language

Contact, Verb

From Wilson Follett (1966), Modern American Usage (ed. Jacques Barzun)

Persons old enough to have been repelled by the verb contact when it was still a crude neologism may as well make up their minds that there is no way to arrest or reverse the tide of its popularity. Persons young enough to have picked up the word without knowing that anyone had reservations about it may as well make up their minds that a considerable body of their elders abominate it and would despise themselves if they succumbed to the temptation to use it. In this converted noun we have the perfect example of a coinage that has thirty or forty more years of intolerance to face from a dwindling minority of conservatives while enjoying the full approval — and, more important, the increasing use — of a growing majority that will eventually be unanimous. This clash of generations — a forlorn cultural resistance or a healthy disposition to make the most of linguistic growth, according to how you look at it — is one of the standard phenomena of change.

If in doubt, contact your physician — this locution is as natural to the American of thirty as it is grotesque to the American of sixty, for whom the idea of surfaces touching is the essence of contact. The elderly can therefore see no fitness and no use for the word in its new sense, when the vocabulary already provides consult, ask, approach, get in touch with, confer with, and simply see. Their juniors can perceive no point in forgoing so plainly useful an invention.

The conservative retains one advantage: no one insists that he must use contact, and if he sticks to consult and other inconspicuous synonyms no one will even notice his abstention. But this argument is unlikely to persuade the addicts of contact, who exploit the word because it sounds brisk and comprehensive.

Two other ‘vogue words’ in the same category of nouns converted into verbs for ‘dynamic’ reasons are implement and process. A plan or program is implemented when supplied with the practical apparatus — appropriations, staff, schedule, or what not — needed to carry it out. The word is perhaps a shade less harsh than contact, very likely because of its analogy with tool and retool, standard words for a factory’s preparing to undertake new or increased production. With implement the layman can sound technical. As for the second word, an application, request, memorandum, or some other document is processed when it goes through the usual sequence of consideration, approval, and execution. The word sounds as if it should mean something more exact than considered, appraised, weighed, handled, studied, dealt with, etc., but does it?

It is to be noted that all three of these currently fashionable verbs — contact, implement, process — belong to the proliferating vocabulary of bureaucratic organization, the patter of officialdom. This is a linguistic medium that practically everyone not immersed in it systematically mocks, but meanwhile its toxic properties undermine our resistance, and in the end contemporary speech becomes, regardless of the occasion, more and more bureaucratic.

Inside Talk

From Theodore Bernstein (1965), The Careful Writer

Unfortunately, all the words that describe the kinds of specialized language that fall within this classification have connotations that range from faintly to strongly disparaging. That is why the neutral label inside talk has been affixed to them. The subclassifications are these:

Argot: the speech of thieves and rogues, and, by derived meaning, the speech of any particular class of persons.

Jargon: originally meaningless, unintelligible speech, but now also the language of a science, sect, trade, profession, or the like.

Lingo: in contemptuous reference, the speech of foreigners or of a special class of persons.

Slang: current language below the level of standard usage employing new words or old words in new ways; a language that may or may not be peculiar to a particular class.

The reason that all these words have disparaging connotations is that outsiders dislike being outsiders. They envy or resent those who can speak and understand inside talk. And in some instances the very desire to keep outsiders out accounts for these languages: it is certainly the reason behind argot, it is often the reason behind slang, and it is sometimes the reason behind jargon. There is a tendency in specialized groups, for reasons of either establishing a kind of mystic bond or asserting a kind of self-importance, to employ esoteric or pretentious words. It is difficult to see, for instance, what function is performed for the psychologist by instinctual that is not just as well performed by instinctive; what function is performed for the sociologist by target ends that is not just as well performed by goals; what function is performed for the pedagogue by subject area and classroom situation and classroom teacher that is not just as well performed by subject and classroom and teacher.

This is by no means to say that all inside talk, all jargon, is pretentious and useless. On the contrary, most of it is highly necessary. Those in specialized fields have need to communicate with one another in precise terms and with an economy of expression. A single word will often convey to a colleague what would require a sentence, a paragraph, or perhaps an even longer description to convey to a layman. The fact that the layman does not comprehend the single word does not indict it for use within its proper sphere.

With the onward march of education, however, the layman comes to comprehend more and more of the jargon of the specialties. In this way more and more useful words enter the language of the ordinary man and the language is enriched. But there is a danger here. It often happens that the layman does not exactly comprehend the specialized word or phrase he is taking over from the specialist, and the word comes into the language with an erroneous meaning so that thenceforth it becomes an ambiguous expression. In economics, for instance, the phrase economy of scarcity has a well defined meaning; it refers to a deliberate creation of scarcity to drive prices up. But during World War II one of our newspaper military analysts, who had heard but not understood the phrase, applied it as a description of mere shortages of ammunition or ships or blankets or what not. The terms of psychoanalysis have suffered the most at the hands of lay writers and lay conversationalists. The cause is undoubtedly twofold: first, there is such an abundance of those terms; second, psychoanalysis has become fashionable in literature and conversation. Thus, complex is often used as if it meant a mere psychological peculiarity, fixation as if it meant an obsession, exhibitionism as if it meant showing off. And there are a host of other Freudian terms that are habitually misused because they are only half understood

A pointed text for this particular sermon might be the following passage from Ngaio Marsh’s Death of a Peer:

“What do you think of me?” asked Frid, striking an attitude. “Aren’t I quite lovely?”

“Don’t tell her she is,” said Colin. “The girl’s a nymphomaniac…

“My dear Colin,” said his father, “it really would be a good idea if you’d stick to the words you understand.”

A final caution may be of value in a discussion of inside talk. In writing intended for general reading the use, whether by a specialist or by a layman, of jargon terms that are not commonly understood smacks of pedantry. If the writer believes that it is imperative to use such a term, he should at least explain it when it is introduced. It must never be forgotten that the function of writing is communication.