The Two Faces of Jargon

I love working and playing with words. And while, yes, that includes doing the NYT crossword puzzle as a daily partnership ritual with Susan, it's way more than that.

Last week I listened to someone give an impassioned plea for eschewing jargon, and it got me thinking. The speaker acknowledged that there was a place for specialized language (inside of specialties) but it was, in his view, a clear mistake to let that leak out into public where people just get confused about obscure meanings. His point—which was a good one— was that the purpose of communication was to be clear, not to obfuscate or to impress people with arcane, insider knowledge.

But I was not willing to swallow his point whole hog. How is jargon (words with a specialty meaning) useful and how is it distancing? That's what I'm going to explore in this essay.

While I agree that the overall context is communication and that the objective is passing along ideas and meaning as accurately as possible, we need to appreciate that everyone's understanding of "normal" vocabulary (even assuming we could define it) is not uniform, so the line between standard definitions and jargon is not quite as crisp as the speaker posits. Where does one draw the line, and why?

Language, I believe, needs to resist change but not be immutable. It has to breathe, and cannot be a done deal. It has to be possible for new terms to become "normal" as the culture evolves. Thus, some of what starts out as jargon gets elevated to standard, and it's often difficult to tell at first what will endure and what will fade. If jargon is banished or never used, there will be no cream to rise to the top, available to be lovingly skimmed off from time to time and added to sweeten and enrich our speech.

Consider, for example, this small batch of recent additions that are now solidly accepted (but were unheard of 35 years ago), all in the genre of emerging technology: email, social media, and tweeting.
 Here are some edgier examples: terms coming into general usage that I believe are likely candidates to become normalized (though it's probably too early to be sure):

•  crowdfunding to describe a broad-based appeal to potential benefactors where you try to raise money from a large number of small donations, typically via an electronic platform (the prime examples of which are Indiegogo, Go Fund Me, and Kickstarter).

•  mansplaining to describe the phenomenon where a man explains something (especially to a woman) in a condescending way in the mistaken belief that he knows more about the topic than she does.

•  cisgender (often shortened to "cis") to indicate people who identify with the gender they were biologically born with (in contrast with transgender).

The thing all these newer terms have in common is that they were developed to meet an emerging need. Because our culture isn't static (thank god), our vocabulary has to be protean enough to keep up. That means jargon needs to tested periodically to see if it's ready for prime time—not carefully restricted to the specialty closet or only invoked in dark corners sotto voce.

And there's more. Consider Donald Trump, who uses a very limited vocabulary, and, in consequence, many trite phrases (for what else is left?). It's often hard to know exactly what he's saying, which is further complicated by his contradicting his staff and his disconcerting habit of disavowing a thing he says in the morning with a follow-up statement later the same day. He's pretty good at conveying a clear energy (disdain being his forte), but discerning meaning from his statements is like trying to follow a drunk home—he's all over the place. (Admittedly, in his case it's hard to tell if he values consistency at all and it's difficult to distinguish whether he's being purposefully obscure, or simply cannot communicate any better.)

I bring him up as an example both because he's readily available and because it seems to me that he's embraced what my friend was advocating: no jargon. He speaks only in simple terms. How well is that working? 

Generalizing from Trump, I believe limited vocabulary correlates with the incidence of hackneyed phrasing. While that may not be inevitable, it's common and it isn't a good thing. Overused phrases typically have a dull edge. They cut poorly and are imprecise at conveying meaning (just as poorly oxygenated blood has trouble invigorating cells). Going the other way, jargon is energizing (if sometimes confusing). Think of it like a pond turning over, stirring up nutrients. 

Do all uses of jargon succeed in conveying meaning? Absolutely not. The more nuanced question is whether the incidence of failure indicates that we should never try, because everyday use of jargon sometimes confuses instead of inspires? For me it doesn't, though the decision to judiciously interlard one's speech with jargon calls for discernment in word choice—and a commitment to patient explanations when you overreach.

What is the value in stretching the language? While there were many aspects of my relationship with my father that I've struggled with, his love of words was something I readily embraced and for which I am grateful. Among other things that seed ultimately grew into my becoming an author and a public speaker, because I love the medium. It's an art form (rather than a mine field). 

I have made the strategic choice to regularly employ less commonly used words in my speech and writing because they have the meaning I want and I rebel against dumbing down the language (and the Orwellian concept of word elimination to control dissent through reducing the vocabulary to express it—a central feature of 1984—which was offered as dystopian fiction in 1949, yet expresses perfectly the horror of what this process can lead to—a version of mind control.

Besides, at the end of the day, I'm just having too much fun playing with the words. And who wants less fun in their life? 

In closing I'm going to ask that you indulge me on a pet peeve. "Enormity" is often used these days to mean large, but it didn't use to. It means evil. Will the language expand to embrace the misuse? Maybe (even though it makes me want to puke). There are plenty of other words to convey large (immensity, for example). On the other hand, Kleenex has now come to mean any facial tissue, not a particular brand, and I think that's probably OK, so enormity is likely to become acceptable as a synonym for large, despite my dyspepsia. Such is life, and my lack of ability to control it.

Foot Traffic is Prohibited on the Sidewalk

Yesterday I was in Chicago (with a layover between trains) and walked by a printed sign on Canal St that gave me the title for today's blog. The sign was directed toward pedestrians (like myself) walking northbound on the west side of the street and I had to read it three times before I convinced myself it really said that.

The sign was at the driveway portal to a parking garage beneath a major facility of the US Postal Service. There were raised sidewalks on either side of the driving lanes leading under the building, and I reckon they didn't want people using them. Maybe the sidewalk turned out to be dangerous (people getting bumped by cars flying in and out of the garage), and they decided to shut it down. Who knows.

In any event, the sign gave me pause to ponder a number of questions...

1. Were other kinds of traffic are permitted on the sidewalk? Night crawlers, perhaps?
2. Where would foot traffic be permitted, if not on the sidewalk?
3. What did they mean, "the sidewalk"; most anyone who could read the sign would be walking on "the sidewalk."
4. If they wanted to close it, why didn't the sign say "Sidewalk Closed"? After all, what possible traffic could it have been open to? Rickshaws?

This is the kind of sign that makes fun of itself (though I'm doing what I can to help it along) and fuels that special blend of outrage and humor epitomized by $2700 hammers revealed to have been buried in military budgets. It boggles the mind to imagine the number of bureaucrats who signed off on this sign (so to speak) in order to get it officially blessed for prominent placement in a US government building, without noting that the self-contradictory potential in its message was likely to offer up as much opportunity for lampooning as enhanced safety. But I'll be damned if they didn't print it and post it anyway. What a country!

It reminds me of a Ron White joke where he complains about being profiled by local police because they were pulling over every car that traveled along this particular stretch of sidewalk...

• • •

On a more sober note, this mostly innocuous example of poor signage leads me to lament how low the bar has been set when it comes to what passes as acceptable standards of communication. It's one thing when an individual's best effort falls short of aligning meaning with intent; it's an altogether sadder state of affairs when obfuscatory efforts pass institutional review and manifest as posters. WWPGT (what was the Postmaster General thinking?)

Maybe it'll be a little easier now to understand why the Postal Service needs to keep seeking higher rates for first class stamps. While they're making no claims whatsoever about whether you'll find first class communication inside the envelope, these dedicated couriers apparently have to complete their appointed rounds while weathering imprecise instructions as well as the vagaries of snow, rain, heat, and gloom of night. I'll bet it's a real gauntlet.