Words that make me cringe

I promised myself I would write another blog about the jargon of the non-profit word, and my VISTA site, but this is just my internal discussion.

I have been thinking about jargon for the last few days because I have had to begin changing my lexicon as I begin to work at my site. I also want to make sure I write down and recognize jargon as I pick it up so that when I am describing to others my work, I can be clear to NOT use jargon words when possible. The reason is that, as I wrote earlier, when dealing with people who are coming out of poverty, jargon words act as a barrier to them, at times. The jargon of "help" from service providers can make an unpleasant experience more intimidating. To be more inclusive, we must use more inclusive language and I want a guide to maintain my own self. Like I wrote in my previous blog, adapting to the job means changing myself. This isn't bad, but an anthropologist's job is to be able to explain to other people a culture, and language can be very powerful tool or a hindrance to that task.

The other thing I found out today about myself is that I unconsciously cringe at some language. It isn't because I disagree with an idea, but the way it was presented, because of the jargon, biased me.

So my boss and I were talking about my role and opportunities that we had identified between our program and another program we are connected to. I will talk more about this SWEET program later. My boss comes from a management and especially retail environment. He has been involved for years in the chamber of commerce and in his new position at my site been building up professional business relationships. But that word "professional" is almost a jargon word itself.

Professional to me means someone who wears a suit. It means they show up to meetings, use a computer, have agendas, and is skilled in some behavior or activity. Business professional means fluff. It is a word that makes me cringe. When I think of a "business professional" I think about a person who comes up with ideas and then tells someone else what to do. Usually it has to do with how to make money. I cringe just thinking about it. It is a person (usually male) who's good ideas aren't from the employees, but something that looks good on paper. I just don't relate to it, and in a way it is the reason I became an anthropologist. I want to change what it means.

I want a "business professional" to be an anthropologist, in a way. I want them to be leaders who let the sales people, customers, and producers of the goods come up with the ideas. I don't want the top down approach in the 21st century. I think about Sam Walton. His great idea was to pay people a living wage with benefits and buy big enough lots to get the lowest price and pass that along to consumers in poor neighborhoods. He wore a cowboy hat. But his idea got so big, and was so successful, after his death, a room full of business leaders in suits run the company now. I want business leaders to be the guy in the hat, not the suit. Suits make decisions based on numbers. Hard hats make decisions based on people.

But this is my internal stereotype. And I know it isn't always fair. I still know that "big business" is not all roses. There are businesses that don't make decisions based on sustainability, responsible stewardship of the environment, or its human cost. I also know that a lot of work has been spent, not just on re-branding corporations to look more friendly, but some really are more friendly. My internal bias still causes me to cringe at the word "business" or "business community."

This goes back to my discussion of jargon. The non-profit, especially private non-profit, world has adopted a language of business. I have a list of the words I have been keeping, but let me high-light a few: assets, investment, capital, production, entity, ask, development, cost, target, and mission.

As I become more educated about what I do and my "mission" at my service site, the language can change me, but do I want it to?

Robots Rights NOW!

So, while many of the NPR commentators on this story say it is a waste of time, they weren't looking at the representations of what it means. This simple "Should Robots Speak 'Jive'?" question is asking us to look at many deep topics.

The question of stereotypes is deep. Stereotypes are useful markers to help humans make quick decisions, and stereotypes are often based in some reality. The problem is when we hold on to an idea of a stereotype too closely, we may not let people out of the ideas and it may harm them. Is 'jive' an ethnicity? When we use ethnic characters are they ethnic 'caricatures'? They are ideas in their simplest form. My opinion is, if the ethnicities are represented as heroes, and are shown to be of value, they are likely good. If the ethnicity is a marker to distinguish them from the good guys or as a bad guy, the use of ethnicity/culture is racist. Racism is using race/ethnicity as a distinguishing trait for preferential or negative treatment. If we use the marker of ethnicity especially with accents (like is all too often the case) to mark negative traits, we associate the two. Bad guys have accents=people with accents are bad guys. If you don't believe me, just think...The chef who tries to kill Sebastian in The Little Mermaid, Jafar from Aladdin, and it isn't just in Disney movies.
A great link to check is http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A891155 It is analyzing some of the reasons so many villains have British accents.

One of the hot debate points about the use of ethnicity towards the Robots in Transformers was how one particular character had both physical distinguishers and was described as "gleefully illiterate." I laughed aloud when I first read "gleefully illiterate"...but what was my own reaction based on? It is "common sense" that to be illiterate is a trait that my peers would not be proud to have. My laughter was because of the lapse of logic about being "gleeful" on a right that most Americans may take for granted. I interviewed a woman this week who will tell you about how the right to read was taken away from her and other ethnic Albanians just 2 decades ago.

Writing has been around since for about the last 6,000 years. But modern humans have been around for about 200k-160k years. I'm talking Homo Sapien Sapien. We have had the same wiring for that long. This means we have been physically capable of being literate for that long. There is still debate about how we may have been mentally capable before being physically capable...but I digress. I ask, why is being literate a marker of being more advanced? For over a hundred thousand years we didn't need writing. We have strong evidence that oral traditions were what held the knowledge we needed. So why today do we hold literacy in such high esteem? I wonder if it is the same reason we love our iPhones...because it is the newest and coolest technology. Or are we ethnocentric. Either way, we should check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.

The most interesting comment I came across was the Robots Rights NOW! comment. It went as following

"Why isn't anyone talking about the stereotypical way that giant intelligent robots from outer space are portrayed? I for one am sick of Hollywood portraying them as bent on the destruction of mankind when all they want to do is harvest us for their interstellar carbon farms. Robots rights now!"

Now, seriously, why are robots stereotyped they way they are. Their audio voices are based on a history of technology that is outdated. Don't programmers have ethnicity? Does the primary language (or bi-, multi- lingual ability) of the programmer change the code that affects computers? Is it not foreseeable that robots would have linguistic distinguishers or diversity that would at times mimic what we know?

If intelligent robots from out of space are just farmers, then aren't we demonizing farmers? I'm still worried about the Robot Holocaust (see previous post).

And I have to have my last word on gender, but I'll quote a comment from the NPR website.

"what about the way female robots are often depicted? Why would a robot need gigantic breasts or wear high heels?"

Why is un-gendered & uni-sex most often male. This is a blog for another day. Believe me, it will come.

clipped from www.npr.org Should Robots Be Allowed To Speak 'Jive?' One of the more fascinating discussions on the film (besides the varied and creative ways film critics are finding new ways to insult director Michael Bay) is whether the personalities assigned to some of the titular robot stars could be considered racist. (Or at least grossly stereotypical.) The robots in the film could be considered an extension of our fascination with high-tech gadgetry (only in this case, bigger is better). When we're at the point where we can assign a Homer Simpson voice to our GPS devices, do we owe it to give them a little bit of dignity. Does it matter that they're fictional?