Dealing with buzzwords in the humanitarian and international development sectors

Global humanitarian and development leaders, their mouthpieces, and those who write their content have significant cross-cultural communication challenges.?

These change champions create confusion — and failure — with their word choice, clichés, metaphors, and similes enough confusion to suggest they don't know what they mean — or how to achieve transformational change.

It's especially problematic for those who don't speak English or use English as their first language, let alone those who are functionally illiterate. Much of the social impact vocabulary simply doesn't translate well. And multiplying and layering these buzzwords risks reducing their value.

Buzzwords are hollow!

Somehow, we have lost the understanding that writing is about making the correct linguistic choices for specific situations. People who should know better fail to remember the best communication solves problems, clarifies confusion, and reveals processes.

Language is both means and method. Written or spoken, language is an artificial construct to code thinking for external reading. The best communication has cleansed itself of things subjective.

However, social impact has co-opted the trendy vocabulary of engineering, business, sociology, and politics. Search Engine Optimization mandates placement and repetition of keywords. And concerns for the politically correct treatment of the colonial powers and/or marginalized populations only compounds these problems.

On the role of metaphors —

Metaphors assert comparisons between unlike things. Without using "like" or "as," the comparison carries the weight of assertion. Effective metaphors engage the reader's brain, drawing on known images to fully picture a new idea. But social media turn metaphors into facts.

Metaphors are not to be taken, intended, or used as literal. They are meant to enhance communication. But overuse has left them thin and shallow, susceptible to abuse by the writer or meaninglessness to the reader.

·??????Nexus 1660s, "bond, connection, interdependence between members of a sequence or group; means of communication," from the Latin nexus "that which ties or links together," from the past participle of nectere "to connect," from the PIE root * ned-"to bind, attach.

·??????Sunsetting: It's a charming image, a pleasant way to end the day, perhaps with a drink on a beach someplace romantic. In fact, it means things are over. Like it or not, darkness is coming your way.

·??????Deep Dive: Analysts have used deep dive to suggest a value of quick and deep immersion in analysis or investigation. It's not a metaphor appreciated by desert people, and it doesn't suggest the risk of diving too deep or resurfacing too quickly.

·??????Big picture: Offering people a look at the Big Picture is fundamentally demeaning. It tells your listeners and readers you have a vision they don't share. It suggests they're only there with your invitation. Moreover, the framers of big pictures often draw larger than needy people need.

On the not so common parlance —

There's a certain arrogance to specialists. They cultivate a jargon, of it’\s nature, a lingo attached only to their field. Among themselves, they banter to no one's amusement but their own.

Engineers, sociologists, economists, and other soft and hard sciences have and share jargon. They all deal with complex systems, so they feel pressed to explain their work clearly. But they lose that clarity when they communicate outside their field. They create a vocabulary of shortcuts, abbreviations, and an infinite supply of annoying incomprehensible acronyms. To share their meaning and intent, they use analogies that just don't work or confuse readers more.

·??????Beneficiary: The word beneficiary can mean heir/heiress, inheritor, recipient, grantee, assignee, and more. The context decides the meaning. A social impact initiative is a chain of events that begins with a donor and ends with a recipient. Beneficiary suggests the recipient was satisfied. It implies the donor is a benefactor. It feeds the donors' value for money by making them feel good. When used to name those receiving aid, the beneficiary suggests a subservient position.

·??????Ideate: Software developers have commandeered ideate, and it has spread through Design Thinking like a pandemic. The trouble is that ideate means "to form a mental picture." Synonyms include conjure, imagine, or envision, which are more explicit. As used, it carries negative values of daydreaming, fabricating, inventing, stargazing, or hallucinating. You see, it originated in psychiatry, a science the engineers would dismiss as soft and unscientific.

·??????Growth-hacking: Marketing millennials came up with this word picture. They define it as the intensive dive into making startups grow rapidly, often focusing on digital marketing. It means nothing more than "focused, constructive collaboration." It may be expected in Starbucks' conversations, but it means nothing to implementation teams in low economy cultures.

Software uses sequence, iteration, recursion, knot, looms, and fiber as if they had an objective reality. Port, bridge, memory, mouse, and cloud are all attributed to computers. Black hats, black holes, and black boxes suggest mystery, doom, and hints of racism. And, the Big Biz graduate schools have institutionalized stakeholder, capacity building, scalable, transformative, engagement, and a long litany of unstable buzzwords.

stakeholders originateIn short, those born in analog worlds and disciplines must opt for metaphors to communicate beyond their reductionist rationale. However, many of their options fail to clarify their intention and/or are co-opted by others who cloud or corrupt the original intent. For example, in high finance; stretching it to include the victims of natural disasters loses credibility. Cloud may have helped the public envision advanced technology servers, but it has become a marketing term. It helps if the users, readers, and writers hesitate to use metaphors of their own making. Metaphors are valuable and necessary, but they must be used selectively.

On choosing the effective word —

Effective communication depends on selective crafting. Words have no objective meaning, especially in global exchange. They are symbols presented with subjective intent and received with subjective perception within a context. If you think about a traffic Stop sign, the shape is almost universal. The word for Stop varies among language regions. In this case, the shape communicates among people experienced with traffic symbols. This complexity eludes the mindsets of many, even those with a genius for innovation and goodwill.

Engineers have sought to create coding systems for which they develop languages. These languages have governing sequences and rules on syntax. They seek to frame a universally usable medium of exchange. And, they have succeeded very well at this. However, these languages transmit formulaic sequences without ideation. (Oops, there's another fuzzword!)

Computer languages have advanced technology beyond human expectations. But computer languages do not exchange ideas. They message data users with digits that readers mine for information. Because understanding occurs in a context, the message must convert efficiently into local languages developed in local contexts. It's not enough to translate a message from English to Sudanese spoken Arabic, for example; the message must have value-plus meaning in a specific culture within a particular village in a particular region.

This complicates attempts to choose the effective word: fit for purpose, fit for context, fit in time, and fit for use Oops, there's another set of fuzzwords!). It demands mastery, conscientiousness, and conscience. Some helpful guidelines suggest:

·??????Use quantitative adjectives conveying number, size, weight, volume, and dimension.

·??????Avoid adverbs completely. All adverbs, of their nature, are judgmental.

·??????Minimize the use of vague, indefinite pronouns — some, many, few, and the like.

·??????One-syllable words deliver immediacy and power absent in multiple-syllable words.

·??????Avoid importing vocabulary from foreign dictionaries.

·??????Show zero tolerance for clichés, aphorisms, and proverbs.

Prudent writers prohibit the use of weighted vocabulary. Ameliorative phrasing enhances an argument by selecting words skewed to enhance reality. Likewise, pejoration tilts the weight towards the cynical. Amelioration and pejoration manipulate language, and manipulation diminishes the writer and disrespects the reader. Low-income economies, for instance, are frequently the vestiges of imperialism and colonization. And in those contexts, language takes on its own value system.

On the language of human development —

Social impact actors (notice the metaphor) have several problems. They must communicate in a relatively closed ecosystem (a metaphor) hosting multiple languages. They use jargon and argot specific to their world of humanitarian goodwill yet unknown to the marginalized (metaphor) recipients of their earnest generosity. And they are constrained by the language of compliance and auditing practices.

NGOs, INGOs, nation/states, faith-based organizations, community-based benefactors, and more must find the means and methods to share information-loaded data despite the incredible physical, intellectual, social, and income disparity between development grantors and grantees. Not an easy task when entrenched in buzzwords and fuzzwords!

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