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Effective Marketing
When Words Fail
How the public interest becomes neither
public nor interesting
By Tony Proscio
In the final installment of his celebrated series on
jargon-infested public-interest speak, Tony Proscio
both entertains and explains how the sector’s use of jargon creates reader confusion and bewilderment
rather than a clear understanding of ideas and activities. Throughout
the piece,
When Words Fail, Proscio defines today’s popular buzz
words and argues that the continued overuse of this mystifying language
alienates the public and hinders a lively and active policy debate.
Below is an excerpt from the introduction of the
publication, which was funded by the Edna McConnell
Clark Foundation.
Introduction
Several years ago, under the title
In Other Words,
the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation issued what we
called, in a subtitle, “a plea for plain speaking in
foundations.” Two years later, we followed with another
volume, called
Bad Words for Good, expanding on the theme. Both
essays focused on jargon in philanthropy and public
service—turgid, vain, or just meaningless expressions
whose worst effect is, as John Humphrys put it, to “dumb
down” the voice of democracy.
In all honesty, the goal
of those little essays wasn’t anything
so grand as saving democracy. Our much smaller thesis
was
that the philanthropic world’s fetish for “bogus
management speak” does even more harm to the people who
use this language than it does to the body politic. It
gives the impression—a false one, in our view—of a civic
and philanthropic subculture stifled by its own
pomposity, self-involvement, and muddled thinking.
Reflecting on overused words like CAPACITY,
BENCHMARKING, INFRASTRUCTURE, METRICS, and SYSTEMS the
essays painted a picture of a field dressed up, like a
drunken reveler at a fancy-dress ball, in an absurd and
giddy caricature of itself.
Most of this vocabulary
isn’t even original. It has been
pilfered from other fields and stretched beyond all
bounds
of technical meaning or usefulness. By parroting every
verbal
fad wafting from the nation’s war colleges, investment
banks,
engineering schools, and management consultancies,
foundations and nonprofit groups not only make
themselves seem silly—like star-struck teenagers aping
the hand gestures of every new pop star—but something
far worse: They wall
themselves off from the public in whose interest most of
them
pursue their branch of good work.
To be clear, our complaint
wasn’t primarily about the
aesthetics of public-interest writing. Whether authors
use
fancy words and intricate phrases or simple
noun-verb-noun
constructions, whether their prose has rhythm and music
or merely plods along, the issue is that they say,
clearly and
honestly, what they mean, and that they candidly
describe
ideas and activities that one can readily envision,
think over,
and maybe dispute. Sometimes, when ideas are genuinely
complicated, a rich vocabulary—learned or poetic or
both—
can be a real plus. But if so, “rich” would have to mean
more
than just lofty and abstruse. Most of all, it would have
to
mean precise, concrete, and frank. In too much
philanthropic
and public-interest writing, those qualities are either
absent
or buried deep under a layer of gibberish.
Origins of False Impression
Because I spend most of my time as a consultant to
foundations, and therefore know a great many foundation
officers, I feel confident that the widespread image of
a
field populated by confused, overweening elitists is
wrong.
In my experience, people are drawn to philanthropy and
the
related fields of civic affairs and public policy
largely by a
clear-headed and intelligent desire to make the world
better.
Yet the stilted doubletalk gives a different and far
more
menacing impression: a country-club bourgeoisie whose
every
utterance is intended more to impress and intimidate
than
to discuss, inform, or persuade. If that false image has
been
spreading—and inviting periodic waves of attack from
politicians and the media—the blame for it lies at least
partly
at the doorstep of foundations and public-interest
groups
themselves. Speak and write like a narcissistic
automaton,
and people can be forgiven for believing that’s what you
are.
Or anyway, that was our premise when this series of
essays began. Four years later, as this is written, the
subject
of foundation and nonprofit jargon has received a bit
more
attention than it had in the past (not necessarily
thanks to
anything we’ve done). But regrettably, the shape and
tone
of public-interest communication has changed very
little.
Even in the Internet age, with its supposed premium on
crisp, sprightly communication, it is still easy to find
a major
philanthropic Web site that proclaims:
"We support community-based institutions that
mobilize
and leverage philanthropic capital, investment capital,
social
capital and natural resources in a responsible and fair
manner. Grant making emphasizes community-based
responses to growing needs for prevention strategies
and appropriate policies.…[G]rant making also helps to
establish and fortify organizations and institutions
that
support asset building through research, training,
policy
analysis, and advocacy."
Other than tempting the
reader to imagine a universe of
irresponsible, unfair, inappropriate policies devoid of
all
forms of capital and not based in any community, and of
asset building not achieved through research, training,
and whatnot, what does this description say? What
kind of work does the foundation actually want to pay
for? The unintentional but irresistible message
behind this avalanche of buzz-words is: Don’t ask.
Yet the real problem with
statements like this is not the hit
parade of trendy words: COMMUNITY BASED, MOBILIZATION,
CAPITAL, STRATEGIES, and so on. In the four years since
the publication of In Other Words, we’ve learned
that the
challenge is not just a matter of finding other words.
The
words are a problem, sure. But even when the vocabulary
is scrubbed of all its LEVERAGE and PREVENTION, the tone
and style continue to be evasive, formulaic, often
pseudoscientific,and generally impenetrable.
Take ASSET BUILDING, for
example—an intriguing idea
with bipartisan appeal, once you know what it means. It
has
to do with helping poor or disadvantaged people own
things
that will improve their lives and incomes and give them
more
control over their future. Elsewhere on its Web site,
the same
foundation gives helpful, concrete examples of such
assets:
savings, investments, businesses, homes, and land, among
among other things. But in most other spots, including
the page just quoted, the text refers simply to
disembodied ASSETS, which are somehow to be built
(literally? figuratively? no clue) and enriched with all
sorts of mobilized CAPITAL, much of which seems to verge
on the ethereal. It is often unclear whether the assets
in question might include purely metaphorical ones (like
skills, connections, worldly wisdom) and thus be built
with purely metaphorical capital (like,…well, skills,
connections, and worldly wisdom).
As a result of all the
vagueness, a reader who might readily be drawn to this
idea will end up having barely a clue what it’s about.
Even the intrepid types who read all the way to the end
of the page will be in the dark—unless, of course, they
are already in the field and know the code. And that,
sadly, is the real audience at whom most foundation and
public-policy writing is aimed. Most of it is a
soothingly coded message from one true believer to
another; it is neither intended nor likely to persuade
anyone from the outside. Thus the seemingly inbred
nature of most philanthropic style, the just-among-us
quality that puts off the uninitiated and creates the
unflattering clubhouse aura surrounding public-interest
organizations of all kinds.
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