What Corporate Jargon Gets Right About Human Relationships

Corporate jargon is often treated as sheerly an annoyance that we would be better off discarding: It is vacuous, self-indulgent, and evasive language that obscures rather than clarifies. However, that assumes that the primary purpose of language is communicating content; in practice, communication serves another function as well—one that is often more important in real-world interactions.

Language Does More Than Convey Information

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Jordan Conrad, founder and clinical director of Lexington Park Psychotherapy, offered a different way of understanding corporate language. As he put it, language has two jobs: to convey information and to navigate relationships.

This is particularly easy to see when dating. As Steven Pinker points out, it isn’t unusual to hear someone on a first date say something like “It would be awesome if you could pass the guacamole.” That sentence is incredibly bizarre, however, when you think about it literally: it wouldn’t be 'awesome', it would be perfectly normal, and 'if you could' suggests that we’re now discussing a counterfactual world in which you have abilities that you don’t have now.

So why would anyone communicate like that? The answer is that saying “Give me the guacamole” is a demand and makes you sound like a jerk. Language is not just about exchanging information back-and-forth, it is about communicating to the other person that you love them or respect them, that they should be frightened of you, that you need support, that you are romantically interested, that you are bored, and so on.

From this perspective, corporate jargon is not simply a failure of clarity, but a way of managing the interpersonal consequences of what is being said. Conversations at work often involve evaluation, disagreement, or failure. Direct language may be more precise, but it can also introduce a level of emotional intensity that makes those conversations harder to sustain.

Why Indirect Language Can Be Useful

Take another example from the dating world. In the early twentieth century, a common pick-up line was “Would you like to come upstairs to see some etchings?” This was so popular that New Yorker cartoonist, James Thurber, drew a cartoon of a man in the lobby of his building saying “You wait here, I’ll bring the etchings down”.

Today (or, at least, a few decades ago), the line “Would you like to come up for coffee?” is recognized as a perfectly understandable double entendre. Why don't people simply say “Would you like to have sex with me?” The answer should be obvious: whereas the former allows both parties to save face in the event that one person is uninterested (“Thanks but I really should be getting home”), the latter forces the other person to explain that they are not sexually attracted to you. The point is that this kind of indirect communication reduces anxiety for the person speaking while managing the feelings of the person responding by giving them the opportunity speak honestly without making them have to say something uncomfortable.

Now, consider the difference between saying, “This didn’t work,” and “Let’s sunset the initiative.” The second phrasing is less precise, but it changes the experience of the interaction. It allows the conversation to continue without placing the full emotional weight of the outcome on a single person. The employer can communicate what is needed without making the employee feel berated or demoralized. In this way, corporate jargon can function as a kind of buffer. It creates distance between the content of the message and the person receiving it.

Why This Matters in High-Stakes Environments

It is clear enough why this occurs when dating and in relationships, but why should this kind of imprecise speech be a part of high-stakes environments like hospitals and even cut-throat financial firms? Workplaces and environments where evaluation is constant and consequences are real require navigating not only the material elements of the space, but the human elements as well. Many very talented people get hamstrung in their careers because despite their skill in their primary function area, they struggle to manage the feelings of other people involved.

Overly direct communication can make you difficult to tolerate, and corporate jargon provides a way of navigating that reality. It allows people to communicate about problems without fully personalizing them. Responsibility can be discussed without being sharply assigned in the moment. This makes it possible to address what needs to change while preserving working relationships.

A Different Way to Think About “Clear Communication”

This does not mean that clarity is unimportant or that lying is permitted. There are contexts where precision is necessary and indirect language can become frustrating or limiting. But the expectation that communication should always be direct overlooks the relational dimension of how people interact. Dr. Conrad’s point suggests a more nuanced view. The question is not simply whether language is accurate, but whether it allows people to remain in the conversation. In many cases, what appears to be imprecision is actually serving a stabilizing function.