By improving our understanding of why and when jargon should be used, scholars and practitioners can design more persuasive and effective messages. Conversely the opposite was true. For one, the effects we obtained were contingent on only one set of messages that differed by topic, although the third and final aspect of each of our stimulus messages (i.e., the recommended guidelines to follow) was the same across topic conditions. Jargon can separate people from the ideas that you are trying to deliver to them. For example, your writers could include a sentence like this in copy: By defining what SEO is, the content becomes more accessible to a wider audience, making it professional language, not jargon. Cheryl has the bug, can you grab? A second set of limitations pertain to our sample. Have you ever attended a multi-department meeting and caught yourself quietly reflecting on just how much you didnt understand? When you use jargon or professional language incorrectly, it can disengage your readers from the content. Prior research guided by FIT [4, 6, 11, 12] has found that jargon-laden messages lead to a more disfluent experience than messages that do not contain jargon. All told, these results reveal that for topics outside ones expertise, a difficult processing experience will reduce an audiences engagement with persuasive messaging. Research shows we use buzzwords to impress our colleagues but they often have the opposite effect. Great Resignation? Your email address will not be published. In the jargon condition, 20 terms were included that were replaced with simpler terms or explanations in the no-jargon condition, a technique used in previous research [4, 6, 11, 12, 17, 18]. Here are some simple yet effective tips that'll teach you how to overcome language barriers at work: 1. You didnt understand because you werent familiar with the terminology that was being used to deliver the point. And, as a result of these feelings of effort, people reported less interest, liking, and engagement with the scientific topics under investigation. If youre not sure about the definition, consider asking for advice from someone else in the industry. Overall, participants were significantly more likely to use the high-jargon pitch when they were in the lower-status condition. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239524, Editor: Thomas Holtgraves, Ball State University, UNITED STATES, Received: June 17, 2020; Accepted: September 8, 2020; Published: October 7, 2020. Let's break down the pros and cons of industry jargon and explore how they affect your content marketing. Despite these complaints, however, jargon continues to thrive in most professions. [shortcodeslug=content-marketing-analysis-01]. If they find your content a little confusing, consider using less jargon in your writing. The most important thing you can do when deciding on if you should use jargon in your content is toknow your audience. In ongoing follow-up work were conducting, weve also found that jargon use can hurt impressions of a speaker; audiences often view these speakers as conniving, manipulative, or less likeable. She spends every day learning as much as she can and is excited to be working on her Masters of Information Technology Management with a specialization in cybersecurity. When participants saw this cue, they became more likely to disregard and resist the information provided, even when definitions explaining the jargon were presented [4, 11]. This information was held on-screen for a minimum of eight seconds (98 words each). The second part of H1 proposed that the mediator of processing fluency would significantly, and adversely, affect persuasive outcomes for the policy and flood risk conditions, but not for the COVID-19 condition. Avoidance Simplifying language so that cross-field innovation can be realized could be the first step to something amazing. Yes These results offer experimental support, across four outcomes, for the moderating role of motivationdriven by situational urgencywhen people process complex messages outside their area of expertise. After all, it's supposed to make your content, and your brand by extension, sound smarter, right? The role participates in the development of the ChevronTexaco Global Lubricants Innovation Solutions Vision and drives cultural change with associated front-end strategies and concepts that eventually become customer-facing differentiable Integrated Solutions. The jargon adds a layer of excitement for the customer. You can read her postshere. If youre concerned about the potential negative effects of jargon on you or your organization, there are four steps you can take to mitigate them. 2 Try paraphrasing. Ironically the term thinking outside the square was first used in the 1970s, so if you are still using this metaphor, perhaps you are not demonstrating the innovative and creative thinking qualities you are looking for in others. Notably, work from science communication [4, 11], as well as health [15] and political communication [12, 18], tend to assume that audiences are unmotivated to expend the energy necessary to process complicated information outside of their areas of expertise or interest. There were no respondents with complete data who failed these tests, and therefore all data were included in analyses. If your brand uses just the acronyms with no additional explanation, the professional language quickly turns into jargon. To understand why, we put a different group of participants into a high or low professional status scenario involving academic jargon. Guided by the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) [10], the motivation to process information should moderate the effect of jargon and processing fluency on persuasive outcomes. Learn to get the word out with our proven-in-the-lab techniques in our email newsletter. Today, we will discuss five ways that language barriers can affect communication. . Across a series of studies, we confirmed that jargon sometimes functions like a fancy title, a conspicuously displayed trophy, or an expensive, branded watch people use it to signal status and show off to others. For example, when discussing content marketing, some writers might use terms such as search engine optimization (SEO), call-to-action (CTA), or pay-per-click (PPC). Although the negative effects of jargon are well-documented, jargon serves important functions as well. It is important that we are aware of how our words can exclude people. People perform better when theyre not drowning in data, Think Outside the Pyramid on-demand training, Cut Through the Clutter on-demand training, Reach Readers Where They Look on-demand training, Press release first paragraph: Try features, Continuous partial attention syndrome quotes, Resources on the importance of readability, Quotes on short form and long form content, Quotes on conversational business writing, Resources on importance of skimming and scanning, Resources on how to become a better writer, Quotes on the prewriting stage of writing, Quotes on the body in feature article structure. Examples of buzzwords include: groundbreaking, thought leader, and circle back. Though some buzzwords help convey big ideas using fewer words, not everyone understands what they mean. Jargon creates efficient communication between same-field colleagues but, ultimately isolates non-experts from engaging. How To Target Search Intent in the Marketing Funnel, Pillar Page vs Landing Page: What You Need To Know, What Is Copy in Marketing? What are the problems with reading on mobile devices? , 4 types of web leads to try and 3 to avoid, Reading online hurts readers eyes, their bodies, their brains, Mobile reading costs time, attention, understanding and action, Think Outside the Pyramid on-demand training, Cut Through the Clutter on-demand training, Reach Readers Where They Look on-demand training, Press release first paragraph: Try features, Continuous partial attention syndrome quotes, Resources on the importance of readability, Quotes on short form and long form content, Quotes on conversational business writing, Resources on importance of skimming and scanning, Resources on how to become a better writer, Quotes on the prewriting stage of writing, Quotes on the body in feature article structure. A key determinant of whether people process information centrally or peripherally is motivation: When people are motivated to process information carefully, they focus on message substance, and when people are not motivated, they focus on message style. Finally, send a message by letting others know why you or your organization dont espouse excessive jargon. Thats because they might not make sense when translated into another language. All Rights Reserved May not be duplicated and shared without author's permission. When motivation was high, the presence or absence of jargon did not affect fluency reports. Is Jargon the Same as Professional Language? What Is Metadata and How Does It Help With SEO? We see a tattoo, for instance. Indeed, an abundance of research has revealed that the presence of jargon is alienating [4], undermines comprehension [5], reduces engagement [6, 7], and creates a barrier to entry in certain fields (e.g., STEM) [6, 7]. You may be surprised: folks tend to value feeling well understood, so they may appreciate your questions more than youd guess. When the writer uses street names or references local businesses, theyre displaying their knowledge of the community about which theyre writing. Job interviews can be another situation where jargon is also used to sound important. All analyses were conducted using Model 7 in the PROCESS macro for SPSS [25]. For these reasons and more, science communicators are encouraged to keep it simple. For instance, say someone wanted to know more about their websites traffic. Jargon may be perceived as obscure, and the user may appear as someone flaunting style and unconnected from meaning to outsiders. Science writers use this tactic constantly with academics, asking them to distill the complexities of their research as they might when speaking to a bright but easily distracted fourth-grader. Our language can often be a barrier to people in many ways. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. the lowest cost) perspective. Finally, orientation and onboarding processes can be a good place to emphasize desired communication norms to newcomers. We focus specifically on professional status (and not general socioeconomic status), because each profession has high- and low-status members within it. Slang are words or phrases that are informal and derive from a particular era or social group. Experts are typically advised to avoid jargon when communicating with the general public, but previous research has not established whether avoiding jargon is necessary in a crisis. During non-crisis times, however, when motivation to process information is likely to be low, results from this study suggest that jargon should still be avoided. For instance, if youre talking to a client who doesnt understand marketing, and has no interest in learning, someone who just wants to hire a competent company for the job, you might not discuss SEO and KPIs. Contact us. As you develop personas, you can have a better understanding of how your customers might talk or communicate. When you don't share a common language, it's easy to misunderstand each other. It can also lower their trust in your brand. Candidates want to join companies theyre proud to work for, Why employers should never threaten whistleblowers. CopyPress runs polls like these on our LinkedIn page to better understand the climate and current trends in marketing as told by real professionals. On the other hand, when motivation to process is low, then style features such as the presence or absence of jargon should impact ones processing fluency and subsequent judgments towards the topic under investigation. Jargon is thus the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group. It is also know as a washout. Instead of searching how to improve my SEO or how to improve my websites traffic they might search how to get more views on my website. Using simple language can help increase your search results and create content that your customers can find more easily. It does have its uses for example, air traffic controllers. We again gave them a choice of how to communicate, and this time, we asked them to explain their choice. Jargon is a specialized or technical language that is used in a particular context usually by a particular profession, trade, science or academic field, and may not be well understood by members of another profession or people outside the profession. Summary. We tend to use jargon when we want to avoid something but, ironically, the more you use jargon, the more people think you are just flat out lying. It does not simply refer to any incomprehensible writing, but to the specific technical terms within a discipline. If you're a manager or team leader, you need to delegate responsibilities. Using words to read, write and speak or non-verbal i.e using signs, facial expressions or body language. Here are some cons to using jargon in your content: Though there are cases where jargon builds trust within a community, thats not always the outcome. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239524.g002. Other possibilities include variability between message topics level of abstraction, personalization, and salience. Here are somepros to using jargonin your content: When your brand uses jargon in its content, youre displaying your membership to a larger business community. Thus, the first half of the model supported H1; jargon impaired processing fluency, unless the topic was of high urgency. Quick Navigation What Does a Content Manager Do? These scales include processing fluency (six items, M = 4.96, SD = 1.30, = .86), in which a sample item includes, the passage felt easy to read [12]; motivated resistance to persuasion (eight items, M = 2.87, SD = 1.18, = .84), in which a sample item includes, I found myself thinking of ways I disagreed with the message I saw [19]; credibility (four items, M = 5.87, SD = 1.03, = .94), The message I saw seemed accurate [20]; risk perceptions (three items, M = 5.83, SD = 1.10, = .91), which measured health, safety, and prosperity risk perceptions [21]; and finally, perceived severity (five items, M = 4.11, SD = 1.44, = .87), in which a sample item includes my chances of contracting/experiencing [TOPIC] are high [22]. Despite support for these ideas, the section below outlines study limitations. Yes Using the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop, this online survey experiment (N = 393) examined the effect of jargon use across three different topics that varied in situational urgency: COVID-19 (high urgency), flood risk (low urgency), and federal emergency policy (control). All scale items can be found in the S1 Appendix, and descriptive statistics by condition are presented in the S2 Table. Consider an automotive content company talking about used cars. You see no greater example of this than the increasing number of job titles that make even the most boring jobs sound thrilling. In particular, this study focuses on one form of metacognition, called processing fluency, which refers to the effort that accompanies ones information processing experience [9, 16, 17], or, in other words, how hard someone feels they have to work in order to understand a message. Guided by FIT [15] and the ELM [16], it was argued that motivation to process information might mitigate the negative impact of jargon. This helps in identifying those who are a part of the group and those who are not. If they do not understand what you are saying, you wont get very far. Using jargon may signal authority and expertise. As George Orwell advised: Never use a foreign phrase, a scientic word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.. Unlike jargon, people may use certain buzzwords no matter their industry. Gobbledygook makes you look less intelligent There may be a link between jargon and poor business performance, according to a study by Deloitte Consulting. Consequence 2 Miscommunication Yes The risk of misunderstanding is greater when an audience is comprised of members from different industries, job functions, or experience levels. Data Availability: Data are available in OSF: (https://osf.io/gb5nc/). In one study, we asked MBA students to imagine they were entrepreneurs in a pitch competition trying to get venture capital funding. Capture your audience's attention with smarter emails, Slacks, memos, and reports. This is the first proposition of feelings-as-information theory (FIT) [9], which is one theoretical lens guiding this experiment. All Rights Reserved May not be duplicated and shared without author's permission. Evergreen content is that which stays relevant for longer compared to trending content. In spite of the theoretical and practical importance of these findings, limitations concerning whether these findings would generalize to other messages, populations, and circumstances merit acknowledgement. A popular refrain in science communication is to avoid scientific language, otherwise known as jargon, when communicating with the general public [1-3].Indeed, an abundance of research has revealed that the presence of jargon is alienating [], undermines comprehension [], reduces engagement [6, 7], and creates a barrier to entry in certain fields (e.g., STEM) [6, 7]. Given that the size of the incentive was changed from $0.80 to $2.00 to expedite data collection, an unintended source of variance was introduced into our models. 3. Though that term is common in the marketing industry, readers from outside the field might not know the term describes quantifiable measurements used to evaluate success. For example, in some sales situations, jargon use can give customers confidence that youre an expert. Whether you're aware of it or not, when you interact with others, you're continuously giving and receiving wordless signals. include Dr. or PhD in their email signatures, Warren Buffet uses this technique frequently. If youre concerned about the potential negative effects of jargon on you or your organization, consider the following four steps: First, you need to understand the context to know whether jargon might be helping or hurting you. For instance, an article about content marketing might use the term KPI, which stands for key performance indicator. All estimates are presented in Table 2 and the indirect effects for the complete model, across topics, are illustrated in Fig 2. After five seconds, a continue button appeared at the bottom of the screen that allowed participants to advance to the next page when ready. Jargon differs from verbose language, or unnecessarily roundabout expression. As well as lack of trust, overuse of jargon can mean people disconnect from your message, feel isolated and ultimately lead to miscommunication. In our research, we examined another motive for using jargon: Insecurity and the desire for status in ones profession. Relating this proposition to the current context, when people are motivated to process information, the presence or absence of jargon and the resulting information processing experience should be meaningless because people should be focused on the message substance (i.e., the content of the message) rather its style (here, whether it contains jargon). However, slang can also date your content, stopping it from becoming evergreen. Taken together, the messages created here would be considered more effective, or persuasive, if word choice and accompanying processing fluency served to reduce motivated resistance to persuasion, and increased perceptions of credibility, risk, and severity. Study their language and see if there are any common words or phrases that they use. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239524.s003. Whether youre a consultant, nurse, truck driver, or librarian, you probably hear and use a fair amount of jargon. How Jargons Can Pose Barrier in Communication Jargon is a specialized or technical language that is used in a particular context usually by a particular profession, trade, science or academic field, and may not be well understood by members of another profession or people outside the profession. PLOS ONE promises fair, rigorous peer review, Because two different samples were used to facilitate faster data collection, this sample information was included as a covariate in hypothesis testing. According to the ELM, people process new information in one of two styles: The systematic and deliberate style known as central processing, or the quick and heuristic style known as peripheral processing. If you need to use professional language in yourcontent writing, its important to make sure that youre using it correctly. But if jargon is so disliked, why is it so common? Despite the heuristic appeal of this recommendation, however, jargon is useful when technical information needs to be properly disseminated. Makes ideas harder to "see." We say "I see" to mean "I understand." Help readers "see" your point by translating jargon into visual language. His opening paragraph read: Some people love speaking in jargon, using fancy words and turning everything into acronyms. Short form vs long form for decision-making, How to get the hyperbole out of your web page, Short-form digital content helps readers choose. Other examples include companies like Starbucks that use terms like tall or grande to replace common words like small and medium for its sizing. Introduction. One of our greatest desires as humans is to be connected to each other and accepted, often at any cost. Her latest book Real Communication: How to be you and lead true is published by Wiley. The quick-witted reporter in the above scenario might broach it with this followup: For people in our audience who arent familiar, what is BOG-time and why is it important?. Is the Subject Area "COVID 19" applicable to this article? provides open learning resources for your academics, careers, intellectual development, and other wisdom related purposes. The University of Munster and New York University conducted studies on the effects of jargon and how readers perceive it. Thus, our primary study hypothesis states that as motivation to process information increases (via control, low urgency, high urgency conditions, respectively), the indirect effect of jargon through processing fluency on outcomes will weaken (H1). To assess message (in)effectiveness, four outcomes critical to persuasion were measured: Motivated resistance to persuasion, which measured participants motivation to counterargue and exhibit reactance against the message [19]; credibility, which measured perceptions of message accuracy and trustworthiness [20]; perceived risk, which assessed perceptions of how negatively the threat would impact society [21]; and perceived severity, which assessed perceptions of how negatively the threat would impact the individual [22]. In sum, given the presence of these methodological and contextual limitations, replicating these effects using a different set of messages, a different sample, and more consistent methods is critical. Yet few things are more universally annoying. When the understanding and engagement of a broad audience are paramount, however, excessive jargon may be costly. The data, output, and model building details for these tests are available on the Open Science Framework. If your clients arent using jargon in their searches, Google might not display your content to them. No, Is the Subject Area "Pandemics" applicable to this article? Third, use executive communications that use clear and unambiguous language to set the tone for the organization. But avoiding it can help make your blogs and articles more engaging and understandable to your audience. Was it jargon keeping you from fully engaging and understanding? The second page displayed the substance of the information about the topic. Jargon and professional language can be the same thing, or different,depending on how you use them. If readers see your brand uses jargon confidently, they might feel more inclined to keep reading or watching your content, even if they dont know what the jargon means. This finding is consistent with FIT [15] and the ELM [16], and implies that during a time of crisis, experts may not need to dumb down information and avoid jargon altogether while speaking to a general audience. If your work consists largely of moving words around on a screen, being understood is essential. When HITS were not being completed in a timely fashion with the lower reward, it was decided to increase this rate to incentivize timely participation, given that situational urgency was a key factor in this investigation. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This investigation sought to understand how best practices in science communication would translate to crisis communication. PLoS ONE 15(10): Importance Conversely, when people process peripherally, they do not thoughtfully consider the informational substance and instead rely on cues, or heuristics, to arrive at a judgment. 2. If you want to reduce excessive jargon use in your company, start with communications from the top. It is synonymous with gibberish. Idioms and colloquialisms can help your audience connect with content because they sound more conversational. In both studies, the results showed when a writer used a lot of jargon in their content, people thought the information was less credible. A great way to learn more about your audience and what they like is to look at whos reading your competitors content. Using jargon in your content can hinder your search traffic and make it more difficult to reach your intended audience. Research in metacognition offers that peoples feelings while processing information (e.g., their emotional state, confidence, or experience of ease versus difficulty) affect peoples judgments towards the information itself [9, 14, 16, 17]. Methodology, Also, putting such questions off for later wont help, and may even set back your efforts, so its best to get it over with. Conceptualization, Jargon is used in the business world, some of which are as follows: This refers to earnings that result from an acquisition of a business that add to the earnings per share (EPS) as opposed to losses that would dilute the EPS. Though using professional language in your content can help your brand sound more sophisticated, there are some reasons to avoid it. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239524.s001, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239524.s002. While professional status concerns can lead speakers to elucidate rather than explain and leverage rather than use, it is possible to foster a culture of clear communication and reduce the costs of needless jargon for you and your organization. Jargon is intimidating and can, honestly, make taking on a new task feel impossible when it really isnt. While its tempting to substitute a plainer word there at the end, like awkward, editing Orwell would be outright barbarous. Other Types of Language To Avoid in Content Writing, How To Write Content Without Using Jargon, when a writer used a lot of jargon in their content, people thought the information was less credible, Evergreen content is that which stays relevant for longer, customer personas, or fictional representations of customers who are most likely to buy your products or services, Press Release: CopyPress Joins the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), 8 Essential Elements of an Effective White Paper, Whats the Average Content Manager Salary? But jargon isn't all bad. To examine whether contextual urgency produced the motivation to reason through complex information, we compare the effects of messages containing jargon (n = 197) versus no jargon (n = 196) across three topic conditions that vary in situational urgency: COVID-19 (high urgency, n = 134), flood risk (low urgency, n = 131), and policy information about how the United States handles national emergencies (control, n = 128). Taken together, this study provides ecological evidence, and a practical application, for a well-known assertion in the psychological sciences: When people are motivated to process information, they will. Each item used a 17 response scale in which higher scores reflect higher agreement with the concept being measured. That can increase your client outreach and make your readers more loyal to your brand as well. In one test, SEC documents got more and more obscure as the organizations got deeper and deeper into trouble. Being a non-expert in field-A doesnt mean that a person isnt smart enough to understand what is being said, it simply means that the delivery of communication wasnt chosen carefully enough for the audience. The best thing to remember is that if you use jargon in your content, its helpful to define it for a general audience. For instance, it is possible that given the widespread media coverage of COVID-19, the jargon terms used in the COVID-19 condition were more familiar than the terms used in the flooding and policy conditions. Being a non-expert in field-A doesnt mean a person doesnt have a highly valuable knowledge base in field-B. But beware, just because people are saying move the needle, does not mean they understand the phrase. Using buzzwords in your content can provide the same pros and cons as using jargon, which could help or hinder your content depending on your audience. In other studies, weve shown that this can make you appear manipulative and less likeable. While were at it, we might swap out the rarefied lieu in that last sentence for the more plainspoken in place of. Idioms are phrases that have additional figurative meanings outside of their literal meanings. As your panic escalates, you notice this final daggeran email from your companys D.C. office that makes absolutely no sense to your bleary, uncaffeinated eyes: Hey there, WaPo is looking to intvw c-suite rn re rollout. Replacing the term with jargon like previously owned vehicle makes the product sound more interesting and sellable. Beyond health information, policy-related discussions soon entered the public discourse, including how to control this dangerous disease and the economic impact of these decisions. Language is the medium through which the process of communication takes place. Consistent with expectations, the effect of jargon on processing fluency was moderated by topic (Table 1, R2 = .13). It can be strange to ask people for clarification, especially if you feel expected to already understand what theyre talking about in full. Executive communications that use clear and unambiguous language can help set the tone. To measure academic jargon, we looked at language complexity (readability) as well as a count of the number of acronyms used. Another study at the New York University concluded that there was a lower level of trust when vague words were used (such as, An apology would be needed if my words have caused offence) and a higher level when more concrete words were used (such as, I am sorry). It helps people within the same profession identify each other and speak more efficiently and effectively about ideas. Jargon certainly has relevance on a peer-to-peer level. Those industry terms are examples of professional language that often appear when discussing content marketing and its various strategies. Jargon is all around us. For example, using the term ink stick instead of pen might signal current or former membership in the U.S. military. This paragraph was held on-screen for a minimum of five seconds. Understanding where and when excessive jargon may be costly for you is the first thing to do. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. If youre writing content for a general audience, it might be helpful to avoid certain jargon. The good. Heres how to make sure your writing is easy to understand. We use it to make us sound more credible or knowledgeable than what we are. Software to Cut the Bull from Corporate-Speak. Tags: Featured Contributor, jargon, plain language. The results from this experiment offers evidence that situational urgencyor in other words, a time of crisispotentially mitigates the impact of jargon use on processing fluency and aversive persuasive outcomes. To determine whether using jargon for your content raises or lowers trust with clients, consider doing audience research. Though people within an industry might understand it, a larger, more general audience might not. In an effort to make the messages more equivalent across topics, all participants received the same list of guidelines in either a jargon or no-jargon version depending on language condition assignment. Your email address will not be published. Examine some of the product reviews they leave on your website. Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor. Each industry has its own jargon, and its used in place of more easily understood, less-professional alternatives. Both pitches conveyed the same information, but one used lots of business jargon (leveraging, competitive advantage, disintermediating, etc). This helps increase the readers satisfaction and makes it so they feel more engaged with your content. Its also helpful to send out surveys. While jargon is associated with many potentially beneficial outcomes, from improved communication to group bonding and membership signaling, it can also impose costs. No, Is the Subject Area "Social communication" applicable to this article? But Orwells final rule also acknowledges that its possible to go too far in pursuit of simplicity. Yes A quick statement would be clutch.. The contribution of this work is testing whether the aforementioned theoretical proposition and conventional rules of thumb about avoiding jargon translate to crisis communication. While its fun to tinker with language, invent creative slang, and show off your wonkery with jargon, sometimes the best way to get things done is by using straightforward, plain language. Thus, jargon serves the purpose of allowing the author to communicate both concisely and effectively within a disciplinary audience. All of the information presented was factual and was obtained from credible sources, including organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as mass media outlets such as the New York Times, POLITICO, and WIRED. As you use industry terms, check their definitions and make sure youre using each word accurately. HBR Learnings online leadership training helps you hone your skills with courses like Writing Skills. If youre using fancy or complex vocabulary, the content might confuse your readers. Before the study began, participants were first presented with an online consent form approved by the IRB that stated that by clicking on the proceed arrow, participants were providing their informed consent to participate. Instead, consider writing the sentence like this: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the act of improving your website or content to increase its visibility and attract new customers to your business. This sentence is a much simpler definition that replaces a lot of the technical jargon and fancy vocabulary to make the statement more understandable. Taken together, the fact that these messages varied in ways beyond topic urgency and jargon underscores the need to test these relationships across multiple messages, a technique called the message sampling approach [26]. Thus, it remains unclear why these differences emerged. To best ensure data quality [24], MTurk workers qualified for participation if they were located within the United States and had obtained at least a 95% completion rate on at least 500 HITS or were designated as Masters status; could pass a CAPTCHA and an attention check; and could respond to an open-ended question. For the COVID-19 topic, however, the effect of jargon was not significant (B = 0.11, SE = 0.22, t = 0.53, p = .598, 95% CI [-0.31, 0.54]). Its a sentiment echoed in a memorable scene from the 2011 film Margin Call, in which the CEO of an investment bank on the verge of collapse deadpans to a young analyst, Speak as you might to a young childor a golden retriever.. It is the analysis of various financial alternatives usually based on time value of money concepts and formulas, to determine the most effective solution from an economical (i.e. Language barriers involve miscommunications related to vernacular differences or translation difficulties. These reward values differed for practical reasons. Those entrepreneurs who were caught up in the 1999 2000 euphoria surrounding internet stock deals. But, according to the authors research, jargon can also result from insecurity and a desire for professional status. For example, it can make communication more difficult for group outsiders and lead them to disengage. Copyright: 2020 Shulman, Bullock. An asterisk next to an item indicates the item was removed to improve reliability. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies. Not always. Writing original draft, Affiliation We then told participants that they were competing against successful MBA alumni (this put them in a lower-status condition), other MBAs (same-status condition), or undergraduates (higher-status condition). That said, recall that the presence of jargon tends to negatively impact persuasion, so, as our hypothesis articulates below, we expect thatfor the non-urgent topicsthe presence of jargon will undermine, not facilitate, persuasive efforts. In sum, all four mediation models cohered with expectations such that jargon exerted the strongest indirect effect in the control condition, followed by the low urgency condition, while no significant indirect effects were found for the high urgency condition. Let's take a closer look. The common term used car is easy to understand, but its a little mundane, maybe even off-putting. George Orwell hammered on it in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language (PDF). While most people find jargon (not to be confused with slang) to be annoying, it remains a staple of the modern workplace. This position & objectives are a new addition to the stable of existing Global Lubricant Solutions (GLS) functions. Culturally and geographically diverse team members cant comprehend what their colleagues are saying. No, Is the Subject Area "Surveys" applicable to this article? For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click In the high-status condition, however, participants were more focused on communicating effectively and being understood clearly. Whether its synergistically leveraging strategic competitive advantages or disintermediating retail channels with bleeding-edge technologies, workplace jargon is a staple of the modern organization. A separate model was run for each outcome, though the primary independent variable (jargon condition), moderator (topic condition), mediator (processing fluency), and covariate (sample), always remained the same. Consistent with our experimental findings, we found that authors from lower-status schools used more jargon in their titles on average than authors from higher-status schools, even after controlling for things like dissertation topic and length. Look at the feedback customers leave on your social media accounts. They had to choose between two pitches describing their company. Low-status participants again preferred to use more jargon, and the explanations for their choice emphasized wanting to look good in the eyes of others. Jargon creates efficient communication between same-field colleagues but, ultimately isolates non-experts from engaging. All it takes is a senior person or an external consultant to start using a particular phrase and, in most cases, gradually everyone else starts to use it. As government employees we all wear many different hats and have to work within a variety of fields. But just like jargon, some readers might not know what the idioms mean. Theoretically, these findings suggest that the motivation to process information is an important moderator for crisis communication in particular and science communication in general. Thus, participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 6 experimental conditions using the randomizer function in Qualtrics (S1 Table). Letting others know why you or your organization dont espouse excessive jargon sends a clear message that youre confident in your abilities and interested in being understood rather than showing off. While we're at it, we might swap out the . Miscommunication. Jargon can be distinguished from the rest of a language based in its special vocabulary which is made up of specific words words that convey different meanings that someone outside the group would tend to take in another sense, which often results in miscommunication. It can include metaphors, figures of speech, acronyms, or repurposed terms (for example, a 30,000-foot view, EOD, or disrupt). They typically also act as mentors to the founding entrepreneurs. This survey experiment (N = 393) was hosted by CloudResearch [23] from March 24 until April 4, 2020 (MAge = 40.26, SD = 18.46, 44.5% Female). During this time, most states in the U.S. were in the early stages of lockdown to reduce the spread of COVID-19; therefore, the dissemination of virus-related information was still rapidly evolving. Language in communication can be verbal, i.e. In other words, asking questions shows people you respect their time. In particular, research in science communication and beyond has found that the presence of jargon damages persuasive efforts [9] and can have a disengaging effect on audiences [46]. Finally, using both jargon and non-jargon equivalents, at least initially, can demonstrate your expertise while also ensuring that the audience understands your message. Together, information about COVID-19 quickly became complicated, scientific, political, economic, andmost important to the present studyunfamiliar. Regardless of why we use jargon, there are consequences. Ask yourself if theres a simpler way to communicate the same idea or if the audience commonly uses the same jargon. At the University of Munster, Germany, Dr Regina Jucks and Maria Zimmermann published How experts use of medical technical jargon in different types of online health forums affects perceived information credibility: Randomised experiment with laypersons. After all, its supposed to make your content, and your brand by extension, sound smarter, right? All of your nonverbal behaviorsthe gestures you make, your . Building on this work, we explored whether having lower professional status motivates people to use more jargon in the workplace. They may think that by continuing to engage with your content, they can pick up the jargon meaning in context. This refers to one hundredth of 1 per unit; used in interest rates or exchange rates. Create a survey with a list of questions about the content you show your audience. Participants were compensated either $0.80 (n = 160) or $2.00 (n = 233) for their participation. In other words, the lower-status participants used more jargon because they were preoccupied with how they would be judged by others. The words used in slang may make content more conversational and also increase engagement with certain audiences. What the general means is yes, but he uses a term that most civilians have to look up; in this context, BOG is short for boots on ground. When communication breakdowns happen, they can be devastating for you, your clients, and your team. How does jargon affect communication? Indeed, prior research suggests that jargon terms undermine peoples ability to accurately understand message content [4, 5, 11] and make it feel more difficult to process the information presented [4, 11]. Copyright 2023 KM Business Information US, Inc, Whistleblower gets $279 million reward for telling on employer, Be warned: Non-compete agreements violate the law in most cases, says government official, How the Grammys handles DEI scrutiny after boycott scrutiny. The corresponding author would like to thank her partner, David DeAndrea, for wrangling two very small children while this study (and this writing) was in progress. Pitching a new technology to a local government admin or your executive director? Yes e0239524. We often see this when companies refer to cutting jobs (that is, making people unemployed) as downsizing or rightsizing. In business, this term refers to the process of financing a business by internally generated cash flow as opposed to kickstarting the company with external investment capital. Our findings show that visible reminders of the importance of being understood lead to less jargon use. Slang is informal and used in more social settings. 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Latest book real communication: how to communicate, and your brand uses just the acronyms with no explanation. Might understand it, we examined another motive for how can jargon affect communication jargon for your academics, careers, intellectual development and... Professional language can often be a good place to emphasize desired communication norms newcomers! Within it in many ways product sound more credible or knowledgeable than what are! Desires as humans is to be connected to each other and accepted, often at any cost your competitors.... Help convey big ideas using fewer words, asking questions shows people you respect their time put... Asking for advice from someone else in the 1999 2000 euphoria surrounding internet stock deals how... Were conducted using model 7 in the S1 Appendix, and descriptive statistics by are... Respect their time sentence is a staple of the group and those who are not should never threaten.. 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