Say What You Mean
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
I feel like there's a plague across the advertising and marketing industry (and maybe we're not the only ones). This isn't the first time I've mentioned this, but I think it's worth revisiting.
We use words and phrases that are not commonly understood by the people we're communicating with.
There seem to be two reasons why this happens.
1. We think that it's ok for words to have multiple meanings.
We are too generous. We want everyone to feel smart and valued and right. But, sometimes not everyone is right; sometimes some people are wrong. And making ourselves clear, saying that we mean this and not that can actually help both us and the people we're speaking to come to an understanding about what needs to be done and how it will be accomplished.
2. Jargon.
Jargon is a despicable passive-aggressive rotten sickness that we use to mask our inability to communicate clearly. Jargon words are adopted by a particular industry or discipline to refer to something unique to that work. Jargon becomes insidious when it's used in speaking with people who don't understand it. In these instances, we use jargon as a way to gain power; the other person is made to feel ignorant, and we are made to seem more knowledgeable. This power play, however, comes at the cost of understanding. And without understanding, you can never have true agreement.
In both of these situations, if you can't clearly define what you mean, then you should say something else.
Our job is to help people figure out how to communicate. We should strive to be better at communicating ourselves.
This is why (as my co-workers will attest) I like to argue about semantics. I think that knowing what we mean and the words that we choose to express that meaning matter a lot.
I think that meaningful words can help us to do better work, and make the work easier to do.
We use words and phrases that are not commonly understood by the people we're communicating with.
There seem to be two reasons why this happens.
1. We think that it's ok for words to have multiple meanings.
We are too generous. We want everyone to feel smart and valued and right. But, sometimes not everyone is right; sometimes some people are wrong. And making ourselves clear, saying that we mean this and not that can actually help both us and the people we're speaking to come to an understanding about what needs to be done and how it will be accomplished.
2. Jargon.
Jargon is a despicable passive-aggressive rotten sickness that we use to mask our inability to communicate clearly. Jargon words are adopted by a particular industry or discipline to refer to something unique to that work. Jargon becomes insidious when it's used in speaking with people who don't understand it. In these instances, we use jargon as a way to gain power; the other person is made to feel ignorant, and we are made to seem more knowledgeable. This power play, however, comes at the cost of understanding. And without understanding, you can never have true agreement.
In both of these situations, if you can't clearly define what you mean, then you should say something else.
Our job is to help people figure out how to communicate. We should strive to be better at communicating ourselves.
This is why (as my co-workers will attest) I like to argue about semantics. I think that knowing what we mean and the words that we choose to express that meaning matter a lot.
I think that meaningful words can help us to do better work, and make the work easier to do.
4 Comments:
And there's a much bigger picture here, and not very easily handled (or even easy to grasp), and that's intercultural differences in communication. And of course, intercultural can mean much, from sub-cultures to actual geographical cultures in which case the problematic situation hits its peak.
One could ask for extreme clarity, but that's a western way of looking at it, a low context perspective.
But the low context vs. high can be made, even though it's just within the advertising industry (and perhaps even specifically the U.S. one) - there's no such thing as communication that everybody get's, that's redundant and deloused of jargon or homonyms. That would be taking away context, and taking away cultural spice.
However, using jargon for the sake of it, or not even making the assessment if it adds clarity or confuses, or just saying things instead of meaning things (and knowing what that is) is another matter - and this should be forbidden, agreed.
There's nothing more beautiful than meaningful words. Clarity. Few words instead of many. Only problem is; many people would look like question marks...
Remember the "World's Most Dangerous Battery" viral video?
Here is another viral video for the "World's SAFEST Battery".
They pierced through a real battery to cause a huge explosion.
Among mobile phone batteries, notebook batteries,
there is only one battery that doesn't explode...... Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxlBvKrgVNw
Are we cowabunga on this?
I read a story about communication between pilots and between pilots and air traffic controllers. I think it was in Gladwell's Outliers.
Sometimes it is the cultural nuances which disrupt language and stop the communication of ideas and situations. And when you are in a plane, that can have fatal consequences. Imagine if we had to communicate like our life depended upon it. Maybe then we'd think more carefully about the words we use ;)
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