Teaching English Jargon

or: Can You Say That in English, Please?

All right, now we’ve done it. Somewhere, at some point in time when we were squinting narrowly at constructed images and deconstructed meanings, we joined ranks with the military, state and federal governments, high tech industries, medical sciences, and a host of others: We became jargonists. Jargon users. Experts with the finely tuned and precisely turned phrases that pinpoint exact meanings in our field. Buzzwords.

Or, perhaps we simply weren’t looking?

Jargon does, of course, have its place and purpose. It exists because of the search for precise meaning. It is a superhighway shortcut that allows us to say exactly what we mean with a minimum of words. It’s not really surprising, then, that those of us who teach writing, literature, and language should have reached this point; our business, after all, is words. The difficulty lies not in the use of English-specific jargon, but in the assumption that our students are fluent in our language—that they know the jargon as well as they know their mother tongues—and that they’re as skilled in using it as they are in using a toothbrush or favorite computer game. Quite frankly, they aren’t. More importantly and to the point, we shouldn’t expect that they would be.

Out of curiosity, I polled two sections of First Year Writing students. “Define these words for me,” I asked. “Jot down what you think the word or phrase means. If you’re not sure, just put a question mark in that place.” I chose words we use reflexively when we teach English and writing; terms we tend to use when we discuss texts or when we workshop: tone, voice, style, flow, form or shape, detail, function, imagery, rhythm, reader response, foreshadowing, symbolism, narrative, and the ever present “show, don’t tell.”

The results were enlightening.

Of those students, only a handful were unable to define symbolism and foreshadowing. That made sense to me; most of our students memorized terms like symbolism, foreshadowing, and irony in their first junior high school literature class. The remainder of the list, however, was something of a guessing game. Some students were able to guess quite well—especially if they’d been strong English students, had taken honors English courses, or were among the few who actually enjoyed reading and writing. In reality, however, those students are a minority in our classes. Most of our students take First Year Writing courses simply because our universities and colleges require that they do so, and for these students, our jargon is the equivalent of mystery meat at the lunch counter; it’s edible, but they’re not quite sure what it is. In this case, it’s language, and they’re not at all certain they know what it means. Unfortunately, because we all too often assume that they know, they assume that they should know, and as a result, they don’t ask, often because they don’t want to look stupid in front of their classmates. Instead, they nod in agreement, look knowing, and decide that they’ll ask you to define the term in private or by e-mail if it becomes a major obstacle. Of course, that time rarely comes and, as a result, we all too rarely know when a student is genuinely having difficulty with our terminology.

When asked to pin down those elusive terms, I received a mix of responses.

Flow: the way a work flows; transition; how well the writing is written throughout the whole thing; if you’re in the flow, you’re just another human like everybody else
Form: similar to rhyme scheme; the length of a paper; how your paper is coming to look towards the end or in the end; outline of the correct way to do something; words the author chooses to use
Function: the way a word acts in a sentence (like as a noun, verb, etc.); a type of problem in math; the point for the use of certain things—the role they play in the relevance of your writings; what the author intended to portray
Narrative: a story being told in the first person; a person who is not in the story but the writer puts captions of someone to help you understand; a personal story/comment about a great literary work; the writing about the writing?
Tone: the style of voice used in writing; the voice of a literary work; something like your attitude?; the way you talk to the reader through the poem
Voice: almost like opinion; how the author is speaking (using first, second, or third person); active voice or passive voice—active is good and passive is bad; specific to author—way you speak—strong voice is confident writing

Flow, Form, Function, Voice, and Show, Don’t Tell were the most problematic for these students and received the most question marks. Sometimes they understood the term, but couldn’t vocalize it, which means that they wouldn’t be able to vocalize it during their workshopping or reading discussions, either. The exercise also reminded me of something I’d forgotten to take into consideration: our international students are definitely out in the weeds when it comes to English jargon. Most of them have never been introduced to our terminology, and we shouldn’t expect that they have.

After I received their definitions, I handed back a single page handout defining the terms in their own language and based on a few classroom exercises we’d done to illustrate those concepts. I made the definitions as clear, basic, and simple as possible. For instance:

A Narrative is simply a story. We can tell it in first, second, or third person, singular or plural, in a poem, a song, or the usual paragraph type format. It can be told by a person, an animal, a doll, even a rock–if you can get a rock to tell an interesting story (with thanks to Janet Burroway for the rock in Writing Fiction).

What does all this boil down to? It’s simple. We need to remember that our students aren’t fluent in our language, and that we have to give them terms like voice, tone, and form if we expect them to understand those words when we use them. We most certainly should not expect them to use our language unless we first teach them.

The following section is certainly not intended to be the final word in buzzword definitions and is definitely not definitive (no puns intended). On the other hand, perhaps it will provide a starting place if you’re crunched for time or energy.

English Buzzwords—Our Jargon (a handout)

Flow is basically how the piece reads from start to finish. It includes sentence rhythms as well as idea progression—whether you go from idea to idea smoothly (or even sentence to sentence); without feeling like you came in at the middle of the movie, or that you’re missing the key piece to the puzzle.

Form or Shape. In simplest terms, is it an essay, poem, or short story? Obviously, the question can get more technical—there are “sub-shapes” within each category of shape/form—but for the purposes of this class, just consider how the piece was actually written.

Foreshadowing hints of something that will happen later in the story.

Function. What’s the purpose of the writing? You’ll want to consider your audience when you consider your purpose, or you may have a mismatch. For instance, if your purpose is to share cheap and easy ways to redecorate your home, you may not find it very productive to target the population of the Leon County Detention Facility as your audience.

Imagery and Show, Don’t Tell are closely related. “Show, don’t tell” is an expression often used in writing classrooms. Bluntly, it means to use imagery, voice, detail, or some of the other techniques to help the reader see the image. For both imagery and show, rather than simply saying “the car is burning,” try helping the reader feel the heat twenty feet away from the blaze, smell the gasoline and burning rubber, hear the roar of the fire itself and the sound of metal warping and glass popping, see the shift in the flames and the shimmer of heat. If you’re trying to “show” a character, try using the character’s speech patterns, habits, dress, gestures, and movements to create the image. Even something so simple as a favorite hat or preferred cologne may be the key.

A Narrative is simply a story. It can be told in first, second, or third person, singular or plural. It can be told in a poem, a song, or the usual paragraph type format. It can be told by a person, an animal, a doll, even a rock—if you can get a rock to tell an interesting story (thanks to Janet Burroway and Writing Fiction for the rock).

Reader Response is literally the reader’s reaction to a piece of writing. What was your gut response to the story, essay, or poem? What did you like, dislike, what did you want more/less of, what worked or did not work for you? As a reader, how did you respond to this particular piece?

Rhythm. Where flow refers to the overall essay, rhythm usually refers to the piece on a sentence level. Flow discusses the critter as a whole; rhythm gets down to the molecular level.

Short words and sentences will give you a faster, often more abrupt, rhythm. Mixing in longer words, combined phrases, longer sentences, and pauses within sentences (with a comma, semi-colon, or em-dash) will give you a slower, often more “flowing” rhythm. Remember, you can alternate sentence rhythms and change the rhythm of your paragraph. Try using one short, one long, two short, one long, etc.

Style is the author’s way of writing. It can incorporate the author’s voice, use of imagery, details, or special effects, and preferences for sentence rhythm, word choice, and construction or progression of the piece of writing. Remember, you’re not limited to or locked into a specific style. You can experiment with different styles. You may find that one style fits a particular piece of writing better than another, and you may find that you’re more comfortable with a certain style.

Symbolism is using one thing to represent another. In hokey terms, a heart-shaped box may symbolize love, a chalkboard may symbolize your life, a statue may symbolize an ethnic stereotype, a shadowed forest may symbolize confusion or danger.

Tone is the emotion of the piece—how it feels. For example, letters to the editor of the local paper are often hostile, angry, or impatient. You can create “tone” by choosing words that carry the emotion you’re aiming for, by fitting your sentence rhythm to the emotion (e.g., anger or frustration may need shorter, choppier sentences and phrases), and matching your imagery and details to the emotion. For example, if you’re aiming for that “hate the world” feeling, you probably won’t want to include a toddler in pink ruffles happily licking an all-day sucker on a clear summer morning—unless, of course, your next image is of the gang on Harleys as they roar past in a cloud of dust and snatch the lollipop from the child’s sticky little fingers.

Voice is the way in which a character speaks or thinks. If we’re talking about non-fiction, then we may be referring to the author’s voice, which is simply how the author speaks or thinks. On the other hand, if we’re writing a story (fiction or non-fiction), each character should have a distinctive personality, which is reflected in speech patterns, vocabulary, dress, mannerisms; remember the five year old boy and the valley girl from class?

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