Buzzwords and corporate jargon can be infuriating, confusing and downright silly. But breaking up with them isn’t an option—here’s why
Ever since humans first formed groups around professional trades, there has existed jargon, vocation-specific language. Professional discourse demands speedy transfers of information. But what has developed out of this is an increasingly idiosyncratic language: think “disruptors”, “backburners”, “needle-moving” and “opening the kimono”.
This exposure to jargon in our office environments has turned what should be an invaluable linguistic toolset into a subject of universal ridicule. In popular media—from the panels of the late 20th century comic strips Doonesbury and Dilbert to depictions through the 1999 satirical comedy Office Space and Silicon Valley, the sitcom that ran from 2014 to 2019—corporate lingo is presented as a source of annoyance or gibberish. Yet, even while its use triggers eye rolls, jargon thrives.
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Who’s to blame? “It’s often the seniors at a company who use it, thanks to something called linguistic inertia”, says Zachariah Brown, an assistant professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Business School, who co-authored a report titled Does Your Office Have a Jargon Problem? published by the Harvard Business Review in 2021.
“[Jargon] is more common to them and it just pops into their heads more quickly. But then the junior people overuse it when they feel they’re in the spotlight or being evaluated because they want to seem like they belong.”
Brown has conducted research into jargon and how it operates as a signifier of status and expertise. He believes that negative perceptions of jargon are based on a human instinct to judge language that’s used for anything other than communication. But as he explains, our choice of words always features a performative element.
“We use words for communicative needs. If a thing is blue and I want to convey to you that it is blue, I’m using the word blue,” he says. “But there’s a tension between this communicative need and social needs—such as wanting to belong and also to be respected: ‘I want you to take me seriously and not think I’m some clown who doesn't know what he’s talking about.’”
Tatler reached out to its Gen.T honourees to see how their practical experiences with jargon matched up with the theoretical. Hong Kong-based Anushka Purohit, founder of Breer, admitted that while she originally hated jargon, she now sees value in how these status signals do identify valuable contacts, especially at networking events.