I was on the phone to a friend a few years
back. ‘It was bespoke’ he said. ‘Have you just learned a new word?’ I asked. Yes he had.
There’s something about the newly learned word that it becomes a
favourite, crowbarred in, or given that little extra inflection. So my question is, where do the boundries lie
for the assumptions we make about what other people do and don’t know? When finding out about a new subject, how
much can you assume the other person will know intrigues me. Of course this is mostly because I don’t want
to look like an arse. And adding a
further layer, in an industry or organization, how quickly we forget what the
‘in’ words are, that only exist in the sector, or even room that you work in….
and are utter clap-trap to everybody else.
A few times I have assumed someone didn’t know the word I just learned,
only to get slammed down with an ‘I know what an advertorial/echo location/pozi-drive
is’. Alas on the other end of the
spectrum there are the times you take for granted that some lingo is generally understood
only to look like a pompous twat.
And it’s not just words either; it’s whole
areas of knowledge. Ok, so I often hark
back to my home-education: was any of this (doubt) spawned from the fact that I
wasn’t learning the same as everyone else, whilst they were – on the most part
– all learning the same stuff? That’s
not in any way an excuse, just an ‘I don’t know what everyone else knows’ kind
of thought.
Waaaay back in 2000, I took a boy from my
Plato lectures - that I was vaguely seeing - back to meet a friend. He was an American skater type; I must have
thought that was cool, that he was cool.
He sat about spouting pub-philosophy to the wrong audience, pseudo-Socrates
‘I know what I don’t know’. But to
bastardise this further, my problem here is the opposite: I don’t know what you
do know.
So to quote Voltaire: ‘If you wish to
converse with me, define your terms’ and everything else please, I won’t be offended.
Do you know what I mean?
