New ambiguous phrases = same old meanings

What is it with companies renaming things? I know my company has been guilty. Why not just keep phrases the way they used to be?

For example, no one is a salesman anymore. You are either a consultant, account manager, or the very long VP of Business Development. I’ve recently starting telling people in a concise manner what I really do for a living: “I am a database salesman.” Does it sound unexciting and bland? Yes. Does it matter? No. Because by telling people what I really do, they are more likely to cut through the ambiguity, remember what I do, and maybe even send a referral!

Need another? Brand management. You mean you design logos? It’s not like logo design is rocket science and needs a fancy name. Apple’s logo is an apple with a bite in it. Clean and simple just like the definition of logo.

What examples can you think of?

—August 25, 2005

4 Comments

Bob

Aug 28, 2005 at 9:39 pm

Great blog! I read you regularly.

Your reclamation of the “salesman” tag falls in line with similar “take backs” occurring over the last couple of decades. Examples include defiantly open proclamations about being “gay”, “woman”, (as in “I am woman”), “nigger”, “dyke”, even “garbage man”.

The reclamation move seemingly rattles the chains of stereotypes and the stigmata attending them. Whether it’s a bold move or not is another question. Some might argue that it ain’t so bold because it’s swaddled in the protective draperies of political correctness–i.e. relativism where anything can and should go unassailed.

On the other hand, historically, “salesman” has been one of those words plunked in the middle of a web of unsavory connotations–sleazy, sneaky, self-serving, deceptive, pushy, oily. But the days of ‘door-to-door’ vacuum/encyclopedia guy or the plaid-jacketed used car salesman or the moustache-twirling snake-oil traveling swindler are pretty much dead. The stench of these exemplars isn’t around and we’ve mainly forgetten it, so it’s a kinda safe to reclaim “salesman” label in the context of our cultural amnesia. It may even undergo a renaissance revival!

Escapable too, is the charge of sexism insofar as “saleswoman” seems to work just as well as “salesman”. It don’t work well with things like “firewoman”, hence, the birth of “firefighter”.

Bob

Blake

Aug 29, 2005 at 12:28 am

I’m not aware of any new ambiguous meanings for “nigger”, “dyke”, and “woman.” The first two are just offensive names that I don’t use for obvious reasons. None of the originally posted words are offensive, except maybe “salesman” but that doesn’t hold any loaded discriminatory meaning.

Bob

Aug 29, 2005 at 9:30 pm

Actually, the ambiguity in these words is evident if one takes in the sweep of many dialects of English . Male homosexuals often refer to each as “girl”, for example. I’ve heard straight athletic types do the same thing. A “nigger” is anyone downtrodden. “Dyke”, well, yeah okay, that one is still pretty narrow.

In any case, my response focused more on the reclamation of a word formerly attached to a semantic web of negative connotations.

Technically a term like “account executive” is probably less ambiguous than “salesman” in in market environment of repeat sales, on credit, which are managed or executed by way of “accounts”. A salesman, however, can do “one-timers” and that’s that, or he can also manage perpetual sales accounts. But which? It’s ambiguous. This term makes no specifying distinction. Perhaps, then, this why “salesman” has stuck for businesses like selling cars, usually a once-off deal to this or that consumer, versus a graphic arts firm which manages client accounts that ebb and flow ongoingly with multiple sales and payments…on “account”.

To be fair, however, job titles in general have become more elaborate, more high falutin sounding. Whether they are any more ambiguous or not, well, I’m not sure.

An example: I’m a chief administrative officer in a small town. This is the modern high falutin incarnation of “town manager”. The latter, however, is *more* ambiguous than the former, there being several managers in our town. Town manager makes no hierarchical distinction. Further, to say we administer is much more precise than to say we manage. Councillors manage the town through policies and we administrators do the implementation work of their policies.

This is why I’d argue that the issue has more to do with the perception of overblown aggrandizements couched in modern titles than with ambiguity. The titles are more “dressed up”, hence coming off as pretentious and self-elevating. To say, “I’m just a salesman, and that’s that” is another way to say, “Hey, I’m just a regular guy. I’m genuine, not a bullshitting, glittery phoney.”

The theme of the blog entry, I think, is closer to a wish to demonstrate good ole down-to-earth genuineness than gun-sight precision. Reclaming “salesman” nicely satisfies the former, but falls short of achieving the latter. It’s more about form more than content.

bob

Blake

Aug 31, 2005 at 12:11 am

Agreed. I like how you say that we should strive for the “good ole down-to earth genuiness” rather than gunsight precision. That’s exactly why i say “salesman” is that i hope to come accross as a genuine regular guy so we can cut through the formalities and start building a friendship.

Blake Snow

writer-for-hire, content guy, bestselling author

New ambiguous phrases = same old meanings

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