|
 It
was Sir Les Patterson, on Barry Humphries’ Flashbacks (a 1999 TV
series about recent decades in Australian life), who made the memorable
announcement that “one of the big buzzwords in the eighties was
‘buzzwords’”. But he wasn’t the first to utter this one-liner, as this
quotation in OED2 shows:
1980
Time 28 Jan. 90/1 The air is thick with devalued buzz words, including
“buzz words”.
A
buzzword, of course, is a currently fashionable jargonesque catchword,
“used more to impress than inform” (OED2). And yes, buzzwords
were rife in the 1970s and 80s, so much so that several types of
“buzzword generators” soon appeared. More of which in a sec, but first a
bit on the word jargon.
Did you
know that until the 15th century jargon meant “the inarticulate
utterance of birds, or a vocal sound resembling it; twittering,
chattering”? (OED2). Later it took on the general and sardonic
sense of “unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing”, which just about
sums up a lot of modern jargon usage too, though the OED is
characteristically more precise:
Applied
contemptuously to any mode of speech abounding in unfamiliar terms, or
peculiar to a particular set of persons, as the language of scholars or
philosophers, the terminology of a science or art, or the cant of a class,
sect, trade, or profession.
Some
lines of work are notorious for their jargon, aren’t they? Computing, the
military, business management, sociology, to name just four. Lovely
utterances like these:
information
superhighway
collateral
damage
downsizing
antifoundationalist
I’m very
partial to the jargon of sociology, and in a later issue I’ll bring you a
few really preposterous gems. Meanwhile, here is part of a well-known
buzzword generator from the business management field:
integrated
total
parallel
balanced
functional |
management
digital
incremental
reciprocal
organisational |
concept
options
capability
paradigm
policy |
All you
have to do with a buzzword generator is to select one word from each
column at random and string them together (e.g. parallel +
management + paradigm). Immediately you’ll have a bombinating
catchphrase with which to sizzle the ears of all and sundry. With any
luck, it’ll mean nothing, and therefore you’ll be all the more likely to
impress the trusting uninitiated.
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