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There is a concept — which was accepted much before the Internet came on the scene — called the granny test. It never aspired to be jargon; the granny test has actually been used to curb that. But it’s still surprising that when words like assmosis (the process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by making up to the boss) can gain acceptance, granny gets the cold shoulder.
What is the granny test? It has several ramifications in certain situations. But in its simplest form it means that you shouldn’t do anything that your granny wouldn’t. Would granny have approved of assmosis (the word, not the deed)? Certainly not. And she wouldn’t have approved of the deed either. So don’t use one or practise the other.
Granny has come into play today because it has somehow managed to stay outside the lexicons of business jargon. Words like “buffling” — a new term for business waffling — can be found in respectable UK newspapers. (They were respectable before the Murdoch saga.) The examples of buffling (see box) are getting more abstruse. (That’s not buffling; the word abstruse has a respectable heritage.) Tangentry (distracting side topics) may seem odd. But remember that in the Regency Period, “infantry” meant children. But it never caught on.
The excursion into the Regency Period is only to demonstrate that jargon is timeless. When the centre of the world was the nobility in England, it created its own language. If you didn’t understand, you didn’t belong. Business is doing that today.
But what’s new? Business has been generating jargon for several decades now. Management thinkers and academics don’t talk of colleagues. The expression of choice is “task-related lateral position holders”. This is the shorthand (not particularly short though) of today’s freemasonry. And most people would let the devil have his day (and his drivel).
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In a corporate setting, it has long been known that jargon turns people off. One reason is that if you don’t understand, you feel left out. The second is that this is actually started by the bosses. If you talk their language, you are considered as having an edge when it comes to promotions and pay hikes. This is the secret of the success of IIM alumni; it is not the faculty or the assumption that great guys get in so they must do well in life. It’s like the folks at McKinsey and Co. They are shell-shocked today because one of their partners didn’t let them on to his game.
Jargon was always deplored, but you did it with a smile. Today, things appear to have changed. A study by New York University and the University of Basel in Switzerland has come to the conclusion that if you use business jargon people are likely to think that you are lying. The study is a mouthful: “Truth from Language and Truth from Fit: The Impact of Linguistic Concreteness and Level of Construal on Subjective Truth.” It has an inner contradiction. The bottomline of the findings is that if you can’t understand what the other guy says, you may think he is lying. Did you understand the study title without going through it half-a-dozen times?
Has there been a change in perception or was this always true? “I can only speculate,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “But it seems to me that the financial crisis years have seen an increase in top management gobbledegook. When they address workers whose jobs are on the chopping block, you will find them seeking shelter behind jargon. There is a growing sense that business jargon is escapist literature. It is the curtain that separates the survivors from the sacrifices.”
The next time you want to use expressions such as “dog in this fight”, remember the much older idiom “Let sleeping dogs lie”. Let the boss use the jargon and do the lying while you lie low.
NEW IN THE FRAME
Some recent entrants to the business jargon list
Black sky thinking One step beyond blue sky thinking. For those who will not abide any limitations on their flights of fancy.
Tangentery Distracting side topics.
Long con Working for years at a job you should have never been hired for, without any oversight, accountability, or line of communication.
Roll in When telling a story about a late co-worker, this is the only acceptable way to describe their arrival.
Dog in this fight Presence in a given market. “Find out what the competition is up to, and make damn sure we get a dog in this fight.”
