From The Cut
Why Do We Use a Different Vocabulary at Work?
By Katie Heaney
In my place of work, there is perhaps no “word” more ominous than “hihi,” typed over Slack, sent by a person senior to you. Or, at least, that’s how I feel about it. “Hihi” means a request is imminent, or worse, a correction. “Hihi” means Listen up, buddy, in a not-nice way that is absolutely desperate to seem nice. One “hi,” unpunctuated, is bad enough, but two, joined together, is almost always a sign of unwelcome news. The same is true for the always disingenuous “quick Q”...
But why? What comes over us when we’re at work that makes us sink into Slackspeak? I asked Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist and an adjunct full professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, for help.
Let it first be known that our self-hatred regarding the way we talk at work is nothing new, says Nunberg. Documented complaints to that effect date back to the 19th century at least, during which time workspeak (what I’ll call Slackspeak pre-Slack) was deemed “shoppy,” or too obviously derived from the professions, not dissimilar from what we now might call “talking shop.” Nunberg provides the example of an 1840 letter written by politician and author Thomas Chandler Haliburton, who wrote: “Still, my attention was riveted (I fear that word is shoppy).” Riveted was a work word, as in “secured by rivets,” and when Haliburton borrowed it for another context he, apparently, felt he must do so apologetically...
Geoffrey Nunberg is a linguist and an adjunct full professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information.
