# In praise of pidgin > In monitoring and evaluation, partners often want to agree on their words first. Guest writer Ad Korf shows that a shared language grows out of collaboration… Source: https://narrate.works/resources-and-insights/pidgin-in-monitoring-and-evaluation Language: English (Nederlands: https://narrate.works/tools-en-inzichten/pidgin-in-monitoring-en-evaluatie) Publisher: Narrate (Narrate B.V.), https://narrate.works [Back to resources & insights](https://narrate.works/resources-and-insights) Long read 6 min read22 October 2026Guest writer Ad Korf In monitoring and evaluation, partners often want to agree on their words first. Guest writer Ad Korf shows that a shared language grows out of collaboration, and why a makeshift pidgin is a sign of progress. For networks & ecosystem builders, public-private partnerships and 1 moreEngagementImprovementBelongs to For [Networks & ecosystem builders](https://narrate.works/with/networks-ecosystem-builders), [Public-private partnerships](https://narrate.works/with/public-private-partnerships), [Foundations](https://narrate.works/with/foundations) Perspective [Engagement](https://narrate.works/impact-management#engage), [Improvement](https://narrate.works/impact-management#improve) Phase [Strategy & scope](https://narrate.works/resources-and-insights?phase=strategyScope), [Interpretation & evaluation](https://narrate.works/resources-and-insights?phase=interpretationEvaluation), [Engagement & communication](https://narrate.works/resources-and-insights?phase=engagementCommunication) Frameworks and methods [Theory of change (ToC)](https://narrate.works/impact-management/frameworks#verandertheorie) Keywords [Theory of change](https://narrate.works/keywords#verandertheorie), [Indicator set](https://narrate.works/keywords#indicatoren), [Baseline study](https://narrate.works/keywords#nulmeting), [Impact dashboard](https://narrate.works/keywords#impactdashboard) When a group starts on monitoring and evaluation together, the first thing it often makes is a glossary. What do we mean by outcome? What counts as a result? Who is a participant? It feels careful. Yet it usually works the other way round. A shared language is what collaboration leaves behind, not what it needs to begin. The work brings a foundation, a delivery partner, participants and sometimes a council to one table. They come from different worlds, each with its own words. A funder talks about indicators and reporting. A field worker talks about families, conversations and trust. A resident talks about the street. How do such partners find each other when they do not speak the same language? Linguists have an answer. It is called pidgin. ## What a pidgin is A pidgin is a language of necessity. It appears when two groups without a common tongue still have to get something done, such as trade or work. You can recognise a pidgin by four things. - Nobody’s mother tongue · it exists only for contact between the groups. - Small and practical · few words, simple grammar, only what the task needs. - Tied to one domain · you can do business in it, but you cannot argue, comfort or philosophise. - Borrowed words · the vocabulary usually comes from the stronger side, the sound and structure often from the other. So there is always a balance of power inside it. Some examples. Russenorsk was the trading language of Russian and Norwegian fishermen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It vanished when the trade stopped. Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea began as a pidgin and is now an official national language. Sranan Tongo and Papiamentu are creoles with a similar history. A pidgin can go three ways. It dies out when contact ends. It settles into a fixed auxiliary language for one domain. Or it creolises: a new generation grows up with it, and it becomes rich and complete. Then it is no longer a go-between, but a language of its own. ## What the research says The idea that language grows out of collaboration is not new. Seven studies each show it in their own way. - Peter Galison · worlds do not start with a shared language, but with exchange. Repeated trading grows a pidgin first, and only later a creole. Language is the sediment of collaboration. - Donnellon, Gray and Bougon · groups can act together while giving that action different meanings. Shared action is enough. Shared meaning is not required. - Karl Weick · meaning comes afterwards. First you act, then you understand what you did. - Star and Griesemer · boundary objects make it possible to work together without agreeing. The object carries the connection, so the words do not have to yet. - Beth Bechky · understanding between occupations grows in the work itself. Name the differences in each other’s work, find common ground, and you change how the other side sees it. - Paul Carlile · shared words only solve the first boundary. A difference in meaning needs translation. A difference in interest needs something to change. - Etienne Wenger · meaning comes from taking part and writing things down, together. What you write down without taking part carries no meaning of its own. Galison saw this among physicists and engineers who built radar and computer simulations together. They had no shared theory. They did have a shared working language about the thing they were making. That language was local, incomplete and effective. ## What this means for monitoring and evaluation Take a theory of change, a set of indicators or a dashboard. In monitoring and evaluation these are boundary objects. The board of a foundation reads accountability in them. A delivery partner reads a work plan. A resident mostly looks at whether the neighbourhood is getting better. That is fine, as long as the action holds together. Around such an object, a pidgin grows by itself. A steering group might say ‘the baseline’ and mean the conversation in March. Or it might say ‘the green box’ and mean the goal that is on track. An outsider understands little of it. For those taking part, it is exactly enough. Such a pidgin is a sign of progress, not a flaw. It shows that real exchange is happening. Polish it out of a neat final report and you throw away part of the learning. ## The risk of starting with language Demand that the partners speak one language first, and in practice the most powerful party chooses the words. In monitoring and evaluation that is often the funder, or policy. It is assimilation that looks like connection. So notice whose words they are. Do they all come from policy language, or from the grant report template? Then the balance is unequal, even if the partners use the words correctly. Connecting does not mean making everything the same. You can translate without losing your own voice. ## How to build bridges - Start with something you do together · a joint action or a shared object, not a glossary. Draw a theory of change together, or take a first measurement together. - Accept pidgin · half-words and borrowed words belong to the start. They are not mistakes to correct. - Harvest language afterwards · write down the words that emerged by themselves. Keep a glossary that grows, not one fixed in advance. - Let meanings sit side by side · as long as the action holds, the partners need not mean the same thing. - See your own creole as success · when the partners speak the mixed language themselves, the collaboration has found its own language. ## The person in between Every partnership has people who understand both sides. I call them people in between. Think of a programme manager who talks to a foundation’s board and to people in the neighbourhood. Or an evaluator who turns figures into stories, and stories back into figures. People in between speak the language of both sides. That makes them the makers of the pidgin. It is a craft, and it deserves attention. So learn the pidgin on purpose, and write down how it grows. The best a person in between can achieve is to be needed less. When the partners speak the mixed language themselves, the translator can step back. The person in between disappears. That is not a loss. It is proof that the bridge is standing. A shared language is not the foundation under the bridge. It is the path that appears because people walk across it together. Sources (7) Source Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics Publisher Peter Galison, University of Chicago Press Date 1997 Consulted 22 October 2026 Status Not yet checkedThe source is in our register, but we have not yet taken a quote from it. [Open the source](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo3710110.html) We provide empirical evidence to show that through communication, organized action can occur despite differences of interpretation among organizational members. Abstract Source Communication, Meaning, and Organized Action Publisher Anne Donnellon, Barbara Gray en Michel G. Bougon, Administrative Science Quarterly 31(1) Date 1986 Consulted 22 October 2026 Status CheckedWe read the source itself and took a literal quote from it. [Open the source](https://doi.org/10.2307/2392765) Source Sensemaking in Organizations Publisher Karl E. Weick, Sage Date 1995 Consulted 22 October 2026 Status Not yet checkedThe source is in our register, but we have not yet taken a quote from it. [Open the source](https://www.sagepub.com/en-us/cab/sensemaking-in-organizations/book4988) Boundary objects are both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them. Abstract Source Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39 Publisher Susan Leigh Star en James R. Griesemer, Social Studies of Science 19(3) Date 1989 Consulted 22 October 2026 Status CheckedWe read the source itself and took a literal quote from it. [Open the source](https://doi.org/10.1177/030631289019003001) if members of these communities provide solutions which invoke the differences in the work contexts and create common ground between the communities, they can transform the understandings of others Abstract Source Sharing Meaning Across Occupational Communities: The Transformation of Understanding on a Production Floor Publisher Beth A. Bechky, Organization Science 14(3) Date 2003 Consulted 22 October 2026 Status CheckedWe read the source itself and took a literal quote from it. [Open the source](https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.14.3.312.15162) A framework is developed that describes three progressively complex boundaries—syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic—and three progressively complex processes—transfer, translation, and transformation. Abstract Source Transferring, Translating, and Transforming: An Integrative Framework for Managing Knowledge Across Boundaries Publisher Paul R. Carlile, Organization Science 15(5) Date 2004 Consulted 22 October 2026 Status CheckedWe read the source itself and took a literal quote from it. [Open the source](https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1040.0094) Meaningful learning in social contexts requires both participation and reification to be in interplay. Learning as the production of social structure, p. 1 Source Communities of practice and social learning systems: the career of a concept Publisher Etienne Wenger, in Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice (Springer) Date 2010 Consulted 22 October 2026 Status CheckedWe read the source itself and took a literal quote from it. [Open the source](https://www.wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/09-10-27-CoPs-and-systems-v2.01.pdf) Photo: [Marko Lengyel](https://unsplash.com/@marko_lengyel?utm_source=narrate&utm_medium=referral) via [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=narrate&utm_medium=referral) ## Need specific guidance? Get in touch for personalised support with your impact management question.