War of the Words
Rhymer Rigby investigates the often baffling prevalence of linguistic manipulation in the workplace.

I am reading an email from a woman who works in public relations and who, to spare her blushes, must remain nameless. She is asking me if I would be 'happy for us to progress a meeting'. I'm not sure what she's talking about. Leaving aside the fact that 10 years ago, a meeting might progress—but no-one would progress a meeting—it is also a piece of odd inexactitude.

For starters, progress—when used in this relatively novel sense—usually means to push along towards some sort of conclusion. But I don't have a meeting with her client yet. I think what she really wants to do is facilitate a meeting. In the meantime, as I am rather busy, I will probably progress her email in the direction of my recycle bin. But I'm still left wondering why she used this word when 'set up' would have expressed her sentiment with admirable accuracy and clarity.

In fact there are a number of possible reasons for her linguistic meandering. Firstly, when people use new words they can show that they are special—that they belong because they have their own language. The second reason is to appear hip in a business sense. The third is the so-called marketisation of society—in other words, commerce and business have spread to areas where they once held little sway. And the fourth reason is simply to make unpleasant things sound less unpleasant.

Let's take the first reason—the desire to exclude others. 'Thieves and adolescents do this by developing what the linguist MAK Halliday called their own 'anti-language',' says Paul Chilton, professor of linguistics at the University of East Anglia. 'And a lot of the current business speak might have this purpose. Even if words like co-opertition and people based channel are not totally unintelligible, it does take you a few minutes, if you are not an insider. So these words act as a badge of membership.'

Charles Sutton of business psychology consultancy Nicholson McBride agrees, and takes this thinking to the next level. 'It can be more than just belonging. It's also a way of saying that what I'm a member of has some scientific validity. Many of these words have a scientific ring to them and this goes back to the idea of the rightness of doctors and scientists. Consequently you get the adoption of these pseudo-scientific terms. Users believe they give extra power and meaning to what they're saying.'

There is no better example of this than the transformation of 'personnel' into human resources. How much more professional and precise does the latter sound? This descriptive value add is doubtless reflected in the fact that people will now cheerfully call themselves human resources professionals, whereas if they'd said the alternative—'Hi, I'm a personnel professional'—people would be justified in laughing their HRses off.

Allied to the desire to belong in business is the desire to appear up to speed. 'I was talking to an American who mentioned that he was going to a 'drains-up meeting',' says Cary Cooper, professor of organisation psychology at Lancaster University Management School. 'You have to wonder what he's he trying to say to me. Probably that he's tuned into the zeitgeist and that he reads the Harvard Business Review.'

Interestingly, Cooper adds that as virtually all biz speak emanates from the US, UK early adopters may be consciously or subconsciously trying to ape what they see as a superior US business culture.

Jargonification of one's speech, Cooper continues, is also about insecurity. When management first appeared in academia it wasn't always seen as a 'proper' subject, hence the need to dress it up in fancy, often obfuscating words. Nowadays it is far more rigorous and, he says, it is the consultants who need the jargon. 'They're away from the coal face; they're not originating this new science, but they're picking up on it, propagating it and using it. So yes, I do think they're a bit more insecure and buzzwords are a way of covering this up.'

The marketisation of society is perhaps the most interesting reason for the use of new language, as it involves the creep of what cognitive linguists call 'frames', which are constructs that organise our understanding of the world and the words that we use to describe it. What has happened here, says Professor Chilton, is that the 'commerce frame' has spread to all sorts of areas where it was never previously used—in the healthcare domain, for example.

'THIEVES AND ADOLESCENTS EXCLUDE OTHERS BY DEVELOPING THEIR OWN 'ANTI-LANGUAGE'. A LOT OF THE CURRENT BUSINESS SPEAK HAS THE SAME PURPOSE'

'Here,' continues Chilton, 'is a quote from the Health Service Journal: 'the information you need to deliver Patient Choice'. The Health Service jargon does not eliminate the word 'patient' [which means someone who's suffering] but it certainly is framing 'patient' as a consumer who 'chooses' and who has the 'chosen' service 'delivered' to them. I don't know if this matters—professors of linguistics can't tell you that. The question is, do you as an individual want to be 'framed' as a customer if you go into Accident and Emergency with a heart attack?'

Making the nasty sound nice is the easiest reason to understand. This is what 'euphemism' actually means. 'But the problem with euphemisms is that they wear out and have to be replaced, because the nice word attaches itself to the nasty connotations,' says Chilton. 'For example, it's now hard to think of a non-euphemism for the place where people deposit faeces and urine.'

The most notorious business example, he continues, is 'the succession of words meaning to stop paying someone for work. We used to say sack somebody—this was itself a euphemism. But sack stopped being euphemistic, so we got make redundant, which also wore out, and we got down-size. But 'down' is bad—there is a general metaphor that affects many English expressions which says up is good/down is bad. So down-sizing became right-sizing—the right size of what for whom? Eventually no one asks the question and the term will go the way of sack.'

But whatever their raison d'etre, the most fun to be had is when these words become truly ridiculous. 'It can get profoundly stupid,' says Cooper. Sutton agrees: 'Some of these terms are so stunningly excellent you find yourself gasping in amazement that people can say them.' Examples abound but a particular peach is brain dump. You only have to look at what else 'dump' is a euphemism for to see that suggesting a brain dump says something very unfortunate about the contents of your head.

Still, if there is a consolation it is that—ridiculous as most of this newspeak is—it is by its nature ephemeral. So should you worry about being called a customer in the education and health systems? Perhaps. Should you stress out about being asked into a meeting to facilitate a 'brain dump?' Probably not. Life, as they say, is too short—and we all get right-sized in the end.