Blogging in various sites, Prize-winning novels, award-winning movies, TV reports, new paper articles, speeches, memos, PowerPoint presentations, popular one-liners, hit songs- what do these media have in common? Language naturally!

We are talking here of clever use of language where we tweak it, pun it, break it, beat it, mould it to put your point across to the other person to your benefit. We admire people who have the gift of gab, who are natural born raconteurs. Why, I have stood many a times in front of the mirror trying to punctuate my sentences with more than a pause- a sweep of my arm, a head shake, trying to make effective use of body language to convey to my audience my point of view.

Whenever my friends make a great presentation we cc EVERYBODY a 'well done' mail. He or she has made such optimum of use of words by intelligently mixing brevity and humor, facts and wish-lists, sometimes trading length for short and sharp communication. Now after my exposure to the crowd from IT, all the rules of effective communication have changed. It has what we call a paradigm shift for me. Now language needn't be "beautiful" only "understood". An "exquisite" compliment is useless if the carpenter doesn't understand the word. A staid 'good' will work equally well because the end-recipient knows the meaning.

Instructions issued to my driver are meaningless if they not used with 'flash-card precision'. It goes like this- Babu you come 8.30. No late. Then we go office. Then you go home, drop sir to office. And it goes on and on. Language is a function of time and place- as simple as that. So, among friends if you have fixed Friday 6th 1.30 for a lunch rendezvous you say “we have decided to meet on Friday ” Whereas a person working in the IT industry will say “lets freeze this”

Access was a hitherto unknown word. I really have no memory of the word access maybe except in military operations. Now everything has an access and an exit. Residential complexes have access, an authorized user has access, you are either allowed to access or barred from access. It can be used as a verb or as a noun. Loop, cool it pal is very common for the take it easy, oh drop the crap is bin it, the turn of this IT booms and revolution has not left behind the change incorporated in the language, we need to brush up with another dictionary, from SMS to the pal talk we try to condense it as much as possible and chill it. was something used in the tailoring context. Now loop is used in a way that its very form suggests- to include. Drill down is not oil, it’s the nature of data

These conversations have killed my illusions of language. Language is as malleable, mercurial, and volatile as you want it to be. It can soar for epics and drop all its pretensions for the street. It will speak in one tongue inside a bank and another on the shop floor.

It will accommodate the erudite and the laborer equally generously. Language will transform into crass porn and rise gracefully in a ballad. It will get cantankerous when angry or calm inside a meditation hall. Use it to lose it (relationships, rapport, and support) or use it to gain (the same things that you effectively lost). Language is constantly reinventing itself. From silent movies to talkies, from huge print media to palm pilot and hand-held. It can contract and expand to fit all attention spans, formats and end-users. It can be curvaceous like heroines or it can be lean like a tennis player.

Point is you have to take the right pick. Make your choice.. sunkan