Drawbacks of jargon monoxide (hollow and impenetrable babble)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At my friendly local public library, on the new books shelf, I found the 2024 book by Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao titled The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder. Chapter 7, from page 180 to page 201 is titled Jargon Monoxide and subtitled On the Drawbacks and (Limited) Virtues of Hollow and Impenetrable Babble.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They divide Jargon Monoxide into four types, as are shown above in a table: Convoluted Crap, Meaningless Bullshit, In-Group Lingo, and Jargon Mishmash Syndrome. Then they have a detailed discussion of jargon.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What should we do instead? When writing (including speechwriting) we should use powerful words that prompt others to act, to persist, and to generate imaginative solutions, as shown above in a colorized version of a table from pages 198 and 199.

 

“As our table shows, these hallmarks include using concrete language rather than vague words and phrases, talking in the present tense rather than the past tense, using terms that suggest people have chosen to engage in friction fixing rather than are forced to do so, using sensory metaphors that are linked to bodily experiences, and talking about friction fixing as a journey rather than a destination.”