Re: Lingua Franca Today

[CHRISTINE ANAMEIER <CANAMEIE -at- email -dot- usps -dot- gov>]

>Most folks were concerned that I was needlessly using a 25cent
>word when something else would do. You're right. It's actually
>a didactic approach that, when used judiciously, is pedagogically
>sound.

I know that sort of thing is accepted at universities (I spent nine years
in that environment), but once you get outside the ivy-covered walls,
people's tolerance for a didactic approach drops off dramatically. (Just
for giggles, run "didactic" through Word's online thesaurus.)

You've said this isn't technical writing, but it is nevertheless a report
of some kind in a business environment. What posture do you want to take
in that situation? Using an obscure term like "lingua franca" essentially
puts you in the "lofty professor" posture, which can make you seem
out-of-touch and can potentially generate resentment. It sounds
pretentious. (The sidebar thing makes it even worse: then you're presuming
to remedy the intellectual deficiency of your readers who aren't familiar
with the term, which would be fine if they'd signed up for a humanities
course...) I reflexively balk at using a 2-dollar word because it disrupts
the posture that I usually rely on as a tech writer: that of an
unobtrusive, helpful guide who shows readers what they need to know
without making them work unnecessarily hard or feel dumb.

> An excursion--reference to Shakespeare, a side note on the
> origins of the phrase hacker, an aside about the commercial origins
> of 'lingua franca', an associative link made with pop culture--
> brings the non-techie into the experience of learning about
> technology and related issues because it provides them with
> something familiar, something comfortable, something more geared
> to their world.

But "lingua franca" is not familiar and comfortable to a significant
portion of your audience. Heck, I'm your basic overeducated liberal-arts
ex-grad-student with a Phi Beta Kappa key, and *I* had to stop and ponder
what you meant by it. You may feel that forcing readers to stop and think
is acceptable, but to what end? To teach them something they don't need to
know, like the origin of "lingua franca"? To distract them from the matter
at hand, which is BGP?

I just went back and reread your original post. As you pointed out, your
question was really about what to call "corporate English" or whatever. But
the bulk of your original post was an anecdote about using this phrase in a
report, getting a puzzled reaction from a reader, and responding to the
problem by including a sidebar explaining the term. It was right up front
in your post, and it sounded a lot like the scenarios we run into as tech
writers, so it's no surprise everyone "answered" the question you didn't
really ask. If you were only asking what to call corporate English, why the
anecdote about that report containing "lingua franca"? If you really didn't
want feedback on that anecdote, it was a red herring.

Christine


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