Calling Bullshit on Corporate Communications

Joseph Price
Aug 24, 2017 · 3 min read

If you don’t have anything empty to say, don’t say anything at all. Or else.

A master of communication readies another email.

The beginning of Harry Frankfurt’s discussion and exploration On Bullshit makes the claim that “Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it.” While his analysis of the subject is apt, this claim is off the mark. We recognize bullshit, but we certainly don’t avoid being taken in by it. Instead, we love bullshit. We insist on bullshit! Anything besides bullshit requires too much thought and is potentially too divisive. Any exception to bullshit is condemned or censored, especially in the professional realm. There, nothing but bullshit is allowed.

This phenomenon was captured in a scene from The Office in which a character, Gabe, who reports directly to corporate, says of definitive claims: “Statements of such nature, while they have their place, are overused in a competitive business environment.” Overused? He can’t bring himself to use one. This is not only commonplace; it is the rule. Platitudes are the rhetoric and buzzwords are the diction of corporate communications. Employees are inundated with efforts to propagate “synergy” and “leadership.” Yet the definitive meaning of these words will not be defined by management or departments of communication. But they sound nice.

As Frankfurt observes, the effort to turn effective communications to bullshit stems from a need to remove all value-statements from communications; bullshit an attempt to say something without saying anything. Organizations regularly employ this rhetorical method. One of my past employers required its corporate employees to work as scabs when union employees declared a strike. Of course the derogatory word “scab” was censored, banned, and its use was punished — even though it accurately described our mandatory role. Instead, they resorted to a value-neutral acronym: EWA (Emergency Work Assignment). This did not come as a surprise, but the corporation didn’t even use the word “strike” in its communications. In their own words, the company “faced a work stoppage.” This rebranding effort exemplifies capable sophistic rhetoric: a strike is declared to leverage fair pay and workplace conditions. A “work stoppage” on the other hand has no appeal to values — it doesn’t really refer to anything specific. “Work stoppage” might refer to a strike, but it might also refer to imminent weather precluding employees to take their posts, as in “The hurricane brought about a work stoppage.” The use of passive verbs like “faced” is also a clever rhetorical tool used in communications to shed the responsibilities of capable negotiation. The first rule of business communications seems to be: Do not make definitive or value-laden claims. If you don’t have anything empty to say, don’t say anything at all.

At another company I had the audacity to do my work in the lobby of the office building which was cooler and had more natural light than my cube. I was told that this was not allowed, that I had to resume my work in my cube. Again, I was audacious — I asked why. “It,” the lobby, “is not an authorized workspace.” After contemplating what an “authorized workspace” could possibly mean, I requested a definition. Au∙thor∙ized work∙space (ô/thǝ rīzd/ wûrk/spās) n. “Just do your work in in your cube.” [see also cage].

These attempts at communications represent bullshit. It is a rhetorical method in which one says something in order to overtly or covertly coerce action or obedience without appealing to logical or ethical claims. And far from being merely tolerated, it is the lingua franca of professional communication. Dostoevsky — a master at communicating authentic truth — describes a letter from a businessman as: “Not so very illiterate, and not too literary either — a business style!” In other words: bullshit.

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Joseph Price

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Joseph is a freelance writer who composes content, copy, and creative works. https://joseph-writes.com

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