Why Do Managers Use Business Buzzwords?
A use case in the dumbing down, and erosion, of meaningful communication.
First of all I want to apologise unreservedly for using the phrase “use case¹”, it’s one of those seemingly innocuous expressions that makes me, and by now many progressive software engineers, wince inside.
Every time I hear it, and many other similar words and phrases that are spoken out loud in conference rooms, plastered large on headache triggering PowerPoints², or merely just copied into Teams’ awful chatrooms, I die a little inside, my faith in the survival of humanity falls a few percentage points, and I have to make a Sanity role lest I go full on defenestrator³.
I’m sure you’re aware of Orwell’s quote,
“Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.” — George Orwell⁴
Now he was, of course, speaking of his time and primarily about writing from a journalist’s or author’s perspective I’m sure.
After all, this was before the advent of zero content “AI” generated SEO prose, optimised attention seeking clickbait, monetised short form attention destroying “AI” voiced social media video dross⁵, and very definitely way before the modern corporate management system was a twinkle in an envious manager’s eye when…
