“….These days everyone “talks a bit like a management consultant”: it’s symptomatic of the growing “professionalisation” of ordinary life. Thanks to blurring work-life boundaries and the rise of the “self-help” industry, we increasingly view our lives as “projects in which excellence needs to be achieved” – and can be, with “the right toolsets”. Hence the prevalence of management jargon in “unlikely quarters” such as the nursery: the sphere of “parenting” (itself a “verbification” of the sort so loved by business) has produced “baby-led weaning”, “co-sleeping” and “attachment-parenting”. Is management jargon necessarily a bad thing? Some words, such as “stakeholder”, are genuinely useful if the only alternative is a lengthy phrase. Moreover, jargon has uses beyond simple functionality. In a work context, it can “convey the impression of legitimacy, boost confidence and gain the attention of others”, argues André Spicer in his new book, Business Bullshit. Perhaps we hope the same is true of our increasingly professionalised social lives. (Rhymer Rigby, The Times)

The whole thing is bogus, an attempt to show off. The great linguistic skill in life is to use simple English and speak it grammatically, free of the verbal tics that are so irritating to others (in America the latest is to start every answer to a question with “So….”). Young women (in particular) still spatter their speech with “like” in every sentence.

It’s the thing nowadays to do business studies as a first degree. At the end of it students are well versed in business-speak, but really know nothing whatsoever about business. Unfortunately, the language they do learn seeps into the general culture. In the old days there was a crude phrase: “Bullshit baffles brains”. So, it, like, doesn’t baffle mine – I think it is pretentious and shows a lack of imagination and a poor command of the language. Am I being intolerant?