Opinion Wyn Drabble: In search of straight speaking

The new Plain Language Bill currently before parliament . Photo / NZME

There is a glimmer of hope for lovers of language; the new Plain Language Bill before parliament just might help bureaucrats to eliminate verbal fluff and talk like proper people.

The bill claims that comprehensible information from government agencies is "a basic democratic right".

Instead of saying, "A number of different approaches are currently being trialled", for example, a government agency might be required to say, "We still don't have a clue what we are doing".

A couple of decades ago, Don Watson gave us a good laugh at vacuous verbal pomposity in his books Death Sentence, The Decay of Public Language (2003) and Weasel Words, A Dictionary of Contemporary Cliches, Cant and Management Jargon (2004).

"Democracy," he said, "depends on plain language. It depends upon common understandings. We need to feel safe in the assumption that words mean what they are commonly understood to mean."

He made us aware that real people had written examples such as the following:

· Too often the vision for the organisation goes no further than the CEO's office and organisations' foyers. Cascading the vision through divisions, branches and other sub-units can be facilitated to create: aligned missions, values and visions at all levels; a Steering Team process for managing the change program; a hit-list of barriers to improvement and opportunities for change.

· For example, if a course requires a person to complete a task within a particular timeframe this does not necessarily mean that the course would therefore map against the project management "Manage Time" unit of competency as the competency is not being demonstrated within a project management environment.

· The government has no exit strategy.

The bill before our parliament does not define plain language so we can only assume it means language that is clear, concise, organised and appropriate to the intended audience. If there were an official definition it would certainly not contain the phrases "cascade the vision", "project facilitation", "behavioural accountabilities" or "key stakeholders".

The new plain speaking should call a spade a spade. It should call "a very desirable, luxuriously leafy character home simply oozing potential" an "overgrown cottage". It should call "a modestly affordable levy" "a tax".

It should certainly contain an element of linguistic equality so that minority groups such as migrant speakers of other languages would not be adversely affected. English is complex enough already without burdening it with jargon-laden gobbledegook or a muddle of metaphors.

The proposals in the bill contain no enforceable rights or requirements so members of the public will have no redress if they still find information difficult to understand. But it should still be a step in the right direction.

Other countries such as the US, UK and Canada have plain-speaking movements. After the Plain Writing Act was introduced in the US in 2010, plain language advocates were initially unimpressed by its effect but subsequent investigations have noted slow but significant improvements.

There is even an International Plain Language Federation, which brings together plain language organisations and individuals from around the world. It actively promotes the public benefits of plain speaking.

So, will it work here?

I am cognizant of the fact that, going forward, there will be teething troubles but I feel that on the back of hard work by writers as well as feedback and feedforward from the stakeholders – ordinary New Zealanders – we will progress things in a meaningful manner, touching base and engaging in dialogue – face to face where necessary – to reach tangible and measurable goals relating to the cascading of vision, the eschewing of obfuscation and the elimination – nay, eradication – of sentences like this one.