Declaration: I declare that I wrote this thesis by myself and that I used only the sources listed in the bibliography section. Brno, April 2012 Adela Pilátová Acknowledgements
Expressions used at work – “corporate speak”
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6.4Expressions used at work – “corporate speak”Corporate speak, can be also referred as a corporate jargon. It is a language used in corporations as well as government offices. It is considered to be a occupational variety of English. Although it has not been clearly or officially defined, it is widely used in English-speaking organizations (“Corporate jargon”). On the internet it is not difficult to find web pages where people are making fun or do not speak with pleasure about corporate speak. According to Amy Chulik once you are working in the office it is very difficult not be touched by these words. She has mentioned the list of unpopular corporate phrases. The first place belongs to ‘outside the box’ 31 percent of respondents of that survey marked it as the worst one. Next is ‘low-hanging fruit’ 24 percent. The third place is for ‘synergy’ 23 percent (Chulik). The aforementioned survey is very different from my survey. Last open-ended question of my questionnaire was that respondents were supposed to write a few phrases and expressions that they use or they see the most often at their work. I must say that as this was open-ended I have not received the answers from all respondents, probably because they would have to spend more time on this question. However, responses that I received were different from those I expected when designing the questionnaire. It might be the result that corporate speak has not been spread so widely outside the English native speakers’ territory and as most of corporate phrases are considered to be idioms. In my opinion, idioms are always difficult to be acquired by non-native speakers as they can have a different meaning when translated into other languages or non-native speakers may not know the meaning at all. Different results from those expected can also be a consequence of the design of the question. The question was written in the following way: “Please write down below the most frequent expressions in English language that you use or see in your work. The more expressions written, the better it is. It is mainly about fixed expressions and phrases. In case you do know Czech expression, please write it next to the English one.” I asked for the translation to be able to further analyze it, in case I would not know the phrase. Those who responded to this question had written mainly expressions that they use at their work and which are related to their field of work. Few respondents, especially those whom I got a chance to speak to before they filled in the questionnaire wrote the expressions and phrases I had meant - in the field of corporate jargon. Analyzing expressions according to where and how they are used and what meaning they have was easier to me as most of the expressions I know from my work. Few expressions especially from information technology were unknown to me so I asked people who work in this field to explain it to me. I also consulted a dictionary specialized to technical terms. I will not analyze down all of the expressions I will always choose some that represents a group. To list expressions that I received I would like to divide them into several groups. First group would be expressions that I would consider to be a corporate jargon as people who are not working in corporations may not know the meaning and it can be quite difficult to guess the meaning. The sub-type or sub-group of this corporate jargon would be abbreviations since, based on my experience, they are mostly used in written forms.
These abbreviations apart from ‘SPOC’ are used across corporations no matter what field of industry the company belongs to. SPOC is used mainly in companies specialized in information technology. Another sub-type of corporate jargon would be phrases. According to MacMillan dictionary the phrase is: “a group of words that are used together in fixed expression.” (“Phrase”) Phrases are usually used across corporations the same way as abbreviations.
Few of these phrases or words should not probably be considered as purely corporate speak. For example win-win is an adjective used in expression of win-win situation – is a situation in which everyone benefits (MacMillan, “win-win”). Other expressions that do not belong to corporate speak exclusively are press on, focus on or follow a process. However, on the other side, top-down thinking I would consider as purely corporate jargon. The phrase means that someone thinks about something in general level and then thinks further focusing on end-result. Chair the meeting is another expression that would probably not be used outside corporations, people who do not know this fixed phrase would more likely use ‘meeting leader’ and instead of asking who chairs the meeting, they would ask who leads the meeting. Drive result should probably be the phrase drive for results which means work effectively to produce the best results possible. Face an issue is an expression also rather used in working environment of corporations as people outside this territory would more likely use to deal with an issue. Second group of expressions I received are those that are used especially in written communication. I assume, that nowadays most of the communication is done through e-mail respondents probably send me expressions that they use in their everyday electronic correspondence. These might be fixed phrases used in any written communication, not exclusively in corporations. According to me, the phrases are usually written either as a greeting or used to finish the e-mail. They all seem to have certain level of politeness.
Words or expressions which are used in companies in general, regardless the field of industry the company represents, are put into third group. These are words used on everyday basis.
According to my experience, although all of these have their equivalent in Czech language, Czech expressions are not used in corporate environment. I have observed my colleagues for a few days and analyzed whether they use Czech words for any of the aforementioned. To be honest, I have not heard anyone to say ‘jednání’ instead of meeting or ‘mít hovor’ instead of have a call. The only word that is used in Czech is ‘schválení’ for approval. Another impression I got from my observance that my colleagues are sometimes unable to pronounce correctly some of these words, for example schedule or analysis but they still insist on using the English expressions rather than Czech. The fourth group consists of words used in financial companies. These companies mostly deal with finance analyses, audit or tax counseling. Expressions received from these respondents were closely specialized to their field, however, some of these expressions, such as report or analysis, I put to the third category as they were received from other companies as well.
As it can be seen, these words are very closely specialized to financial matters of companies. These expressions should be considered as business English rather than corporate English. Expressions in the fifth group are those used in companies specialized in information technology or used by people who work on the position of IT experts in other companies. In my opinion, these expressions are more considered to be technical terms and should not be classified as corporate speak as well.
Interesting point about these terms is that most of them got different or similar from their original, once considered to be a technical term. For example: switch according to MacMillan Dictionary is “a change from one thing to another” or “something such as button or a key that controls the electrical supply to a light, piece of equipment, machine, etc.” (“Switch”) while in technical terms as found in technical terms dictionary a switch “is used to network multiple computers together.” Actually, its function was to switch from workstations to the mainframe computer and between workstations so the concept involves both switching and networking though this is not reflected in the name (“Switch”). In original meaning the switch changing one thing to another in technical term it is connecting things together. Another example can be given by Firewall. The word originally referred to a real brick wall that was built to enable fire to spread from one place in the building to another. (MacMillan, “firewall”) The term is used in information technology for a similar purpose. “A computer firewall limits the data that can pass through it and protects a networked server or client machine from damage by unauthorized users.” (TechTerms, “Firewall”). When used in both environments technical as well as non-technical it servers to protect one thing from another. Some terms, in my case, a compound ‘cloud computing’, does not refer to anything outside the technology environment. Cloud computing is a neologism and it refers to on-line applications and services. (TechTerms, “Cloud computing”) In non-technical environment to get an idea what it means we would have to separate cloud and computing and still as a compound it would not make any sense to us. According to me division of technical terms7 can be made into three categories: the first category where the meaning in non-technical and technical environment is similar, the second category where the meaning is different and the third category would be words or compounds that do not have any meaning in non-technical terminology. Download 153.35 Kb. Share with your friends:
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