An organisation is its language. You cannot innovate an organisation if you stick to its current language. So what role does language play in the transition of an organisation towards a new way of working? And what are mechanisms that you can apply if you are trying to change an organisation?
An organization is its language. Large organisations will often create a common language to work more efficiently together, but such a common language can limit the organisation’s future vision. An organisation’s ability to change, evolve and innovate depends on its ability to change its language. Starting from this provocative idea (from Pangaro and Dubberly), this talk explores what could be such a language for transition.
First, I will demonstrate how language is everywhere in our work as designers and information architects, from creating taxonomies and choosing labels, to designing voice UIs and facilitating conversations…
Then we will look more specifically into the importance of language in projects of transition: What role can language play when you try to change and improve a system or organisation? And how can you influence this process of transition by carefully choosing the right language? By looking at examples from the real world, Victor Klemperer’s analysis of the language of the Third Reich (“LTI”), and Trump’s smart use of rhetorical linguistic devices, we learn how language really shapes the way we think, shapes our perspective on society and the world. I will present some linguistic techniques you can apply in your projects of transition, such as metaphors, foregrounding/backgrounding, coming up with neologisms, using noun versus verb phrases… and I will illustrate these with examples taken from projects I have worked on.
To conclude, I will link my linguistic research to the systemic design toolkit we have developed recently. The tools in this toolkit are workshop tools, tools for conversation, and they allow us to zoom out to and design on a system level (versus interactions or service level). This “systemic lens” is indispensable when you want to intervene in a system or organisation, when you want to design for transition.
Language for Transition, WIAD 2018 UtrechtKoen Peters
What are the language skills of UX designers today? Language and conversations are at the heart of our current design practice. There is the growing importance of voice UIs and AI in the form of voice assistants (and the growing need for dialogue designers). The design process nowadays is all about co-creation and facilitating conversation between stakeholders. Language is also crucial when you try to bring about change in a system or organisation. An organisation is its language. You cannot innovate an organisation if you stick to its current language. During this talk, I will link the subject of language and conversation to the systemic design toolkit we have developed at Namahn in the past two years, and more specifically to the tool 'transition by design'. What role does language play in the transition of an organisation towards a new way of working?
An organization is its language. Large organisations will often create a common language to work more efficiently together, but such a common language can limit the organisation’s future vision. An organisation’s ability to change, evolve and innovate depends on its ability to change its language. Starting from this provocative idea (from Pangaro and Dubberly), this talk explores what could be such a language for transition.
First, I will demonstrate how language is everywhere in our work as designers and information architects, from creating taxonomies and choosing labels, to designing voice UIs and facilitating conversations…
Then we will look more specifically into the importance of language in projects of transition: What role can language play when you try to change and improve a system or organisation? And how can you influence this process of transition by carefully choosing the right language? By looking at examples from the real world, Victor Klemperer’s analysis of the language of the Third Reich (“LTI”), and Trump’s smart use of rhetorical linguistic devices, we learn how language really shapes the way we think, shapes our perspective on society and the world. I will present some linguistic techniques you can apply in your projects of transition, such as metaphors, foregrounding/backgrounding, coming up with neologisms, using noun versus verb phrases… and I will illustrate these with examples taken from projects I have worked on.
To conclude, I will link my linguistic research to the systemic design toolkit we have developed recently. The tools in this toolkit are workshop tools, tools for conversation, and they allow us to zoom out to and design on a system level (versus interactions or service level). This “systemic lens” is indispensable when you want to intervene in a system or organisation, when you want to design for transition.
Language for Transition, WIAD 2018 UtrechtKoen Peters
What are the language skills of UX designers today? Language and conversations are at the heart of our current design practice. There is the growing importance of voice UIs and AI in the form of voice assistants (and the growing need for dialogue designers). The design process nowadays is all about co-creation and facilitating conversation between stakeholders. Language is also crucial when you try to bring about change in a system or organisation. An organisation is its language. You cannot innovate an organisation if you stick to its current language. During this talk, I will link the subject of language and conversation to the systemic design toolkit we have developed at Namahn in the past two years, and more specifically to the tool 'transition by design'. What role does language play in the transition of an organisation towards a new way of working?
2016 felt pretty bleak, but 2017 is a chance to turn things around. We think languages can play a big part in that, from better educational outcomes and increased empathy to international communication skills and business opportunities.
Use Your Words: Content Strategy to Influence BehaviorLiz Danzico
What if we were truly open to the language in our cities, our neighborhoods, our city blocks? What is our environment telling us to do?
In this workshop, we’ll let the language of the city guide us to explore how words, specifically the words of our immediate contexts, shape our behavior. By being open to the possibilities, we’ll explore how language influences both the micro and macro actions we take. We’ll go on expeditions in the morning—studying street signs to doorways to receipts—comparing patterns in the language maps we’ll construct. In the afternoon, we’ll look at what these patterns suggest for the products and services we design.
You’ll walk away having learned how words influence behavior, how products and services have used language for behavior change, and having tools for thinking about language and behavior change in the work you do.
Spend the day letting words use you, so you can go back to work to use them with renewed wisdom.
Abstract: Language is a tool to learn knowledge, bequeath illumination (dossier), trump up ennobling ties, compose societal integrity, express sensibility, emotions & ideas, lingua Franca. as a language of correlative communication, one of the six official languages of the United Nations. This paper will help perceive the importance of English language as the language of science and technology, business and trade, Banking & corporate sector, window on the world, language of opportunity, third most spoken language in world. English is the requisite international language of communication, science, information technology, business, seafaring, aviation, aerodynamics, entertainment, radiotelephonics, saviour-faire, delicatessen, expedience, finesse.
Keywords: Language as a means of communication, non- instinctive, complex, creative, modifiable, structurally complex, verbal, vocal (sound), phonology, Morphology, syntax, semantics.
Title: Nature and Scope of English Language in Today's World
Author: ANU ARORA
ISSN 2349-7831
International Journal of Recent Research in Social Sciences and Humanities (IJRRSSH)
Paper Publications
Discourse, small-d, Big D James Paul Gee Arizona State.docxlynettearnold46882
Discourse, small-d, Big D
James Paul Gee
Arizona State University
[email protected]
Word Count: 2215
Abstract
The notion of “Big ‘D’ Discourse” (“Discourse” spelled with a capital “D”) is meant to capture
the ways in which people enact and recognize socially and historically significant identities or
“kinds of people” through well-integrated combinations of language, actions, interactions,
objects, tools, technologies, beliefs, and values. The notion stresses how “discourse” (language
in use among people) is always also a “conversation” among different historically formed
Discourses (that is, a “conversation” among different socially and historically significant kinds
of people or social groups). The notion of “Big ‘D’ Discourse” sets a larger context for the
analysis of “discourse” (with a little “d”), that is, the analysis of language in use.
James
Sticky Note
Appeared in: Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, and Todd Sandel, Eds., International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, published with Wiley-Blackwell and the International Communication Association, 2015
1
People often believe that language is a tool primarily for saying things, for giving information.
But, in reality, language is a tool for three things: saying, doing, and being. When we speak or
write we simultaneously say something (“inform”), do something (act), and are something (be).
When we listen or read we have to know what the speaker or writer is saying, doing, and being
in order to fully understand (Gee 1999).
If a teacher in a math class says “Mary, what do you think?” this could be a test question on the
basis of which Mary will be graded, assessed, or judged. It could be an attempt to start a class
discussion where the teacher cares more about how Mary thinks and the discussion that thinking
can start than she does about grades.
It can be crucial to Mary to know which is which. Misunderstanding the question (e.g., as an
invitation to take a risk and elaborate when in reality it is a test question) can be consequential.
Note that in a case like this, Mary and the other students judge what the question really means
based on their knowledge of the practices, values, and identities acted out in classroom and
expected by this teacher and school. Is the teacher an assessor (be) grading students (do) or is
she a discussion facilitator (be) facilitating talk in interaction (do)? Is she a traditional teacher or
a more progressive teacher? It takes “social knowledge” to understand and to respond
“appropriately”.
Paulo Freire (1995, org. 1968) long ago pointed out that understanding language (in any useful
way) requires understanding the world. Reading the word requires reading the world. To
understand what is being said in any deep way we need to know what speakers or writers are
trying to do. This requires us to know about social practices and genres of activity in the .
Timo Honkela: Introductory lecture of the seminar course on Computational Pra...Timo Honkela
T-61.6020 Computational Pragmatics
Timo Honkela, Aalto University School of Science
Spring 2012
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in
which context contributes to meaning. It studies how the transmission
of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge of the speaker
and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge
about the status of those involved, the intent of the speaker, etc.
Even though pragmatics is traditionally considered as an area of
linguistics, similar considerations related to meaning in context are
also relevant for information systems design and especially
interactive systems development. An interesting issue within computer
science is the interface between pragmatics and semantics. Ontologies
are used in semantic web to define prototypical meanings but in the
real-world contexts, pragmatics deals with the subjective and
contextual variation around prototypical meanings. In human-to-machine
communication, information systems may have practical uses in new
contexts beyond the ones defined originally by the designer of the
system. In machine-to-machine communication, formal semantics may fall
short in solving interoperability issues and thus issues related to
pragmatics need to be considered. In overall, the focus is in how
understanding takes place, not in how meanings are defined.
During the course, the participants are introduced with the main
linguistic theories related to pragmatics including but not limited to
the theories about the functions of languages, the speech act theory,
and the theory of conversational maxims. The participants will
familiarize themselves with computational models in the area of
pragmatics with specific focus on dynamic and adaptive systems and
statistical machine learning. They will also conduct a small empirical
study related to the subjectivity and contextuality of meaning using
the grounded intersubjective concept analysis (GICA). The collected
data will be analyzed using statistical methods.
Informal Writing Assignment
Informal Observation
Informal Communication Essay
The informal economy
Informal Discourse
English Language And Informal Language Essay
Prioritizing content, talk at #euroia20Koen Peters
In my daily practice as information architect working for clients on the structure and design of pages for websites, intranets and application, one of the recurring challenges is to have a client team make choices in selecting the right content to display on a page, prioritizing the content (what comes first on the page), linking the page content in a meaningful way to other content, and adding the right call to actions (CTA’s) to the page. Of course, this problem is not new. In the past 10 to 15 years, a range of models/tools have emerged to help you tackle this: Page description diagrams, the Core model, Priority guides, OOUX, Page tables, the Container model…. basically, they are all about listing the content and CTA’s needed on a page and prioritizing them in a mobile-first way. These different models/tools do very similar things but not exactly the same, so which one should you choose?
In the past years, I have been trying out these different models and used them in different projects. I have discovered for instance that priority guides work really well when you want to include actual content and want to leave out the design/wireframing aspect completely. Cores & paths are great to start with early on in a project, can be applied in almost every situation, even when you don’t have a classification for your site yet, but go less in depth and lack the prioritization element. OOUX is great for its practical, workshop-friendly step-by-step sticky notes process and the idea of “nested objects”. In this talk I will share these findings, show examples from projects, explain the pros and cons of each tool/model, and guide you in making the right choice of tools depending on the context. I will even show you how you can combine elements of different tools into your own version of them.
Towards a Systemic Design Toolkit: A Practical Workshop - #RSD5 Workshop, Tor...Koen Peters
Namahn (BE), a human-centred design agency, and shiftN (BE), a futures and systems thinking studio from Brussels, are developing a Systemic Design Toolkit combining the methodologies of both practices. The toolkit is currently piloted with the EU Policy Lab of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. The toolkit is structured as a suite of discrete thinking-and-doing instruments, to be applied selectively, sequentially and iteratively. The purpose of this toolkit is to enable co-analyses of complex challenges and co-creation of systemic solutions mode with users and other stakeholders This workshop aims to exchange insights between participants and facilitators in a hands-on, case-based format.
Workshop presenters are: Philippe Vandenbroeck, Kristel Van Ael, Clementina Gentile (@clementina_g) and Koen Peters (@2pk_koen)
More Related Content
Similar to Language for Transition, EuroIA 2018, Dublin
2016 felt pretty bleak, but 2017 is a chance to turn things around. We think languages can play a big part in that, from better educational outcomes and increased empathy to international communication skills and business opportunities.
Use Your Words: Content Strategy to Influence BehaviorLiz Danzico
What if we were truly open to the language in our cities, our neighborhoods, our city blocks? What is our environment telling us to do?
In this workshop, we’ll let the language of the city guide us to explore how words, specifically the words of our immediate contexts, shape our behavior. By being open to the possibilities, we’ll explore how language influences both the micro and macro actions we take. We’ll go on expeditions in the morning—studying street signs to doorways to receipts—comparing patterns in the language maps we’ll construct. In the afternoon, we’ll look at what these patterns suggest for the products and services we design.
You’ll walk away having learned how words influence behavior, how products and services have used language for behavior change, and having tools for thinking about language and behavior change in the work you do.
Spend the day letting words use you, so you can go back to work to use them with renewed wisdom.
Abstract: Language is a tool to learn knowledge, bequeath illumination (dossier), trump up ennobling ties, compose societal integrity, express sensibility, emotions & ideas, lingua Franca. as a language of correlative communication, one of the six official languages of the United Nations. This paper will help perceive the importance of English language as the language of science and technology, business and trade, Banking & corporate sector, window on the world, language of opportunity, third most spoken language in world. English is the requisite international language of communication, science, information technology, business, seafaring, aviation, aerodynamics, entertainment, radiotelephonics, saviour-faire, delicatessen, expedience, finesse.
Keywords: Language as a means of communication, non- instinctive, complex, creative, modifiable, structurally complex, verbal, vocal (sound), phonology, Morphology, syntax, semantics.
Title: Nature and Scope of English Language in Today's World
Author: ANU ARORA
ISSN 2349-7831
International Journal of Recent Research in Social Sciences and Humanities (IJRRSSH)
Paper Publications
Discourse, small-d, Big D James Paul Gee Arizona State.docxlynettearnold46882
Discourse, small-d, Big D
James Paul Gee
Arizona State University
[email protected]
Word Count: 2215
Abstract
The notion of “Big ‘D’ Discourse” (“Discourse” spelled with a capital “D”) is meant to capture
the ways in which people enact and recognize socially and historically significant identities or
“kinds of people” through well-integrated combinations of language, actions, interactions,
objects, tools, technologies, beliefs, and values. The notion stresses how “discourse” (language
in use among people) is always also a “conversation” among different historically formed
Discourses (that is, a “conversation” among different socially and historically significant kinds
of people or social groups). The notion of “Big ‘D’ Discourse” sets a larger context for the
analysis of “discourse” (with a little “d”), that is, the analysis of language in use.
James
Sticky Note
Appeared in: Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, and Todd Sandel, Eds., International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, published with Wiley-Blackwell and the International Communication Association, 2015
1
People often believe that language is a tool primarily for saying things, for giving information.
But, in reality, language is a tool for three things: saying, doing, and being. When we speak or
write we simultaneously say something (“inform”), do something (act), and are something (be).
When we listen or read we have to know what the speaker or writer is saying, doing, and being
in order to fully understand (Gee 1999).
If a teacher in a math class says “Mary, what do you think?” this could be a test question on the
basis of which Mary will be graded, assessed, or judged. It could be an attempt to start a class
discussion where the teacher cares more about how Mary thinks and the discussion that thinking
can start than she does about grades.
It can be crucial to Mary to know which is which. Misunderstanding the question (e.g., as an
invitation to take a risk and elaborate when in reality it is a test question) can be consequential.
Note that in a case like this, Mary and the other students judge what the question really means
based on their knowledge of the practices, values, and identities acted out in classroom and
expected by this teacher and school. Is the teacher an assessor (be) grading students (do) or is
she a discussion facilitator (be) facilitating talk in interaction (do)? Is she a traditional teacher or
a more progressive teacher? It takes “social knowledge” to understand and to respond
“appropriately”.
Paulo Freire (1995, org. 1968) long ago pointed out that understanding language (in any useful
way) requires understanding the world. Reading the word requires reading the world. To
understand what is being said in any deep way we need to know what speakers or writers are
trying to do. This requires us to know about social practices and genres of activity in the .
Timo Honkela: Introductory lecture of the seminar course on Computational Pra...Timo Honkela
T-61.6020 Computational Pragmatics
Timo Honkela, Aalto University School of Science
Spring 2012
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in
which context contributes to meaning. It studies how the transmission
of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge of the speaker
and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge
about the status of those involved, the intent of the speaker, etc.
Even though pragmatics is traditionally considered as an area of
linguistics, similar considerations related to meaning in context are
also relevant for information systems design and especially
interactive systems development. An interesting issue within computer
science is the interface between pragmatics and semantics. Ontologies
are used in semantic web to define prototypical meanings but in the
real-world contexts, pragmatics deals with the subjective and
contextual variation around prototypical meanings. In human-to-machine
communication, information systems may have practical uses in new
contexts beyond the ones defined originally by the designer of the
system. In machine-to-machine communication, formal semantics may fall
short in solving interoperability issues and thus issues related to
pragmatics need to be considered. In overall, the focus is in how
understanding takes place, not in how meanings are defined.
During the course, the participants are introduced with the main
linguistic theories related to pragmatics including but not limited to
the theories about the functions of languages, the speech act theory,
and the theory of conversational maxims. The participants will
familiarize themselves with computational models in the area of
pragmatics with specific focus on dynamic and adaptive systems and
statistical machine learning. They will also conduct a small empirical
study related to the subjectivity and contextuality of meaning using
the grounded intersubjective concept analysis (GICA). The collected
data will be analyzed using statistical methods.
Informal Writing Assignment
Informal Observation
Informal Communication Essay
The informal economy
Informal Discourse
English Language And Informal Language Essay
Prioritizing content, talk at #euroia20Koen Peters
In my daily practice as information architect working for clients on the structure and design of pages for websites, intranets and application, one of the recurring challenges is to have a client team make choices in selecting the right content to display on a page, prioritizing the content (what comes first on the page), linking the page content in a meaningful way to other content, and adding the right call to actions (CTA’s) to the page. Of course, this problem is not new. In the past 10 to 15 years, a range of models/tools have emerged to help you tackle this: Page description diagrams, the Core model, Priority guides, OOUX, Page tables, the Container model…. basically, they are all about listing the content and CTA’s needed on a page and prioritizing them in a mobile-first way. These different models/tools do very similar things but not exactly the same, so which one should you choose?
In the past years, I have been trying out these different models and used them in different projects. I have discovered for instance that priority guides work really well when you want to include actual content and want to leave out the design/wireframing aspect completely. Cores & paths are great to start with early on in a project, can be applied in almost every situation, even when you don’t have a classification for your site yet, but go less in depth and lack the prioritization element. OOUX is great for its practical, workshop-friendly step-by-step sticky notes process and the idea of “nested objects”. In this talk I will share these findings, show examples from projects, explain the pros and cons of each tool/model, and guide you in making the right choice of tools depending on the context. I will even show you how you can combine elements of different tools into your own version of them.
Towards a Systemic Design Toolkit: A Practical Workshop - #RSD5 Workshop, Tor...Koen Peters
Namahn (BE), a human-centred design agency, and shiftN (BE), a futures and systems thinking studio from Brussels, are developing a Systemic Design Toolkit combining the methodologies of both practices. The toolkit is currently piloted with the EU Policy Lab of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. The toolkit is structured as a suite of discrete thinking-and-doing instruments, to be applied selectively, sequentially and iteratively. The purpose of this toolkit is to enable co-analyses of complex challenges and co-creation of systemic solutions mode with users and other stakeholders This workshop aims to exchange insights between participants and facilitators in a hands-on, case-based format.
Workshop presenters are: Philippe Vandenbroeck, Kristel Van Ael, Clementina Gentile (@clementina_g) and Koen Peters (@2pk_koen)
The EYD2015 website: working agile at the European Commission (EuroIA 2015, M...Koen Peters
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My talk from EuroIA 2012 in Rome. Turning yourself into a human-centered design coach.
Shifting from traditional design consultancy to design coaching requires new skills. In this talk, we share some tips & tricks and best practices on coaching clients in human-centered design:
* Managing expectations from the start – have a clear understanding on what can be expected from both parties.
* Knowing the coached team (and its organization) well before you start.
* Organizing design trainings at the start of the project – these will also give the coached team an understanding of what is going to happen.
* Finding a good balance between having the people you coach do the actual work, and doing parts of the work yourself. Not all techniques are equal: some are easier to pass on than others.
* Working with example deliverables from other projects and ready-to-use templates, to make it easier for the coached team to put a technique into practice and get good results quickly.
* Building consensus in the team you are coaching, and avoid getting caught into one of the camps in the team.
By sharing some of our experiences, hopefully we can help you become a better design coach.
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https://dribbble.com/shots/24253051-Let-s-Summon-Demons-Shirt
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Quality control is vital to every industry. This is why every department in a company need create a method they use in ensuring quality. This, perhaps, will not only improve the quality of products and bring errors to the barest minimum, but take it to a near perfect finish.
It is beyond a moot point that a good book will somewhat be judged by its cover, but the content of the book remains king. No matter how beautiful the cover, if the quality of writing or presentation is off, that will be a reason for readers not to come back to the book or recommend it.
So, this presentation points designers to some important things that may be missed by an editor that they could eventually discover and call the attention of the editor.
You could be a professional graphic designer and still make mistakes. There is always the possibility of human error. On the other hand if you’re not a designer, the chances of making some common graphic design mistakes are even higher. Because you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s where this blog comes in. To make your job easier and help you create better designs, we have put together a list of common graphic design mistakes that you need to avoid.
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In today's digital era, the dynamics of brand perception, consumer behavior, and profitability have been profoundly reshaped by the synergy of branding, social media, and website design. This research paper investigates the transformative power of these elements in influencing how individuals perceive brands and products and how this transformation can be harnessed to drive sales and profitability for businesses.
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3. Namahn
Language and conversations
“An organization consists of conversations.”
“An organization’s language is the basis for all
transactions, for all business.”
“Language affects, even constitutes the ways people
perceive their reality.”
“An organization’s ability to create a (new) language is
synonymous with it’s ability to evolve.”
EuroIA 2018 Dublin - Language for Transition 3
14. Namahn
Characteristics of LTI:
Regulated and repeated
One-sided, one-dimensional, narrow
No difference between spoken and written language
(you can only shout it)
Neologisms: aufnorden, Blitzkrieg, Endsieg…
Prefixes: Volkswagen, Volksgemeinschaft, Weltanschauung
Euphemisms: Sonderbehandlung, Krise, Evakuierung
Abbreviations: SS, KZ, …
Metaphors: connotations to military world, sports, religion, machines
EuroIA 2018 Dublin - Language for Transition 14
18. Namahn
Trump’s rhetorical linguistic techniques
Superlatives: “yuuuuge”
Hyperbole: “the whole world is blowing up”
Binaries: criminal aliens vs. hard-working Americans
Repetition: “That’s wrong. They were wrong. It’s the
NYT, they’re always wrong…”
Short and simple sentences; verb-heavy rather than
noun-heavy
Register: casual, private talk, used in public, formal
circumstances: “you know”
EuroIA 2018 Dublin - Language for Transition 18
33. Namahn
Markedness vs. unmarkedness
Zerubavel: “The word choices we make (every day without
even realizing it) expose the subtly encoded ways we talk
about race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, social status
etc.”
Examples: male nurses, working mom…
Techniques:
Foregrounding: “home phone”, “I’m openly straight”,
Backgrounding: “police officer”, “fire fighter”
EuroIA 2018 Dublin - Language for Transition 33
Thanks for joining today.
So “language for transition”, why this topic
Let me give you a quote
A Quote from Pangaro during a talk 2 years ago. This phrase really stuck with me.
Conversations and language are the basis for all transactions and business
An organisation must be able to create a new language in order to evolve or innovate
Cf. Mechanism in large organisations: have shared, common language to work more efficiently. But this limits the ability to evolve, to innovate.
Past language limits future vision. To regenerate, an organisation must create a new language.
Take the well known example of Kodak
Kodak was not able to create a new language and to innovate, eventhough they pioneered the industry and co-invented digital photography.
They were stuck in the language and ideas of past successes, and couldn’t make the necessary switch/change in their branding and way of thinking. They thought their brand meant film, instead of higher ideals “preserving memories”
A second trigger, We have been working on a systemic design methodology at Namahn.
My colleague Kristel (leading the initiative) asked me to investigate the role of language in the systemic design process, especially in projects of transition.
What role can language play in projects of transition, when you try to change and improve a system or organisation? How can you influence this process by carefully choosing the right language?
Let’s have a closer look at this.
While preparing this talk and investigating this subject, if there is one thing I've come to realise even more, than it's this:
It shapes our perspective on society and the world. Language shapes the way we think.
In the debate about migrants in Belgium, when they are forced to return to their country of origin, will you call this "repatriation", like the Belgian politicians currently in power do, or will you call it "deportation" like some other people do.
But even in seemingly more trivial subjects, currently in the news, I’ve come to realise that language shapes our view on things...
I was reading this interview with a Cronobiologist Roenneberg, who is strongly against daylight saving time, or summer time. In the interview he got irritated by what the interviewer was saying (words): “There is no summer time. This is propaganda language by lobbyists. It is summer and winter, and time is time. You can change clocks and watches, but not time! And you don't save light. The days don't become longer in the summer, thanks to so-called summer time. No, we get up earlier and go to bed earlier, that's all, and our health suffers from it…
I wasn’t aware it is also really a language issue...
To illustrate the influence of language, I would like to point to an author I discovered half a year ago
Victor Klemperer, a Jewish linguist who miraculously survived World War II. He kept a detailed diary of what was happening in his life, during WWI and in the 20's, but also at the time of the rise and fall of the Nazi regime, which gives a fascinating insight in daily life for Jews during the Nazi regime. He always did this with a special interest in language. Shortly after the war, he published a book about the language of the Third Reich, LTI.
His book explains meticulously how LTI works
The nazis used a whole set of linguistic, manipulative techniques, mechanisms, to get their message through.
Their LTI was poisonous for the minds. It changed the way people were thinking.
Sometimes you think, how on earth could people go along with this crap. When you understand these mechanisms, you better understand how this could happen...
As a sidenote, there was more into play than just the written and spoken language. The language came a long with a strong nazi visual language.
The main lesson I take from Klemperer's LTI book is that you can never underestimate the power of language and words. The risk of misuse and manipulation is always there.
By the way, this guy here... I’m showing him right after the nazis, so that’s a bit of framing. To me he is not a nazi. But he definitely uses a whole range of rhetorical linguistic devices, some are very similar to LTI: superlatives, hyperbole, binaries (them against us), repetition, the grammar... And the register is a crucial element: He uses conversational language, less formal and less complex than you would expect from a president, to distance himself from conventional politicians and make him sound like the common man.
What are mechanisms you could use in your projects, not to manipulate, but in a positive way...
(In a metaphor you refer to one thing by mentioning another thing, to identify (hidden) similarities between the two ideas or concepts.)
We know since Lakoff that metaphors are crucial in our language, in our communication, in our way of thinking. Metaphors are everywhere.
The reloadable battery metaphor. Ikea makes smart use of it.
Or the military rhetoric around cancer
Cf. In the world of business as well: strategies to conquer the market, we fight the competition, we have war rooms...
You could deliberately step away from the dominant military metaphor to change the mindsets...
BTW, a "metaphor designer" is a real job title now. Michael Erard used to work at the FrameWorks Institute as a metaphor designer. The company used the tagline "words that change minds“. They don't want to create pretty images (like poets do), they want to change the perception, to influence people in a specific way.
An example of a metaphor we used in our projects, is the tree metaphor. The tree metaphor can help support a process of growth or change: a tree has roots and a solid trunk, it has branches, it grows, blossoms and bears fruit at certain moments, but does not always have to perform, not the whole year through…
We used it in a project for the Flemish government, where they tried to improve integration (Integration pact).
My colleagues used a tree metaphor throughout the project. Here you see trends, identified in the beginning of the project, as forces working around and on the tree in the middle.
Then we created a common vision and image for the desired future.
Here you can see us listing initiatives that already exist at the moment, that are already contributing to the future states/goals,
A metaphor I use regularly in intranet design projects is the house (or hotel) of information.
Originally the Knowledge management house, by Françoise Rossion.
You present an organisation as a house or hotel: you describe the different interactions that a user can have with information as different rooms in the hotel.
Here is our generic version of the house: with a library, team rooms and project rooms, a learning center, a lobby and coffee corner etc.
With the house, you can also show that information is used for different knowledge needs: inform, inspire/learn, connect, or service.
And you can illustrate how an employee goes from one room to another during a working day...
We have our clients make their own version of the house during a workshop
Another linguistic technique that you could use in your projects, is foregrounding and backgrounding
Zerubavel in his book "Taken for granted" explains the notion of markedness vs. unmarkedness
The word choices we make every day expose the ways we talk (and think) about race, gender , religion, sexual orientation, social status etc. When we mark something as being special or somehow noticeable, that which goes unmarked is assumed to be normal, ordinary by default..
By marking "male nurses" , we are also reinforcing the apparent normality of the idea that nurses are female.
You can use this notion of marked versus unmarked in your projects, and explicitly go against conventions, and making a gestalt switch, by:
Foregrounding: marking what was unmarked before (awareness rising). E.g. by saying your openly straight. Or the desktop computer and the home phone
Backgrounding: the opposite, unmarking what was marked before - neutralizing, for instance a police officer, fire fighter, sales person
Another technique is to invent new words. A good name to a new idea or concept, can help the idea to gain acceptance and spread in an organisation
Let me take the example out of our practice, and a word Namahn invented a 6 years ago: Wireflow.
It combines wireframes and flowchart/taskflows.
We were starting to make these schemes in our projects. By giving it a name, it became something normal and evident, it became an explicit part of our methodology.
So to come back to Pangaro, use these techniques to adapt the language in an organisation and to foster change.
Hold a conversation to create a new language.
But, there’s a danger here.
Copying the words of a new language is not enough to actually accomplish innovation.
How many companies do you have out there that adopted "Agile“?
When you look closely, they have just copied the language
In reality they are not working in an Agile manner at all...
Cf. This LinkedIn post...
So to summarize, here are my first ideas on language for transition: