One of the most active sources of new terms is apparently layoffs. Consulting companies and CEOs try to one-up each other, perhaps unconsciously, who can come up with and then own the coolest new term.
Then it starts spreading. CEOs read the same magazines and blogs and then everyone is using the term. "Hmm, I kinda like how so and so used the term 'circling back' I'll start using it too, it just seems so fresh and cool. Everyone will be impressed". [1]
I always wonder how people end up writing in that style. Do they actually think like that, as in for an hour they switch to thinking in corporate-speak, and later switch back to thinking normally. Or do they think normally and then translate as they type so "fuck that guy blah blah" becomes "we reached out to the developer and told them we'll be letting them go".
Imagine the tragedy of a poor CEO stuck in corporate-speak mode, unable to plainly communicate with family or even order coffee, because nobody understands them or just thinks they are an asshole.
I think a lot of people miss the important distinction between jargon and buzzwords.
Jargon: special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand.
Buzzword: a word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context.
A lot of these "corporate-speak" terms that are easy to poke fun at are jargon created to describe very specific, nuanced ideas within a professional group - they make communication easier. Then maybe the popular ones get used more broadly as buzzwords, by people who don't really know what they're talking about, and then it becomes assumed that anyone using that term doesn't know what they're talking about -- a huge disservice to the original creators of the jargon term, who coined it because they needed a word or phrase for nuanced communication with each other.
In my old management consulting job, we used this kind of jargon all the time. We knew it was jargon, many (but not all) of us never spoke like that in our personal lives. But at work, it helped us be more effective communicators.
Low-hanging-fruit is an example - does anyone have a shorter way of describing the idea? Sometimes we called them "easy wins", but that's as jargon-y as anything else I've heard.
> Consulting companies and CEOs try to one-up each other, perhaps unconsciously, who can come up with and then own the coolest new term.
This is an interesting example of a euphemistic treadmill. Corporate-speak has to change because each cool new term (e.g. downsizing) eventually gets poisoned by what it actually describes.
For a dysphemistic treadmill: "bleeding edge" was originally satire about the pain of being "past the cutting edge", but it gets used sincerely to describe new projects and even advertise startups. At this point it's so unremarkable that Programming Sucks had to use "hemorrhaging edge" to get the same effect.
More interesting question - since bureaucratic style is meant to shield blame, i.e. to put the situation into words such that the primary actors are put in a semantic position outside the scope of direct blame, then do the people who write in that style start thinking in it, and then do they stop being able to perceive themselves as the direct cause of events, to some extent? Language shapes thought to some extent, so if you use blameless language, do you start thinking of yourself as not responsible for anything?
I am quite good at "corporate speak" when i need it. I tend to use when i want to be really vexing for the receiver.
In general, i begin with "what i want to say" and then i generate the smoothest way to explain it in a sentence, without anything that someone could "grasp" on.
It tends to be enough. So i don't think i ever think in corporate speak. I just try to use my imagination.
I use the same process, though I realized that to do that effectively you need to have appropriate vocabulary. An occasional press release you stumble upon, or a dystopian sci-fi movie/novel you read, serve as good sources of useful phrases.
Political press releases are fantastic for this. "If by whiskey" has become infamous, but the actual technique can still be made quite subtle. Similarly, "neither confirm nor deny" is a trope, but it was originally a lesson in avoiding giving away negative information.
Well i read a _lot_. Like during 10 years i read one book per day or more. I am lower now, but i am slowly getting back to it. So i think i have the vocabulary anyway. It is deeply engrained into me now.
I think business speak is like a second language in that I may need to switch to using it for a while and certain constructs I'll get tripped up on and others not so much. But like any language, if you use it often enough you may start to actually think using the language.
I just wanted to point out that your 2 examples are manifestations of different phenomena:
>One of the most active sources of new terms is apparently layoffs. Consulting companies and CEOs try to one-up each other, perhaps unconsciously, who can come up with and then own the coolest new term.
(1) euphemisms for negative events like "layoffs"/"firings" into "downsizing", "rightsizing", "resource actions", etc. Same situation as using "unintended targets", "collateral damage", etc for civilian deaths in war.
>"Hmm, I kinda like how so and so used the term 'circling back' I'll start using it too, it just seems so fresh and cool.
(2) phrases of "social graces" such as "circling back", "reaching out", "touch base" instead of the blunt tonality of "I will call you", "I will notify you", "Be prepared for me to be back at your desk a little later for your answer", etc. It's fascinating that this language lubrication to not make other people not feel like they are at our beck & call has been happening forever. If it was 200 years ago, I suppose one person might hand a note written on a piece a paper to a servant, and then the servant then passes that paper to the target's servant, and finally the target's servant gives the paper to the target. It seems like reinvention of phrases like "circling back" are recreating this non-threatening version of "we will be communicating later".
I understand that people can be irritated with both examples. However, (1) is more about dishonesty and deflection where (2) is just human grooming and ego preservation.
That, plus a layer of "everyone knows the shitty thing I mean when I say this, time to update". Hence "firing" becomes "downsizing" becomes "rightsizing".
Except that these are individuals who have a lot of power and what they do and what they say affect a lot of people. So it is kind of more interesting to study.
One of the most active sources of new terms is apparently layoffs. Consulting companies and CEOs try to one-up each other, perhaps unconsciously, who can come up with and then own the coolest new term.
Then it starts spreading. CEOs read the same magazines and blogs and then everyone is using the term. "Hmm, I kinda like how so and so used the term 'circling back' I'll start using it too, it just seems so fresh and cool. Everyone will be impressed". [1]
I always wonder how people end up writing in that style. Do they actually think like that, as in for an hour they switch to thinking in corporate-speak, and later switch back to thinking normally. Or do they think normally and then translate as they type so "fuck that guy blah blah" becomes "we reached out to the developer and told them we'll be letting them go".
Imagine the tragedy of a poor CEO stuck in corporate-speak mode, unable to plainly communicate with family or even order coffee, because nobody understands them or just thinks they are an asshole.
[1] http://paulgraham.com/circling.html