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"Corporate Buzzwords" in English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6436 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 34 11 January 2010 at 1:51am | IP Logged | ||
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Has anyone working for an American company encountered this?
There's like an entirely new version of English being used in American Workplaces. I found this website that has a glossary and examples and it brought back terrible memories of my last job where almost everyone literally spoke this way: Corporate Buzzwords. I can remember being in meetings where people spoke for hours yet nothing was actually said, just a bunch of buzzwords thrown around to make it seem like everyone was being productive. From a language perspective, do you view this as a good thing or a bad thing? Please note that I'm not referring to "jargon," as jargon is entirely necessary within specialized fields. I'm talking about buzzwords that really don't mean anything, such as in the example I linked to above. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5468 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 2 of 34 11 January 2010 at 2:14am | IP Logged | ||
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The comic strip Dilbert often makes fun of this.
I know they like to use the word "paradigm" a lot. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6121 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 3 of 34 11 January 2010 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||
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That was my life for 25 years in corporate America. They missed a few though:
Sidebar - synonym to offline - something not appropriate that needs to be discussed later - "We need a sidebar on that" Drink the cool-aid - to get in step with the company's goals and thought processes - "you need to drink the cool-aid" Here's a Finance and Accounting one: Baked in - Did you include interest expense in that proforma? Yeah, it's baked in. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5520 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 4 of 34 11 January 2010 at 3:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Apart from the very obvious ones like "catch up" and "leverage", I dislike "at this time," which really only means "now".
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 34 11 January 2010 at 4:15am | IP Logged | ||
From a communicative perspective, I think that they're bad since their communicative value is very low, or they can even shut off communication as the overuse of clichés, and certain metaphors and fixed expressions has a tendency of turning off an even semi-informed audience. I know that I tune out when hearing someone draw on his/her fluency in buzzwords. From a linguistic perspective, they defy being classified as "good" or "bad" as far as I can tell. I haven't had the pleasure of a meeting replete with these buzzwords, but even occasional use of buzzwords can annoy me. What's more is that this is not unique to American workplaces. Anywhere where you have to evade/stretch the truth, sound prestigious/trendy/cool, exploit asymmetrical information or pull snow-jobs on listeners or readers relies on using varying amounts of buzzwords, "weasel-words"/"peacock-terms", tautology or verbosity. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5966 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 34 11 January 2010 at 4:23am | IP Logged | ||
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That's a good topic and something I was recently thinking about. Buzzwords can serve a purpose if you are constantly meeting new people through your work, just as a start or to set up some common ground before discussing anything serious, but they are really tiresome used more than once or twice. And if they are entirely content-free, they are just an evasive waste of time. If you have to go to meetings that like this:
. . . How would you like to have a seminar in having strategic imperatives and having vision? You know, like, outreach? And having satisfaction? I welcome you to our performance enhancement renown management session. The first behavior we need to do is identify needs. Then we need to define a model. Then we’ll model our behavior on identification. So, in the end, we’ll need to identify definitions. Throughout our awareness journey, we’ll do a lot of communication . . . vision, outreach, imperative, model . . . this will melt your mind. There are a few absolutely hilarious buzzword lexicons online. Some of these "words" are actually very creative!: Buzzwhack or for more academic/pseudoscientific stuff, see The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense (not for the easily offended!) butterflies and wheels I got very distracted reading these tonight, laughed myself sick and accomplished nothing . . . such a lack of vision and outreach. Disgraceful. I wonder if other languages have their own buzzwords? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6767 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 7 of 34 11 January 2010 at 4:47am | IP Logged | ||
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"Drink the Kool-Aid" isn't a corporate buzzword, it's a metaphor for blindly doing what you're told, and it is
highly negative in connotation. It refers to the mass suicides of the Jonestown cult, where 918 followers of Jim Jones were persuaded to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. On the topic of corporate buzzwords, Japanese has its share. They're not pervasive as in English, but they are a major pain to translate. Edited by Captain Haddock on 11 January 2010 at 4:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6049 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 8 of 34 11 January 2010 at 6:19am | IP Logged | ||
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"step up" !!!! I hate this word, it means basically anything you want it to mean with the end result being "make what I want happen without me having to explain anything".
the full version "step up to the plate" makes me sick when I hear it. Edited by irrationale on 11 January 2010 at 6:20am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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