I have been thinking a lot lately about the words we choose to be the words we use. For years, I have sanded texts heavy with jargon, so they would be more useful to more people. Now, I am thinking about the choices themselves and how they relate to who we are.
One of the jobs of a communications professional is to translate between what is meant and what is said; even then, we sometimes do a sorry job of it, not really getting to the heart of the content. That is definitely on us, but not entirely. What compels professionals to write technical text for the public? There are a few reasons that come to my mind:
- We lack the time to do the hard work of simplifying.
- We want to show our expertise, and what better way than to show we are part of the in-crowd that uses such words?
- We may not have as good a grasp of the concepts as we wish we did. In that case, translating is out the door.
The best way to show what we have learned is by teaching someone else. It is a great method for assessing retention and understanding. Translating falls into that category, which means communications professionals need to do their work to learn before doing the work of sharing messages. Fun fun.
But, as I have been thinking about it, this applies to everyday words, too. Alex, designer of this beautiful Canada Day picture he let me use here, chose “strong and free” scripted across a big ol’whale. How much more strong and free can we get than this ocean-dwelling critter? Naturally, strong and free allude to our national anthem, and we sing them cheerfully (especially after booing a certain other anthem, amirite?). If I were to ask you what these words mean to you, what would you say? How would those words reflect your experiences of those words? How about your experiences of Canada? Would you use strong and free? If not, which words would you choose? Your choices tell a story. Now that I am a consultant, I want to hear your stories.
In the meanwhile, I will keep sharing mine. One of my goals in writing this blog is to connect you with tools and readings that can help you with your communications. To do more thinking about words and how they might mean something different to people based on their experiences, consider taking the Government of Canada’s online Gender-based Analysis + training. If gender is one of those words that makes you prickle, I doubly recommend it. And get in touch. Unspun Communications will offer you the unvarnished truth about your communications.