Words #1 - Paradigm

Happy New Year to you all. I'm compiling a list of words I hate. Either cause they're nonsense business speak, pretentious or just found in plain old bad English. Here’s the first offering:

Paradigm
In grammar, a paradigm is an organised list of forms all of which contain a particular element. For example the word cat in Spanish (gat-) inflects depends on its form; gato (singular male cat) gata (female) gatos (many cats). A list of these forms is called the inflectional paradigm since the gat- part is being inflected.

Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science, extended paradigm to mean a highly stereotypical set of practices that define a scientific discipline. In his words, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share.” (The Essential Tension, 1997). Nowadays, by extension, it has come to mean a set of highly typical, or stereotypical, example of something.

The word does not mean model or pattern. These two words are perfectly sufficient and encompassing in their meaning; and do not need to be usurped by the clever sounding 'paradigm'. Worse still is the term paradigm shift, one which Kuhn coined in philosophy of science. Paradigm shift seems to be applied to any change in thinking, understanding or policy. Much more concise and explicit phrases exist. Even clichés like “change in thinking” are much clearer than “undergoing a paradigm shift”.

If model could be used in its place then do so. If you are thinking about using paradigm shift, my advice is don’t. It’s always better to leave more technical sounding words/phrases to their more technical meanings. Not just to preserve the detail in the meaning; you’ll also risk confusing those who know the real meaning. And risk confusing those who don’t know the word at all. But mostly, using it makes you sound like an uninformed and pretentious twat.


Other notes and queries:
The staff behind www.freesearch.co.uk released a list of the ten most commonly searched words on their dictionary service. Paradigm was fifth.

Paradigm "is a word too often used by those who would like to have a new idea but cannot think of one."— Mervyn Allister King, then–Deputy Governor, Bank of England

tags ( grammar paradigm )