Watch your language

Sounds a little impolite that - "watch your language" but it was just to get your attention, and to illustrate that the words you choose will have very different effects on your reader, or listener.

Human beings are tribal, and a feature of all tribes is that they have a language which is exclusive to them, and often is designed to be exclusive of non-members.

A good example of this is the street language of adolescents - all that "I'm like, Doh!" stuff; and "radical man", and much more that I can neither comprehend nor remember.

Of interest to me is the ski instructor tribe. This tribe also has a language of its own, which is readily bought into especially by younger trainees and instructors, and those new to the activity. Its use is one of the ways that a great many ski teachers can help themselves to feel that they are a part of the group.

Unfortunately, an unintended side effect is that your client, your pupil, is excluded in the process, because (s)he is not privy to the secret meanings attached to the words and phrases.

Let me give you an example - take the word "edge". This is one of the commonest words in the ski instructor's lexicon, and one of the least efficacious. It is often employed in totally meaningless phrases dreamt up by the marketing departments of the manufacturers of skis. A classic example is the "this ski is faster edge-to-edge than that ski".

What in Heaven's name is this supposed to convey? Here is a short list of some of the things it does not define :-

1. It doesn't define what an "edge" is, in this context.

2. It doesn't define when a ski is on an "edge" and when it isn't.

3. It in no way illustrates what is required to get the ski to move from one edge to another, nor why it is perceived to take less time to do this than on any other ski.

I could go on, but I'll leave it there.

Does it perhaps mean, "this ski is easy to get to change direction"? And if that is what is intended to be conveyed, why not say so? Because that wouldn't be tribal, exclusive, and sound "cool" would it?

One of the essential precepts of Neuro Linguistic Programming, with respect to communication, is that the only mechanism humans have for conveying ideas from one mind to another's mind, is words.

The process goes something like this - I formulate an idea in my mind; I then have to search for words - and a structure for those words - which within the framework of my experience, I believe expresses my idea.

I then utter those words, which are picked up by my intended recipient, who first of all runs those words through a kind of database in his/her mind and via some form of cross referencing retrieves their meanings for those words, which when assembled in the order that I gave them, builds an idea in their mind.

During this process there are manifold opportunities for omissions, distortions, and deletions. You can see, I'm sure, that the chances of the two ideas being congruent are minimal indeed, even at the best of times. The potential for misunderstandings is so huge that it is a wonder any of us can communicate at all with anyone else. Perhaps we don't!

N.L.P. tells us that words are merely labels for experiences. For example when I see a colour, which I know as blue, I give it the label "blue". You also have a label called "blue" and you apply it to the colour which you have become accustomed to apply this label to. But is the colour you see, the colour that I am seeing? We can never know. The colour that you are seeing, when I see it, I perhaps give the label "red" to.

I might be seeing the colour which you call "red" but I have become accustomed to labelling it "blue". I saw an hilarious example of this once, when I met a gun dog trainer who had trained his dog to do the opposite of every instruction he gave him. When he said "sit" it stood up; when he said "away" it came back; and so on. The instructions were the same, but their labels were reversed, to the watching throng "sit" meant one thing, but to the dog, another.

Now let's just revisit that word "edge". If you are ski instructor, then you know perfectly well what you mean by "edge", and the idea doesn't bother you at all; in fact as an instructor and excellent skier you might even like it. But how many other people like edges? Not many.

To most people, edges are narrow, sharp, unpleasant, easy to fall off, and associated with knives and things; altogether to be avoided. And here are you telling them to "get an early edge"; "get the ski on the edge" (without you will note, advising them on what to do to achieve this).

What I'm saying is this - if you want to communicate with others, and especially with pupils who are not members of  your tribe - pay attention to their likely experience of skiing; to their possible perceptions about the labels you use; and do your best to keep the jargon out of it.

Bob Valentine Trueman

www.bobski.com / www.blogstoday.co.uk (Search for Limits to Growth)