Bob Cuddy: Navigating through the jargon jungle

Say, is anyone out there itching to mitigate some impacts through program participation? I didn’t think so.

The reason I ask is that I’ve been reading government documents again. (Stop me, doctor, before it’s too late!)

I cover the county, so I have to read this stuff as part of my job.

Usually, I slog through the gobbledygook well aware that, as I tell younger reporters, our job is to translate bureaucratese into English so our readers may be better informed.

But sometimes the glop and the gobble just get to me, and I have to scream, “Hey, doesn’t anyone here talk English?”

My latest fit began building a few days ago when an intelligent woman told me she was going to dialogue with some folks.

No, you’re not, I explained. Perhaps you are going to have a dialogue. But you can’t dialogue with anyone because dialogue is a noun, not a verb.

Maybe my sensitivity was running high because people are turning nouns into verbs willy-nilly. People transition, they dialogue, they conversate, they workshop, they guilt-trip.

One San Luis Obispo store even grand-opened last year.

All of this is on top of the now routine practice of adding “ize” to a noun to make it a verb. Prioritize, for example.

This kind of verbifying (hey, if everyone else can make up words, so can I) weakened me.

Then the staff reports from bureaucrats began to pile on.

One from the Sheriff’s Department used quotation marks like Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers films. Gangs seek out “turf.” They operate in “gangland.”

The Public Works Department weighed in by “formally verify(ing) the nonmaintained status of a proportion” of a road and issuing a “formal declaration of termination of maintenance.”

The phrases began to flap ominously around my head like malevolent bats.

So when the state said it was going to “re-purpose” a Paso Robles building and the air pollution district talked about community members being asked to “mitigate some impacts through program participation,” I admit I grew woozy.

It’s not like these guys don’t know they mangle the language. One of them, the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments, actually sent out a memo to employees:

Information “should be understandable… to decision-makers, planners and lay people.”

The next sentence was: “Transportation systems and sub-systems should be assessed based on system outcome performance and focused on the benefits and costs that it produces.”

So, I’m not looking for clarity from bureaucrats. I’m just kvetching and trying to remain conscious.

Since misery loves company, here’s an invitation: Join me.

Are there words, phrases, general abuses of the language that irk you? Send them in. I’ll use the best ones in a future column.

Meanwhile, I need to get over my angst. Maybe if I transition into a gentler frame of mind…

Contact Bob Cuddy at bcuddy@thetribunenews.com .