Language Inflation

A YOUNG MAN I know has asked me to help him update his résumé. His professional field is "human resources." As I look through earlier drafts of his résumé, I am stunned by the language inflation which has occurred in this field over the past 40 years.

My first job after I graduated from law school was with Western Petroleum Refiners Association, a national trade organization. My assignment was to keep the personnel directors of member companies informed of changes in regulations which pertained to wage-hour rules, union negotiations, and other aspects of employee relations.

In those days, the corporate office which dealt with such matters was called the personnel department. Today, no self-respecting company would use that term. The word "personnel" has been upgraded to "human resources." In the process many other terms in the field have been upgraded as well. We used to talk about "hiring" people, for example.

Today, new workers who are brought aboard are not hired; they are "integrated into the corporate structure." Nor are employees "fired" or "let go." They are, instead, "down-sized" or, sometimes, "terminated for cause."

What has happened, I suspect, is that university business school instructors have created a whole new vocabulary for the personnel (pardon, human resources) field. The new terms are thought to be more professional, more scholarly. My young friend, for example, has at various times in his career "assisted in administration of multi-reviewer feedback processes" and "facilitated train-the-trainer sessions using a group-decision support system." He is "experienced in conducting needs analyses," and has even managed to develop a "needs analysis strategy."

The subject of his master's thesis was "Human Resources Development: Practitioner Competencies." In the course of his work he has developed "strong interpersonal skills" and "implemented" all sorts of things--new evaluation programs, analysis sessions, review processes, and the like.

Now, none of what I am saying here is meant as criticism of my young friend. He is bright and competent. In selecting words to describe his work, he is merely parroting terms developed, I suspect, in the ivied halls of university business schools. Academicians in the human resources field are particularly attracted to the use of phrases like "management of diversity" and "implementation of multiculturalism in the corporate environment."

Language inflation of this sort is not, of course, confined to the human resources field. It occurs in every academic arena. In the hope of enhancing their occupational image, professors and their graduates seize upon increasingly grand multisyllabic terms to describe the elements of their work. Unfortunately, each linguistically inflated term tends to be a little less precise than the term which preceded it. As the language in a professional field becomes more and more grandiose, meaning becomes less and less clear. When a human resources manager proclaims, for example, that he has "effectively facilitated a multicultural avocational environment that enhances cognitive perception of diversity," it's almost as if he is speaking a foreign language.

Verbal Facade
Language inflation continues apace
And a flagrant example, of course, is
Transition from plain old "personnel"
To the pompous "human resources."

Discuss