Jargon: We Love To Hate It

Science Diction

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Friday, Society & Culture, Science, Origin, Culture, Words, History, Word, Language

4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Head on over to plainlanguage.gov, and you’ll find a helpful table, dedicated to simplifying and demystifying military jargon. On one side of the table, there’s the jargon term, and on the other, its plain language equivalent. “Arbitrarily deprive of life”? Actually just means “kill people.” “Render nonviable”? Also means “kill people.” “Terminate with extreme prejudice”? “Kill people.” This table is just one of many resources on plainlanguage.gov—from checklists to plain language training to thesauruses. The website was created by an unfunded government group of plain language activists who make it their mission to translate government communications into regular old, plain language. But jargon isn’t just a government problem. It pops up in nearly every field, and it seems like it annoys most of us. So why do we use it? And is there anything actually good about it? This episode was inspired by a question from a listener, Jafar, who asked about the word “recrudescence” and why we tend to use fancy words when simple ones would work just fine. If you have a question about a word or phrase, leave us a voicemail! The number is 929-499-WORD, or 929-499-9673. Or, you can always send an email to [email protected]. Guests: Joe Kimble is a plain language advocate and professor emeritus at WMU-Cooley Law School. David Lipscomb is Director of the Writing Center at Georgetown University, and Vice Chair of the Center for Plain Language. Alejandro Martínez García is a researcher at the National Research Council in Italy. Footnotes & Further Reading: For a challenge, try to explain science using only 1,000 of the most common words. For all your plain language writing needs, take a look at plainlanguage.gov. Learn more about the history of the plain language movement in the United States. Read a study on how our brains react to concrete vs. abstract language. Read more about how jargon affects citations in scientific papers. Credits: This episode was produced by Johanna Mayer and Senior Producer and Editor Elah Feder. Daniel Peterschmidt is our composer. Nadja Oertelt is our Chief Content Officer. Special thanks to Jana Goldman, Bill Lutz, and especially Karen Schriver for background information on the plain language movement.

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the early 90s, a local branch of Veterans Affairs sent out a letter.
0:05.4	It was a routine thing explaining how to collect veterans benefits.
0:09.2	And when the letter went out, the phones started ringing.
0:14.5	Call after call hours upon hours of customer service with frustrated veterans on the line.
0:21.8	People who didn't know what it meant to furnish medical evidence or what the Privacy Act and
0:27.4	Law 38 U.S.C. 210C.1 had to do with them.
0:31.6	A bunch of very confused people just trying to get their benefits.
0:36.6	The VA estimates that they got about 1,200 phone calls
0:39.9	about this one letter. But then, the next year, the VA tried something different. They sent
0:47.9	the letter out again, and this time they got just 200 calls. The difference between those two letters? Jargon. Or lack of. They revised the letter,
1:01.4	broke it into sections, cut out a bunch of minute details. Furnish medical evidence became,
1:08.0	send us a medical report from your doctor or clinic. They made it clear, plain.
1:13.7	The VA estimates that if every regional VA office adopted the changes for this one letter,
1:20.0	they'd save more than $40,000 per year. Now multiply that by every letter, every flyer, every notice, every website, every bulletin that goes out, the public information that we all look at every day and you can start to see how this adds up.
1:36.0	Joe Kimball. He's a plain language advocate.
1:38.8	Poor communication is the great hidden cost of carrying on business and government.
1:44.6	Jargon.
1:45.6	It comes from the old French chargonne for the inarticulate utterance of birds.
1:51.9	Prattle.
1:52.9	Twitter.
1:54.0	Chatter.
1:55.1	Basically unintelligible noises.
	...

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