There was Mr. Kisungu Kiingi (pseudo name), whose statements during parade we knew by heart whenever he was on duty: “There are some elements who are misbehaving, but we will sort them out.” The word elements sounded so big back then that I left primary school without ever realizing he simply meant that a few students were misbehaving.
In high school, there were several others who always demanded “maximum cooperation.” I even registered for my National ID without ever knowing what maximum cooperation looked like, what it entailed, or when exactly it was expected.
If you came to my village thirstier than David when he longed for water from the Philistine camp (2 Samuel 23:15), and instead of simply saying “Please, can I have some water?” you said, “I need to hydrate,” my friend, you would die of thirst just for the love of jargon.
In corporate circles, boardrooms, and conferences, experts often throw around big words that have become clichés, pretty much like the generic answers we gave in business exams to any question that included the word challenges. We always knew the standard responses: government policies, lack of infrastructure, and inadequate resources.
So, as you give your contribution, we need to know:
What exactly is to leverage?
What is synergy?
And circle back?
These words are common in brainstorming meetings. The moment I hear them without any specific illustrations or examples attached to them, I tend to get tired. Why not simply tell us specifically how we can benefit from the leveraging you are talking about?
I am not the first person to complain about jargon. William Lutz critiqued doublespeak and jargon in the late 90s, and Richard E. Wydick (1979) applied plain English to law.
Plain Language Theory emphasizes that communication should be clear, direct, and audience-friendly so that meaning is not lost in unnecessary complexity (Lutz, 1996; Wydick, 1979). In my experience described above, terms such as elements, maximum cooperation, and hydrate obscured meaning instead of clarifying it. A child hearing “elements” instead of “students” shows how meaning can be lost when words are unnecessarily complicated.
For real, effective communication is not about sounding sophisticated. Just ask for water and leave hydration to the hospital setting. Otherwise, you might just die of thirst, or if you like, dehydration.
References
Lutz, W. (1996). The new doublespeak: Why no one knows what anyone’s saying anymore. HarperCollins.
Wydick, R. E. (1979). Plain English for lawyers. Carolina Academic Press.