When jargon becomes unsustainable

By Will Self Published 20 May 2011

Good afternoon. I'm glad you were all able to join me here for a brief presentation on some of the key issues that will be affecting us in the medium term. Since our organisation was founded in 2002, we have aimed to provide clients in both the private and the public sectors with real-time analyses of structural capabilities and help them to interface these with logistical support. Since 2007, we have increasingly recognised the importance of sustainability as a key component of our best practice. Previously, "sustainability" was a technical term applied in the environmental sciences to those ecosystems that achieved high levels of diversity and so were able to withstand negative impacts - but that all changed with the full assimilation of environmentalism to what passes for mainstream political debate.

It's academic

Our sustainability group has dated the precise moment at which environmentalism ceased to be sustainable outside the party-political context to some period between the publication of the Stern review in October 2006 and the installation of a wind turbine on the roof of David Cameron's Notting Hill home in March 2007. Some have argued (Parris, Procter, Phelps et al, "Sustainability and Metonymy in Post-Millennial Meaning", British Journal of Ephemera, volume nine, August 2010) that the sustainability of sustainability itself, far from being a vicious circle, is a virtuous one and that some sort of perpetual motion machine could be built using this principle - one that would deliver a sustainable energy supply at minimal cost.

Others disagree, pointing out that simply because district councils have sustainable public transport provision, sustainable vandalism prevention and sustainable dog-waste schemes, it doesn't mean that sustainability can be sustained, given the reductions in government spending overall.
One thing is beyond dispute: "sustainable" is the mot du jour. During a recent PMQs, I heard the Prime Minister employ the term in all its variants - nounal, verbal, adverbial and even conjunctive - no fewer than 375 times, while the so-called leader of the opposition even managed an inspired example of tmesis:

“If the honourable member honestly believes that I give a sustaina-fucking-able-shit, then he's sustainably mad." To which the Prime Minister rejoined: "Sustain yourself, dear." Whereupon the opposition benches erupted, waving order papers and chanting over and over again: "Sus-tain-able! Sus-tain-able!" in a manner strongly reminiscent of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

When I stood up this afternoon to address you, I myself wondered whether it would be possible to speak on this subject at length without some form of sustenance - which is why I'm taking frequent slugs from this Vimto that's been liberally admixed with vodka - but the truth is that, once you begin talking about sustainability, it's possible to go on for a very long time.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to join a field trip last year that journeyed to an isolated plateau in the Venezuelan jungle. Hacking our way up a vertiginous precipice through sustained undergrowth as dense as purple-stemmed broccoli, we came upon a strange, lost world full of jargon and buzzwords that time had forgotten. Here, ongoing situations and consumer demand frolicked in sylvan glades of "minded".

I was amazed at the diversity of these lexical throwbacks and unsheathed my digital recorder, determined to capture them for posterity. But, then, disaster struck! A jejune member of our party uttered the S-word and, before we knew it, sustainability was crawling about the place in such profusion that the entire semantic system was undermined and became . . . unsustainable.

In so many words

In conclusion, then, when we look forward to 2012 and consider what sort of strategies may be sustainable, given emergent trends, we need to bear in mind that sustainable can mean any - or all - of the following: maintainable, supportable, viable, self-supporting, justifiable, defensible, expedient, deniable, larger (as in the expression "sustainable profits"), smaller (as in the expression "sustainable rates of emissions") and the same (as in "sustainable growth"). So long as we remain absolutely clear about this, I feel certain that a way of bullshitting that we've all come to revere will remain, in the medium term, sustainable. Thank you, Jeremy. l

Next week: Real Meals
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6 comments

Mon, 2011-05-23 19:08 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

I don't see the problem. Granted, sustainable has lost any objective meaning, but it's only the last in a long line of such words which have in effect become rhetorical devices which are there to engender a sense of dynamism, moral-probity, inclusivity or 'thinking-outside-the-box-iveness'.

These words no longer impart a meaning or sense which could ever be substituted by a synonymous equivalent; their purpose is to declare: this person (a) is prepared to read and listen to at least some of the gumf that comes his way and absorbs meaningless shite by osmosis (b) is willing to ape his corporate superiors -implying a degree of easy but shameless ambition (c) has at least been awake for some of the last 6 months (d) realises the importance of consistency within a corporate environment. (e) is aware of 'the big picture' (sic -another of the fuckin things)

It's necessary that these words and phrases change and, in future, will probably do so more frequently; otherwise, eventually everyone would pick up on them and they would fail to signify anything. Their frequent insertion at every available juncture would not necessarily indicate the presence of a revved-up, go-getting type.

I'm pretty sure the process can be traced back to the phrase 'action plan'. Although perhaps this was simply the first time I became aware of the phenomenon. I remember, upon first hearing the phrase, puzzling over just exactly what an 'action plan' might be and, more pertinently, how it differed from a 'plan'. I was told, somewhat dismissively that it was a 'plan' of action...or a scheme which mapped out ones intentions.

Now other than doing nothing...which arguably isn't really a plan at all; what one might call a 'null plan', ....the only reason I could think for appending 'action' was to distinguish a plan - in its 'course of procedures' sense- from potential confusion with its map/diagram/blueprint sense. But this can hardly ever have been a major problem, certainly not enough to invent a whole new phrase-a phrase which is, on the whole, rather unattractive, clunky and awkward...then again, on consideration, prosidic virtue has never been a major preoccupation of the corporate bard.

The only possible motrivation for the substitution of 'action plan' for 'plan' was rhetorical; a desire to convey a sense of dynamism. It brought no extra meaning or clarity.

An alagous set of phrases, which occur to me since, on reading back, I notice I happened to use onesuch earlier: 'thinking-outside-the-box-iveness' . If you recall, thinking outside the box is itself one of a series of phrases which progressively hint at an ever expanding consciousness.

We moved from 'outside the envelope' (a bit flat and '2D') onto 'outside the box' (3D) then perversely, avoiding the 4D hypercube, we moved onto blue-sky thinking (implying that our musings were not only not constrained by any sort of packaging, but were apt to roam free to the very edge of the stratosphere). Presumably, stratospheric thinking is next in line. I've also wondered whether talented mathematicians and theoretical physicists, who are certainly better acquainted and comfortable with higher dimensional analysis, did indeed move from 'outside the box' to some 4D variation...and may now even have utilised further dimensions, wormholes or parallel universes to portray the vastness of their cognitive journeys.

Mon, 2011-06-06 18:19 — Jimbo (not verified)

I am quietly impressed by the last comment...the next time someone hits me with some jargon filled spunk I'm chucking that back at them...

Thu, 2011-09-01 12:08 — JW (not verified)

'In real terms' makes my skin crawl every time.

If what you're about to say is 'in real terms', what the f*** have we just been discussing for the past half an hour of this meeting? Imagined terms? Fairy-tale terms? Terms you made up for a laugh???