Why is corporate jargon so annoying? You can feel it before you can explain it. Someone says they want to "take this offline and circle back once we've aligned on the learnings", and a small part of you quietly leaves the building.
The usual explanation is that jargon is just ugly. Management words sound like a spreadsheet trying to be a person. True, but that doesn't explain the physical reaction. Plenty of ugly language is harmless. So what's actually going on?
It sounds like information and contains none. Your brain is very good at spotting sentences that carry a payload: a name, a date, a thing to do. Jargon mimics the rhythm of those sentences while delivering nothing. "We're going to leverage our synergies to drive alignment" has the shape of a plan and the contents of a fog machine. The irritation is your ear catching a forgery.
It deletes the person. Plain English has a subject. Someone did something. Corporate English prefers the passive and the abstract: "mistakes were made", "headcount is being rationalised", "a decision has been taken". Nobody took it, apparently; it floated down from the ceiling. That's the point. A sentence with no owner can't be blamed, argued with or held to anything.
It makes bad news sound optional. "We're sunsetting the role" is a lovely phrase for a person losing their job. "Right-sizing", "transition", "realignment": each one is a small anaesthetic, applied by someone who would rather not watch the procedure. The listener is never fooled. They just learn that this is a place where hard things get said softly and then happen anyway.
It's a membership badge. Some jargon has a perfectly honest origin: a precise term for something technical, shared by people who need to move fast. That kind earns its keep. But the filler kind, the verbs that mean "talk" and the nouns that mean "thing", works as a password. Say it fluently and you belong. Say "I don't understand what that means" and you've broken the spell, which is exactly why the most useful person in any meeting is whoever is willing to ask.
It's expensive. This part never makes it into the slide deck. Every vague instruction creates a second meeting to find out what it meant. Every unowned action item has to be rediscovered, usually three weeks later and in a worse mood. Fog isn't free. It's borrowed against the future, with interest.
There's also a slower cost, and it's the one people feel at ten to five on a Friday. If you spend all day speaking a language that doesn't describe anything real, you start to lose track of the things it was meant to describe. That's most of the weariness. It isn't the work; it's the translation.
The cure is boringly simple. For every sentence, ask who is doing what, by when. If there's an answer, keep it. If there isn't, you've found decoration. Swap the abstract noun for a person, swap the passive verb for an active one, and say the date out loud. It will feel faintly rude for about a fortnight. After that it feels like breathing.
A novel about this
Fiction has always been good at this subject, because comedy is what plain speech sounds like next to jargon. Time, For a Change is mine, a time travel romcom set in West Clare, on the wet western edge of Ireland.
Its hero, Terry, is a burned-out project manager who speaks fluent corporate and resents every syllable. He gets through the day on sarcasm, caffeine and instant messages with a friend who shares his contempt. Then he clears out his late father's workshop and finds a wooden box with a spinning brass cone, a pair of copper hand pads and four labelled controls. It has no power source. It keeps spinning anyway.
When Terry touches it, his own past comes back in startling detail, and for the first time in years nobody is asking him to align on anything.
Which is a decent test of a book, really. Does it say something real? Please circle back with your findings.
FAQ
Why is corporate jargon so annoying?
Because it's built to avoid commitment. Jargon removes the person who decided, the date it's due and the cost of getting it wrong. Your ear notices a sentence that sounds like information but contains none, and the mismatch is what grates.
Is all business jargon bad?
No. Specialist vocabulary that names a real thing precisely, like 'critical path' or 'technical debt', saves time between people who share it. The trouble starts with vague filler that stands in for a decision, such as 'circle back', 'align on' and 'leverage'.
Why do managers use so much jargon?
Mostly because it's safe. A sentence nobody can disagree with can't be wrong, and a sentence with no owner can't be blamed. It's also contagious: people copy the register of the people above them, because plain speech can feel like a risk in a room full of fog.
How do you stop jargon creeping into your own writing?
Run one test on every sentence: who is doing what, by when? If you can't answer, the sentence is decoration. Replace the abstract noun with a person, the passive verb with an active one, and say the date out loud.
Is there a funny novel about corporate life?
Time, For a Change is a time travel romcom set in West Clare, with a burned-out project manager called Terry who is fluent in corporate-speak and sick of every word of it. A mysterious wooden box in his late father's workshop changes the subject.