The joys of jargon: a necessary evil?

The etymology of jargon stems from the Old French ‘chatter of birds.’ In current parlance, jargon can be defined as the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group. ‘Top-down’, ‘verticals’ and ‘low-hanging fruit’ are prime examples in the marketing sphere.

But is such terminology really necessary? There are two schools of thought in the discussion on jargon: Plain English – it’s simple, helps audience understanding, increases transparency and presents the message in an undiluted way; Jargon – it’s a natural, necessary by-product of the specialist areas that exist in an industry and often something cannot be expressed in any other way.

While in an ideal world we as marketers and researchers may lean toward plain English, the reality is that, no matter how hard plain English advocates argue their case, jargon will inevitably infiltrate the marketing world.

Language analytics firm Linguabrand presented findings from a study at the 2014 Annual MRS Conference which revealed that much of the copy used on the websites of leading MR companies was considered generic, and less than half of the copy was unique. ‘Know/understand’, ‘help clients’, ‘new/innovation’, ‘global’, ‘approach/way’, ‘creative’ and various combinations of these key words, all work to define the MR industry. It’s our lexicon, it’s what you expect from anyone who’s anyone in MR. You would be perceived as incompetent if these phrases weren’t part of your professional vocabulary. In fact, collective use of terminology defines one’s place within a group as well as their level of expertise.  Ultimately, jargon is a signifier for knowledge.

Consider the fresh-faced, next-gen researcher

Recently I had to define the commonplace jargon term ‘COB’ for ‘close of business’ to a junior researcher, and this really highlighted the potentially daunting situation that new researchers face when they first enter the industry. As the commercial world’s love of jargon is unlikely to change, how do we handle the teaching of such core terminology to the next generation researchers without resorting to condescending flashcards and vocab sheets? What steps should companies take to educate, not alienate?

• Awareness: jargon exists and you can’t learn it all at once. In time they’ll talk the talk. It’s part of the learning curve.
• You’ll never know it all: new lexical items enter the English language at an incredible pace. Keeping abreast of the industry trends will inevitably lead to an increase in your language stock.
• There’s a time and a place: sometimes jargon’s completely unnecessary. Using jargon to sound clever will inevitably cause the opposite reaction.

While writing questionnaires, focus group moderation and client management may be top of the training and educational curriculums, it’s important that employers, mentors, line managers, senior staff and HR all have responsibility to address the issue of jargon and decrease the stigma attached to not immediately having the definitions of BIC, top-down, organic, streamlining or low-hanging fruit to hand.

Lucy Hoang is senior research executive at Northstar Research Partners