Exaggerated communication

Most practitioners are aware of how the meaning of certain words used in routine client and staff communication may change over time. Sometimes the source of the change is unknown, while other times it can be traced to some celebrity or pop icon, or even an advertising or marketing campaign. The most troublesome are those words that carry an enhanced emotional charge. However these expressions, which often are perceived as ways to enhance communication by those who use them, also may undermine it.

For example, Dr. Jorgensen, the older, more reserved founder of the Tall Mountain Veterinary Practice, limits his use of adjectives such as “brilliant” or “awesome” to describe individuals or events that far exceed the normal range. He does this because he ascribes to the primary dictionary definitions of these words. By virtue of their similar temperaments and education, certain members of the veterinary staff and the practice’s client base do the same thing. On the other hand, those who are younger or more immersed in popular culture like his associate Dr. Amaris may assign a more contextual meaning to those same words. They may use it in the same context it was used in a song, movie, or ad or by a singer, actor, athlete, or someone else whose style they particularly admire. Whenever Dr. Jorgensen found himself involved in a conversation with one of those belonging to this group, initially he was unsure how to properly respond when they peppered their language with these terms.

On that fateful day, when Dr. Amaris, 1 technician, the assistant office manager, and 3 clients referred to him or his work as “brilliant” (4 times), “awesome” (twice), “amazing” (3 times), “incredible” (once), “fantastic” (twice), and “outta sight” (once), he had no idea what they were trying to communicate to him. As a result, his responses to them were probably as incomprehensible to them as theirs were to him.

“When people used these words to describe me and something relatively simple and routine that I had done, at first I thought they were being sarcastic,” he confided to his wife. “I accept that I’m reasonably intelligent and good at what I do, but I’m hardly brilliant. Nor do I feel flattered when somebody describes something as simple as vaccinating their animal as ‘brilliant’ or ‘awesome.’ If I accept the inflated compliment, I feel like a hypocrite. But I don’t want to upset or alienate them either.”

The use of exaggerated adjectives at the negative end of the spectrum also troubled him. Like all practitioners, he had dealt with hysterical clients over the years who perceived even the most benign problem with their animals as a disaster. But when these same adjectives began popping up in routine discourse with clients and staff members whose demeanor in his mind did not support such an exaggerated response, he felt equally confused and disoriented. When such descriptive words were used during phone conversations in which he had no access to the speaker’s body language to help him evaluate their emotional state, he became even more so. And when such messages arrived in electronic form void of all visual clues regarding the speaker’s meaning as well as those detectable in the speaker’s body language, he became frustrated and angry.

As the hyperbole became more ubiquitous, Dr. Jorgensen gradually succumbed to a process he later thought of as semantic devaluation. He gradually neutralized the meaning of words that once carried a specific meaning but now carried what he considered an enhanced emotional charge.

“I realized that there were risks to this,” he later admitted to a former classmate. “I knew I could devalue comments that were truly heart-felt or were related to conditions that truly were extraordinary. Unintentionally I could hurt people’s feelings or respond more slowly to events that justifiably deserved an extraordinary response because I’d become so desensitized by all the overstatement.”

Nonetheless, and for as much as he tried to rationalize his solution, it continued to bother Dr. Jorgensen that his communication with a growing segment of his staff and the practice’s client base could be substandard. Two questions continued to bother him following interactions with these people: i) What did these words mean to the people who used them in their routine conversation with him? ii) How would they articulate their thoughts when something truly extraordinary occurred?

About this same time, an academic friend with whom he also had discussed the topic shared a study concerning how the same trend toward hyperbole also could be extending into the research realm.

In their article titled “Use of positive and negative words in scientific PubMed abstracts between 1974 and 2014: Retrospective analysis” published in the December 1, 2015 British Medical Journal [http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6467] a group led by Christiaan Vickers analyzed the language used in all PubMed abstracts from 1974 to 2014. Their goal was to determine whether the use of language in science abstracts can become skewed over time via the use of increasingly positive or negative words. To do this, they selected 25 positive, 25 negative, and 25 neutral words plus 100 words that were normalized. Positive words included “amazing,” “excellent,” “innovative,” “promising,” and “robust.” Examples of negative words were “detrimental,” “impossible,” “insignificant,” and “weak.” “Animal,” “blood,” “design,” “experiment,” “rodent,” and “treatment” were among the words on the researchers’ list of neutral words.

Of particular interest to Dr. Jorgensen, the study’s results demonstrated an increase in the use of positive and negative (to a lesser degree) words, whereas there was no increase in neutral or randomized words during that period. Nor could the increased frequency be attributed to one or two words; the incidence of all the positive words increased. Although this effect was less pronounced in what the researchers defined as high impact journals, it was still present.

More relevant to Dr. Jorgensen’s dilemma as he interacted with clients and staff members were the implications the study’s authors assigned to their results. Although acknowledging that it was possible that researchers felt increasingly optimistic and enthusiastic about their results, the authors also maintained that it is more likely that those desiring to have their work accepted for publication assumed that they must exaggerate and overstate their findings to achieve that goal.

This caused the practice owner to wonder: Did staff members and clients prone to using exaggerated language want their communication with him to have more impact for some other reason? Was there something about his demeanor or communication style that made others think that they had to exaggerate to gain his full attention? These thoughts also caused him to share his questions with Dr. Amaris as well as other members of the staff apt to use hyperbole.

While somewhat frustrating, it did not surprise him that they gave him multiple answers. Some people did use these words because they perceived Dr. Jorgensen’s more low-keyed and reserved temperament as disinterested; others who knew him better, quickly assured those who held this opinion that this was not the case. Several others, including Dr. Amaris, admitted that the hyperbolic words had become such a normal part of their language that they assigned them no special meaning or emotion at all.

Following that revelation Dr. Amaris exclaimed: “Oh, no! Could my conversations with some of you and our clients annoy you as much as that waitress at the café who calls me and everyone ‘Honey’ annoys me?”

A third group believed that the emotionally charged words communicated exactly what they intended to communicate. Additionally, they assumed that others did likewise unless they knew something would negate this view. Their definition of what constituted someone or something extraordinary also was lower than that of the others involved in this discussion.

Dr. Jorgensen then addressed his second question related to this topic: What words would they or clients with the same communication style use to describe situations that truly were extraordinary in a positive or negative way?

This time everyone shared his concern that they, clients, or both who routinely engaged in hyperbole could have difficulty communicating their true feelings at those times, particularly if the communication did not occur face-to-face. Failure to communicate positive responses successfully could jeopardize working relationships with each other and clients. Failure to communicate or recognize from veterinarians’, staff members’, or clients’ tone of voice or body language that conditions truly were dire could have grave consequences for all involved.

Even remote practices may attract others from different countries and cultures who express themselves differently. Drs. Jorgensen and Amaris and their staff perceive understanding and acknowledging these differences to ensure quality communication as part of their jobs. The potentially problematic communication styles discussed in this commentary also arise from cultural changes as the function of age, temperament, and other factors. Because of this, it is easy to assume that the communicator and the recipient know exactly what the other means. But in reality, the only way to know for sure is to ask.