Ice Breackers for the Classroom and the Office:
Public Speaking Tips
and the Jargon Alert Game.
JARGON ALERT GAME
PUBLIC SPEAKING TIPS
THE NO JARGON RULE
Another way to
Integrate Technology into the classroom is to
PLAY BUZZWORD BINGO
Never use a fancy word when a simpler one will do. If your idea is good, no hype is necessary. Explain it clearly and people will get it, if there truly is something notable to get. If your idea is bad: keep working before you share it with others. And if you don't have time for that, you might as well be honest. Because when you throw jargon around, most of us know you're probably lying about something anyway.
- Why Jargon Feeds on Lazy Minds
- Politics and the English Language by George Orwell
Jargon Alert
ASK FOLKS TO FLAG YOU DOWN WHEN YOU BREAK THE "NO JARGON RULE"
Give each learner in your class a bright yellow paper on which was written, "Jargon Alert." Tell
the
students that when they heard anything they didn't understand, they should hold the paper high, and then
you (the teacher) can explain further. This makes it easy (and fun, rather than scary) for students to get
the
instructor's attention -- and it cut way down on his accidental use of technical jargon.
JARGON / MEME
Education and the English Language
Jargon that confuses and obliterates meaning:
"Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession."
Unfortunately, many educated speakers of English are not really proficient in their own language. They become lost when reading structurally complex sentences. Their working vocabularies are depauperate, a deficiency for which they all too often compensate by mastering a discipline-specific jargon which gives the impression of communication without its substance. A complex tool has value only in proportion to the skill of the person operating it. Following the ritual of the group and presenting a verbal offering which means multisyllabic, makes things deliberately incomprehensible. "A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and gramatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue."
Evolution's Profligacy
Howard Bloom
One of the first phrases was the bit Charles Darwin borrowed from Max Mueller:
"A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and gramatical
forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand,
and
they owe their success to their own inherent virtue."
This was very reminiscent of the language in which Peter Richerson has been describing cultural evolution.
It
makes the assumption that, as in physics, forms will tend to seek the state which takes the least energy to
maintain. The problem is, in English this isn't true. We often have nice, short, blunt Anglo-Saxon terms
and energy-draining, multisyllabic forms taken from Latin and/or French. The Anglo term (excuse my language,
please) "f_ck" may cleave like a battle axe, but it is short as short can be.
Fornicate, on the other hand, is three syllables long. If economy were everything, Englishmen, Americans,
Australians, and a bunch of others would never fornicate, urinate, or defecate. They'd settle for the
single-syllable versions. But they don't. Why? Try this hypothesis on for size.
It's all a matter of conspicuous consumption. Those who have display their ability to amass far more than they need. They do it to win the most attractive members of the opposite sex. They do it to show or to achieve a higher status in their community. They also do it to climb the ladder of prestige which arches over a massive hodgepodge of communities. Or, to put it a bit differently, they show off their wealth to make it into the jet set, the cosmopolitan, international elite.
Which is more upper class-to f_ck or to fornicate, to p_ss or to urinate, to s_it or to defecate? Those
willing to wallow in the gutter will pick the one-syllable entries. Those who wish to cavort with
aristocrats
will never settle for such blunt efficiency. Instead they will waste their time and mental energy on
the sesquipedalian alternative. Why? It's a display of conspicuous
consumption, a sign that they have the extra brainpower, leisure, and money the superfluity of syllables
represent. Aha, you may say, Bloom has been sloppy in his use of language. Extra syllables do not represent an overflow of money. But they do. They indicate that
one
has a good education. And good educations do not come cheap. They take lots of spare time, and oodles of
spare cash. (Hang on, I'm showing my uncouth roots. That should be, "They
demonstrate that one is endowed with an ample abundance of superfluous hours in which one can exasperate
one's impatient tutors while the paterfamilias offers the ample remuneration required by one's
pedagogue as recompense for his frustrations, notations, explanations, reprobations, and
cerebrations.") Which means we do not necessarily go for "the better, the shorter, the
easier forms." In fact we often go in the opposite direction.
Somewhere in this is an answer to Peter Richerson's questions about a society's maximization of
complexity. Peter said, if I understood him correctly, that societies increase their intricacy at a rate
which
far exceeds what one would expect if one were looking at things from the point of view of economy.
Societies seem to do far more than maximize utility. And so they do. In fact, they too obey the rule
of conspicuous consumption. The more useless excess they can flaunt, the higher they move on the hierarchy
of social groups. The entire hierarchical system is geared not to saving but to showing how much one can
afford to throw away. However today's useless frippery often turns into tomorrow's
commodity. In 1950, only massive government agencies could afford the luxury of a computer. Today almost
everyone's got one. And most folks of moderate means have a dozen or so-six or seven hidden in the
workings of their car, a few in the microwave, the television set, the stereo, the telephone, and even an
extra called a Palm Pilot. The evolutionary game is not rigged to reward those who reduce, it showers its
rewards on those who can produce. It favors those most able to turn the unusable into treasure and the
inanimate into biomass.
True, one can radically up one's surplus by increasing productivity-which DOES mean saving energy. But
one
saves it only to be able to expend even more than one ever could produce, consume, and toss away before. The
basic imperative of a complex adaptive system is the following-"To he who hath it shall be given. From
he
who hath not, even what he hath shall be taken away." This operates even at the basic level of
planetary
formation. The gob of gathering gook which grows the largest manages to become a planet. The sliver which
stays slim gets even slimmer and becomes a mere moon, meteorite, or mite of cosmic dust. Even the force of
gravity rewards the greedy and makes the self-denying slim their way into oblivion.
Is this why the rules of economics which have been applied to evolutionary analysis for the last hundred
years
or so simply don't pan out? Few creatures on this earth opt for sheer utility. Most are driven
by
the need for luxury. And the more they luxuriate, the more they exfoliate. The evolutionary imperative is
to
make, not just to save. Evolution works us overtime not to slim things down but to elaborate. Hence we do
not have a universe slouching toward the miserliness of entropy. We have one climbing to the heights of
more
complexity.
The formation of different language and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed
through a gradual process, are curiously parallel.
But we can trace the formation of many words further back than that of species, for we can perceive how they
actually arose from the imitation of various sounds. We find in distinct languages striking homologies due
to
community of descent, and analogies due to a similar process of formation. The manner in which certain
letters
or sounds change when others change is very like correlated growth. We have in both cases the reduplication
of
parts, the effects of long-continued use, and so forth. The frequent presence of rudiments, both in
languages
and in species, is still more remarkable. The letter m in the word am , means I ; so that in the expression
I
am , a superfluous and useless rudiment has been retained. In the spelling also of words, letters often
remain
as the rudiments of ancient forms of pronunciation. Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups
under groups; and they can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other
characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other
tongues. A language, like a species, when once extinct, never, as Sir C. Lyell remarks, reappears. The same
language never has two birth-places. Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together. We
see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the
powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct.
As Max Mueller has well remarked: "A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and
gramatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the
upper
hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue." To these more important causes of the
survival of certain words, mere novelty and fashion may be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong
love for slight changes in all things. The survival or preservation of certain
favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.
Whoever Owns The Language Owns the Conversation
Origin of the English Language
The language of GWOT: Military men, women come up with own jargon 2007“ 'Embrace the
Suck': A Pocket Guide to Milspeak,” Compiled by Col. Austin Bay, The Pamphleteer Press, 2007, 72 pages
(pb), $4.
Austin Bay, a noted author and military commentator who lives near San Antonio, spent a year in the sandbox
(Iraq), as a reserve officer. The publication "documents the language of the Global War on Terror (or
GWOT — as defined in this book, pronounced gee-WOT). At 72 pages, it is a pamphlet, but no less useful
for
its size. It opens a window to a world that most of those not living downrange (outside the United States,
in
the combat zone) view through the filters of the evening news." The book combines phrases gathered
through personal experience, with contributions sent to him by troops visiting his Web. Every war develops
its
own jargon. Some terms — like contraband or Doughboy — become dated and fade away. Others, like Yankee or
snafu, get absorbed into everyday language. Unless you understand a soldier's jargon, you are speaking a
different language than those fighting a war. Military jargon reveals the attitudes of soldiers, sailors and
airmen towards their fight. “Gung ho” came from World War II. To “frag” came from Vietnam.
PUBLIC SPEAKING TIPS
"My favorite is to have each person introduce themselves with some item they have with them and explain why that item is a good descriptor of themselves. I always use my keys - my key ring has everything important in my life - my school keys represent my job, which is a huge important factor of my life, my moose key ring my daughter gave me, which is because our town, Newberry, is the Moose Capital of Michigan. I also have a spare key for my other daughter's car and house, because she is notorious for locking herself out of both. My 2 truck keys, because I love both my trucks, love traveling, 4wheeling in them, etc... And perhaps the most telling thing about my key collection - no house key. We live in a small town where no one locks their doors. This is always fun to tell when you are at a conference in a city where people cannot imagine such a thing! But as I explain each key and its significance, it tells the story of my life. Different people will dig out different items, pictures, whatever they have in their pockets but it is fun, whether the people in the group know each other or not". ~ annon