Who's Watching the Store?

In France there’s a body of linguistic experts called “l’Academie français.” Among its roles is to oversee the language and make sure it remains appropriately French, especially in the face of creeping globalization and the general Americanization and Anglicization of most of the world’s cultures and languages. It studies the emergence of new terminology and makes determinations about whether the term can be appropriately francicized. If not, it proposes French alternatives.

For instance, in French, e-mail, which is shortened from electronic mail, is called couriel, which comes from courier electronique. A hamburger is called un hambourgeois. Just for the record, a cheeseburger is not a cheesebourgeois, but un hambourgeois avec fromage; however, a hot dog is un chien chaud. French fries are not frites français, but patates-frites.

English doesn’t work that way. There’s no group of English linguistic scholars pronouncing on the appropriateness of new English words, or words that have been borrowed from other languages. There’s nobody sitting in an ivory tower somewhere deciding whether we should adopt a word like tsunami or develop a more English-sounding term instead.

Whether this is a good thing is open to debate. There’s no doubt that our language is filled with words that have been taken from other languages. In most cases we’re richer for it. We have taken words from the French (denim, buccaneer), from Native Americans (canoe, igloo, chinook), and from India (pyjamas), among others, and made them our own.

As I mentioned in a previous posting, we have an enormous quantity of words that are directly descended from Latin or Anglo-Saxon words. We still have Celtic words in our lexicon too.

So what would our language look like if somebody had to evaluate every new word that came along and decide whether it was good enough to join the family?

Actually, in a way, someone is doing this. Or rather, several people are doing it, all over the world. Most English speaking countries have native dictionaries that are widely considered to be authoritative. In the U.S. it’s Webster’s. In the U.K., it’s the Oxford English Dictionary. Canada and Australia have their versions too. The inclusion of a word in one of these texts is like a baseball player getting to the Major Leagues.

What we don’t have is somebody actively telling us whether a new word is, in fact, a word. In English, if enough people are using it, it’s a word and the dictionaries record its arrival after the fact. In other words, the people decide whether a new word is a word. It’s all very democratic and, like democracy, messy at times. But for my money, it’s the best way to keep a language vibrant and vital.

Joy of Communicating

I love being a professional communicator. I enjoy the challenges of trying to reach diverse audiences, of creating product that has a specific purpose, and of writing in a variety of styles and formats. It can be frustrating at times, but it's rarely boring.

Helping people like scientists or economists or law enforcement professionals tell their stories effectively and compellingly can be very satisfying. Helping an organizational leader to connect with employees is equally so.

During my last two years with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I was solely engaged in the organizational transformation file. We were trying to encourage change in an iconic, historic police organization that is known around the world for the integrity and professionalism of its police and civilian employees. The Mounties are world leaders in the fields of policing and forensic science, but certain elements of their culture were keeping the organization and individuals within it from achieving their full potential. Our job was to help employees to determine what change looks like and encourage them to aim high in trying to effect change.

It's no wonder I walked into work every morning feeling energized and went home in the evening knowing I'd really earned my pay. I was doing an incredibly important job and everybody I was working with felt the same way. But there's a lot of really important work going on in the communications shops of organizations large and small, old and new, private and public, including where I'm working now.

The one thing people the world over have in common is a need to believe their own life has meaning. Family, faith, and community play an important role in fulfilling this need but the reality is, full-time employees spend a huge chunk of their waking hours devoted to something that has little to do with any of these supports.

It stands to reason, therefore, that work needs to have meaning as well. This is where communicators can really have a positive impact on the satisfaction levels of employees and, by extension, to the success of their organization.

The fact is, satisfied, engaged, and informed employees are the best public relations vehicle available to any company. For example, when an organization receives negative media coverage for any reason, it's inevitable that employees will be called upon by their friends, relatives, and acquaintances to tell them the "real" story.

I'll give a hypothetical example: a media outlet has erroneously linked the CEO of a large organization to an outlaw motorcycle gang. The reality is that her brother-in-law is a successful criminal lawyer who recently represented a low-ranking associate of the gang in question. It may seem a little unsavory, but that's what criminal lawyers do; it's their job.

Now imagine what would happen if employees were given approved messaging about the issue to use in discussing it with friends or business colleagues. The messaging could be presented in plain language and employees would be entrusted to use the messaging at their own discretion when and if the issue comes up in conversation outside the workplace.

You would have employees feeling like a part of the solution because they would know what the issue is all about and have a pretty good idea where the truth lies. Your employees would also feel valued because they are being entrusted with defending and promoting the organization in the wider world. They would also feel better about their CEO for knowing the truth themselves.

Consequently, you would have employees defending their CEO and their organization with facts and figures that are verified and credible.

Frankly, it amazes me that all organizations don't take this approach. I know that when I was with the Mounties I had to defend the organization on several occasions because of the actions or perceived actions of a small number of police officers. Often there wasn't much I could say other than that there are two sides to every story and the officer's side will come out when the case gets to court.

Fortunately, I know from first-hand experience that the so-called bad apples were few and far between and those police officers with whom I worked were often the harshest critics of a fellow cop who did something unprofessional or just plain boneheaded. But the fact remained, that there were times I wished the organization would tell me something, give me something, because every single time something like this happened somebody somewhere would be anxious to talk to me and get my take on the situation.

I started this post talking about why I love being a communicator, and I'm ending it by musing about how all employees could be empowered to be better communicators. It makes sense, though, because what I love most about my work is feeling like I'm injecting a little bit of meaning into the work lives of my fellow employees. That's what gives meaning to my work.