'Moving the Needle' on Corporate Clichés

Thought leader. Picking someone’s brain. Running an idea up the flagpole.

Sound familiar? My suspicion is that, if you’re in a certain professional environment, you’ve likely heard people use these phrases before. More specifically, they probably used them in lieu of “expert,” “get information from,” and “gauge approval of,” respectively.

These terms belong to a larger group of corporate jargon that, though once niche, now feels ubiquitous. Acting almost as euphemisms for words that aren’t crude to begin with, these particular idioms make up about half of the collection of corporate jargon—the other half being non-idiomatic alternatives for ideas that might otherwise require multiple words (think “onboarding,” “actionable,” and “dynamic”). Like most jargon, corporate phraseology isn’t only less specific than the language it replaces, but it also often carries less semantic meaning as well.

So much less meaning, in fact, that it’s mocked just as often as it’s used non-ironically. With blistering critiques having been lobbed at it in the past by publications from Buzzfeed to Forbes, it’s no secret that people find corporate jargon irritating. Some critics have even gone so far as to call for the complete elimination of particularly unpopular terms like “synergy,” while others have fought for a more nuanced understanding of its utility.

So if this office speak is so nails-on-a-chalkboard grating, and potentially fuels less trust and bolsters workplace hierarchies, why do we use it? Why don’t we just call projects “in-depth examinations” instead of “deep dives?” Why don’t we say something will “generate a reaction” instead of “move the needle?”

Aside from the utility of idioms in general, the answer lies, at least in part, in sociolinguistics, a subfield of language study concerned with social relationships and that argues that language achieves multiple purposes for its speaker. When speakers use jargon, they establish themselves as members of an in-group, or a class of people with a set of shared knowledge and experiences. Jargon also identifies its speakers in relation to their listener (or interlocutor). Business jargon, in particular, acts as a non-exclusive yet power-building tool for those in its in-group.

Take “heavy lift.” Imagine a colleague proposes an idea for a project that you don’t think is feasible. But instead of just saying that, you might say that it’ll be “a heavy lift.” By using this phrase, you establish yourself as a member of an in-group—in this case, a group of professionals who have been in the field long enough to know when and how to use that term. And with this acknowledgement of in-group status comes clout: By using it, you build a sense of social cachet for yourself as someone with knowledge of the topic at hand.

While it’s easy to see how tapping into office speak can be useful, probably less obvious is how it can make workplaces worse off. For people who are new to the professional world, it may be seen as a necessary tool for establishing themselves in the space. But for many other speakers, it can do more harm than good. Thanks to a growing distaste for language that functions as flash over substance, more and more people are becoming aware of jargon in the workplace as something meant to impress, rather than to inform. What’s more, its stratified use among those trying to impress others can further entrench workplace inequalities. When you use jargon to establish yourself in a space, you’re signaling that your position is one that requires you to prove yourself.  

Typically, in-group members use jargon with other in-group members, since a key ingredient of its utility is a shared knowledge of its meaning. For example, imagine you’re dropped into an operating room and the doctor tells you to put an N-vent into the patient’s G-tube. Unless you happen to have a medical degree, you probably don’t know what to do.  

But, here, corporate jargon takes an interesting departure: It can be used in both in-group and out-group situations, with similar effects and different results. In contrast to other jargons, corporate jargon is just predictable enough, if you squint, to be understood by those who might not have heard it before. If, for example, you’re at an “onboarding” meeting with the HR department for your first professional job, you can probably guess what the meeting is about. When speakers use business jargon with those outside their professional spheres, it often has the same effect as when used with those inside—the listener recognizes your use of jargon and is possibly annoyed by your use of a cliché, but you’ve established yourself as an in-group member.

Remember, though, language is complex, and the result of using corporate jargon with out-group members may be very different from the result of using it with in-group members. In particular, if your listener isn’t familiar with corporate jargon, she or he may understand something different from what you intended. Here, ideas from discourse analysis dovetail usefully. According to J.R. Searle’s Speech Act Theory, linguistic utterances have three types of meanings: what a speaker intends to say, what a listener hears, and the literal meaning of the words (illocution, perlocution, and locution, for the logophiles among us). This idea assumes that what a speaker intends to say often differs from what the listener hears—and even from the actual, contextless meaning of the words.

Back to “heavy lift.” There could be up to three meanings telegraphed in this scenario—what you mean (this is a bad idea), what your listener hears (it’s possible but will take a lot of work), and the literal meaning of the phrase (this project is heavy). This last bit is of course nonsensical in this instance, but all three meanings are important when thinking about what this language achieves and how it’s understood.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way. So the next time you find yourself without the bandwidth to do a deep dive, think about what your language does for you and what you really mean. It could have surprising effects on the ways you’re perceived and understood. You know, just something to keep on your radar going forward.