What jargon is, and seven ways it prevents us from developing sustainably.

Definitions

“Jargon, noun:

1: the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group.

2: obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words

3          a: confused unintelligible language.

b: a strange, outlandish, or barbarous language or dialect.

c: a hybrid language or dialect simplified in vocabulary and grammar and used for communication between peoples of different speech.

Circumlocution, noun:

the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea”.

–Merriam-Webster Dictionary

The Situation

Many sustainability specialists write or speak to “raise awareness” about the economic, social, and environmental problems we are all facing, and their proposed solutions. But frankly, what the sustainability discourse raises is often only eyebrows, even among specialists.

How aware are we, sustainability specialists, of our own words, and of how they are received? We cannot solve a collective problem if we do not understand each other. And currently, we mostly don’t. Because we speak mostly in our own jargon.

Much worse: most of us sustainability professionals are blind to having a jargon problem. We go on inventing more jargon in an attempt to explain the existing one. Like for bureaucracy and technocracy, a gremlin in our mind somehow makes us believe that more of it will help reduce it. Well, no, jargon persists and festers.

Amplified by technology, never before have we humans exchanged bigger volumes of information than today. A large portion of this information attempts to explain how nature works. Yet so much of this “explaining” ends up in increased confusion and division rather than in shared understanding and union. We disconnect in an attempt to connect. I call it “jargon disease”, and we humans all suffer from it to some extent. We, sustainability professionals, are particularly affected, but we are not the only ones. Folks in economics and finance are pretty jargony, too, and yet they run us all!

To be fair, I do not consider jargon to be entirely bad. We have to name things in order to speak about them. And it is good to have an efficient, familiar language within a community. But in “commun-ication”, the goal is to reach common understanding. The use of jargon outside a community, without audience-adequate descriptions, can divide, complicate, antagonize, and alienate. And that is the opposite of what we need and really, deeply want.

Jargon-oblivion

The third United Nations Sustainable Development Goal for 2030 is about human health: “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” Health providers are all sustainability professionals (even though many do not know that).

In this article, I will use the brilliant analysis proposed by two doctors: Q-rounds cofounder and CEO Michael Pitt, MD, and Marissa Hendrickson, MD. In an article available on the Q-rounds website, Pitt summarized a study he co-authored with Hendrickson about the jargon used in healthcare. In my opinion, much of their findings applies to the general sustainability profession (and to any profession, really).

Dr. Pitt’s company, Q-rounds, invented a piece of technology meant to make hospital rounds more efficient for all involved, including patients, through better communication. Even though healthcare professionals know the vital importance of communication, they often use jargon, just like other professionals. And just like others too, they do so involuntarily and unknowingly. Basically, both healthcare providers and sustainability professionals at large—and frankly most of us—think we are communicating clearly, but often aren’t. In fact, we can be very far from clear, even to ourselves.

Pitt and Hendrickson call “jargon-oblivion”, in their profession, “the discrepancy between physicians’ self-rated skill in clear communication and their patients’ ability to understand the terms being used”. It is a form of mindlessness.

They compiled seven most common types of jargon used in this oblivious way, and gave a brief description of each. I merely adopted most of their classification and gave examples in the context of the broader sustainability profession, based on my own observation and experience of over 40 years (I am capable of jargon-oblivion too). Here they are:

Type 1: Technical Terminology

Biodiversity, carbon dioxide emissions, biosphere, biomass, etc. Not everyone understands these words, even though they name real things. And using more technical terms to define them won’t help those who don’t have, and don’t have to have, the scientific background to understand. We must find other, more universal words. For some audiences, try saying “everything that’s alive”, or “the diversity and uniqueness of every living entity”. But really, we may not even have to torture our brains or our audience’s. Because the angle of approach to get a person interested is through whatever THEY are interested in. It is our job to ask questions, to listen first, and find some link between what we may want to say and what they have expressed interest in. We may find that the angle is, for example, good health, and perhaps never even have to talk about CO2.

Type 2: Alphabet Soup

This type includes acronyms and abbreviations such as DEI—Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, ESG—Environment, Social, and Governance, CSR—Corporate Social Responsibility, etc. I just learned a new one: UPF—Ultra-Processed Food. And I would add, like Pitt and Hendrickson do, that using the full term does not always clarify much, like in the case of “Environment, Social, and Governance” or “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”. There seems to be as many different definitions of these word groupings as people who use them. In fact, as I write this article, “DEI” is being understood by some groups as a negative thing, which obviously excludes rather than includes.

Type 3: Sustainability Vernacular

This category concerns words that are not exactly technical, are known to a group of people, but are not known or understood by most audiences. In this category, I would put “net-zero”, “scope 3 reporting”, “carbon neutral”, “greenwashing”, “Amazon tipping point”, “agrivoltaics”, and the like. I recently came across “femtor”: apparently the feminine of “mentor” (this one could also belong to the next category). These terms should be avoided when unnecessary (for a given audience), or accompanied by simple, audience-appropriate descriptions and examples.

Type 4: Incorrect Word Juxtaposition, Shortcuts, and Poetry

My type 4 is not the same as Pitt and Hendrikson’s type 4 (which is “medicalized English”), but it exists in our profession. It concerns phrases with logically questionable word juxtapositions. It includes, for example, “sustainable future”, “low-carbon economy”, or saying something is “more, or less, sustainable” (when in fact it just is, or is not so). “Sustainable future” is probably a shortcut for something like “the situation that will exist in the future, when humans are behaving sustainably.” But who can describe this situation clearly? Now that would be useful! I added poetry here because I find there is a thin line, easily crossable, between incorrectness and art. Consider, for example, these propositions: “the unevenly distributed climate future”, and “sustainability is in our DNA”. Something in them rings appealing but we can’t quite put our finger on it.

Type 5: Unnecessary Synonyms 

To many audiences, it would be enough that sustainability specialists speak of having a “place with a great diversity of plants and animals,” instead of a “highly biodiverse ecosystem.” Another interesting example in this category is “biophilic”, for a human yearning to be in close presence of other natural life forms, particularly green vegetation, in architecture, interior design, or urbanism. In Pitt and Hendrickson’s article on the healthcare jargon, the following cracked me up, so I had to share it here: “upper extremities” instead of arms! If a simple word exists for it, use it, instead of imposing a brain twister.

Type 6: Euphemisms

I cannot find many examples in this category. Unlike in the healthcare profession, general sustainability professionals tend to make things more negative than they are, not more positive. I wonder: would perhaps “associate”, for “employee” or “staff” qualify? What about “unhoused” that recently replaced “homeless”? Would you agree? In the medical profession, providers often try to soften language by fear of shocking patients or their families, but this often comes at the expense of clarity. Can you find more euphemisms in the general sustainability field, my readers?

Type 7: Judgmental Jargon

This category alone could use a few pages, a book even. It includes phrases that reflect unintentional biases. I believe that even though our profession is in great part about removing biases and promoting equity, particularly as concerns race, religious affiliation, age, or income category, we sustainability professionals are just human beings, and we carry many biases, too. Some are specific to our profession.

• Many sustainability professionals affirm, for example, that climate deregulation is “the most important problem” of humanity. Others think it is over-production, or over-consumption, or some other problem. Those are subjective judgments. There is no science to support these assertions. There is science to support the existence of many, interdependent problems in a system with subsystems. All are “important”. Thus, we must act on all in an intelligent and organized way. There may be a hierarchy of causes and consequences. Hierarchy does matter because addressing root causes helps reduce or eliminate the advent of an entire tree of consequences, saving considerable time and energy in solving problems. But each problem counts as such. We must both extinguish the fires and prevent fires from occurring.

 

• In our profession, many are also biased to consider humans and technology as separate from nature. It is indeed possible and helpful to have and play with models in our minds, that divide overall reality in chunks, pieces, or smaller entities (like a machine), and analyze the relationship between these entities. But nature is a continuum including humans, technology, and everything. From a certain—right brain, holistic—perspective, we are nature. Models—that use words and numbers—help talk about things and solve problems. In sustainability we work with very sophisticated models. But we must always keep in mind that models are not reality itself. The book Thinking in Systems, based on a draft by Donella Meadows (author of The Limits to Growth), helps make this difference.

 

• Related to above, many people are biased to mostly see and speak of the reality that is external to us—climate, forests, oceans, other people—and omit what happens within us. I am not just talking about the trillion microbes that inhabit our body, even though some of these microbes communicate with our brains and run our cravings and decision-making, for example. I also include our feelings, our thoughts, and how our hearts, livers, and all our organs communicate with each other and with our brains. These are all components of our natural systems. They are all physical. They are all important. How our leaders think impacts all of humanity’s lives, and climate, and beyond. A judgment or decision that is based on only one fraction of reality bears a high probability of being wrong.

What can we do about it?

As a recovering “jargonaholic” I know we can all be jargon-oblivious. Humbly, I also know that this disease never goes away entirely. But we can, and we must, do our best to keep it in check.  I also know it takes some time and an intentional process, not unlike the 12-step program adopted by many sobriety promoting organizations, to heal ourselves from it.

The process starts with admitting to our jargon-oblivion (getting out of denial) and goes all the way to freedom and clarity, and being able to commune in loving conversation and organization with others. Only then can we together see our problems as they are (objectively), all see the same reality, and implement solutions that (really) work, using our respective human abilities. Because we have each other, and a collective power much bigger than the sum of its parts.

If you haven’t yet, you may find some tips in Five Keys to Communicate Sustainability for Success.

And here is the link to the study publication by Pitt and Hendrickson.

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