Every social subculture is held together by language.
Subcultures repeat certain words that other subcultures hardly use at all.
This is where buzzwords come from.
This is a form of linguistic shorthand we use to signal our “insider” status: that we know what we’re talking about and we’re part of the “In group” gang.
A group of hotshot Internet tech execs will have their own buzzwords, as will California winegrowers, as will Houston oil barons, as will far-left DC political activists, as will Dallas Baptist conservatives, as will a bunch of Star Wars nuts at Comicon.
So when a newbie arrives on the scene, in order to assimilate into their new chosen ecology, the first thing they do is learn all the buzzwords, and then start obsessively repeating them. Politics, business, media, academe, it doesn’t matter. They all do it.
This is why so many newbies come off sounding like complete zealots. They know all the right words but have not had the actual industry experiences to match. So there’s something not quite there.
Which is fine. Fake it till you make it. We’ve all done it, we all do it.
The problem starts when you do it for TOO long. A good example is the word “Innovation”. It’s easy enough word to drop into a point you’re making at a meeting, *actual* Innovation is much, much harder. Ditto is the currently fashionable term, “diversity and inclusion”.
Yes, we all use language to map out our territory. But as with all things, the map is not the terrain.
