I completely abhor business-speak. I must admit that business-speak in some respects is useful and adds value (irony here completely intentional). Jargon is justified linguistically when new words are created to succinctly represent frequently used ideas or concepts that have no succinct term (probably because they are not frequently used outside the specific context).

However, what really irks me is euphemisms created or "value inflation" used in business-speak in order to afford the users of the term some short-term gain, though at the expense of the general degradation of language.

Some examples of this:
"Vice-President" - in some organizations, a very large percentage of people are given the term "vice-presidents". Doesn´t intuition tell you that in a group, there´s at most one president, and usually only a handful, if not only one vice-president. I´m sure "vice-president" looks great on your business card, but the effect is greatly lessened when everyone else you work with is also a vice president. Verdict: "Vice-President", diluted.

"People Strategy" - In a certain organization that I happen to be very familiar with, the Human Resources department was substituted by a "People Strategy " department. Not only does it sound completely retarded and asinine, but it´s confusing to new employees, and to outsiders. And the effect of "humanizing" the concept of HR (which is to some extent stimatized) is undermined when you have to explain to someone that "People Strategy" is basically HR, to which they respond, "Oh!". Verdict: "People Strategy", obfuscating

Now, the real point to writing this is - I recently got a regular Career Services email about upcoming job opportunities. This entry caught my eye:
[Nameless big corporation] is looking for an intern to work 10 to 12
weeks during the summer. This intern will be empowered and
challenged to drive important projects to a successful
outcome.

"empowered and challenged to drive important projects to a successful outcome."
The same exact amount of information would have been conveyed if they had written, "This intern will be given stuff to do". The problem is that this description is so full of business-speak, yet so devoid of any meaning. Any internship, or any job position for that matter can be described using the exact same phrase. And provided that you´ve had just enough of the real world to taste, you´ll know that the above phrase probably actually means, "you´ll be making copies"... or perhaps, "you´ll be empowered and given ownership to the copying process in order to drive important projects to a successful outcome." Bah.

I´m finally done with my last bit of work for the fall semester!

My gosh, what a crazy, umm, lets see... I´ve been working on finals work since right after christmas break... three weeks! arg. a week more than I should have, since my last piece of work was due in actually a week ago :P. Hopefully the chinese professors are used to lazy, excuse-laden americans. :P :P

Now, time to relax (eherm, chill-ax), eat food, spend time with Amy, and see Italy.

Wheee-hooo!