Issue #78: The one 'stupid' question I always ask

Language is power, wrote Angela Carter. Sure – but it shouldn't be a private members' club.

One of my early formative memories occurred in the week I began primary school, which also happened to be the first time I ever got told off by a teacher. The details are kind of hazy (because I was four), but the substance went something like this…

The whole class was engaged in whatever passes as education at that age – I think it was colouring in – when, suddenly, the teacher asked everyone to stop. Reader, I did not stop, clearly so immersed in a state of zen-like flow that I had no idea what was going on. Soon after, I was taken outside by Miss Parker and asked whether I ignored her ‘on purpose’ or ‘not on purpose’. Trouble is, I had zero idea what the phrase ‘on purpose’ meant, and I was too scared to ask for clarification. Deciding the former was the more benevolent-sounding option, I confidently asserted that I defied my teacher overlord ‘on purpose’.

And then I got shouted at, or punished in whatever manner they used to punish kids in Liverpool in 1995. Again, details hazy. The point, and the reason I recall this fragmented little anecdote, is that I fell victim to my own limited understanding of language. And I didn’t want that to happen again.

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Obviously, my primary school teacher didn’t intend to be confusing on purpose. She was simply failing to reach conversational middle ground with a little person. She was trying her best. Which is more than a lot of adults can say.

‘Language is power,’ wrote British author Angela Carter, ‘…The instrument of domination and liberation.' This quote could easily be applied to the acronyms that prevail on the online dating scene, or the legal jargon perpetuated through centuries – just two of the many areas where language can be used opaquely, to keep out those who are NFI (not fucking invited).

Niche language has its merits. In dating (particularly in the alternative dating scene), acronyms might make certain individuals feel more comfortable revealing risqué preferences, taking some of the sting of shame out of their online profiles. In many professional industries, insider lingo is a valuable tool – providing a common understanding and sense of identity, or at very worst, shaving a valuable 0.5 seconds off every interaction.

But there’s a downside to this: namely, that corporate language can be disproportionately disempowering to those who don’t understand. In ‘The State of Workplace Jargon’, a report commissioned by LinkedIn in collaboration with Duolingo last year, two-thirds of workers globally said they had to covertly look up unfamiliar terms upon starting a new job. Interesting this doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem among Brits and Americans as in other nations: some 78% of workers in India said their colleagues used jargon, closely followed by 76% in Vietnam, compared to 52% in the UK and 44% in the UK. 

With that in mind, I have a solution. It’s a practice I’ve kept up ever since that fated incident at primary school, and likely with much more audacity since I entered the world of journalism, an industry where clarity of language is everything. Specifically, it’s a question that I will never fail to whack out when needed.