“FYI, I need feedback on coworking ASAP, preferably by EOD.”
All over the world, certain expressions are more popular than others in corporate settings. Most of them are in English, which doesn’t always make office communication any easier for workers in non-English-speaking countries.
From acronyms to idioms, office workers can be confronted with all kinds of jargon. This can be tricky enough to navigate for native English speakers, but many other global business cultures now borrow this office lingo directly, which can lead to even more confusion.
The extensive use of such terms in the professional context often leads to a lack of clarity, as revealed by a recent Duolingo-LinkedIn survey. The companies questioned over 8,000 employees in eight countries – India, Vietnam, Colombia, Brazil, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – about the use of English buzzwords in the workplace.
The majority found that their coworkers overused workplace jargon.
Using these terms indiscriminately irritates workers, and hampers the quality of their conversations. In fact, 60% of those surveyed admit that they don’t always understand the meaning of these expressions.
But there’s no question of asking their peers for explanations: jargon newbies learn on the job, which causes them stress and hampers their productivity.
So it’s hardly surprising that almost half of all respondents would like to eradicate office jargon. Hope Wilson, expert in linguistics and intercultural communication at Duolingo, sees this rejection of workplace lingo as a desire to break free from the shackles of the corporate world.
“People typically use jargon in the workplace to project an identity of business-related authority. By knowing and using specialised lingo, you (in theory, at least) show the people around you that you’re sophisticated and in touch with the latest business trends.”
Borrowing from English
English terms are so much in vogue in workplaces that some of them have become part of everyday language. French workers, for example, are now used to hearing words like “coworking”, “overbooked”, and “burnout”.
But some Anglicisms are not so widespread, or at least not everywhere in the world. Brazilians, for example, struggle to understand and use the terms “feedback”, “networking”, and “ASAP”.
Workers in Colombia and Japan share the same aversion to the acronym ASAP (as soon as possible). The expressions FYI (for your information), KPI (key performance indicator), and by EOD (by the end of the day) are equally incomprehensible to most non-English-speaking workers.
That said, this can also be the case for workers with a good command of English. Many British, Indian, American and Australian employees are at a loss when it comes to certain English expressions in the workplace.
This is all the more paradoxical given that corporate language should be accessible to all employees, not just a few insiders – or a “happy few”, as the corporate world would say.