Office Jargon
"As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck."Winston Smith witnesses duckspeak in George Orwell's 1984
Know your enemy
Is your holistic approach complimenting your helicopter view, thus creating a win-win situation? Are your blue-sky ideas selling at ten, or have you just gone 404? Is your job a good job or just a GOOD (Get-Out-Of-Debt) job? Have you ever considered taking your talk offline? If so, you're working in an office where people converse in a confusing half-language of jargon and acronyms.
According to a survey last spring by Office Angels Secretarial Recruitment Consultancy, nearly two thirds of office workers use management double-speak. Buzzwords and phrases such as 'talk offline' and 'blue-sky ideas' have become part of the workplace idiom. If, according to Max Weinreich, 'a language is a dialect with an army and a navy', then office jargon is a dialect with a palm pilot and an expense account.
In an ideal world, office jargon would serve as a common language which clarified the workings of business to each and every participant in it. New terms would come into use that helped to explain the character of new concepts and business practices. However, at its worst, office jargon creates a select club where the players speak the same language. If you can't understand the language, you won't be able to play the game, let alone win it.
The Office Angels survey reported that one in five employees feel at a disadvantage at work if they do not use jargon. Forty per cent found the phrases irritating and distracting at meetings, while ten per cent dismissed speakers who used them most often as "pretentious and therefore untrustworthy".
It seems there are regional variations in the extent of office gobbledegook. It has become almost twice as common in the South East of England (where more than forty per cent of employees are afflicted by the virus) than in the straight-talking, no-nonsense North, where only a quarter of workers drop office jargon into professional conversations.
The report found that more than one third of employees used jargon to show they are "in control thus making them more credible" and to "keep pace with other colleagues". Use of a special vocabulary is a time-honoured means of emphasising your membership of the group and your importance within that group, while setting you apart from ignorant outsiders. The pinnacle of achievement within the group is to successfully coin a new phrase. But this is a rare occurrence. Most additions to office jargon seem to originate from the world at large - the Internet, printed media, conferences or are ad hoc transplants from other sectors of society.
Origin of the speeches
In the mediaeval world, written language was the sole preserve of the ruling classes, particularly the clergy. Most books were written in Latin, which remained a mystery to the most of the population. Mass ignorance was the order of the day across Europe as education required competence in an ancient and foreign language. History does not relate what ordinary people made of the confusing jumble of strange syllables that constituted church services; they probably emerged from their pews none the wiser. However, attempts to assimilate pig Latin were made in folk songs. Phrases like 'hey-nonny-no' appeared because the occurrence of gibberish and nonsense was what the audience expected in a good singsong. Furthermore, such phrases were funny. Jargon, at its best, carries with it a good deal of humour.
More than half a millennium later, the same magpie tendency is evident. Scraps of specialised English are cobbled together into new contexts and regurgitated in novel sets of circumstances. Phrases with origins in the primaeval word-swamps of the armed forces, football pitch or IT department have found new careers in the boardroom. They have become, in effect, commercialised. Phrases such as 'he scored a spectacular own goal' or 'she shot herself in the foot' are stripped of their old kit or uniform and dressed up in a neat business suit. However, the core business language of profit, loss and accounting is so dull that jargon phrases themselves soon become vapid clichés, eroded of meaning.
According to Andreaus Antoniou, Senior Support Analyst at Arthur Andersen, "most of the reports and emails sent over from the US are full of jargon, that filters down through the company". However, he sees jargon as a positive thing. "It helps you to refer to the correct terminology and be specific". Whether or not Antoniou's minions share this optimism cannot be counted on. In a world where a degree of deference and quiet forbearance is still expected, unpalatable jargon is rarely spat back at the cook.
Indeed, the main producers of fresh jargon seem to be management consultancies and business publications. Corporate motivators and consultants seek to set themselves apart from the competition with trademark words and phrases. However, the meat of their ideas is usually indistinguishable. Perhaps the human jargon gland is inflamed by the pernicious effects of long hours, too much coffee and radiation from mobile phones and glaring computer monitors?
Jargon as bludgeon
Sometimes, words such as 'downsizing' are introduced to disguise the truth behind the action. Jargon becomes divisive, setting management against the managed, hiding the fact that the profit-motive eclipses all other concerns and responsibilities. The worst instances of jargon, rather than elucidating unfamiliar concepts, are used to keep ranks. Buzzwords used by management have been created to give meaning to a term that does not exist or means just the opposite. Malcolm Cordwell a Copywriter for Saatchi & Saatchi warns, "there can be a suspicion from the creatives in the company about confusing buzzwords used by more high powered account executives and there is evidence of people using these buzzwords without really understanding what they mean."
Jargon operates in such a way that the fear of ridicule prevents sceptics from questioning the mysterious pronouncements made by their bosses. Malcolm Cordwell concedes "most people turn these high powered buzzwords and acronyms into stupid sayings and make them fun." Again, humour triumphs over adversity and incomprehension. So, those who use jargon with bad intentions or partial understanding run the risk of making fools of themselves. Respect for management becomes undermined, as the meaning is lost in a confusing blizzard of worthless words.
I-resign.com's approach to dealing with office jargon
Treat it with the contempt or respect it deserves on a case-by-case basis. If an item of jargon serves to show up management as a gang of bungling, semi-literate fools, make sure you spread the word among all your friends and colleagues. If the phrase makes you laugh or crystallises an elusive truth, adopt it as your own and astonish your friends and colleagues. If the phrase is used in a meeting by a besuited, half-witted bore, snort with derision and then tell all of your friends and colleagues how you slapped the sucker down. Then there's buzzword bingo, where you tick off phrases and bellow 'HOUSE!' when a critical number have been used. If you come across a real gem, send it to tim@I-resign.com and I'll add it to the list of terms at the end of this article.
Maybe you're one of those unfortunates who just doesn't get it and is perpetually mystified by the language they encounter in meetings? Use the links below to see if you can dig up the meaning in your own time. Showing weakness in the face of blinding stupidity is not going to do your career any good. That is unless you use your ignorance as a weapon - 'I'm sorry, you're not making any sense. I don't know what you mean and I don't think you or anyone else in this room does either."
Some prime examples, good and bad, of jargon you may come across:
Adminisphere - The rarefied organisational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
Blamestorming - the practice of sitting in a meeting and shifting responsibility for poor performance or abject failure from department to department.
Blue sky ideas - Exceedingly novel or advanced concepts.
Cobweb Site - A World Wide Web site that hasn't been updated for a long time. A dead Web page.
Cube farm - an office containing many veal pens (see below).
Flashturbation - the excessive and self-congratulatory use of useless animation, usually on a web site.Golden-handshake/parachute/handcuffs - receiving financial recompense for retiring/quitting/joining a company. Golden handcuffs are used when the reward is conditional on length of service or achievement.
Low-hanging fruit - Easy targets. Smartass arboreal baboons probably used this term in pre-human times.
Ohnosecond - that minuscule fraction of time in which you realize you've just made a big mistake.
Open-Collar Workers - People who work at home or telecommute.
Sacred Cow - Something, which cannot be questioned or eliminated. Nowadays, of course, there are no sacred cows.
Veal pen - the cubicles inhabited by denizens of the modern office.