“Asap gtg” (As soon as possible got to go). Catch-up session for non-English speakers, not connected, stuck in the year 1000 by translating in Yoda: “As soon as possible, I must go there.” Exceeded the “OK”, “a + “. Fans of the abbreviation are, for those outside the circle, bac + 4 geek, “tt UFO” (totally unidentified flying objects), experts in “M1SDL” (master 1 in language sciences). The most skilled will have fun doing Pierre de Maere: “I’m looking for a girl from another galaxy/Who could make me love everything and its opposite” – required alternatives to “meuf” and “jtlg” (I love you severe). In the abbreviations for dummies series, there is “fyi” (for your information), “tkt” (don’t worry), dare we translate the “lol” (laughing out loud), “mdr” (death of laughter), “cc” (hello), etc. (et cetera, it’s Latin). Some express themselves in this way, personally and professionally. With their fellow hearts and emojis, they make “bvo” (bravo) when the boss has spoken and “dcdr (died laughing)” at the jokes of the same manager. If we are all polyglots or called to become so, is it still appropriate to use this language in a professional context, and what does it reveal about us?
EPISODE 1 – “Sorry, I’m in a meeting”: the hidden costs of managerial madness
EPISODE 2 – “You are close to burnout, delegate!”, this double-edged managerial injunction
EPISODE 3 – Management: the “collaborator”, umpteenth example of managerial verbiage?
EPISODE 4 – “Empathy and benevolence required”: beware of the excess of “soft skills”
Manifestation of thought?
What is language? For Hermogenes, language is the artificial product of pure convention within the cultural group, while for Cratylus it is natural and expresses the very nature of things; in the middle, Socrates attempts synthesis. If Plato exposes the stakes in the Cratylus (IVᵉ century BC), his disciple and rival Aristotle decides: “Man is a political animal more than any bee and any gregarious animal. […] And alone among the animals man has a language (logos). Certainly the voice is the sign of the painful and the pleasant, so do we find it in animals […]. But language exists in order to manifest the advantageous and the harmful, and consequently the just and the unjust. (Policies.) Analysis of the linguist Noam Chomsky, twenty-five centuries later: “A linguistically mature person can produce in his language a new sentence when the occasion calls for it, which other people can understand immediately, although it is no less new. Most of our linguistic experience, speaking and listening, is made up of new sentences. Once we have mastered a language, the range of sentences with which we can operate fluently and without difficulty or hesitation is so wide that ‘in practice […] it can be considered as infinite […]” (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory1964).
Domination and communitarianism
But is Net Newspeak really a language? In this expanding universe of communication, there is no difference between generations, there are just the believers and the non-practitioners. These stateless people, supporters of“oldspeak” and of 1984 of George Orwell (1949) judge that it is an instrument of domination, insofar as the “newspeak” removes all reflection and replaces it with a Manichaean and simplistic thought: whoever is not for is against. Applause from the whole team to the boss’ joke on the social network. Communion in communitarianism. In the work of Orwell is described the totalitarian mode which modifies the language by impoverishing it to ensure the control of the masses. Politically correct, ultraconsensual, megacommunautarized, this sabir is a language that has invaded our lives; it exists, evolves, imposes itself. It should be used sparingly, so that the beauty of the language and the thought and imagination created by the succession of words remain. Already, in 1900, pessimistic, Henri Bergson had denounced the betrayal of language to express a thought: “We do not see the things themselves; we confine ourselves, most often, to reading labels stuck on them. This tendency, resulting from the need, has been further accentuated under the influence of language. […] We move among generalities and symbols. […] we live in a middle zone between things and ourselves, externally to things, externally also to ourselves. (The laugh.) The language of the Net pushes reasoning to its climax: you can slip “I miss u” or “tmk” (I miss you) to your “bff” (best friend forever) or to its N+1 departing from the company or from this world. But these symbols will never be able to make us forget the powerful breath of Victor Hugo, in 1856, in Contemplations : “Tomorrow, at dawn, when the countryside whitens / I will leave. Do you see, I know that you are waiting for me / I will go through the forest, I will go through the mountains / I cannot stay away from you longer.”