Comments on: More on language alignment

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Defending generalists || May || 2008

Wed, 14 May 2008 12:00:36 +0000

[...] and underestimates the social difficulties of selecting and aligning specialists. The problems of language alignment and of picking the right team of specialists are where generalists provide value in a way that [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Six Sigma and the Perils of Process || October || 2007

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:37:53 +0000

[...] mean that it provides a common framework that one can use to communicate between organizations. Aligning language is difficult, and perhaps Six Sigma has to use artificial jargon to ensure that none of its terms [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || The Art of Conversation || July || 2006

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 02:12:43 +0000

[...] The other issue with bars and parties is something I touched on in the mysterious connections post, where I said “If I have to spend several sentences explaining each of my references, then the conversational momentum is disrupted and itâ€™s hard to achieve that sense of flow in conversation”. It’s also linked to the idea of language alignment. If I don’t know people well, as is common at parties, then there are more opportunities for friction between realities to interrupt the flow of conversation. Combine that with the inhospitable (to conversations) physical environment, and it’s no wonder that I don’t enjoy either bars or parties. [...]

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Secondary research || June || 2006

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 03:05:11 +0000

[...] If I want to be part of a community, I have to subscribe to the same interpretations of the world, use the same jargon to describe it, etc. Part of the reason that communities develop their own jargon and language is to separate themselves from the mainstream, to provide a way to identify members, but I suspect that it also reinforces a certain viewpoint on the world. The language we use influences how we think, as Lakoff describes. By creating a new jargon/language, the community completes the indoctrination of new members by locking in a certain viewpoint. We can see this in the college kids who have just read Ayn Rand for the first time who see everything in objectivist terms, or in the grad student in critical theory who deconstructs everything they encounter. It’s the hammer and nail phenomenon again. [...]

By: Beemer

Beemer — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 23:39:50 +0000

In other words, communication is all about impedance-matching. And it’s rooted in the need to compress the linguistic datastream.

That’s a very good observation. Interesting to think that we have literal dialects that require translation — but kind of obvious when you think about it that way. It used to be that social groups were based primarily on geography, but as we have become more mobile and specialized, we instead congregate in tribes based on jobs, pastimes, interests, activities…

Is it useful to think of jargon as a contextual dialect?

Random thought: one interesting aspect of aligning language — building a translation bridge — is that sometimes it can be a political fight about framing rather than a mutual effort to communicate…