 
 SmokeLanguage Barrierby Michael Hahn
 
 
        I speak English, but in this age of jargon and specialization, 
    that isn't necessarily a good thing.  More and more, we seem to 
    know less and less about what the other guy is saying.  Words are 
    assuming different meanings for different people, meanings that 
    are sometimes in direct opposition.
        What is a disc?  To a doctor, a disc is a section of the 
    spinal column.  To a radio personality, it may be a recording of 
    Neil Diamond's greatest hits.  A floppy is a disc; so is a 
    Frisbee.  At a statewide convention for student council types in 
    Illinois (in the dead, dark days of my youth), a couple of kids 
    from Chicago's inner city overheard a couple of farm kids from 
    Watseka talking about "discin'."  The Chicago kids couldn't 
    understand why the Watseka kids seemed so upset about playing with 
    a Frisbee.  The farm kids, of course, were talking about the hot 
    work of turning the earth in a field with an implement usually 
    called a disc.
        The number of contexts has grown in our technological world, 
    and the same words are being used in several of them.  Are we 
    creating new languages?  Do we now have dialects of English, like 
    Computer English and Newscaster English and Government Employee 
    English, that are as mutually incomprehensible as Chinese 
    dialects?
        Whatever the reason, I've seen this situation crop up more 
    often lately.  Part of it is my new job--a large part of document 
    analysis is persuading a roomful of people from all facets of the 
    document creation and use process to agree on a common set of 
    definitions for the parts of their documents.  My colleagues and I 
    continually run into the "Everybody knows what *that* is" claim-- 
    and we inevitably discover that *no one* can agree on just what 
    *that* is.
        The meanings of words, as well as their connotations,
    can change with the passage of time.  Remember when "gay" 
    meant "happy and carefree"?  Which came first, the word 
    "solidarity," or the labor movement in Poland?  "Portable" in 
    general usage, means "can be carried from place to place."  In 
    computer software parlance, "portable" also implies that the 
    software is usable on a variety of operating systems . . . and has 
    nothing to do with location.
        So, the next time you're not sure you understood what the 
    other guy meant, ask.  You probably didn't.

                                  -end-
                      Copyright (c) 1993 Michael Hahn
                                  
