What's in a word?

It's not easy to communicate clearly, meaningfully, unambiguously, non-prescriptively and without jargon. Would it be easier if we thought of language not in mechanistic ways but as a quantum process?

Words

I’ve been thinking about words a lot lately. Way too much. In fact, day and night.

Over the last weeks I’ve been tethered to my computer, staring at spreadsheets and documents as I respond to hundreds of government review comments for the IPBES transformative change assessment. I’m one of three co-chairs for this assessment, working with 100 authors from around the world. We are now finalizing revisions to the Summary for Policymakers.

IPBES stands for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. It’s an independent intergovernmental body that assesses the status of biodiversity and nature. It has 147 member states, each of which can submit comments on assessment drafts. Not all countries review the drafts, but we still end up with thousands of comments and requests for changes.

Every comment has to be considered and responded to before the revised Summary for Policymakers goes through a line-by-line government approval process. That will take place in Windhoek, Namibia in December 2024, after three years of work.

What we’ve learned over the past three years is that it’s difficult to communicate what the literature on transformative change is telling us in a way that is clear, meaningful, unambiguous, non-prescriptive, and without using jargon.

Precision can be exhausting. Every reviewer offers an alternative word or different phrasing. Staying true to the research findings but open to phrasing that everyone agrees upon sometimes feels impossible.

We’re trying! Yet it seems that whenever we produce what some of us consider to be a precise and clear language, it is flagged as “muddled jargon” by reviewers.  

Jargon

It’s not easy to avoid jargon. Especially for me — the queen of jargon. Fractals, entanglement, tipping points… I love jargon!

Jargon is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group of people, and are difficult for others to understand. It’s not surprising that academics thrive on jargon – it’s how we speak, write, and communicate.

I’ve been discussing the nuances of words with the two other co-chairs and 15 coordinating lead authors from around the world. We go back and forth, trying to figure out how to best “de-jargon” the text. We consider what is relevant, how to order the messages, what to emphasize, and so on. Over and over again.

Just when I am ready to give up, I think about physicist David Bohm. He wrote that shared meaning is crucial. It’s the glue that holds societies together.

I also think about Alexander Wendt’s work on quantum minds and the nature of language. He emphasizes that language as a whole is in a quantum coherent state, and it is in decoherence, or when the potential meanings of words collapse into actual ones, that meaning is created. Words matter because they influence how our seemingly separate minds experience shared meaning.

Shared meaning

I understand the importance of language and shared meaning. I get it. I may feel tired, but I’ll pay attention to each word, even if this take more time and effort. I’ll stay glued to my computer.

But wait… This is no mechanistic exercise. In fact, Bohm criticizes the “atomistic” approach to words, especially when they relate to the grammar and syntax of modern languages like English. The subjects-verb-object structure of these languages sustains, propagates, and reflects fragmentation rather than flow. This structure does not, he says, recognize language as “an undivided field of movement, involving sounds, meaning, attention-calling, emotional and muscular reflexes, etc.”

Reading Bohm’s ideas about language calms my nerves, assuring me that there is no “right answer.” A starting point is the recognition that what is important to me might seem irrelevant to the governments who will use the assessment, and what is significant to them might seem meaningless to me. As Bohm puts it:

“Clearly, the act of apprehending relevance or irrelevance cannot be reduced to a technique or a method, determined by some set of rules. Rather, this is an art, both in the sense of requiring creative perception and in the sense that this perception has to develop further in a kind of skill (as in the work of the artisan).”

How can we be artisans, not editors? I think the answer is to trust the process — and to look at the assessment as a whole rather than as a compilation of words that need to be precise and understood by everyone. Readers will experience the meaning of each word in different ways, so our focus should be on creating shared meanings and experiences of the overall messages.

A drop of glue

It’s time to get back to the hundreds of comments that still need to be addressed by the end of next week. Somehow, it feels less daunting if I don’t approach them in a mechanistic way, and instead focus on the larger messages. This means emphasizing coherence, flow, and shared meaning. Still, we have to respond to review comments, one at a time.

Words matter, but the messages and meanings they convey matter more. My hope is that this assessment will be like a drop of glue that contributes to a shared meaning of transformative change, which in turn will help us to pursue aligned and coherent strategies and actions for achieving the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity. Living in harmony with nature.

“… When we speak, whether or not
we agree, the trees will turn
the breath of our words
from carbon dioxide into air—”

give us new breath
for new words,
new chances to listen,
new chances to be heard.”

Excerpt from: The Forest for the Trees – Rena Priest.

Image: Natalia Bardushka/Shutterstock