It’s absolutely true: corporate speak, or corpspeak, sounds often ridiculous from the outside and it really deserves the level of mocking it receives. Not just for the language itself, but of course for what it represents beyond the signifier.
That said I think that — as true for many things — there’s a balance in everything. I think there’s a use for purposeful language inside a company that helps clarifying and increases precision in the work.
In this sense, we can simplify and assess different levels:
- Corpspeak to feel part of the group
- Corpspeak to increase accuracy and clarity
- Corpspeak to look like the part
Corpspeak to feel part of the group
We shouldn’t ignore that humans by their own nature have a strong pull for group dynamics and belonging, and separating the world into “in group” and “out group”.
Organizations, just because they have a more organized boundary (marked by hiring and contracts) aren’t less affected by group dynamics. For this reason, it’s not just reasonable but also quite natural that people adopt the peculiarities of how other people speak in their group.
Trying to strip out this level would be not just hard, probably even impossible.
Corpspeak to increase accuracy and clarity
This is where a lot of the language specificity can help to a huge amount. Using a specific acronym that is used only in one company can feel obnoxious, especially when heard from the outside or as a new started, but on the other hand, it can really help communication clarity.
Let’s imagine that this company has a very specific moment in the way they work where they want to make sure customer support is involved before a major release. If the company is trying to hard to avoid a corpspeak language, the outcome can be that they call it something like “checkpoint” and they use it. But then you are going to have discussions like “Oh, have you reached the checkpoint yet?” and you’re not sure if they are talking about “a” checkpoint or “that” specific checkpoint. Thus, a clarification is needed to be able to move the conversation forward, with the additional risk that they mean in their head two different checkpoints and they get “yes” an an answer even if that’s not the case.
If instead in this example they called that special checkpoint something like “Marketing Greenlight Check” (MGC), when two people are talking the precision is high: “Oh, have you reached the MGC yet?” now either gets a clear and precise answer, or… “What the hell is a MGC?” prompting the people involved to share knowledge.
And yes this might lead to sentences that are horrible to human ear like “We should make sure to include the SLT in our next MGC to make sure we are clear for FY25 L1 OKRs”… but these are also precise statements.
So when is corpspeak actually a problem? Well…
Corpspeak to look like the part
This is what I consider the problematic side of corpspeak. This happens for two possible reasons: either the person is just trying to look knowledgeable so they are effectively using corpspeak to obscure the message, or the person is defaulting to corpspeak language even when it’s not necessary.
Both scenarios, in hindsight, are easy to spot: they are both lowering the clarity instead of increasing it.
If it’s the first of the two reasons, you might be able to spot it because when you ask “What the hell is a MGC?” you get a passive-aggressive answer, or get scoffed at for not knowing.
If it’s the second, it’s likely a situation where using the more generic word would still convey the same level of clarity, as the specific word wasn’t needed. This is the case for example sentences like “we should make sure these mission-critical projects are completed in time”: are these actually mission-critical, or they just meant these are important?
I personally think it’s essential to create a distinction between these differences because there’s corpspeak and specialistic corporate lingo that can be useful, increase clarity and precision, and save time. Which means that attempts to “speak more common language” would be misguided in this sense.
As long as neologisms, acronyms, and keywords:
- Increase specificity
- Share key knowledge
- Have an easy way to be looked up
Then it’s likely these are having a positive impact on the organization. As long as we aren’t synergizing but we are collaborating, it’s all good.