Create Your Own Word Salad

You hem and haw, you take a jargon hit. It takes you a while to figure it's the Yuppie's hi-tech way of asking you to show cause. You are only trying to extend your deadline of computer hardware delivery. And as you sink into dialogue, get a read on his game, you realise it's infra dig for the country head to pin you with a simple, "How late is the delivery going to be?" He has to buckshot you with, "Could you reassess the time-scale implications for us?"

That's a simplistic version of the way jargon is infiltrating our lives. In actuality, increased specialisation in our society is contributing to the spread of new lingo. Also, as Professor Meenakshi Mukherjee, English department, Jawaharlal Nehru University, says, "There's a growing feeling among theorists that ordinary language is finished. That it has reached a certain level of communication and can go no further. The jargon that is now creeping in is sometimes a conscious effort to stretch language."

Entities like the government and the army seem to specialise in the area. Burying simple proclamations under tons of verbiage makes official statements sound official enough. For instance, in the Gulf War, the US military coined the term "collateral damage" to avoid having to admit that even the smartest of bombs caused civilian damage. It got picked up by military all round the world. Similarly, "garbageman" transformed itself into "sanitation engineer"—it's gender-neutral and it avoids the verbal smell of garbage.

In the more down-to-earth sense, jargon is where things are really on the fast track and computer hacker lingo is where it's evolving at a murderous pace. There's a 1,500-plus word index posted by a Japanese university on the Internet which is the computer nerd's jargon bible. Samples: time sink, a project that consumes unbounded time; tired iron, hardware that's perfectly functional but behind state-of-the-art; tits on the keyboard, a faultily manufactured keyboard; toaster, a very dumb computer; propeller head, the non-hacker's name for all techies; and dinosaur mating, that's yet another merger or buy-out, like the recent Boeing takeover of McDonell Douglas.

There are also many exotic, sometimes less intriguing terms. Chernobyl Chicken, backward compatibility, asbestos longjohns, dumbass attack, some random X, tip of the ice-cube, venus flytrap etc. The Infoseek search engine on the Net yields 37,382 listings. You notch up higher figures on other search engines like Alto Vista.

But even though hacker jargon is the newest specialisation in a burgeoning field, the hackers themselves have an unwritten code on usage. Says Anish Trivedi, a business executive who's got addicted to his company's commercial connection, "One has to use just enough lingo to serve as a kind of I-card. Overkill is considered downmarket. It's only the newly initiated who do it."

While you can get away with a flippant attitude on the Net, you have to back it with an underlying seriousness and intelligence. A lot of hacker jargon originates from the generalisation of technical terms. Amazingly, a significant percentage has been independently reinvented across separate cultures and languages because of the strong internal logic behind its formation. Also, because the networks propagate innovations quickly, first usage is almost impossible to establish. But because coining words has become easy and awareness levels have enhanced, what's happened—and this is not limited just to hacker jargon—is that the time a word or phrase takes to get co-opted into the mainstream has decreased.

Says Rajesh Debraj, creative director, Channel V: "You want the jargon you use to be exclusive. You don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry using it." Typical December Channel V lingo could run like this: "Roll the bugs before the jumpers and top it with a Madras cut." Bumpers are graphic elements that go into programs and bugs are little logos and the Madras cut is something like the Rajnikant jump sequence. Organisations, typically, develop usage that's limited to their offices and spreads only when staff leave. Very contemporary lingo, for instance, in Channel V staff is 'sinkesh'—sinking picture into sound.

Jargon can also intimidate, confuse and help sell risk as innovation. A very 'in' term in Delhi advertising circles is break the mode. Says a senior Mudra hand: "To any campaign quirk that a client has difficulty in accepting, you say 'we're breaking the mode'. What that means is that if you accept this, your ass could catch some fire."

Current terms that account executives use to strike poses with corporate clients: 'advertising needs to be aspirational', or 'we have examined the proposition at length using dipstick research'. Says a Lintas executive: "Dipstick research is essentially having bounced the idea in question with two of your creative colleagues." There are also the more obvious. Share of Voice is a hip way of measuring the noise level you might be making in media. Bottom up Marketing is a substitute for commonsense. Not to forget the tug factor that could be there in an ad or the sexual connotations of using a phrase like 'insertion on the centrespread—bleed and non-bleed' on a female trainee. Bleed is a technical term which in advertising jargon means extending the advertising copy or illustration to the edge of a page so there is no white border.

SAYS Sundarajan Mahalingam, accounts executive at HTA: "The positive use of jargon is that it's a unifying factor in the particular circle you move in. But it's nearly never used in that spirit. It's more like the person is throwing weight around. It's a way to signal you have arrived."

HTA itself doesn't like to pitch itself as just an advertising agency. It feels the term brand communications is a better signifier. Even some public relations firms are repositioning their roles. Perfect Relations has started a sister concern called Image Inc. Says Dilip Cherian, partner: "We wanted to be a subset of management consultancy than just PR. What we call ourselves goes a long way in defining our role." He makes a fine distinction between fad words and jargon: "One has to wait for words to cross the three-year threshold before they qualify to be bracketed as jargon. Jargon has a technical edge to it which slang or fad words don't."

Image Inc. uses terms like wet blanketing, a term used to signal a drop in interest in a particularly exciting story. The term, of course, originated from fire-fighting services. Then there's the cheesecake factor, which is used for an exciting visual opportunity. Like T.N. Seshan on a TVS Scooty. Of frequent usage is boiler plate, a common introductory passage for all press releases of a particular client. Says Cherian: "For us jargon is a means of short form in communications. It creates a sense of mystery for the outsider and that generates its own mileage. A bit like collecting rent on a word." While PR and advertising are a little less on verbiage, management jargon contains many euphemisms that convey an impression of insincerity as well as generating wordiness of the kind which develops when you call a toilet a comfort station. It's also highly departmentalised. CEO lingo is very different from the jargon used at departmental manager level or the one used by junior execs. A chairman would be comfortable saying things like 'let's institutionalise the solution', or 'intensify our partnering activities', or 'focussed alignment'. Going into high gear for him would be to generate usage like, 'let's look at this from 30,000 feet' or 'proliferate a step-functional improvement'.

Junior executives are more flagrant. Incredibly hairy is something too complicated. So is rocket science. Lingo for something unachievable is conquer world hunger. Says Rajeev Seth, marketing consultant: "From jargon, you can figure a person's perch in the pecking order. Junior executives are ones who haven't figured out their core competencies yet. They're in the learning process. Middle level managers are more innovative. They're into speed wobbles, transcultural competencies, let's keep the balls in the air, and pick some low-hanging fruit.'' For the high-hitters and performers, the lexicon is more empowering. Says Seth: "You have to throw phrases like synergistic linkages, visual metaphor, aggressive timeframes and let's walk the talk. The last one is just discussing issues with friends, simply a halo around bouncing an idea." There are also the smart varieties that fall in the bracket of word juggling and which you would expect from management types. Like attitude recalibration, black belt statistician, massaging the issues, and the sale manager's pet—customer intimacy—which is an index for your aftersales service efficiency.

'In' usage is something that hasn't given New Age religion a bypass too. New Age itself is a term that gained currency about three years back. A Deepak Chopra seminar in Goa which is com -ing up in March next year has been titled 'Seduction of the Soul'.

Says Parven Chopra, editor, Life Positive: "Terms that have gained ground are positive affirmatives, which is simply telling yourself over and over again that you are becoming better. Or creative visualisation, which is imagining what you want to become, a kind of self-oriented prayer.'' A high-wattage word is energy. Says Chopra: "It's used any and everywhere. 'Today my energy is up', or 'That room is full of negative energy'. The danger is that overuse creates cliches. People soon say, 'Oh, I have heard that before'.''

A GREES Mukherjee: "When everybody grabs the usage, it loses its novelty." Mukherjee sees jargon as words with a high negative charge. She takes particular umbrage at the language of literary and film criticism. Says she: "The ordinary man can't understand today's language of criticism." As illustration, she reads from the introduction of Hom Bhabha's new book The Location of Culture: "...to locate the question of culture in the realm of the beyond. The beyond is neither a new horizon nor a leaving behind of the past." Says Mukherjee: "Every word here is familiar but the combined effect makes one perceive it as jargon. "

Another word that doesn't exist in most dictionaries but is used with profligacy by critics is phallocentric. Says Prof Ania Lumba, in JNU's English department: "Everybody uses it. But street people will call it jargon. At the same time, it's difficult to replace it with something else. But some critics use it simply to feel good. To feel they are doing something as good as physics.''

While some people who are left out of a certain expertise begin to call the language of that discipline jargon, people also don't want to work hard enough to understand the special language which has developed in the social sciences. This leads Lumba to comment: "I would like to probe this commonsense that delineates jargon as nonsense. The problem creeps in because social science jargon is much more capable of misuse than, say, the jargon in physics.''

 Lumba adds that with jargon becoming a status-marker, people are beginning to feel they can't move around without using it as crutches. This is specially true in diplomatic circles. At the recent WTO ministerial meeting in Singapore, journalists were handed a new glossary of acronyms, strange terms and jargon to help follow the deliberations. Some of the terms, like GRULA and Cabbotage, were mistaken for a kind of soup. Swing, for instance, meant the transfer of a quota from one product to another and conference is a group of container lines in maritime transport that has immunity for the purpose of collecting setting rates (phew!). Says J.N. Dixit, former Indian foreign secretary: "The global diplomatic language, which was strong on ceremony till even the late '70s, is now much more direct. It's the influence of the Americans."

The American influence has percolated down to mountaineering. Says Sidhartha Bahuguna, an amateur mountaineer: "We have terms like bonehead, the kind of person who climbs with his first-aid kit strapped on his butt and still has the price tags on his equipment. A lot of these Bombay corporate adventurers fill the slot. A Goomba is a climber who thinks he or she knows everything.'' Other terms are more technical. Dyno, for instance, is a jump for a faraway  hold and deadpoint is the point of lunge in a dyno where momentum is zero and it's time to grab your next hold to save your life. But the cake goes to touron, which mountaineers rate as the lowest form of life in the cosmos and is essentially a cross between a tourist and a moron who asks stupid questions like 'How did you get the rope up there?' and 'Where is your ice-axe?'

Lingo is something you can't do without even if you go weightlifting in Noida, UP. Says Salil Chaturvedi, a regular user of weights in the area: "You have to be really up-to-date in a few of these fitness centres. A lot of the instructors are toked up on jargon. You don't say 'increase your sets with more weights'. You have to say progressive overload. A favou-rite term these days is muscle confusion. It's essentially a technique to counteract muscle adaptation to your training techniques." Incidentally, bulking up is out. The new phrase for stripping the body of excessive fat while increasing muscle size is cutting up. Changing aesthetic ideals?

Indian bureaucratic jargon is a little less hip. After liberali-sation, the Finance Ministry started preferring the use of balance of trade instead 'trade deficit' because of the negative connotations the word 'deficit' carries. In many ministries, prioritise is the key word. Says P.S.A. Sundaram, additional secretary in the Ministry of Personnel, Pensions and Public Grievances: "Another much jargonised term is right size. Sentences like 'we need to right-size this ministry' are endemic. I think the phrase got borrowed from tailoring." Helps to keep inconvenient files sewed up.

For sheer hilarity and entertainment, of course, there's nothing to beat jargon that's sprung from US military. There's the new Txjet, a specially developed fighter-bomber for use by Texan pilots with cockpits large enough to accommodate their hats. Or CDHU (Collateral Damage Humanoid Units)—people who get in the way. Not that the US is purposely aiming at them, but let's face it, it's no loss really because they probably aren't Christians and most don't even speak English. Then, there's the designer weaponry that Pentagon has developed in the BT (Big Tank) with dimensions of 150 by 200 feet. Its purpose is to make the ground war much simplified by simply running over soldiers. Special decapi -tation implements on the underside mows enemy soldiers and the blood and guts are scooped up in a tank to avoid environmental damage to the desert!

More tongue-in-cheek phrases include 'all over me like stink on shit', 'more bang for the buck', 'like having a parachute on a submarine' or 'he would piss on a spark plug if that would help'. Says JNU Professor Harbans Mukhia, from the School of Social Sciences: "One can laugh off jargon but there's a seriousness to it that goes beyond the promotion of laughter. Also, postmodernistic jargon in different fields is more the user's perceptions of reality than the reality itself. And since perceptions differ and change, a single usage could have multiple meanings." 

Mukhia goes on to say that every age has a defining paradigm and the jargon essentially maps it. While medieval society had God's will as the paradigm or defining element, the 19th century saw a paradigm of science and rationality, and the early part of the 20th century saw Marxism as the paradigm. Mukhia goes on to give an interesting example of Marxist jargon in the early '70s on the JNU campus. Says he: "The students were arguing for the merit-cum-means scholarship to be raised from Rs 75 to Rs 100 per month. One of the leaders got up and said with dignity, 'We are not asking for more money. What we are asking for is simply a redistribution of surplus value.' Today, with post-modernism ruling the roost, he would probably say something like 'Our struggle is a contesta-tion of the administration's discourse.'

" Mukhia and other JNU professors are themselves witnessing an overuse of jargon in students taking examinations. Says Mukhia: "Jargon has a social function. It gives you identity. It can also, of course, cloud meaning. The students sometimes use it as a shallow substitute for thinking and learning. Sometimes also as a substitute for labour." Sometimes, of course, it's a dose of their own medicine.

But even as we prepare ourselves for moving around in a world where we have to learn to say hormonally influenced for infatuation and call romance hormonal-induced stupidity, perhaps we should take care not to reach a stage where we achieve a better understanding of Julius Caesar's Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) by reading it as: Upon the advent of the investigator, his hegemony became minimally coextensive with the aerial unit rendered visible by his successive displacements in space.