A War of Words, by Kate Halpern, Personnel Today 7th April 2009

This article is to some extent tongue in cheek but it raises some interesting issues. It makes fun of the increasing tendency for businesses in general, and the HR function in particular, to use jargon, and the extent to which this is a problem. There is also the question - when does a word or a phrase become jargon? ‘Stakeholder’ and ‘incentivising’ are mentioned as examples but aren’t these just words that succinctly express a concept?

There is also a suggestion that the HR function is more guilty of jargon than others and Sales and Marketing are also mentioned as guilty parties, but my reaction was to say that neither are in the same league as Finance or IT. It is even suggested that the term ‘Human Resources’ is jargon and that simple ‘Personnel’ expresses the role much better. I can see that one word is better than two but my recollection is that HR was coined to make it clear that the role was more than managing canteens and hygiene, which came to be associated with Personnel. If this change of title has helped to change the image, it surely was worthwhile.

The article does produce some quite silly examples which I had never heard of - like ‘strategic staircase’ and ‘re-baselining’ - but it also makes fun of other terms that have become part of business and general language like ‘in the loop’ and ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’, both of which I confess to using quite regularly.

My well known defensive instincts therefore drive me to ask the question - why not? If there is a phrase which easily encapsulates a state or a concept, isn’t this just a natural development of language? In fairness the article does ask this question at the end and says that maybe we should be celebrating rather than criticising our ability to ‘jargonise’.

In the end it comes down to why it’s used and whether it helps or hinders communication - that should be the test. If it is being used to make others feel excluded or to make the user feel clever, it should be discouraged. But if it helps us all to express our ideas clearly and succinctly, go for it!


To access this article go to http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2009/04/01/50111/jargon-war-of-words.html