Jabberwocky

“’twas brillig and the slithy toves
Did gire and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths, outgrabe.”
Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass

Mirriam Webster defines jargon as:

1 a: confused unintelligible language

b: a strange, outlandish, or barbarous language or dialect

c: a hybrid language or dialect simplified in vocabulary and grammar and used for communication between peoples of different speech

2: the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group

3: obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words

The word is from Old French and English “gargle” and “gargoyle” – all throaty sounds that have no meaning. So, jargon has no meaning: at least not to everyday people.

Professionals and business people use jargon to simplify and explain their work to each other. But when we use jargon we shut out the rest of the population, somehow placing us above the rest, a secret language that is hidden and obscure: and yet supposedly full of meaning.

At a conference recently, I heard two new terms, and asked several people what they meant.

No one had a clue.

Turns out the terms are becoming increasingly used in the industry, and yet the average people at the conference didn’t know what they meant.

Jabberwocky. The poem is full of words that have no meaning; until Alice meets Humpty Dumpty who manages to explain it to her.

I suppose he was the industry insider at the time.

Stephen Baker on the Business Week blog (Nov 2007) said that, “Jargon is a language of insiders. It undermines communication with everyone else. In a global economy, one featuring madly converging economies, jargon just gets in the way... It wasn’t always this way. From universities to corporate silos, our world has developed into specialized niches, each with its own jargon. These lingos served for decades to protect people. Outsiders, after all, were far less of a threat if they couldn’t speak the language".

Today, people cloistered in niches are at a great disadvantage. The winners will master one or both of the two world languages in the global economy, English and math. Both of them cross borders and bridge disciplines.”

And jargon affects even the people we work for in non-profits (and in business). I’ve heard street people referring to themselves as “marginalized”. Years ago I worked with a man with Down Syndrome who was very quick to tell me that he was “special”. At a talk on working with people with disabilities the presenter used the term “ergonomics”. While I might have been the only person not to know what he meant, I think that there were many others in the room who simply smiled and nodded like me – quickly looking up the word when we returned to our offices.

The jargon of the industries – and I refer to non-profit industry as well – while creating a super-set of smart people who know everything, unintentionally develops a super-set of victims, people whose labels become badges. People who become entrenched in the language that keeps them in place, describing them and analyzing their behaviours to satisfy research questions, but not the community’s need.

Jargon does nothing.

If we stopped using the secretive complex language of our jargons and returned to using plain language to explain, discuss and debate, we would move ourselves closer, I believe, to an inclusive society without increasing the barriers that we so want to remove.

Try to go through a day without using the special terms and jargon common to your work.

Stop people who use jargon and ask them to explain what they mean.

Count the number of times in any presentation you attend that you hear jargon used (after 10 you can stand up and call “bullshit!”).

Type all the jargon you know into a word document and see what the computer doesn’t recognize.

Try using jargon at home and check for the bewildered and blank stares from your family and friends.

Jargon (or gargling) separates more than it connects. And the more disconnected we become the more our relationships, with our clients, members, customers suffer.

Again, Stephen Baker, explains with a computer analogy (rather “jargonny” maybe), “Jargon is like proprietary software in a world moving toward open-source. People ask what we can do about jargon. I think the market will take care of it. Those who figure out how to communicate clearly across industries will increasingly come out on top.”

That, or we’ll need a glossary to have a conversation.