Join the Crusade Against Jargon
Why is the corporate world, the technology industry most definitely included, in a permanent war against candor and intelligible communication?
The impenetrable jargon that proliferates within the tech industry has gotten so bad that a digital decoder ring should accompany each press release.
What is the industry’s problem? Why does it feel compelled to obscure its messaging? Is the problem merely that jargon is now the lingua franca of the industry, which no longer knows how to communicate any other way? Or has the industry become allergic to honesty and comprehensible, respectful communication?
We have reached a point in the evolution of technology industry where too much of what passes for communication is impenetrable bumf or exasperating word salads that neither nourish nor satisfy. We put it up with it, though, partly because everybody, including the industry’s writers and readers, seems to indulge the bad habit. We shouldn’t countenance the wall-to-wall opacity, but we do.
So, why do we do it? Well, at the risk of using circular logic, it’s probably because everybody does it. When everybody is doing something, even something foolish and self-sabotaging, it takes courage to raise an objection and suggest a change in tactics.
I was inspired to launch this one-person crusade for industry candor after reading an FT Times article more than a week ago. In that piece, titled How We Stopped Caring About Corporate Twaddle, author Pilita Clark points out that not caring about the twaddle exacts a prohibitive price. We degrade ourselves when we surrender to the creation and consumption of vacuous jargon. Rather than communicate effectively, we do the opposite: we fail at communication, which means we fail at connecting with other people. Worse, given that the use of jargon is a conscious choice, we commit these sins with volition and intent. We could do it differently, but we don’t.
Again, why? What is it about the corporate world, the tech industry at least as much as any other, that encourages, even demands, systemic equivocation?
Why Jargon Persists
In trying to answer that question in the FT Edit commentary, Clark answers the question as follows:
Office jargon will always be unstoppable because, as I have written before, it makes us feel more secure, more of an insider and more able to tell someone something pronto.
We also, naturally, love to hate corporate guff that deliberately tries to obscure the truth. The world would be a better place if companies stopped saying they were restructuring, streamlining, downsizing or rightsizing when they are in fact sacking people. I doubt they ever will, which raises a more sobering question: tiresome and deceptive as this bilge is, has it now become so pervasive that we do not notice or care about it as much as we did?
That’s a good question. But even if the answer is discouraging, we can still have time to redeem ourselves.
The first step in resolving a problem is recognizing that there is a problem. If we become so inured to jargon that we fail to perceive it as a problem, it becomes a reflexive form of purposeful miscommunication. At that point, jargon is so embedded into our brains that it has taken up permanent, cost-free residence in our cerebral control tower.
The FT Edit commentary addresses the pervasiveness and perniciousness of jargon, but what about clichés? The laziest of tropes, clichés are lethal, capable of killing meaningful discourse merely by making an appearance. When you limply tap your fingers on the keyboard and languidly summon a cliché, you’re choosing not to think – not to think for yourself or for your readers. You’re slouching toward an easy button that only makes things worse.
Cliches put your brain on autopilot, destination nowhere. The appearance of the cliché, by its very nature, signals that a writer can’t be bothered to acknowledge the legitimate demands of readers, who ask only that they be presented with text that communicates clearly and respects their presence.
When you write – a press release, a white paper, an email, or anything more than a desultory text – the objective should be respectful communication. You owe it your reader to communicate clearly and intelligibly. In turn, your reader will appreciate the clarity and the effort. Only swindlers and hustlers have need for equivocation and obscurity.
Turn Off the "Jargon Monoxide"
The FT Edit opinion piece ends with these paragraphs:
Mondelez is the snack giant behind Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers and in 2020 it unveiled a new approach to marketing it called “humaning”. “We are no longer marketing to consumers, but creating connections with humans,” it said in a press release that prompted immediate and widespread ridicule.
Humaning shows what happens when you take your eye off corporate twaddle. All manner of idiocy is let loose.
Happily, the term scores a mention in The Friction Project, a recent book by Stanford professors Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao on overcoming petty managers, red tape and other office horrors.
In their section on “jargon monoxide”, they put humaning in the category of “meaningless bullshit”, meaning it is “empty and misleading communication that is meaningless to both bullshitter and bullshittee”. This description is both simple and true. It’s also a reminder of what a joy it would be if all companies could speak so plainly.
We can end the idiocy – well, some of it – and banish the bunk. The first step is admitting that jargon is a problem, a mortal enemy of cogent communication. Once we identify and isolate the menace, we can eliminate it by consciously excluding jargon from our written and verbal communication.
If you find yourself backsliding unthinkingly into jargon, check yourself before you do any damage. If your bosses demand that you write impenetrable gibberish, respectfully ask whether it’s possible to articulate the message more clearly. Reasonably explain why clarity is a friend and not an enemy. No company should want their prospective customers and partners to clamber over ungainly text on a website or a newswire and have only the vaguest conception of what it all means.
Are we addicted to bullshit? Does today’s corporate culture run on bullshit? Is it the indispensable fuel that keeps reality at a safe distance? I’d like to think not, but we’re getting dangerously close to a type of aggressive anti-communication in the tech industry. The problem is exacerbated by the compulsive insertion of the acronym AI into every form of corporate and product communication (don’t call that stuff “literature”) in the industry. Too often, the letters AI seem to be invoked more to befog the mind of the reader that to convey clarity. Yes, there are instances where AI should be deployed in tech documentation and promotional material, but on occasions when it is put into service, the writer should ensure that the terminology creates rather than occludes meaning. The use of a term should be discriminate rather than indiscriminate.
Whenever we put words on a page or on a screen, we should want them to serve the purpose of credible communication. Jargon, along with is indolent cousin cliché, doesn’t further that cause. It’s long past time for the tech industry, as well as the larger corporate world, to send obstructionist jargon into permanent exile.
Join the crusade. There’s plenty of room on the would-be bandwagon.