… to flattery and back to politesse, all in the one post! Thank you also for the allusion to one of Hollywood’s more persuasive advocates:
[The great Mr James Stewart in 'Anatomy of a Murder" - pic from independentcritics dot com]
Wholly undeserved, of course, but hey…. J
There can be no issue with the deployment of acronyms or lingo per se. As you have sagely reminded us more than once, however, so much revolves around ‘context’, does it not?
We are taught acronyms at school from an early age; they are a useful coda to a communication that is shared by one and all. It allows us to know that a spin doctor on an FM station in DC referring to the GDP of the G7 in the context of the EOFY 09 budget for UNESCO is a public relations consultant speaking on a (frequency modulated) radio broadcast in the District of Columbia about the gross domestic product of all of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America in the context of the 2009 end of financial year budget for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. Easier; more practical; helpful. Importantly: almost universally understood. No argument there.
Equally, we seem to agree that most extant languages are iterative, and that for the most part that is beneficial. In some countries this change is left to serendipity; in others it is somewhat more contrived. Was it not our French friends who recognised this inevitability, and sought to modulate the pace and direction of change by investing a formal and highly esteemed academy (the Academie Francaise) with the responsibility of shepherding the development of that most beautiful language?
Even so, change in language, written or spoken, is most palatable when it is ‘gentle’: when it is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Language should be permitted to meander forward along its own path at its own pace; violence is done to language when it is kidnapped upon that path, indecently assaulted, and returned to continue its journey in a daze. Some might say that one such mugging occurred, for example, when ‘SMS-speak’ burst upon the scene with the mass take-up of the mobile phone: how cn ne1 wan 2 perpetu8 d intrusion of this abr8ion in2 evry day communic8ion?
Whilst on that theme, please: for those of us on foreign shores whose only exposure to the great literary oeuvre of the US of A revolves around last decade’s discarded sitcoms being re-run in the graveyard timeslot, can anyone – anyone – explain the origin, sense, purpose or usefulness of modern-day ‘jive talk’??? Why is it that seemingly well-educated, gainfully employed, God-fearing, family-rearing adults seem intent on popping their eyes in expressions of mock astonishment, adopting a ‘crouching tiger’ stance, throwing their hands forward with fingers and thumbs splayed and spew forth, at considerable volume, a third person, expletive-laden, consonant-dropping diatribe worthy of Samuel L Jackson in a Tarantino movie?
“This brutha's layin' it on ya straight, Holmes, y'all one shape in a drape, ya dig what I'm puttin' down?”
What is that?????
Here is the hook. One one view, as you say, there can be no offence taken at the use of these forms of shorthand so long as the person using colloquialisms, slang, lingo, and new media neologisms also knows the proper, formal form of expression. Respectfully, though, is that the only measure? Where are these forms being utilised? Before what audiences, with what penetration, and with what degree of take-up? Where is the comfort that every member of those audiences will know or remember the proper, formal form of expression when circumstances dictate their use? And if there is a proper, formal form: well, gee, Virginia - why not use that?
Playing on, though; what about that audience? If it is a ‘closed shop’ of a particular species (be it a species of professionals, a species of hobbyists, a species of scholars…), then probably, however large the audience, ‘no harm, no foul’. It is convenient and uncontroversial for one doctor in a hospital to tell another doctor to send the MI patient to ICU for full bloods and an ECG. It is convenient and inoffensive on PPro to advertise your Pt JLC MMR in the CM FSOT as LNIB. It is convenient (and almost obligatory) for Stephen Hawking to write a treatise on quantum physics in an arcane language that no mere mortal can hope to comprehend, for consumption by a few salivating and doubtless envious Nobel laureates each of whom wish they had thought of it first.
This, as you say, TM, is shorthand for specialists; signals to other specialists and insiders which, you imagine, can be (mis) understood [implicitly; by ‘outsiders’] as exclusionary, elitist, snobbish, show-offy, and rude. Why mis understood? If part of the intended audience is not within the magic circle of insiders, then can it not fairly be said that the use of that shorthand is indeed one or more of: exclusionary, elitist, snobbish, show-offy, or rude? Is it not tantamount to speaking to some guests at the dinner table in a language other than the language shared by all guests?
With acronyms and neologisms, then, as with cliff-jumping: just because we can does not mean that we should. There is much to be said for hastening slowly to take up new technologies, new fads, new fashions, new ‘language’. Perhaps those who share that view might be prepared to play some small part in guarding over language as it meanders along its path, to keep the muggers at bay: perhaps the art of polite communication is not lost, it is merely hidden behind the television set....
“FWIW”…. ;-)
Cheers,
pplater.