Buzz Words, Catch Phrases, and Manager Speak?

rivendahl asks: "I have not seen, or perhaps not looked hard enough, to find an article that taps the core of the American business; buzz words. Personally, I hate buzz words, 'clik' words, cliches, catch phrases, and management speak (lingo). One of my favorite pet-peeves is the term, 'going forward'. This whole new concept of 'going forward' grates [on my] nerves. I currently work at a large international company. I have moved departments in the last six months. In my previous department we were made to read books and attend classes on 'positive, forward thinking' and 'action items', as well as classes on 'accepting total accountability'. It made me sick. Please, I ask the Slashdot community to share your displeasure or buzz words along with a few of your most hated management catch phrases."

Comments

Re:People are making up words now.

[david duncan scott]

Well, God knows that IT has a rich collection of jargon, but "gentoo" and "linux" are simply proper nouns, and theefore have no more need to appear in a dictionary than "Jim" or "Bob" or "General Motors". "Robusticity", on the other hand, is simply mangled, like "embiggen" or "speechify" -- it may have a place in slang or humour, but it would bother me if it came from an evidently serious manager of a service important to my company.

It's OK with me if my surgeon says that he'll "put his foots in gear and locomote" down to the bar for a drink after work, but if he sits in his office and tells me that he's going to "surgify that malignancicity" I'm looking for new doc.

There are no bad words,

[hey!]

but there are plenty of stupid speakers.

The problem is not having words or phrases that imply subtle differences in meaning. That is a good thing that enriches the language. The problem is when people use phrases that should imply a meaning other than they intend, in order to sound jazzy. Since they don't actually mean to imply a difference between "leverage" and "use", or "impact" and "affect", gradually these phrases become completely synonymous. The language is robbed of one more means for expressing subtle shades of meaning.

Technical words, such as "Gentoo", or "fdisk" are useful, compact words wtih precise meaning, like "vector" or "matrix" in mathematics. Every field has its jargon, which serves well within the field but are inscrutable from the outside. Management has its own useful jargon: "ROI","balance sheet", "MOU" etc.

Managementspeak, however, is a completely different animal. It isn't shorthand, but more of an elaborately ornamented longhand. It tries to sound like it is saying more than it is. It dresses up the simple to sound profound, the empty to sound substantive. It is inherently deceptive; it is the language of exploitation and chicanery.

People who make words into talismans are in danger of being enfogged in their own linguistic obfuscation. The fetish word "synergy" has lead meany boards into unwise corporate mergers, because it sounded like more than a vague and unfounded wish. People who once held stock in Time Warner probably wish there was no such word in the dictionary now.