Notes on work in progress

I’m working on a few language-related things of possible general interest at the moment. One is for this blog, and is intended in follow-up to this post (and this follow-up) on Language Log, relating to the history of the meaning of the controversial phrase ‘to bear arms’ (in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution). As far as I know no historical lexicographers have got seriously involved in this yet, and it deserves a more detailed treatment than it’s had so far.

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We’re always going forward ‘cos we cannot find reverse…

BBC News Online’s Magazine section has declared war against an adverbial phrase.* The phrase in question is ‘going forward’, which is singled out as a prime example of ‘office speak’: the kind of professional jargon that, at least to the writer of that piece, ‘cloaks the brutal modern workplace in such brainlessly upbeat language’.

Having just moved from the world of academic research and editing to a profession in which I routinely deal with people from a business and accounting background, and being as I am just across the Thames from the dreamless spires of the City, I can sympathize to some extent, if only by attesting to the extraordinary prevalence of the term. It’s worth explaining, though perhaps with less of a wearied sigh than the BBC website has managed, that ‘going forward’ means, in essence, ‘from now on’, or ‘in future’. I’d never heard it being used ‘in the wild’ until I consorted with business people, I’ll admit. But my two questions are: why do they use it, and why is it so hated?

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