<ul>
<li>The corporate jargon is often described as fluffy, without any real substance and aimed towards the speaker’s self-inflated ego.</li>
<li>Words are substituted for analogies and references that take longer to process, and have the intention of wrapping, hiding or impeding actual, effective communication.</li>
</ul>

Language With No Substance

Concealment of facts, covering of real emotions and stating the unspeakable may be the unspoken purpose of the buzzword filled, corporate language, which takes different metaphors in different decades, like aviation (30,000-foot level outlook), big tech (bandwidth), wall street (stakeholders) and the industrial age (production capacity).

Purpose Of Corporate Language

As the corporates evolve, corporate-speak takes newer forms, mixing and matching of verbs and nouns, creating new acronyms and even new words (complexify, replatform, directionality)
All these buzzwords and references sometimes compete with and negate each other, rendering them useless, inefficient or even harmful.

New Mutations of Buzzwords

The underlying reasons for the use of this kind of language by employees can be:
<ul>
<li>Hidden anxiety about our relationship to work.</li>
<li>Concealing the trivial nature of our work.</li>
<li>Being internally ashamed of the kind of work being done.</li>
<li>Being constantly worried about the fragile nature of one’s employment.</li>
<li>Pretending that our jobs are more interesting and ‘large’ than they seem.</li>
</ul>

Reason for Corporate Speak

Corporate speak may not mean anything of value to anyone in a meeting, but like the Emperor's New Clothes, no one wants to point out the inefficiency and mind-numbing nature of the constant use of the jargon. Everyone pretends that they are on the same page as everyone else.

The Emporer's New Clothes

.. they can get inside our heads and can contaminate our thoughts in an instant. Jargon language that uses metaphors, references, metonyms and anthropomorphisms acts as a weapon against people in the office by lowering their positions and making them part of the general insanity.
The encouragement __of such language at the workplace serves as a reminder that delusion and cloaking of facts are considered an asset.

Words Are Like A Virus

Corporations have a language that they use while talking in meetings or communicating in email. It’s called Corporate Jargon.
Corporate jargon is a forced and complicated way to express something that can be said in simpler language, and in effect, take less time and mental energy.

Corporate Speak

This article was featured in One Great Story , New York 's reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. I worked at various start-ups for eight years beginning in 2010, when I was in my early 20s. Then I quit and went freelance for a while.

Corporate Speak

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