The Power of Jargon

Taken from Lightbulb Cartoon

The language, terminology, and phrases of a specific group of people can often intimidate those who are not "in the know."  Sports fans, techies, Trekkies, Broadway buffs and business entrepreneurs--to name a few--all have a specific and unique language that helps them identify others in their circle and allows them to communicate with each other.  We can call this an adult form of a clique that would exist in a high school cafeteria.  But, instead of grouping each other by our clothes and our actions (which do exist in the adult version, don't get me wrong), we now can group each other by the words we use, giving these cliques power over those who do not know the lingo.

I found this power of jargon to be a seminal literacy event in my life, especially during my college years.  It happened in my very first music class my freshman year.  I had always loved music and immersed myself in this love however I could whether it was singing in the choir, performing in the school musicals or taking guitar lessons.  Because of this, I always felt like I was the person people turned to about music.  But when I sat down for my first college music class, I felt like a complete outsider.  I learned very quickly that I did not know as much about my passion as I thought I did.  I had people in this class who were already interning in record labels or producing their own music.  They spoke about current trends in genres and digital download sales.  I was lost and felt powerless among these music aficionados.

But I had a great professor that semester.  If I remember anything from his class, it was this:  "In order to make it in the music business, you have to know your s**t."  He told us the first day that if we wanted a job in the music industry, we needed to KNOW the music industry.  Subscribe to Rolling Stone.  Read up on Billboard.  Check out the Arts Section of the New York Times.  We had to do everything we could to know about what was happening at that moment in the industry, especially because at the time, the music industry was in a sort of limbo.  Digital music was just picking up steam and people were starting to use YouTube to broadcast their original songs.  Many people were beginning to believe that record labels would eventually become obsolete and it was a time in which the industry was changing rapidly just to stay afloat.  If we wanted a job, we needed to stay up-to-date on everything that was going on.

My professor also pointed out that the music business was a business of networking.  You needed to get to know people in the industry but the only way to do that was to know what to talk about.  If you could navigate your way through a conversation with these people, even if you only knew a couple of specific words to throw around that would make you sound like you knew what you were talking about, then you could make contacts to help you climb the ladder to the perfect music business job.

So that's just what I did.  I bought my first subscription to Rolling Stone.  I read articles about new artists and the different ways bands were marketing their music to the public.  I did everything I could to know my industry inside and out.  And once I did, I felt more confident.  I was speaking up in class.  I was laughing at music business jokes and jabs.  I was finally a part of this community because I understood what they were talking about.  We were connected through a specific language.  And I finally felt like I had power in this circle.

Until that moment, I did not realize how much power words actually held.  Although I was always academically inclined, it was not until that first music class in which I really reflected on my literacy of a specific subject.  I did not understand the language of the music business until I drowned myself in it.  I had to teach myself the important terms and familiar phrases of this group of people to exist happily among them.  And once I did, I became one of them.

Flash forward five years and I found myself in the same situation, only this time the subject was education.  I sat in my first graduate education class nodding my head as if I knew what "collaborative team teaching" and "Common Core Standards" were.  It seemed like everyone else did so I pretended like I did, too.  But as I learned more about the state of education today and the different techniques and strategies being used in the classroom, I found another group that I could belong to because I knew the specific language of the members in that group.