So anyone else feel the urge to curb people who use special phrases and words in their job to sound more intelligent or competent when lay terms would work just as well?
I work in the medical field and if I hear one more person say “As evidenced by” instead of “because” I’m going to… continue to do my job… while thinking obscenities.
This sort of thing is everywhere of course. Ever have a superior say, “I’m going to activate you for this assignment.”?
Which phrases and words bug you and do you think it’s utter stupidity how much this stuff is used when it doesn’t need to be?
Does anybody really do it on purpose, though? Or is it force of habit. It may not be just because they want to sound smarter. Once you get into it, it’s a hard habit to break. I’m in grad school, where I feel everybody is smarter and more eloquent than me. The speech I have there is more elaborate with field jargon thrown in.
I used to work at a grocery store in a lower-class part of town. Code-switching back to something less wordy can be difficult after hours of school, studying, observing, talking to classmates, and so on. It wasn’t like I said things like “As evidenced by your savings card, you have saved approximately 32.6% off your grocery bill.” But rather things like “If you look at the receipt, in the middle it shows how much you saved on today’s bill.” Even that was too many words for some people. Some coworkers accused me as if I acted like I was too good to work there just because of my vocabulary. :smack:
Shrug. I’d rather keep my jargon and sound smart rather than the alternative.
I don’t know if it’s done in real life, but occasionally I watch cop shows where they talk about “GSW’s.”
I can see using the abbreviation in a written report, but when you are speaking, “Gunshot Wound” is three syllables, and “GSW” is five, so why say something that is less clear and takes longer to say, other than to sound cool?
I don’t think it’s usually on purpose. I think there’s usually a culture of people using language to elevate themselves hierarchically in a way that lacks substance and therefore shouldn’t elevate them at all, actually quite the opposite. Other people just get caught up by the tone around them. If you do something without thinking of why you’re doing it on a consistent basis and it’s actually less effective than something easier to do that’s just the height of incompetence and being annoying. You’re going to clog the conversation with things that slow it down and make it less effective but if you don’t participate in the practice people look down on you from their theoretical pedestal for abstaining from shooting your mouth in the balls.
I understand when it’s an honest error or just happens or whatever but there are people the revel in this practice, and they keep the arms race of nonsense going.
Great example, though that’s an entertainment example but I’m sure there are similar things that happen in actual police work.
If the professional jargon actually shortens something significantly enough or adds a necessary dimension to the conversation than that’s doing what it’s supposed to but all this stuff should justify itself or be laughed out of the workplace.
I don’t know if I’d call this “special” vocabulary so much as bureaucrat-speak. Yeah, so many people think their job requires them to talk in some kind of “official” way, and the more they do it the more likely they’re just mindless drones trying to get promoted.
Cop-speak–cops are the worst with this kind of nonsense, especially when they get asked a question by the media. Put a microphone in front of the officer in charge of a crime scene, and he or she will invariably spew this stuff.
Isn’t there a valid distinction being made in this case?
If I said “this patient has Nemo’s Syndrome, as evidenced by his high temperature, profuse sweating, and blue spots forming on his forehead” it wouldn’t mean the same as “this patient has Nemo’s Syndrome, because he has a high temperature, profuse sweating, and blue spots forming on his forehead”. The first one implies correctly that the symptoms were the reason I made that diagnosis. But the second one implies incorrectly that the symptoms caused the disease.
If you say “we know” in that instance everyone will know exactly what you mean and is what doctors say most of the time, it’s nurses and other staff that get caught up with the as evidenced nonsense more. Doctors don’t have to prove anything to anyone, they’re the doctor already. (also it means what you intend it to mean just as well).
Whenever there is any use of force, you have to document it. You have to explain what force was used, who used it, what kind of force it was, where it was used on the person, whether it caused any injuries, etc. And you have to explain why you had to use force.
I used to have a supervisor who was very devoted to routine. He felt the ideal documentation should all look the same for “consistency”. Which was foolish because the events were the different so the resultant reports should reflect those differences. But he was the boss so things were done his way.
So all the use of force reports that he reviewed used identical language as much as possible. And he had a favorite phrase he liked as the explanation for why the force was used: “The perpetrator came off the wall so it was necessary to use force to regain control of him.” And he wanted this used in every report, regardless of what the actual circumstances were.
Legal challenges are constant and some lawyer noticed how this phrase was being repeated in all these different incidents. He brought it to the attention of the judge and the judge, justifiably, was angry. He said it was clear that we were just making things up for our reports rather than stating what really happened and that therefore our documentation had no credibility, etc, etc.
But one other thing the judge said was that when he reviewed all of our reports, he found one report he wanted to single out. This report (which had apparently missed the supervisor’s attention) didn’t say “The perpetrator came off the wall so it was necessary to use force to regain control of him.” It said “The perpetrator was attempting to hit me so I had to use force against him in order to defend myself from him.” And the judge said at least this report seemed somewhat credible compared to all the others.
So our supervisor was told to fix the problem and stop having everyone write “The perpetrator came off the wall so it was necessary to use force to regain control of him.” And he did that.
He started making everyone put “The perpetrator was attempting to hit me so I had to use force against him in order to defend myself from him.” in their reports. Because that’s what the judge said he considered to be a credible report.
I gave a silly example. But I could see cases where it could cause genuine confusion. If I said “I diagnosed this patient as having anemia because of his loss of appetite” am I saying that the anemia was the result of the loss of appetite or the loss of appetite was the result of the anemia?
You would never do that, that’s just one symptom that could have any number of causes. I’m trying to imagine what situation this would cause confusion in actual medicine. Maybe you could try to create a better example. There may be instances where "as evidenced by " is the most efficient and effective phrase but I can’t think of it offhand and my point is that it’s jammed into every sentence it can possibly be used when the vast majority of the time it’s more cumbersome than just talking normally.
This is just one phrase as well, there are hundreds of these in various professions, actually probably thousands.
And on the world turns lol. It’s one of the most aggravating things when someone insists you do something stupid when they’re your superior. One might think reasoning with them is a good way to go but you try that a few times, get on enough shit lists and realize it’s not worth the cost.
Professions have these terms in order to communicate precisely and accurately. That’s the reason why. It’s why pilots don’t call all the guages ‘round thingies’ and engineers don’t refer to all load calculations as ‘math stuff’ and doctors don’t prescribe ‘a couple of those yellow pills’.
I’m less annoyed by that kind of stuff, and more bothered when people do not properly code switch. Especially when it comes to acronyms.
If I’m not a part of your special “world”, please do me the favor of at least not using a million acronyms in a sentence. One is fine, because perhaps I can use context clues to figure it out. Or if it’s an organization, maybe it doesn’t really matter what it stands for. But if it’s kind of critical to the story you’re telling me and you keep using it, I’m gonna stop listening to you. Sorry.
I try to be cognizant of keeping jargony speech out of everyday talk. I’m not saying people who don’t do this are trying to be assholes–I honestly think they just forget who their audience is. But it still drives me nuts and makes me not want to be a part of the conversation.
Except in the business world, it feels like most of those terms only serve to obfuscate and complixify. Most of the BS terms used already have actual real world terms in everyday use.
That’s the explanation we hear a lot, but I actually don’t think most people do this to obfuscate. I think they do it because, in their mind, it makes them “more professional.” Or, to put it another way, by using terms or expression in this way, it creates a greater value for their role in whatever is going on. It’s a kind of self-justification.
When I talk to cops under regular circumstances, they usually communicate situations with perfect efficacy. But it seems to me that when they are put in certain situations, such as often when speaking in court, but really mostly when on TV, they feel like they have to totally change the way they talk–as though their input won’t have value unless they change as many words as possible to this kind of officialese.
I swear sometimes I would be trying to explain something to him and I could see the information bouncing off his forehead. He would just sit there with a blank stare on his face and when I finished, he would go right back to saying whatever it was he had been saying without even acknowledging what I had told him. It was like he could only hold one idea at a time in his head so once he had an idea nothing else could get in.
I actually can sympathize. It’s a sort of legalese - you say things in a precise rote way when you’re talking “officially” because you’re aware that everything you say will be closely examined for meaning - often by people who will be looking for alternative interpretations that can be used against you.
So instead of saying something normal like “the idiot started acting stupid on me so I threw him up against the wall” you say things like “the suspect was physically resisting my attempts to place wrist restraints on him so I used force to place him against the wall and held him there by using my right arm against his right shoulder and my left arm against his lower back.”
Because if you say the first thing, you could be getting questioned: “You say he was an ‘idiot’ and was ‘acting stupid’. So you used force against him because you felt he had a low IQ? Do you routinely use force against people who you feel are mentally retarded? They don’t understand the questions you’re asking so you start hitting them? Of course you don’t just hit them, do you? According to your statement, you actually picked him up and ‘threw him’. How did throwing him around help the situation?..Oh, now you’re saying that’s not what actually happened. So you’re admitting what you said initially is not true. Is there anything else in your report that you lied about?”