A new language has been created — and with it a new industry — which only a few can interpret. Cosmas Desmond ponders whether ‘development-speak’ actually encourages development
MUCH is being made of the difficulties arising from having 11 official languages in South Africa. An even bigger problem, however, is the 12th language: jargonese.
The purpose of this language, it seems to me, is to make relatively simple issues, like development, so complicated that nobody but highly paid consultants can understand them. This has given rise to a whole development industry, but to very little development.
An important question, I read, is: “Who is doing the process of a development project?” That is quite meaningless to me — and I thought I was literate; how do you do a process?
But then I did not know what PCM — Project Cycle Management — meant either; I thought it might refer to a manual for a personal computer, or perhaps a member of the now defunct Presidents’ Council. Even more puzzling is how “objectives-oriented project planning” (which in itself sounds tautologous to me — how can you plan without knowing why, or for what, you are doing it?) becomes ZOPP.
Being involved in various ways with a number of poor communities, I have some interest in the question of development. I cannot, however, follow the debate of experts on the subject, because I don’t speak the language; or perhaps it is because I don’t carry around a pointed stick, to be identified as a “stakeholder”.
I cannot even come to grips with such common expressions as “accessing information”. I know how to gain or gather information, how to pass it on or impart it, how to receive it; but I really do not know how you “access” it. I also know about the importance of having a vision, but “visioning”? And how do you go about “scoping”?
Proactively, no doubt. Surely there are enough verbs in the English language without having to create new ones.
Language is supposed to be about communication. Jargon, however, serves only to obfuscate or to mystify; it is a substitute for clarity of thought. If people really understand what they are talking about, they should be able to express their thoughts in plain, straightforward English or, an even sterner test, in an African language. The latter, being generally more concrete, would force them to think through what their artificial concepts actually mean in practice.
I certainly would not fancy being the Zulu interpreter who had to tell a rural community that their participation means “partnership connecting horizontally among people of equal status, but not necessarily equal power, and vertically between those who set policies and those who live within the framework of these policies”.
All papers on such subjects as development should, I suggest, be translated into an African language and then back into English before being published.
Jargon might serve as a usual shorthand among members of the same profession, but one thing I have managed to grasp from the literature is that development is about people, though they are rarely referred to as such: they are “role-players”, “actors”, “stakeholders” or “shareholders”.
We should all, therefore, be able to understand and to join in the debate without having to learn — or is it “access”? — devspeak, which is a cross between Orwell’s Newspeak and Humpty Dumpty, who said in Alice in Wonderland when he used words they meant what he wanted them to mean.
Neologisms one has perforce to accept, clumsy as they all too often are — such as “personal organiser” for what is basically a diary, which requires more organisation than it provides. But using verbs as nouns and vice-versa, quite indiscriminately, is pure Orwell. And when whole sentences are quite incomprehensible to an ordinary practitioner of the English language like myself, that is jargon; usually interspersed with numerous acronyms (in itself a neologism) which can well mean different things to different people, since there are, after all, only 26 letters in the alphabet. For example, IS, to me, meant International Socialists, until I worked for AI (not artificial insemination but Amnesty International) where everyone knew it meant International Secretariat. (I can also recall almost being arrested for having a file marked ANC — until the security police realised it meant ante-nuptial contract).
I have never heard the people who are supposed to benefit from development programmes use acronyms (an impossible task in Zulu) or even talk about such concepts as “empowerment”. But they know what they want and have a fair idea about how to get it. They need resources and a government with the political will to provide them. Then they could get on with the job, whether or not they had an academically acceptable definition of “development”. They are not guinea pigs on whom the latest theories must be tried out.
Much of the present debate seems to be concerned with how to solve the problems that the “experts” created in the first place. The reconstruction and development programme is likely to continue this process, creating more jobs for “consultants”, “enablers”, “facilitators” and “development experts” than for ordinary, unemployed people. It is far easier to talk about problems than it is to deal with them.
Academic debate doubtless has its place — though I am not quite sure where it is — but it might be more useful if they spent more time listening to people than talking to each other. But perhaps the language of the people is as foreign to them as theirs is to me.
* Cosmas Desmond, a longtime anti-apartheid campaigner, is author of The Dumping Ground