm.

From the standpoint of virtue ethicists, for instance, ethics is just as much about the means as it is about the ends. Ethics is about character – good character. Other virtues include justice, care, loyalty, trustworthiness, honesty, and prudence (practical wisdom) – there are, of course, many more. Kane and Patapan (2006) have written a very interesting and thought provoking article on the subject of public administration and prudence, particularly given that managerial reforms have placed more public servants in situations where they will be required to resolve ethical dilemmas. Ethics is about doing what is right. In the case of public officials, doing what is right might be thought of as being connected to the public interest. In a previous blog I argued that citizens expect public officials to be accountable and to act ethically. Personal integrity is essential.