ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609130181
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK (AP)
SOURCE: ERIC R. QUINONES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Remember Mom's warm smile after she got that touching ``social expression product'' for her birthday? Or the sadness of dealing with that first ``mortality experience'' in the family?
The business world has long been notorious for using ambiguous jargon to soften bad news, as anyone who has been ``downsized'' can attest. But these days, even simple - and often harmless - terms are regularly converted into confusing lingo.
To industry insiders, euphemisms help distinguish the complex elements of their businesses. To many outside Corporate America, they're nothing more than business babble.
``People sit around thinking up things to sanitize the things that we do,'' said Robert Sobel, a professor of business history at Hofstra University.
A good example? How about ``death care'' providers, otherwise known as companies that run cemeteries and funeral parlors.
Death, in fact, seems to inspire a lot of creative jargon. Take ``adverse mortality experience,'' a term used by life insurers to denote more deaths than were expected during a given period. In that vein, fewer deaths than expected is a ``favorable mortality experience.''
``I guess it's perhaps euphemistic,'' said John Still, a spokesman for Greensboro, N.C.-based insurer Jefferson-Pilot Corp., who did agree that the word ``mortality'' by definition is an adverse experience.
``It's just a more precise word than `claims,''' Still said, pointing out that health insurers substitute the word ``morbidity'' instead.
Meanwhile, the cards sent to help celebrate birthdays or congratulate co-workers on promotions or cheer up ailing friends have become ``social expression products'' in the lingo of card companies.
While a lot of jargon is specific to certain industries - such as ``population equivalents,'' cellular phone companies' word for people - there is plenty of mumbo-jumbo that infects businesses of all kinds.
The terms that seem to get the most use deal with how companies dispose of unwanted workers, such as ``involuntary separations,'' more commonly known as layoffs. Another oft-quoted blurb is ``eliminating redundancies,'' referring to cutting unnecessary assets - often employees.
Lingo-slinging has become such an accepted practice that many people using buzz words actually don't even know what the words mean, said Scott Adams, creator of the popular ``Dilbert'' comic strip that lampoons office life.
``People think that if they talk in those terms they will sound smarter,'' Adams said.
``The problem is, I think everybody else thinks that other people value it, when in fact everyone is doing it for everybody else,'' he said. ``Except for senior managers, there may not be anybody who likes to hear it.''
Before his career as a cartoonist, Adams worked for Pacific Bell. He admitted that he wrote a lot of jargon while working for the phone company but said he always did it in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
``It's such a fine line between being a complete wiseass and being a serious business communicator,'' he said.
Adams said that while he worked at PacBell, one of the common office acronyms was ``P.O.T.S'' - or ``Plain Old Telephone Service.'' As the business world becomes more complicated, acronyms and jargon like that will become even more pervasive, he said.
``Ultimately, acronyms allow you to be more efficient,'' Adams said. ``If the trend continues, we will become amazingly efficient communicators without communicating anything at all.''
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart by AP. KEYWORDS: MGRby CNB