Mostly why this stuff grates so badly is because we're obscenely conservative about language change. Boring, but there you go. It's nothing innate in most of these words or their constructions that hurts, except that they're new.
I'd hope that no one rails against evil backformations like "escalate" or "burgle" (Americans use the correct "burglarise", which sounds horrific to my ears). Not to mention dirty, redundant neologisms like "foreword" and "afterword".
Having said that, associations with groups you don't respect much will certainly factor in as well. I feel as soiled when I hear schoolkids on the bus talking about how something "was pretty lol" (said like "loll") or prefacing opinions with "TBH" as I do around management speak.
All that said, let's get back to hating on this shit, because it's more fun.
John Ralston Saul has plenty of interesting stuff in Voltaire's Bastards on management speak, which expands on the guts of what's already been said about cliques / in crowds and out crowds. The thrust of his argument is that to get ahead as a technocrat you score points for how, not what you say. "How" will change in context - a la Sick Boy's mention of academia - but the general point is to demonstrate to those with power that you can communicate messages to them in the way they want to receive them. And that that is more important (in the sense of powerful) than the content. Have you got a presentation with charts and graphs? Can you talk about stats, regardless of how horseshit they are? Can you use the language those with more power than you want you to use? Then you're on your way.
I think he's overly simplistic, but OTOH any of us with work experience in reasonably big organisations has probably come across a lower level manager who you know is never going to be a director or what have you because they can't do this kind of patter. They might be great at their job in many respects, but they can't "present" in the wider sense.
One thing I find particularly sickening is slipping into using these terms myself. I do a lot of presentations and training sessions and I find it all too easy to fall into a certain mode. I trained 100s of staff on a new computer system and wanted to tell the trainees not to worry about work they'd already done - that the system was to be used "from now on". But the temptation to say "going forward" was weirdly strong! I had to work pro-actively to avoid slipping. I guess there was absolutely nothing disincentivising using business jargon. Luckily, my internal drivers won out every time and even when talking to some points offline with individual trainees I avoided saying anything so silly.
Nah, but seriously, I do feel the gist of Saul's argument.
I'd hope that no one rails against evil backformations like "escalate" or "burgle" (Americans use the correct "burglarise", which sounds horrific to my ears). Not to mention dirty, redundant neologisms like "foreword" and "afterword".
Having said that, associations with groups you don't respect much will certainly factor in as well. I feel as soiled when I hear schoolkids on the bus talking about how something "was pretty lol" (said like "loll") or prefacing opinions with "TBH" as I do around management speak.
All that said, let's get back to hating on this shit, because it's more fun.
John Ralston Saul has plenty of interesting stuff in Voltaire's Bastards on management speak, which expands on the guts of what's already been said about cliques / in crowds and out crowds. The thrust of his argument is that to get ahead as a technocrat you score points for how, not what you say. "How" will change in context - a la Sick Boy's mention of academia - but the general point is to demonstrate to those with power that you can communicate messages to them in the way they want to receive them. And that that is more important (in the sense of powerful) than the content. Have you got a presentation with charts and graphs? Can you talk about stats, regardless of how horseshit they are? Can you use the language those with more power than you want you to use? Then you're on your way.
I think he's overly simplistic, but OTOH any of us with work experience in reasonably big organisations has probably come across a lower level manager who you know is never going to be a director or what have you because they can't do this kind of patter. They might be great at their job in many respects, but they can't "present" in the wider sense.
One thing I find particularly sickening is slipping into using these terms myself. I do a lot of presentations and training sessions and I find it all too easy to fall into a certain mode. I trained 100s of staff on a new computer system and wanted to tell the trainees not to worry about work they'd already done - that the system was to be used "from now on". But the temptation to say "going forward" was weirdly strong! I had to work pro-actively to avoid slipping. I guess there was absolutely nothing disincentivising using business jargon. Luckily, my internal drivers won out every time and even when talking to some points offline with individual trainees I avoided saying anything so silly.
Nah, but seriously, I do feel the gist of Saul's argument.
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