Pomospeak In Daily Life

[elfs]

So, this afternoon, I was signing up for a work-sponsored 20-minute course related to our new insurance policies. We have to go through this silly sign-in screen that our HR director (an ex-Softie) apparently cooked up as a way of tracking who had taken what courses.

As I'm signing up for it, I'm filling out an absurd number of fields. I ought to be able to give it my email address and it ought to be able to look up everything else: manager's name, email address, phone number, the works. They're all right there in the company directory; the fact that it can't is just... auuugh.

Anyway, as I'm filling it out, I notice at the bottom there's a field with no instructions as to how to fill it out, labeled Modality. I've seen that word a number of times, and always wondered what it meant. I went and looked it up:

Modality, n., a particular way in which the information is to be encoded for presentation to humans.

As opposed to what, exactly? Nematodes? Butterflies? Ponies?

Comments

Duh.

[solarbird]

ELVES. Hello.

Re: Duh.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Pygmies + Dwarfs! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngula_(blog)#PYGMIES_.2B_DWARFS)

Re: Duh.

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

hey, don't forget Metahomo novalis -- we may be few, but we may also be anywhere.... //^_^\\

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

Well, they have taught gorillas to read. Besides, I'm not sure all code-monkeys are human. Could you prove that everyone you work with is human, even senior management?

[(Anonymous)]

If I can't interact with someone in a meaningful way, they're not human.

[kengr]

Yes, but if they *can* that doesn't mean they *are* human...

[mouser.livejournal.com]

"modality" for humans, "protcol" for machines....

[littleone66.livejournal.com]

i was thinking along the line of text, Powerpoint or strictly lecture form.

[spiralsong.livejournal.com]

As opposed to what, exactly? Nematodes? Butterflies? Ponies?


Users. Du-uuuh. ;)

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Eww, that's like "technology" or "cognitive", words that sound like they ought to mean something, but end up meaning "I want the reader/listener to be impressed with my kick-ass vocabulary."

I read modality to mean "howness" - or in this case of its use, how things are encoded or presented. (FWIW, I cut through a lot of corporate and academic guff by reading "cognitive" to mean "has to do with thinking" or "thinkiness", and "technology" to mean "how something is done" or "do-ish-ness"; that reading - while not entirely accurate - helped me get through the piles of attitude associated with those words at the time). Anyhow, it seems to me that adding the target of the encoding or presentation provides exactly zero additional information. Lexicographers ought to do better than that.

My dictionary (Random House-Webser's Unabridged, 1999) defines modality as:
1. the quality or state of being modal.
2. an attribute or circumstance that denotes mode or manner.
3. Also called mode. Logic. the classification of propositions according to whether they are contingently true or false, possible, impossible, or necessary.
4. Med. the application of a therapeutic agent, usually a physical therapeutic agent.
5. one of the primary forms of sensation, as vision or touch.
[1610–20; < ML mod!lit!s. See MODAL, -ITY]

Perhaps definition 4 is what the questionnaire was aiming at? (and *do* enjoy the etymology...)