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Jargon Jangle
"Cairn"--such a nice, innocent word. Who knew it could cause such a ruckus?
It began with one of my Verb Volts exercises at the preconference workshop I was teaching for NAI's Region VI conference in Springfield, Missouri.
In the exercise, participants select a sentence, then experiment with changing out the sentence's verb (or verbs) for different verbs. For example, in the sentence, "The frog jumps into the pond," we replace "jumps" with other verbs that describe the action of moving into the pond-leaps, splashes, cannonballs--lots of possibilities.
Each person picked one of the three proffered sentences and settled in to work.
The most complex sentence of the three has lots of challenges (compound sentence, passive voice), and it has three verbs, so most times, people pick one of the other sentences. The ones who choose this one often rewrite it completely.
Here's the original sentence:
Lines of cairns were used to funnel migrating herds into narrows, and spears were thrown at the trapped animals.
And here's the version created by workshop participant Lisa Richter:
Snorts and whistles of frightened beasts echoed off narrowing walls of cairns as spears sealed their fate.
Our discussion started innocently enough. We noted how the specific details of "snorts" and "whistles" strengthened both imagery and  emotional impact. We talked about how past tense ("echoed") is not the same thing as passive voice ("lines...were used," "spears were thrown"). We noodled around with "their fate," wondering if it was clear that we meant the fate of the beasts.*
Then someone asked if we needed "of cairns," and I realized that every time I read Lisa's rewritten version out loud, trying out the group's variations, I skipped "of cairns." So maybe we didn't need it--but then again, a cairn isn't the same as a wall, and maybe we need to differentiate between cairns and canyon walls. Assuming we're talking about canyon walls and not a wall of cairns...
But before I could say any of this, one of the participants admitted that she didn't know what "cairn" meant--which brought a chorus of agreement from the others. Out of ten people--all of whom are educated, experienced interpreters--half didn't know what a cairn was, and no one was sure how to pronounce it.
Ah, jargon--you tripped us up again.
I admitted that this sentence has never made a lot of sense to me, in part because of that word. I grew up in Ohio, where "cairn" was a little pile of rocks stacked to mark the trail and show you the way (which mostly worked, if you could remember the secret code AND if somebody didn't run ahead and change them all before you got there, which happened often enough that I still have trouble with directions, but I digress). Yes! responded one of the group--that's the meaning she knew about, too. She had guessed from the sentence's context that cairns must also come in the giant economy size; the little ones we'd grown up with were barely big enough to funnel mice through.
Another participant sheepishly confessed that she'd looked it up on Google, because she knew that what she thought it meant couldn't possibly be right. She turned a little pink (we are so easily convinced that everyone else knows the right answer, and we're about to be revealed as ignorant frauds), but then she and the woman next to her started giggling, because the definition they both knew was a dog breed--a cairn terrier. "Toto, in the Wizard of Oz," they explained, as the rest of us laughed, imagining piles of little yappie Toto dogs fiercely herding terrified bison toward certain death.
All of which led to an interesting discussion on how to recognize when a word that is as familiar to you as your favorite blanket is an alien thing to your reader, and whether and why (or why not) to use it.
The problem with big or unusual words isn't that they're big or unusual. The problem is whether they impede (get in the way of) understanding or enhance (improve, make better) the flow of the story. They can (of course) do both, but when space is always at a premium, how do we decide?
I don't have an easy answer to the recognition problem. It helps to trust your instincts and intuition (I've used this sentence in the Verb Volts exercise for years and have ignored my inner "there's something about that word that bugs me" feeling the entire time). Pay attention when it's a new-to-you or new-use-to-you word, too (I never bothered to look up the additional definitions for "cairn" until this workshop; I just figured that what I knew of cairns was a direct  reflection of my rural Ohio upbringing, and that everybody else knew that "cairn" could mean big piles of rocks). Having a couple of trusted reviewers helps, too--people who understand that what you're looking for is anything they trip over, not because you're trying to catch them in their ignorance, but because you want to make sure important information isn't hiding behind your own blind spots.
As to use or not-use questions, there are several things to think about.
First and foremost is purpose. Is this word here for a particular reason? Are fourth graders learning it in earth sciences or history, so it makes sense to introduce it here, too? If we suspect it's a new word for many of our readers, and part of the purpose of the exhibit or program is to introduce the word, we need to make sure that the word's meaning is clear. We might do that through an actual definition: A cairn is a bunch of rocks or stones that people have piled up to mark something important or show which way to go on a trail. We might use an illustration with a caption: "mountaintop cairn." We might even have a wee sidebar noting that Toto, Dorothy's dog in the Wizard of Oz, is a cairn terrier, that cairn terriers are originally from Scotland, and that the word cairn comes from Scottish Gaelic.
Place also has a say in the language we use--both the placement of where in the larger scheme of exhibits and displays this specific information will appear and the place where the exhibit or display itself will be.
If the previous panel introduces the word, showing and explaining exactly what it means, then using the same word on this panel is probably fine (and reinforces the word's meaning and context, too).
What do visitors see as they're reading (or listening to) this bit of text? Is it a geological formation with the remains of big rock piles? One end of a box canyon? An artist's rendering of long-ago? A spear head? If the display or program takes place in view of real-life cairns  (or remains of cairns), then it makes sense to use the word in the exhibit label or presentation, because you are naming an important feature for the visitor.
Word count and flow affect our decision, too. In Lisa's version of the sentence, she rewrote "lines of cairns...into narrows" as "narrowing walls of cairns." If purpose and placement don't require the use of "cairn," can we shorten our word count by two, and just say, "narrowing walls"?
Maybe. The scene we're describing involves getting a bunch of large animals into a smaller and smaller space bounded with an obstacle--a wall--on either side, so hunters can successfully spear them. So "narrowing walls" seems to work.
On the other hand, dropping "cairns" in favor of "walls" changes the meaning. A wall is not a cairn, and a wall of cairns is not the same as the wall of a room or a canyon wall. Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler," and this might be a situation where "not simpler" means including the specific detail that these walls are made up of cairns.
What about the sound of the words and how those sounds work together? That's a major element of word flow. This brings up the issue of pronunciation, of course.
Google and Merriam Webster both give "kern" as the pronunciation key, which most of us in the U.S. would read as the same sound made in "kernel" (kernel of corn, for example). But in fact, "kern" indicates a long-ish "a" sound, like the "a" in "air"; other dictionaries indicate this sound with "eǝ" or "ɛ." The audio version of Mirriam Webster as well as Visual Thesaurus both pronounce "cairn" with this longer "a" sound, a near rhyme to "Karen." The Cambridge Dictionary also uses the "air" sound for both American and British pronunciations, though the "r" is less audible in the British version.
"Cairn-sounds-like-Karen" seems to be the preferred pronunciation, but there are variations, including regional variations, where "cairn-sounds-like-kern" is more common. So when I read this sentence out loud to get a feel for how it literally sounds, I read it with those variations in mind. I'm also reading out loud to get a sense of the "mouth feel" of the entire sentence.
In this case, I'm not sure there's a big difference in the flow for any of the audible variations of "cairns." As to the rest of the sentence? "Narrowing walls" is a little tricky to say, but not so much that I would automatically change that bit.
My personal preference? I like the word "cairn." I vote for keeping it, as long as we make its meaning clear.
Judy
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Thanks to Eric McDonald of DragonPhoenix Studios for the Fierce Cairn Terrier artwork!
*Grammatically, it's ambiguous--not technically wrong, but not ideal, either. One possible fix is to move the "sealed their fate" phrase to the beginning of the sentence. Whether that's the best solution is a discussion for another day! |
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