Yet another question popped into my in-box last week, this time about vocabulary on an interpretive sign:

“A member of the watershed group I’m doing this project for thinks we should leave words like ‘stormwater‘ and ‘watershed‘ on [an interpretive] sign so people can learn what they mean. He’s concerned that if we don’t challenge people just a bit they won’t ever learn about watersheds. I see his point but I’m concerned if people don’t know those words they won’t bother to look it up and the sign won’t have as much impact. (Yes, no or maybe?)”

Thanks for the question. It comes up a lot in my workshops. I’ll address it in a roundabout manner.

It is a deeply rooted instinct among nature protection and pollution control elite to try to teach the public our vocabulary, to arm them with the information they need to arrive at the right conclusions. We are convinced that people need to have the facts before they will form new opinions and habits, or change old opinion and habits.

Yet social research usually finds otherwise. Here’s a little example I like to share when this question pops up. A 2006 study sponsored by National Geographic found that when younger American adults are presented with a map of the United States:

• One in four can’t find the Gulf of Mexico
• One in three can’t find Louisiana
• One-half can’t find Mississippi

Think about that for just a minute. After thousands upon thousands upon thousands of news stories about Hurricane Katrina, complete with maps and every imaginable infographic, many Americans have still not learned the most basic geographic facts of the situation. And despite that, they’ve formed strong opinions about who’s to blame and what should be done next.

At dinner tables all across America, people discussed the aftermath of the hurricane like this:

• The tragic lack of fairness in the racial disparity of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
• Our fury at federal, state, and local authorities for failing to work together to bring aid the families and children of the Gulf Coast
• The outpouring of support we all offered to the Red Cross and other charities that told us what we could to do to
• The Bush administration’s irresponsible failure to plan ahead for a disaster experts had warned was coming
• The need to invest in rebuilding New Orleans and preventing another catastrophe like Katrina

Sound familiar? It should. Those are water words that work. In the wake of Katrina, everyday citizens did not whip out their roadmaps to look for where New Orleans was — they scoured the news looking for evidence of leadership qualities and commitment to broad social values. And nature protection and pollution control experts will enjoy more success changing minds and behavior by expecting the public to respond to future situations this way and calibrating our message accordingly.

So back to the question: People just don’t need to understand expert shoptalk like “stormwater” and “watershed” to appreciate the importance of wetlands, forests, raingardens, rain barrels, porous pavement, and the like. Why turn well-meaning citizens off with a boring vocabulary lesson when you cut straight to the chase by highlighting broad social values like “clean water,” “nature protection,” and “wildlife?”