Does jargon have a place?

The biggest dictionary I've ever owned turned up from Amazon this week. It was a present from Liam, following a recent, erm, 'discussion' on the subject of jargon.  It ended with him telling me I should improve my vocabulary and start looking words up in the dictionary, and me retorting that I didn't have a dictionary and had no intention of buying one. (Actually, I had no idea if I had one or not. But I'd got all competitive and would have argued black was white if I thought it would annoy him!)

We were talking about starting a campaign against jargon. Except we couldn't agree on what we actually wanted to campaign against!  Liam wanted a 'keep jargon in its place' campaign, on the grounds that 'jargon' basically means specialist language used by specific groups, so as long as it's kept within those groups, that's fine. 

He'd written an article to this effect, which contained a couple of words I didn't understand. I said you couldn't possibly write an article about jargon ... and then pepper it with obscure language. I wanted a bigger campaign that was about getting rid of corporate rubbish, meaningless buzzwords and complex language a lot of people wouldn't understand.  (60% of people in the UK have a reading age of 11 or less, and I learned at my reading in schools course last week that 1 in 5 people can't read well enough to look up the number for a plumber in the phone book).

A heated debate ensued, with me accusing him of over-complicating things and making communication more difficult, and him asking if I'd actually passed my English O Level and telling me I was dumbing down the English language. Passionate about communication - us?!!

Anyway, I've just opened said dictionary and discovered - I think - that we're both right. There are two definitions of jargon. The first is 'words or expressions used by a particular profession or group that are difficult for others to understand'. (Liam's definition) The other is simply 'gibberish' (my definition).  John Smurf 's Jargon Watch site has similar descriptions of jargon and buzzwords - specialist language belonging to a particular group, or unusual or pretentious language, trendy phrases or language used primarily to impress other people.

What do you think? Fancy joining in a fight against jargon? Willing to sign up to stamp it out in your own corporate communications? And what should we be campaigning against, exactly?! Is this the campaign to keep jargon in its place? Or the campaign against corporate rubbish? (I can think of other words to replace 'rubbish', but they're not polite enough to use).

Sue

PS Just found this business jargon dictionary which has a fair few terms I've not heard before. And this site is quite hilarious, only in that I really hope their explanations of the jargonistic terms (click on the letter to get the definitions) are supposed to be tongue in cheek!

 

Comments

[Liam]

I was tempted to start finding big words with which to pepper my emails just to make her look them up you know. And doesn't she sound reasonable when SHE describes the argument! PAH! Can you imagine what we'd be like if we were married??????

The point about reading age isn't that you can't read above your reading age - it's the point at which it becomes hard work.

So I'm all for banning made-up words or phrases that only exist to make someone in HR or marketing sound clever. And there should be an annual award for services to corporate language - and a special retreat for communicators who've found themselves helplessly writing "careers of horizonal richness" or "rightsizing for competitive sucess".
"Hi, I'm Jerry and I write gibberish because it sounds big..."

Liam

[Fiona Gibson]

I had a laugh the other day when I heard about a team sending out a glossary of terms for their weekly newsletter - because "sometimes the jargon just slips through the net". Hmmm. Perhaps there is a case there for re-writing the newsletter rather then telling everyone you can't be bothered to put it in their language?!

[Geoff T]

My pet hate are TLAs (three letter acronyms). I was in a meeting for a new project just this morning and an ancronym was bandied about by other members who'd been on the project for a while (coz Comms is always bought in at the end!!). For me, the acronym had three different possible meanings - I asked the question and found out that in our organisation this particular acronym (PLF) now has FOUR possible meanings! I despair

The other things about acronyms is they can become just plain stupid. This project is also setting up a new team witin a call centre to be known as the Customer Information Support Team - who in their right mind would want to be called a 'CIST'.

Anyway, that's my rant.

[Sarah Ponsford]

Sue, as you might expect from me I would be delighted to support any campaign that encourages people to communicate in a clear and simple way!

However, I also support Liam's view. I think it all comes back to the audience. My company is full of highly skilled people who use technical terms all the time in their day to day communications. I wouldn't describe these as jargon, because everyone understands them. However, if I used them to a non-technical audience, they would be jargon.

A case of "I am an expert, you talk in jargon, he talks gibberish", perhaps?

[Alex Manchester]

For me there's definitely a difference between corporate jargon and technical jargon. When it's a specialised skill or area you're talking about, then there will no doubt be certain terms that people not involved in said area will not understand. That's absolutely fair enough.

But the stuff that gets me is the sort of stuff you seen in Private Eye's War Balls (or is it warballs?) section. The sort of drivel about organizations having "relentless drive and passion" (quoted from a Lucy Kellaway presentation in 2005), that I think there should be a concerted effort to stamp out, or at least reduce whenever possible.

As that article says, there were many, many people in that audience of professional communicators who were sitting quite uncomfortably by the end.

[Anita Patel]

Hi Sue,

Sign me up!

I feel that people often use jargon to make themselves feel important, they want to give people the confidence that they are in control and know what they are doing - my argument you can speak with people without jargon and still give them confidence and actually have a higher success rate of keeping them interested in what you are saying.

How many times have we all sat in a corporate presentation where the presenter has used some from of jargon and we have spent the rest of the presentation trying to work out what the hell they are talking about? I know I sit there thinking, what did that stand for? is this something I should know about? am I in the wrong meeting. Before you know it the presentation is finished and I am left wanting to ask the silly question, "excuse me what does COSS stand for?" I am always suprised at the sigh of relief in the room as alot of people finally see the light...so to speak!

I actually belive jargon might have it's place but and big BUT, with and for the right audience. Some audiences love it, understand it and is their preferred communication style. However, having been around a bit (job wise) I have to say these are few and far between and normally in specialist employment fields.

Do I need to get T-Shirts printed for the campaign?

[Liam]

Sorry to sound like a wet blanket but isn't rejecting inappropriate or inaccessible language what we're meant to do? You wouldn't get your HR people campaigning against innacurate payslips or the finance director bemoaning the failure of businesses to keep accurate accounts.

I'm all for a laugh at the expense of the IT team with their daft acronyms and the managers who invent stupid ways of explaining simple concepts. But in the final analysis isn't it the job of IC to make sure that messages are understood by the relevant audiences. Surely it's our bread and butter job and making a fuss about it highlights another area where we're not taken seriously...

Climbing off the soapbox now to run for cover...

Liam

[Sue]

I've got two comments on that one Liam, 1) if the cap fits, we should wear it. If you work in corporate head office, you end up taking on the language without thinking about it, and sometimes you need someone to hold the mirror up. Nobody on Black Belt ever has a problem filling up a B/S bingo card in 3 minutes flat.

2) HR are the only people producing the payslips, but we're not the only ones commmunicating - actually we're trying to get our leaders to be better communicators too. Nothing wrong with campaigning against corporate jargon to try and stop them using it.

Maybe it shouldn't be a problem, but it is. The Investors in People research published last year showed jargon to be one of the biggest things getting in the way of business ... and people wrote into BBC on line in droves with examples they saw in their organisations.