Corporate jargon (variously known as corporate speak, corporate lingo, corpo lingo, business speak, business jargon, management speak, workplace jargon, corpospeak, corporatese, or commercialese) is the

jargon Jargon, or technical language, is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular Context (language use), communicative context and may not be well understood outside ...

often used in large

corporation A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the State (polity), state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as ...

s, bureaucracies, and similar workplaces. The language register of the term is generally being presented in a negative light or disapprovingly. It is often considered to be needlessly obscure or, alternatively, used to disguise an absence of information. Its use in corporations and other large organisations has been widely noted in media. Marketing speak is a related label for wording styles used to promote a product or service.

Coinage and use

Corporate speak is associated with managers of large corporations, business management consultants, and occasionally government. Reference to such jargon is typically derogatory, implying the use of long, complicated, or obscure words; abbreviations;

euphemism A euphemism ( ) is when an expression that could offend or imply something unpleasant is replaced with one that is agreeable or inoffensive. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the u ...

s; and acronyms. For that reason some of its forms may be considered as an

argot A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argo ...

. Some of these words may be

neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

s or inventions, designed purely to fit the specialized meaning of a situation or even to " spin" negative situations as positive situations, for example in the practice of

greenwashing Greenwashing (a compound word modeled on "whitewash"), also called green sheen, is a form of advertising or marketing spin that deceptively uses green PR and green marketing to persuade the public that an organization's products, goals, or ...

. Although it is pervasive in the education field, its use has been criticized as reflecting a sinister view of students as commodities and schools as retail outlets.

Criticism

The use of corporate jargon is criticised for its lack of clarity as well as for its tedium, making meaning and intention opaque and understanding difficult. It is also criticized for not only enabling delusional thoughts, but allowing them to be seen as an asset in the workplace. Corporate jargon has been criticized as "pompous" and "a tool for making things seem more impressive than they are".

Steven Poole Steven Poole (born 1972) is a British author, journalist, and video game theorist. He particularly concerns himself with the abuse of language and has written two books on the subject: ''Unspeak'' (2006) and ''Who Touched Base in My Thought Showe ...

writes that it is "engineered to deflect blame, complicate simple ideas, obscure problems, and perpetuate power relations". ''Marketing speak'' is a related label for wording styles used to promote a product or service to a wide audience by seeking to create the impression that the vendors of the service possess a high level of sophistication, skill, and technical knowledge. Such language is often used in

marketing Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...

press releases A press release (also known as a media release) is an official statement delivered to members of the news media for the purpose of providing new information, creating an official statement, or making an announcement directed for public releas ...

, advertising copy, and prepared statements read by executives and politicians.

Examples

Many corporate-jargon terms have straightforward meanings in other contexts (e.g., ''leverage'' in physics, or ''picked up'' with a well-defined meaning in finance), but are used more loosely in business speak. For example, a ''deliverable'' can become any ''service or product''. The word ''team'' had specific meanings in agriculture and in sport before becoming a ubiquitous synonym for a group spanning one or more levels in a corporate organisation. The phrases ''going forward'' or ''moving forward'' make a confident gesture towards the future, but are generally vague on timing, which usually means they can be removed from a sentence with little or no effect on its overall meaning. In order to obfuscate or distract from unpleasant or unwanted news, filler such as the phrase "at this time" or overly complicated grammatical constructions – e.g. usage of the present progressive – is frequently used at the beginning of a sentence despite its clear redundancy. Examples include "At this time, we have decided we are not going to move forward with your application" when "We have decided not to move forward with your application" would suffice. Legal terms such as ''

Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code ( Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, w ...

'' can be used: for example, Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code is about US bankruptcy. Some systems of corporate jargon recycle pop ethics with terms such as ''responsibility''. Corporate speak in non-English-speaking countries frequently contains borrowed English acronyms, words, and usages. Russian-speakers, for instance, may eschew native constructions and use words such as (literally: for '

leader Leadership, is defined as the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or organizations. "Leadership" is a contested term. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints on the co ...

') or adopt forms such as ( for ' PR specialist'). Jargon, like other manifestations of language, can change over time; and

management fad Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a government bodies through business administration, nonprofit management, or the political science sub-field of public administr ...

s may influence management-speak. This changing popularity over time can be seen in the English corpus used by

Google Books Ngram Viewer The Google Books Ngram Viewer is an online search engine that charts the frequencies of any set of search strings using a yearly count of ''n''-grams found in printed sources published between 1500 and 2022 in Google's text corpora in English, ...

."empowerment" usage: 1960–
''Google Books Ngram Viewer''

References

External links

Business Terms and Business Jargon explained
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191010084252/http://www.scopulus.co.uk/business-jargon/ , date=2019-10-10
Corporate gibberish generator

Corporatepoems.com
Corporate language rating
Business Buzzword Generator

Example of a generator of random plausible business-speak sentences

Jargon Grader Database of over 700 corporate jargon terms

Business English dictionary for corporate jargon
Corporate jargon, Business terms Dialects of English

Coinage and use

Criticism

Examples

See also

References

Further reading

External links