Insider language requires translation
Every one of us has experienced the frustration of listening to jargon – the trendy, obfuscating, insider language that’s meant to impress and exclude outsiders.
Doctors, lawyers, scientists and business managers are particularly prone to using jargon. To most of us, their campy phrases and convoluted grammar are no more than gobbledygook.
New words and expressions pop up continuously, then fade from use when other, more fashionable verbal evasions take their place.
The eyes of all but the speaker glaze over as we hear about “drilling down” in order to “leverage” the “competencies” of our “stakeholders.”
David Lehman, poet, literary critic and editor of “The Best American Poetry” series, offers the best definition of this language abuse: “Jargon is the verbal sleight of hand that makes the old hat seem newly fashionable; it gives an air of novelty and specious profundity to ideas that, if stated directly, would seem superficial, stale, frivolous, or false.”
This sort of language abuse is not confined to the professions and academia, however. It leaks into all levels of society, even to sports.
A good example of this occurred just before the National Football League draft earlier this month.
Our sports writer Dale Lolley wrote about the Pittsburgh Steelers’ expectations of the college players they hoped to select and quoted Coach Mike Tomlin saying, “It’s our job to evaluate the pedigree along with the upside and maybe quantify the learning curve if it constitutes a position change or a strong technique change relative to the schematics that go across the board as we look at all of these guys or most of these guys.”
Plain English translation: We have to determine how good these guys are and whether they can learn to play a different position.