Black Belt Dojo

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!

 

Be careful about the words you use...

...because you can never be sure who's mouth they've been in!

I wish I could remember where I first read that but it seems quite appropriate to the thought that occured to me the other day when I was musing about 'engagement'.

In the last couple of years it seems to be the word on everyone's lips and it's rapidly become as devalued as 'strategy'.  We all know lots of people who use it in subtly different ways - and with resulting confusion.

Some people use it for a concept that is all about workplace co-operation.  Others use it to describe what I used to call employer branding and others for discussing just employee retention programmes.

But most worrying, many of our colleagues in general management use it to mean 'gaining attention'.  Someone used it the other day to describe to me a programme that was visually striking and memorable.  "We really achieved employee engagement with that" they told me. 

And in a dictionary sense they are all right.  Funny how as communicators we can be some imprecise about something so important....

Liam

Ultimate jargon busting

In my line manager training workshop today I heard a great example of one team's attempt to cure their boss of a bad jargon habit. They make up trendy-sounding words, plant them in conversation and then wait for him to use them in a team meeting.

At this point, one of them innocently asks what the word means ... whereupon he realises he doesn't actually know, there is much guffawing, and the team does a little lecturing on the perils of meaningless business speak. He's not cured yet, but it's certainly an entertaining way of going about it.

One of their 'sounds like it could be a good piece of consultant speak but we made it up' terms was wind-tunnelling.  Which was, indeed, duly picked up and used by said manager in a team briefing session.  The funny but sad point was that other people in today's session realised they'd heard the term at work too, and thought it was hilarious that it was spreading!  However, a quick search on google reveals it does exist. It's 'a method which encourages SMEs to adapt their strategies to changing markets and constantly reappraise their basic assumptions' or a 'process used by scenario thinkers'. 

Oh dear.

Sue

PS Regular readers may be amused to note that my ability to end up with 'interesting' male travel companions continues unabated.  Today I ended up texting Liam to call me, to get me politely out of such an encounter. This time I at least had the presence of mind to answer "yes" to the "are you married?" question. But I think next time I'm going to be living with someone, on the grounds that I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to cover up my conspicuously bare wedding ring finger. 

But! In between the cheesy lines ("So, do you and your husband have children? Beautiful women really should have beautiful children".  Please - I never realised men actually SAID that type of thing!) he decided to guess my age ... and guessed it at 42!  Have spent a good ten minutes in front of the mirror debating whether I should start getting seriously worried and wondering whether I've got any articles on restylene and botox!

Plain Speaking

I've just seen on Digital Spy that Naomi Campbell has won the Plain English Society's annual Foot in Mouth award. She apparently said "I love England, especially the food. There's nothing I like more than a lovely bowl of pasta."

There have to be worse contenders than that out there, surely?

Anyway, I haven't had a look at the Plain English Society's website for a while, so I thought I'd have a quick root around.  Their Latest News section has a list of the latest Golden Bull Award winners - can't see any internal communications in there this year though.  For you sporty types, there's also a 'best footballing quote of all time' section.

There's also a new Gobbledegook of the Week section on the site. I suspect this offending item may well be from an internal newsletter:

'An ATU capability will be retained on each APT, however in order to mainstream this work all other APT staff will be allocated to a Safer Neighbourhood on their area.'  (from a Greater Manchester Police newsletter)

They also have a blog. It hasn't really got a very blog-like feel to it, mind. It doesn't seem to be updated very often and it feels a bit oddly formal.  The post about spelling caught my eye though. I think I'm guilty of mis-spelling just about all the most common examples they list, such as:

• 66% of people spell 'strait-laced' incorrectly, using 'straight-laced' (yep)
• 58% get 'just deserts' wrong, using 'just desserts' instead. The word desert means deserve. (Must be my sweet tooth - my fingers type 'dessert' automatically)

I think most of us can probably count ourselves lucky that we've never been up for one of their Golden Bull awards. As I said in an earlier post today, I'm doing a lot of line manager training lately and it's making me really conscious of some of the jargon we use.

I've found myself surruptitiously deleting the odd slide or flicking past it really quickly, depending on the group. The 'engagement' word generally provokes much rolling of eyes and I've stuck a photo of a wedding up there to take the mickey out of the term before somebody else does.  The models that go with it are similarly received.  I use Hewitt Associates' say/stay/strive model because it's so simple, but it's been quoted back at me fairly sarcastically later on in the session.  (although some people do like it and I see them scribbling it down.)  One group was shaking their heads and groaning when someone quoted their manager as having talked about 'analysing key stakeholders'.

I say to all the groups that we all laugh knowingly at other people's use of jargon, but we're generally all as guilty as each other. And I put it to you, m'lord, that us internal communicators can be some of the worst culprits.

Sue

Just for laughs

OK, don't say we never do anything for you. Whilst we're on the subject of jargon, here are a couple of things to give you some light relief.

First, thanks to Fiona Gibson for telling us about the v.funny Alex cartoon website, and here's their verdict on jargon.

Second, see here for your very own Corporate B.S. indicator, courtesy of Tommy Butler at Atrixnet.  Apologies for the bit of naughty language, but it IS very funny ...

Enjoy ...

Sue

Jargon busting

Do read this 'have your say' piece from BBC on line about workplace jargon. It's hilarious, in a kind of sobering, cringeworthy, 'oh dear I recognise that one' type of way.

Last week I was reading a blog post, which I now can't find, by Carol Kinsey-Goman, who was ranting about the overuse of the word 'drive' in corporate communications. ('driving for results' etc. etc.).  Your votes please for the most over-used/cringeworthy/drives-you-mad corporate word. Let's draw up a top ten and mount a campaign to get them banned!

Oh, and all proven tips for getting managers/internal comms teams (!) to give up this nasty jargon habit are also welcome...

Sue

PS I forgot to say what my pet favourite is!  There are so many, but I particularly don't like 'leverage', 'grow' (as in 'how do we grow revenues' ) and socialise (as in 'let's just socialise this around the management team'.