Generation Slang Gap

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, guys. I’m David Stipek, General Manager of KUNR Reno Public Radio on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno.

Wow, hello. Nice to talk to you.

Hey, David.

What’s up?

Well, my question is, I find myself writing to a broader audience these days of staff and university colleagues, listeners, donors, all sorts of people with an increasing mix of younger professionals.

And I was writing an email recently and started realizing that I’m possibly using adjectives that are out of date.

And without overthinking this, I was thinking, do the things I want to typically say from the way I communicate, terrific, tremendous, is that dating me versus, I don’t want to use words like cool or sick or awesome?

I adjust my communication in person or to audiences, but when I’m writing to larger audiences, I’m finding myself wondering now about how that language is maybe dating my form of communication.

That’s a really good question.

Great question.

So you use words like terrific or outstanding to refer to something great.

Yeah, we had an event that the station put on, and so I was trying to do something afterwards.

And, hey, that was a terrific event or a tremendous event.

And I started thinking, well, great is probably safe, and good job or nice is always probably okay.

But some of my audience, my young professional audience, my own kids in this age group say things like awesome or sick or cool, and I wouldn’t use that on an email.

But I started wondering at what point does my own communication style start to reveal something about that I’m out of date.

You know, maybe I’m showing my age, I’m 45, but it doesn’t sound out of date to me, David.

No, it doesn’t to me either.

So words like tremendous, terrific, because what I’m trying not to do here is feel like the mid-50s that I am showing up for work in hipster clothing, trying to fit in somewhere.

But I’m also aware that with mass communication, all the things that I work on, I am trying to speak to a younger group of listeners, young professionals.

I don’t want to overthink it. I probably already am.

But in terms of how do you know where those lines are, how words become out of date or out of touch, it’s not just adjectives. It’s like punctuation.

I find myself using occasionally more an exclamation mark where I didn’t used to use that because it seems exciting.

And that’s not how I used to write.

So I’m trying to find out where I am and how my communication can be most effective in a changing audience mix.

All right. Well, here’s what I would do.

And this is what I usually recommend to folks.

First, it’s amazing that you’re asking this question of yourself because so many people just spew something out and think that they’re done without really thinking twice about what they’ve said or what they’ve written.

So that’s good. That’s a big plus for anyone, right?

You’re thinking about your communication.

The second thing is if you can absorb this new language naturally, if you’re not going out of your way to acquire new adjectives or new slang in order to sprinkle them in your speech and salt your language with the hip new jargon, if you’re not doing that, you’re fine.

If you’re naturally acquiring the language, that’s okay.

You can say awesome or sick if it comes naturally to you, and that’s good.

And you don’t have to worry about the expiration date on this stuff because it will kind of take care of itself.

You will then get feedback from your audience with a quizzical look in their eyes or a smirk or somebody taking you aside even going, yeah, nobody says that’s the bomb anymore.

Probably not very safe to say that anymore.

No, not really.

So it’s kind of a self-correcting process as long, again, you’re acquiring this language naturally, not through some forced flashcard method.

Yeah, David, I really like your analogy of language and clothing.

We use it a lot.

You wouldn’t wear a tuxedo to a volleyball game on the beach, and you wouldn’t wear a swimsuit to a job interview.

Except if it were on a beach.

Right, if you were interviewing for a lifeguard position, I guess.

But I’m thinking about it in terms of clothing.

You know, you might have some particular item of clothing that you’ve picked up that’s maybe a little hipper than other things.

But then wearing a whole hipster outfit to work might look weird on people like you and me.

There’s another thing that I have for you, David, and it’s a completely different direction.

Some months ago, I came across a plug-in for web browsers called Crystal, just like it sounds, C-R-Y-S-T-A-L.

And what it does is analyzes your communications with all your correspondents.

For example, if you use Gmail, it will browse through your Gmail box.

You give it access, and then when you get an email from somebody, it will pop up a little window on the side that says, this person likes to be communicated with in the following ways.

It will say something like they are hurried and they will like brief communications or they’re like more politeness or they’re like more elaborate kind of speech.

It’s really, really interesting.

I stopped using it after a couple days because I realized I didn’t need it for the particular audience that I had, but it might be something to look into, maybe see if the tone of what you’re writing, at least, is coming close to what Crystal believes it should be.

Well, thank you so much for the insights and the tip on Crystal.

We’ll check that out, and we’ll keep at it, and we’ll keep you posted.

Take care.

Yeah, please do.

Sounds good.

Best of luck to you.

Thanks for the groovy tips.

It’s a great cool talk.

Far out, man.

So awesome.

Yeah, cat’s pajamas.

Rock on.

All right.

See you.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Oh, that’s interesting because he has so many challenges dealing with all these different media and all these different constituencies.

I’m thinking about a fundraising seminar I went to once where they said that older donors like a particular kind of font.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, that you need to have serifs.

Yeah, because it’s easier on old eyes.

Yeah, I suppose so.

But, I mean, they’ve done research on this kind of stuff.

I mean, you can really get into the fine-tuning of communication.

But you can also get into over-optimization or unnecessary pre-optimization where you spend more time sharpening the saw than you do cutting wood, right?

As they say.

I didn’t know they say that, but I like that very much.

I think David does probably a lot better than he thinks.

I think so, too.

Don’t you find that when the careful, thoughtful person who considers their own action and their interactions with the world tends to be more successful than they think they are?

Yeah.

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