corporate jargon equals verbal play doh
10 whimsical words coined by Lewis Carroll
It might be surprising to you that an organization known for cutting edge technology cares so much about something as soft and abstract as language and how it makes people feel — and that’s exactly why we’re sharing these tips. Everyone has the potential to be brave, audacious, and radically creative, but we often put ceilings on ourselves with
... See moreCourtney Hohne • The monkey, the tiger beetle and the language of innovation
And yet it should be possible to gaze into this alphabet soup and divine patterns. Our attraction to certain words surely reflects an inner yearning. Computer metaphors appeal to us because they imply futurism and hyperefficiency, while the language of self-empowerment hides a deeper anxiety about our relationship to work — a sense that what we’re
... See moreMolly Young • Why do corporations speak the way they do?
Hence algospeak. Social media users have learned the hard way that... See more
Cory Doctorow • Pluralistic: 11 Apr 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Our highly networked and complex world has given rise to the need for new, hybrid words. As a result, portmanteaus—a linguistic mash-up of two words that means “a large trunk opening in two equal parts” in French—have become a modern necessity. Portmanteaus are not new; Lewis Carroll popularized the use of the term in his book Through the Looking
... See moreLMD Agency • I Love You So, Portmanteau!
While I do agree that many areas of interaction, like... See more
Farnam Street • The Feynman Technique: Master the Art of Learning
And so with every exchange, you have to acknowledge a reality where words like optionality and deliverable could be just as solid as blimp and pretzel. What happens if you ask a Megan or a Steph Korey or an Adam Neumann what they mean? I imagine a box with a series of false bottoms; you just keep falling deeper and deeper into gibberish. The
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