As Lazy As ABC

The ABC were looking for someone to formulate a new language policy. I decided to waste my own time applying

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) logo

A couple of weeks ago I applied for a job. I don’t want a new job. But this was only a two-day a week job, and I currently have two days a week free (or I did when I applied). I had hoped to spend these two free days working on my own writing, but this job advert drove itself straight into my prefrontal cortex with lights and sirens blazing.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) needed someone to help formulate new language policy guidelines. Ideally they were looking for a candidate with a background in linguistics, but I thought what they really needed was someone who spends a disproportionate amount of their time in mental anguish at the lazy language that journalists use. So I thought I’d apply.

But as I figured my application would likely go nowhere, rather than a standard cover letter I instead wrote them a short piece of writing highlighting some of my major bugbears. Maybe they would find the writing amusing, or maybe they’d at least call for a chat to discuss some of the issues I raised.

I’m yet to get a call.

But rather than this being a colossal waste of time, I thought I would adapt and expand the commentary/application for this newsletter. Some of my arguments were drawn from my essay Our “So-Called” Problem – so may be familiar to longtime readers.

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration

George Orwell – Politics and the English Language

Journalism operates on the assumption that there are pre-established receptors in the audience’s mind it needs to tap into. To do so, the language journalists use is often cliché, with stock-standard phrases, or conventional or overused terminology. The use of such standard terminology is not only terrible communication, but it also frequently fails to accurately explain subject matter.

Central to journalism fulfilling its mission to inform and educate is journalists maintaining a vigilant eye on their own work, as well as the work to others – to recognise what terminology to avoid. This involves examining commonly used terms and phrases and questioning whether they are accurate and useful. And especially what they may imply.

Yet at present this vigilant eye is missing. The pace of digital journalism makes a conscious examination of terms and phrases difficult – there’s a lack of time to breathe and think. Instead, the terms and phrases used by other journalists are seen as the terms and phrases journalists should use. Embedding them further.

This problem is twofold. First it is one of confidence. When we lack confidence we mimic the behaviour of others – outsourcing both our own voice and our minds. When this lack of confidence is wholesale it produces a media environment mired in platitudes and banality, leaving us less, not more, informed. What Orwell described as language used for “concealing or preventing thought.”

Which leads to the second problem of not prioritising critical thinking skills – that is, the ability to interrogate language. For the media these skills should be pronounced and instinctive. To find overused or standardised language repulsive as a reflex, and because these terms and phrases often house incredibly bad ideas.

The example I find most useful is the linguistic virus of “so-called”. At its worst so-called drips with cynicism and bad faith. Its primary purpose is to discredit the noun that follows. So intense is this cynicism that we’ve developed the wild tautology of so-called being coupled with scare quotes. Or so-called “scare quotes”. Even if its use is due to laziness rather than malice, this laziness lives in submission to the phrase’s inherent cynicism.

This laziness also leads to language that lacks connection to a subject. Despite the Australian public currently trying to build a new multi-polar political system, “both sides of politics” is still used habitually. Even in the U.S where there are only two parties, there is no “both sides of politics”. Politics is a multi-faceted pursuit involving by a complex web of ideas, interests, culture, traditions and psychologies. It is not a team sport. It becomes a team sport when you’re only capable of describing – and therefore understanding – it as such.

This makes other team-based language also detrimental to journalism’s mission to inform and educate. The “-ists” (leftist, rightist, centrist) are awful, clunky, language – alongside demonstrating a shallow understanding of politics. It may be untenable for the ABC to abandon using the left-right spectrum completely, but there should be a greater awareness of its modern lack of utility¹. And definitely both people and organisations should never be described as “leaning”, as has become a common framing.

Australian media does not want to become like its counterparts in the United States, where every individual or organisation has to have “liberal” or “conservative” precede their name. As if the audience is incapable of considering an action or quote on merit, and needs to be emotionally guided towards their favourite team instead. We should recognise how this style of journalism entrenches partisanism within the public² – and to understand the divisive political and social conditions that flow from this.

There is a necessity to be aware of the unique political and cultural conditions in Australia and not let the dominance of American politics and culture dictate our political framework or journalistic styles.

As part of this, the ABC should see its role as defending the Australian dialect from Americanisation. I cannot understand why Gen Z is pronounced “Gen Zee” by Australian journalists. It’s as if this age bracket is deemed to be solely American, and the convention on the spelling of American proper nouns has been extended to pronunciation. It’s perplexing stuff.

The inattentive habits that drive Americanisation also drive journalism’s tendency towards reductionism. There’s constant inclination to strip out nuance and complexity at the expense of accuracy.

I live in a permanent state of exasperation at how the Coalition (which is four distinct parties)³ is persistently reduced to the acronym “LNP”. Having to mutter “the LNP only run in Queensland” at almost every article I read is getting tiresome. Aside from being lazy, the acronym is also practically useless during elections as the Liberal and National parties often run candidates against each other.⁴ Who is the “LNP candidate” in such seats?

The same habit of using “LNP” as a shorthand also leads to Australian Rules Football being described as “AFL”. Which is the equivalent of someone claiming they are playing “NBA” when they’re just going down to the park to shoot some hoops. There is no need to conflate the sport with its premier league. Especially because the Australian Football League (AFL) is a Stalinist monstrosity intent on consuming everything in its path.⁵ Referring to the sport as “AFL” only feeds and legitimises their obsessive need for control.⁶

This kind of pedantry wins me no friends in Australia. Australians feel syllables are an unfair burden and are always looking for ways to reduce them. Linguistic shortcuts are deemed to be both a human right and a source of national pride. To make an extrapolated argument, this perspective is so deeply embedded in the country’s psyche that it is one of the reasons why Australia ranks so laughably low on the Index of Economic Complexity. The bare minimum is the national ethos.

Any language policy seeking to counteract a national psyche is probably doomed to fail. But there is an opportunity for the ABC to instil manners in their journalists that can at least attempt to counteract its excesses. Striving to be precise is essential, as is being curious about nuance and complexity. Explaining complexity with clarity should be the guiding ideal of public communication, not mistaking simplicity for intelligibility. And at the core of their work, journalists should instinctively always be questioning language to determine its merit.

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What I avoided here is arguably the more consequential problem with modern journalism – the uncritical adoption of activist language. What I fear is that the person hired for this position will seek to entrench this language, rather than challenge it.

However, I found that once I started thinking about modern progressive language orthodoxies it became a more substantial piece of work worthy of its own post. There is a need to explore in depth the reasons why these orthodoxies have developed, what their purpose is, and why these terms are often counter-productive to the people they claim to be in service of.

However, as a stop-gap, this piece from The New Republic a few years ago – The Left Has A Language Problem – is good at explaining some of these concerns. And it concludes with advice that gets to the heart of both journalism and the “political regeneration” that Orwell wrote of – the ability to be persuasive and to always write for those who may not initially agree with you.

The words we use, in journalism or political communication or just in life, should be words that invite people in rather than keep them out, clarify rather than obfuscate, engage with the world rather than retreat behind a wall of buzzwords. On that score, an awful lot of us are failing right now.

1. With the economic and social revolutions of even the last 30 years, the seating arrangement of the French Parliament in the 18th Century is no longer fit framework for understanding politics.

2. I use partisanism here as this is a distinct concept to partisanship. Partisanship is an unavoidable element of politics within legislatures. Partisanism is a psychology that is incapable of understanding an issue on its own merits, instead having to filter it through a team-based impulse. The U.S is currently mired in this psychology and seemingly unable to understand the world in any other way. As I wrote about in Can American Adjudicate a Neutral Principle?

3. The Liberal Party, the National Party, the Liberal National Party of Queensland, and the Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory. To add an extra layer, both the Western Australian and South Australian National parties are not subject to the Coalition agreement, so shouldn’t be included within it.

4. In Victoria and New South Wales if a Liberal or National party member is the incumbent the other party won’t field a candidate in that seat. But if the seat is held by Labor, or another party or independent, then the Liberal and National parties will both contest that seat against each other. In WA and SA both parties will always run candidates against each other regardless of whether one is an incumbent.

5. Australian Rules Football is inarguably the greatest sport in the world. Its premier league’s administrators are inarguably the worst people in the world.

6. The broader point here is - Never use language that lets the fuckers win. Regardless of who the fuckers are.