I was initially cheering yesterday when I heard about Alan Duncan’s (the UK Development Minister) memo on the use of grammar and jargon inside the Department for International Development.
In fact, when I actually read Alan Duncan’s missive, I was rather disappointed. It seems to me he could go a great deal further and to the great benefit of the vast international development community.
As many of you know I and my colleague Oliver Wates are just back from two weeks in Africa where we were training two different humanitarian organisations.The training was in English but there were regularly 7 – 10 different nationalities in the room with the majority of people working in the their second, third or even fourth language.
Oliver Wates training in Africa June 2012
As we have noted in many other areas of business (finance, insurance and engineering for example), many people learn the English jargon of their profession but not an English every-day translation.
So for example the phrase ‘vertical transmission of HIV/AIDS’ will trip off the tongue of many a non-native English speaker across Africa. But ask them to express what it means in colloquial English and they look blank.
It is not that they don’t know what it means, it is just that they are mostly unfamiliar with the English vocabulary that would give them the words ‘mother to child transmission’.
The key element of the Duncan memo, for those of us who care about communication rather than correctness, is the point about ‘resilience’.
Resilience in the development world, is all the rage. ‘Building resilience’ is a mantra in many countries. It means making changes that ensure when disaster strikes, individuals, families and communities will cope better or recover faster.
The author being shown an agricultural project to build 'resilience'
Anything from introducing insurance schemes to improving the structure of the soil for subsistence farmers, counts as building resilience. It often involves planting trees but can also include teaching people how to better treat their sick animals.
The dedicated professionals in the development world have a constant sense of disappointment and frustration that the rest of us do not fully appreciate the great work they do. They don’t understand why the international media, in particular, are constantly highly critical and looking for someone to blame.
But ask development workers from Bangkok to Glasgow (Home of UK’s DfID) to articulate the success stories and most cannot do it. They are likely to say ‘there has been increased resilience amongst the pastoralist communities’. This tells the rest of us absolutely nothing.The stories are there. The successes have been astonishing. But they are articulated in terms that few outsiders would understand.
The magic of Africa
The day after I landed home, I met an average Daily Mail reader at a friend’s party. He politely asked about my trip and then said ‘the problem is we keep paying and nothing changes does it’. The examples I gave of success in Africa amazed him to the point that he thought I might be lying. ‘I have never heard about any of these things’ he said.
The Development professional would smile wanly and blame the media. I believe the use of jargon, conceptual language, and forgetting the basics of good communication have a lot to answer for.
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Dear Lindsay,
Much appreciation for your last two weeks trip to Africa, indeed the use of Gargons in our communications especially on development issues oftens leave people without understanding our view points. Actually I learnt alot on the need to tone down our language for better communicaion.
Thanks Fatuma
It was great working with you and glad we convinced you of the need to avoid jargon!
Keep up the good work.
Lindsay
One of the biggest problems within the international development sector is the closing off of access to information due to jargon. Partly, this is down to the predominance of the need to base much of the sector’s work on policy issues which are believed to lose nuance if translated into easily accessed information.
It is true that it is very important to offer as much of the full picture as possible when communicating, but if you lose your audience immediately or fail to gain space in media to communicate, or only ever speak to the converted, then you may as well be shouting your good work into a paper bag.
Within many NGOs there is tension between departments that serve different audiences. With often-complex issues needing to be communicated well to media, academics, politicians and supporters – as well as staff, ensuring the key points are accessible to all can be viewed as a minefield. But much of that minefield is created by NGOs and individual departments themselves who often believe that being accessible equates to a dumbing down of the myriad complexities of a topic that have been navigated by individuals who can then be unwilling to then let them be summed up in a 26-word tabloid article intro.
Personally I tend to believe that if someone can’t sum something up in simple language that prioritises the externally significant peaks of information available on a case study or in an emergency situation, they either don’t know the subject well enough, don’t want to share, or have spent too much time within a peer-skill bubble perpetuating jargon.
None of which is going to increase the general public’s understanding and appreciation of the amazing work of NGOs.
I wonder if you are right. I think at the beginning of a new profession or academic sphere, there is almost a rush to create the jargon in order to give the subject the stamp of professionalism. Aid workers are always having to prove credibility: that they are not just do-gooders but the solid and highly skilled professionals they are. I think that pressure encourages them to over-complicate.
By contrast doctors, for example, do not have to prove their superior knowledge, and most have little difficult ‘dumbing down’ when talking to patients. Lawyers similarly. Economists have got much better at ‘dumbing down’ in the last 5 -10 years. Is complexity really an excuse for jargon?