The WordSmith
by Darin M. Bush
Forgive My Language
The Wordsmith is glad to be back. If this is your first exposure to The
Wordsmith, he is, well, how do I put it?
How about ‘Grammarian- at-Large’ or maybe ‘George Carlin wannabe’? While I search for on appropriate phrase, I
will simply say: these articles are about using and enjoying language,
especially in spoken form.
For ToastMasters, you almost have to learn to love - or at
least enjoy - language. Well, it
helps. Giving a passionate speech where
you delight in the words can be very satisfying. The audience usually reacts favorably to how
much you enjoy the speech and the language therein. The opposite is also true: you lose your
audience when they do not accept your belief in the words. Even worse, they stop paying attention when
you distract them with difficult vocabulary.
An excellent example of this, or maybe a bad one, is ‘priestly
language’. I almost prove my own
point. I can hear some of you saying,
“Huh?” or, "What does religion have to do with ToastMasters?" Here's an easy way to avoid the problem I
just created: quickly define the word the first time you use it in a speech,
and with simple English. Your audience
can not look things up in a dictionary.
Even The Wordsmith does not carry a dictionary around. Well, not often. When you define a word, speak plainly. If you have to define a word in a definition,
you need to start over and rewrite the offending paragraph.
So perhaps I should have written, “’priestly language’: a list
of words used to describe an unusual set of information from a specialized
field”. Examples can be drawn from
technology, religion, art, science, or politics. The computer industry is chock-full of
priestly language. Is your data on the CPU,
CD, hard drive, floppy, DASD, fixed disk, diskette, removable media, ZIP drive,
PC, or Smart Card? You get the
idea. While the answer cannot be all of
the above, it could be any of the above.
Specialized words like these are called priestly language
because priests invented the idea.
Sometimes it is easy. Before the
spread of books in Europe, few people had access to Latin. Right, you figured it out: almost all of them
were priests. The masses were not taught
Latin by the churches, usually on purpose.
Masses (the other masses) were spoken in Latin, and had a sort of
magical quality for the common folk. The
sense of magic is a combination of perceived divine grace, and the air of
mystery in listening to a foreign language.
If you have ever asked an Uber-geek a technical question, you might have
felt the mystical separation between yourself and her priestly language of
computers. Or maybe that is a headache
coming on.
I think it is quite fitting to conclude with the priestly
language of priestly language: acronym, Dilbertism, disinformation, euphemism,
fast talk, fine print, geek speak, gobbledygook, jargon, jibber-jabber,
legalese, l33t, medicalese, mumbo jumbo, obfuscation, techno babble, Thieves'
Cant.
Questions? Suggestions? Or ask me for definitions
at the Tourette Tiger
Copyright 2005 by Darin M. Bush