I went through the US Army’s 75B AIT way back in 1979 and the US Navy’s PN Class “A” school in 1986. Both schools highlighted the correspondence regulations for each service; said regulations requiring people to not use “high falutin’” language such as utizile instead of use. It often struck me that those regulations were widely ignored.
Perhaps neither you nor Calvin heard of conversion. I’ve heard of it and, to tell you the truth, it kind of bugs me, too.
That reminds me of the “between the sheets”/“in bed” hymn titles game.
The problem, as I see it (along with, evidently, a few other posters here), is too many people like to use jargon when they should just communicate. Deductive assistance: Usage of profession-specific terminology by one participant in a conversation-type experiential occurrence does not constantly provide for another party to the aforementioned occurrence to perceive the party uttering the terminology in question has perspicacity, most notably when the first party employs the argot in a manner inconsistent with precision.*
Or, as a normal human being wold put it:
Hint: Jargon does not always make one appear more knowledgeable, especially when one uses the jargon incorrectly.
A phrase I’ve only ever heard at my current employer is “Resource Action”, abbreviated to “RA”, of course. The higher ups love them some RAs. Wanna guess what it means?
It means layoff. We don’t have layoffs. We have Resource Actions. Sounds almost mechanical and painless, doesn’t it? You can put “8000 RAs in Q2” on a Power Point slide and all the suits can just bob their heads up and down without a shadow upon their consciences. Good for them!
There is a related term “career pathway” that is now common in government funded workforce development pathways. The idea is that if you are having trouble finding a job, you can find a local “career pathway” that will tell you exactly what you need to do (e.g. what classes to take, what exams you have to pass) to get hired. The “career pathways” that have been published so far seem to be one of : 1) obvious, e.g. “get a BS in Computer Science and get hired as a programmer”, 2) incomplete, i.e. they are planning on actually defining the pathway Real Soon Now, but for now just imagine how awesome it will be when people will actually learn what employers really want, and 3) a euphemistic way to describe Adult Basic Education or GED classes. They aren’t basic literacy classes anymore, they are super-awesome Career Preparation Programs where you can just feel the awesomeness of your new career at the door.
How Great Thou Art
As I Kneel Before You
Come, Come, Ye Saints
I Need You Every Day
He Is Risen
Virgin Most Pure
He is Mine
He is Coming
Have Thine Own Way, Lord
Jesus Loves the Little Children
The joke is that if you find yourself bored in church, just leaf through the hymnal and mentally add the phrase “in bed” to the end of the hymn titles.
My most recent instance of making someone stop in his tracks involved a coworker who was gushing about his product being 100% cloud-based. I said I’m one of those troglodytes who prefer programs you can use locally since there are times and places where it is not possible to carry a computer, or where the internet is not reachable.
“No internet? What do you mean, no internet?”
“I mean internet no worky. Router down, someone with a backhoe cut the cable, our security got upgraded, or there is a motherfucking big storm and we’re on generator power so anything other than the production lines is off.”
“Oh my God. Well, I like to always look at things on the bright side!”
“Works for me, so long as you never get to design test cases :p”
But at least he’s a programmer in his late twenties who has grown up in a wired world; dude pays with his credit card and takes out the cellphone to check his balance in his bank’s app. He’s got an excuse. Guys in his 50s? Not so much.
A short while ago, I imagine everyone in management received a memo that they must use the phrase ‘drill down’ several times a day. Because I kept hearing it and hearing it, from several seemingly unconnected manager types.
“Once a problem is identified, reach out to the proper department so they can drill down to find the best approach to solve it”.
mmm
Would you believe we have an “Internal Storytelling Manager” and three"Internal Storytelling Specialists" in the corporate communications department where I work? There aren’t any External Storytellers so I don’t know why “Internal” is necessary. This is in the financial industry. I know.
“Share out” has been used frequently in education for some time. “Divide students into groups of four and have them work on [the project]. Invite them to share out.”
I don’t love the word “share” when it means, as it usually does, “I have to listen to everybody else for an hour and then get to talk for five minutes myself.” Bad exchange rate. I’m not sure what makes “share out” an improvement. (I know, I know…)
What on God’s green Earth is this? I’m picturing bankers sitting on the floor in a circle, sipping apple juice while someone reads them a story from Frog and Toad are Facebook Friends, or Goodnight iPad.
The problem isn’t in people using jargon instead of communicating clearly. The problem is when people fail to realize that communicating clearly is the purpose of jargon. It’s not meant to be a shibboleth.
Take “velocity”, for instance. Physicists have two different words for “speed” and “velocity” because they mean two subtly different things, and the distinction is often important. It happens that “velocity” is more often the concept of interest to a physicist, so people think that “velocity” sounds more sciencey. And so we see laymen (or sloppy physicists) referring to things like “escape velocity”. Except that that should actually be “escape speed”. “Speed”, in this case, is the correct use of the jargon, even though it doesn’t sound as impressive.
Or, another example: You know that spiky thing at the end of a stegosaurus’s tail? It’s called a thagomizer. Gary Larson invented the name as a joke in a Far Side cartoon, after which paleontologists realized that they didn’t already have a name for that structure, and it was occasionally a useful word to use. So now that’s its name. It doesn’t sound scientific, but it conveys the intended idea, and that’s what’s actually important.
In business we say “leverage the work previously done” or “leverage this information I got off the internet” - in ordinary life we call it plagiarizing or stealing shamelessly from.
A lovely image. I especially like the Frog and Toad reboot.
“Toad,” said Frog, “you did not ‘like’ my post about eating flies. That hurts my feelings.”
“Blerg,” said Toad. “I do not like Facebook. It is enforced conviviality. I am many things, but convivial I am not.”
“Oh, Toad,” said Frog. “You are not much of a friend at all, are you?”
But there was no response, because Toad had already unfriended Frog.
I can’t answer for the poster, but the school where I teach part time has a “Story Corps.” [It’s actually a committee, but is officially known as a “team,” because “committee” has become an unwanted term for some reason. (I won’t tell you what my church called its committees at one point.)] Anyway, the purpose of the Story Corps is “to tell the story of the school,” largely through social media. In essence, it’s a PR idea.
Works less well as a term for use in a bank than in a school, I’d say…
