Subject areaPersuasion
Also known ascorporate jargon
Jargon is the language of acronyms, technical terms and stock phrases that a group develops internally.
It shortens sentences among those who share it and makes them opaque to everyone else: other departments, customers, suppliers. The word comes from Old French jargon, the twittering of birds, and Geoffrey Chaucer already uses it in that sense in the fourteenth century.
The risk is a bias of the internal community: people who understand each other instantly believe they share a common language. The remedy is a definition that arrives where it is needed, at the moment the term appears.
An example
In a bank the risk department talks about «LGD» and «stage 2», and marketing nods without understanding. The resulting campaign promises customers something the risk department will never approve.
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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