The Role of Jargon

 Jargon makes the world go around, Your Honour. Or so it would seem. Lawyer/court jargon, management/corporate jargon, Medical jargon, and so on.

A friend at IIM had constructed a matrix for generating management jargon. He created three columns, with complex words in each stack. Random mixing of any three- one from each column- generated a new term. Instant Jargon Generator was the name he gave it. It was great fun!

Maybe jargon is a shortcut for communicating with people in the same field, but it also leaves others mystified, most of the time. 

I learnt some law jargon by reading Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason series. Habeas Corpus, for example.. Mandamus or something similar too.. anyway, I rest my case. You go figure if it helps, or hinders ..

Labelling Things or People

 You want to sort stuff, like inventory or stock of items - in a store, warehouse, or anywhere else. Therefore you label them, or number them in some manner.

What about people? Tall, short, fat, thin, balding, blonde (a favourite in the US-we don't have that many blondes), standoffish, a show-off are some labels that we use to describe people. If it is by way of a description, accurate and not demeaning (except when warranted), it is an easy way to identify certain traits or attitudes in people. Introvert versus extrovert is a case in point. It is a generalisation, but could be used like shorthand to describe some qualities of a person. 

Labelling is not always a bad thing, like jargon. If both sides in a communication understand jargon, it makes for an easy conversation, or reading of an academic paper, for instance. But if used against unsuspecting recipients not on the same wavelength, education, background etc., it can hinder communication.

Also, adjectives need to survive. Their major use is in describing or labelling.

Leading Life Online and Other Ponderables

Imagination is supposed to be the difference between man and (other) animals.

Here's letting some of it loose-

What if we could lead our lives online? What do we really need to do offline? Work life can certainly be online 90% of the time. And online marriages can probably succeed as well as offline ones..you just need to figure out how to throw pots and pans at each other online..I am sure our I.T. guys are capable of doing that, given time.

What if instead of freebies, we made everything free? How will the world change? Karl Marx must be shuddering at this leap of faith beyond what even he thought of.

What if we banned jargon? Lawyers (and MBAs) may cease to exist, and all corporates would have to mend their ways. Point 2 above anyway would have shut down marketing departments.

What if all Heads of Government disappeared?  Would the world be a better place? And national boundaries? (I can already see the smile broaden on your face...)

I could go on,..but the real nightmare is if Apple disappeared from our Garden of Eden, isn't it?

Second life becomes First life..any takers?

A Class Act

This is about some typical students in a typical class of MBA students. They could be from any place or Pradesh. (Cluster analysis was not used and no students were hurt during writing of this post).

Sugar and Spice: Sweet when it suits them, and hot and spicy when it doesn't.

The Advisors: Full of advice (for you), not knowing it's a vice.

The Budweisers: Well, you get the picture. No advice.

The jargon-throwers: Flame-throwers are passe. They know the latest.

The Mobile Set: They think being on the mobile makes them upwardly-mobile even before the first job.

The Hands-up Fraternity: As if there's a mugger in a dark alley trying to mug them, their hands are always up, for anything and nothing.

The Performance-watchers. Passive audience, as if in a play or a movie. Might applaud a good piece of theatrics, but won't talk.

The Questioning, the hurt, the sleepy, the eager-to-get-out and do more interesting stuff-the look says it all. The worst of all-the Killer Look!

Marketing Research Presentations Humour

Marketing Research presentations to their client can be a good example of double-speak! See below-

The data is quite rich in detail, so we have 43 charts
Hopefully you won't notice that the results are totally inconclusive

42% buying intention is not bad taking everything into account
Golders Green is probably not a prime market for Pork Scratchings

Consumers mature into your brand
Your customers are dying like flies

This free newspaper enjoys 80% readership in its distribution area
Most people have to look at it while picking it up to throw it away

The car has above-average appeal to company car owners
No one is going to pay with their own money for this rust heap

The image ratings remained stable between the pre-check and post-check
The advertising made no impression whatsoever

The results are correct within 95% statistical confidence limits
The results don't make sense

There was a significant increase in advertising awareness
Sales remained static

There was an increased level of buying interest
See above

We see a clear pattern
It's inconclusive

A clear trend might be emerging
Let's do some more research

The underlying concept gets a green light
The actual product was rejected

It needs fine tuning
Scrap it

Those who read the body copy found it extremely persuasive
Hardly anyone read the body copy

Message comprehension focuses on four distinct themes
The audience doesn't know what to make of the advertising

Once noticed, the pack communicates evocative attractive images
It went unnoticed

Message comprehension was good
Some of the audience could read

We must allow for rough production values
The proposed advertising is incomprehensible

The advertising takes the philosophical high ground
The advertising is pretentious twaddle

The body copy succeeded in conveying a hi tec image
The body copy was totally incomprehensible

Bombast

This is not the short form for bomb blast, please note. This refers to generally showing off with words. This is what journalists, lawyers, academicians, Public Relations guys etc. do to 'add value' to themselves, their professions, and whatever they are talking about, such as events. Use of meaningless words in the right places adds to the mystique of things. Examples-

Global
Strategy
Transformation
Metrosexual (no one is quite sure what that means, unlike bi- or trans-)
Revolutionary (new product, technology)
Game-changing (THAT usage IS the game, my friend)
Breaking news (I hear laughter breaking out among readers)
Breakthrough (while you are at it, might as well break a few more)
Fantastic (savings- when you spend a lot, that is)
Out-of-the-world (holiday destination- is it on Mars?)
Plagiarism- won't plain old copying do?
Big Data- anything can be this
Cloud- this is apparently not the pieces of fluff that you encounter in the sky, but here on earth
Soulmate- by definition, the soul is invisible. So how do you know if the soul has found a mate?
Millennium- what exactly is it? A thousand, million, or in between?
Baby-boomers- may a thousand babies bloom
Boundary-spanning
Bounded Rationality (I assume it's the the opposite of Unlimited Stupidity)
X-gen, Y-gen, Z-gen.....take your pick

Corporate Chieftains

Like the tribes which are now extinct, corporates have their own lingo that seeks to impress. Does it? Let's figure out with the help of a few designations and their full forms/meaning.

CEO- Chief Entertainment Officer. Most would qualify, eminently.

CFO - Chief Frauds Officer. Remember Enron?

CTO - Chief Tinkerer with Office computers

CMO- Chief Mourning Officer (for bad sales, which is most of the time)

Exec Ass to the CEO- the second word says it all!

Vice President- Second guy in a two-man company

President- One who oversees the shutdown of a company or a government. Yes, he can!

Impressed?

Allaying Fears

I am always intrigued by the jargon used by our journalist fraternity. 25 feared killed in landslide. Disaster strikes Maryland. Town heaves sigh of relief as tornado passes it by. Government allays fears about the H1N1 epidemic.

These are a small sample of headlines going about the 'newsy' rooms and on to the printed pages. What if they got really daring, and started to become bold (if not beautiful) and report what they truly felt, minus the jargon? We might see something like these reports-

He claimed a lot of things, but the audience knew it was hocus-pocus.

The news reporters in the press conference were clueless, and ill-prepared to ask intelligent questions, including this reporter.

The speech did not make any sense, but the audience clapped anyway.

There was no news to report on our beat, so we made up some.

The same old parade- looked more like a charade.

The roads had the same number of potholes as yesterday. So we did not bother to go out today.

It rained incessantly, so we let the TV channels go out there to report the 'reality' while writing our stories by watching them, sipping some hot tea with samosas in the office.