The business world is already infected. Will the rest of us be next, asks Stephen Cummins.

We've all been baffled by the way our politicians, businessmen and academics can speak. What do they mean when they talk about an "enhanced implementation of key fiscal resources" or the "moral clarity to prioritise value-added transparency"?

It's not as if such phrases are confined to the boardroom: if you have a bank account your "personal financial adviser" has probably telephoned to reassure you of the organisation's "continuous commitment to improvement" and offer "key flexible changes to aid contemporary forward planning". All it means, you can't help thinking, is that it's hiding a decision to increase its charges behind convoluted language.

It's a depressing decay, particularly for the likes of Don Watson, an Australian author who has just written a book about our descent into jargon. "You get these horrible constructions, the same words used again and again. It's a language you can't write a poem in, tell a joke in or express any sort of emotion in. It's a dead language full of dead words."

He points out in Gobbledygook how management speak has passed down through the public services to sit as the language of our schools, universities and local authorities. His theory is that the shift followed the introduction of market-driven public services - outright privatisation in many cases - which brought with them private-sector management models.

"With this new management structure, the language follows," he says. "Soon everyone is speaking it. You can find examples of it everywhere, from massive companies to library brochures."

His concern, he says, is that it will seep into our everyday language. "I'm sure it has the capacity to spread," says Watson. "I have a 13-year-old granddaughter who's taught English in PowerPoint. She has to write 'mission statements', and when she writes her history essays her conclusions are called 'products'.

"People increasingly now talk in the language of their workplace, which is this managerial speak. I'm sure in some houses they're talking about proactively oversizing the porridge!"

But with all the problems in the world, why should we be concerned with changes in language? Watson says the new words are increasingly used to deceive.

"Politicians have picked up on it, and they see it as a way to fill a gap, to put in a couple of words that make no sense and get them out of a situation. They'll say stuff like 'negotiating a consensual community process', and people don't have a clue what they're on about. Their minds close down, and they return to doing the ironing or whatever they're doing. The politicians use these weasel words to get out of things.

"The remarkable thing is that no one seems to hold them to account over it. The media never seem to say, hold on, what did you just mean? That's the concern. Journalists tend to just write down what the politicians say,

regardless of the sense in it. Thus the truth gets lost.

"The best examples of this were the reports from embedded journalists in Iraq who used the language of the Pentagon PR guys. Ultimately, the truth is in the words, and if you don't have words which present the truth you don't have anything."

Watson regards Ireland as still largely free of such complex jargon. "The last time I was in Ireland was about four years ago," he says. "I flew Aer Lingus, and I was struck by the fact that people spoke in whole sentences. They used verbs and spoke very much as if you were to meet them in a pub.

"I found it extraordinary. That's the way Australians used to speak. It seemed to be that the Irish were still speaking English as it's meant to be spoken - as a language of possibility, nuance and rhythm."

Gobbledygook: How Clichés, Sludge And Management-Speak Are Strangling Our Public Language by Don Watson is published by Atlantic Books, £12.99