Synergy? Offlining? We all hate corporate jargon—but here’s why we still use it

For something designed to streamline communication, corporate jargon often does the opposite—leaving many employees confused, excluded, or just plain annoyed.

A survey of more than 8,000 working professionals across eight countries found that 58 percent feel their fellow employees overuse jargon. If given the opportunity, nearly half of them would eliminate its usage since deciphering their meanings “causes stress and slows down productivity.”

Yet, we persist. Even fictional workplaces like Severance’s Lumon Industries parody the language of modern employment—with their Office Retreat Team Building Occurrences and waffle parties—because it’s all too recognizable. So, what keeps us looping in and syncing up? What does this evolving vocabulary actually do for us, and why does it endure?

Drilling down on jargon

Language isn’t just about sharing information; it’s social, says Daria Bahtina, a lecturer from the University of California Los Angeles’ linguistics department. “When we speak, we’re not only passing facts back and forth, we’re performing relationships, identities, affiliations, and stances,” she says. Corporate jargon is a natural by-product of people working together toward a shared goal—even if that goal is surviving a Monday morning meeting.

(New words are spreading faster than ever—thanks to teenage girls.)

This isn’t limited to managers or corporate departments. Bahtina says specialized language pops up wherever people gather: in a team of software engineers, a hospital triage unit, or even a neighborhood book club after their third bottle of wine. Our lexicon of choice has always spoken to who we are and what we’re trying to make sense of as a collective. “Language follows behavior,” Bahtina says. “We change how we work, how we live, how we relate—and then, we create the words to talk about that change.”

For example, workplace jargon in the early 20th century 1910s maximized production, precision, and accuracy, essential values during rapid industrialization. By the 2010s, a different set of priorities emerged, shaped by the rise of fourth-wave feminism and social movements. Terms like terms like “DEI,” “unconscious bias,” and “inclusive leadership” entered the mainstream. Even today,  TikTok-viral terms like ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘coffee badging’ popularized by a post-pandemic, hybrid workforce signal a culture still negotiating what work means—and who defines it.

Jargon doesn’t just connect—it also divides

If this lingo is meant to mirror our contexts and conversations, why are they so complicated? Doesn’t this defeat its original purpose? Far from it, actually—jargon is also a means of segregation. “Shared jargon can foster a sense of identity and community. Speaking the same language as everyone else is a way of saying, ‘I belong here,’” says Eric Anicich, associate professor of management and organization at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

In this sense, office jargon doesn’t just describe reality—Anicich says that “it reprograms it, dividing those who are ‘in’ from those who’ll never fully understand.”

Organizations often use jargon to hide sinister intentions or downplay the real effects of their actions. Anicich cites the 2008 financial crisis, where phrases like “synthetic CDOs” and “tranches of debt products” masked the true scale of the risks involved. In more recent times, mass layoffs are now shrouded in euphemisms like “downsizing,” “restructuring,” or “re-engineering.”

(Why it’s never too late to learn a language as an adult.)

Jargon also serves a performative function. Together with Zachariah Brown and Adam Galinsky, Anicich conducted research that shows how office lingo is also used for impression management. According to their findings, lower-status individuals are likelier to use jargon in evaluative situations—not to clarify their message but to signal intelligence and competence.

“In that sense, jargon is the linguistic equivalent of a luxury car: it may have legitimate functions, but it’s also a status symbol,” Anicich explains. “It’s funny until you realize how often real organizations use language to draw invisible lines between insiders and outsiders.”

Should we put a hard stop?

So, where do we go from here? Should we strip work language down to the simplest possible terms? Not necessarily. “Jargon is used as a tool—it’s not inherently good nor bad, so it depends on how and when you use it,” Anicich says.

In fact, it’s nearly impossible to avoid. Jargon seeps into everyday life in ways we barely notice. Bahtina mentions how fans of Grey’s Anatomy who have never set foot in a hospital can still understand phrases like “code blue” or “intubate.” “This doesn’t mean that they can perform surgery, it shows how jargon can flow beyond its origin and become part of everyday speech,” she says. Perhaps it can even help us articulate feelings or phenomena that we didn’t know how to describe before.

(How do you save a language from extinction?)

Instead of resorting to extremes, experts agree that it’s best to interrogate whether jargon is being used constructively. Is the shared language fostering understanding or obscuring important information? Is it inviting people to contribute to the discussion or barring them from true belonging? Are employees more focused on reading between the lines than on the task at hand? If our vocabulary is building walls instead of bridges, it may be time to circle back—and rethink how we speak at work.