Motivation
Throughout my career as a consultant in multilateral and governmental institutions, I have been exposed to the phenomenon of buzzwords1, catchphrases2 and slogans3, and to how they suddenly emerge in policy discussions, and—at least for some time—take center stage in strategic planning.
Notably, in the organizations I worked with (including World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, G20, EU, and the Italian Government) catchphrases and slogans often turn into significant funding allocations, as they can steer the prioritization of policies and programs.
Examples in the development economics arena
Some examples I can recall (drawing on my own experience in development economics) are: South-South Cooperation, Gender Mainstreaming, and Results-Based Financing, which were prominent in earlier periods. More recently, concepts such as Sustainable Development4 and ESG (criteria/reporting/issues) have become quintessential to the development discourse. Understandably, constructs like Build Back Better and Resilient (institutions/infrastructure/communities) have gained traction, especially as part of the legacy of the COVID-19 crisis.
I’ve noticed how certain formulaic expressions often make their way into project documentation and policy papers, quickly gaining traction—and sometimes becoming pervasive—in both academic and professional discourse.
This has led me to question how much thought is given to the deliberate selection of such terms, or if they simply become popular and turn into a convenient shorthand for more complex ideas. This phenomenon isn’t surprising when we consider the paradoxical effect of social media and its recommendation algorithms on the information we access. Rather than broadening our exposure, these algorithms tend to limit it, reinforcing the echo chamber effect.
The curious case of lexical domestication
A further element that interests me is when the meaning of words and phrases progressively detaches from reality and/or from their original intent, sometimes even adopting new reinterpreted meanings that gradually become the dominant interpretation—whether explicitly or subtly. For example, I was struck to learn that the Latin motto I heard as a child—“Mens sana in corpore sano”—is actually a partial quotation adopted in 1861 by John Hulley for his Liverpool Athletic Club. The phrase actually quoted Juvenal’s “Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano” from Satire X (Juvenal and Braund 2004, 10.354–357), which, seen in its entirety, has a whole different meaning!
Such reductions have real consequences, as Giovanni Gentile notes: “language is not a garment of thought; it is thought’s own body” (Garbini 2003, p3, quoting “Sommario di pedagogia come scienza filosofica”). Language doesn’t merely communicate ideas but shapes and defines them. Luca D’Auria similarly asserts that “language is performative,” as it colors, alters, and produces reality (D’Auria 2024). While language help us categorize, it can also divide—separating good from bad, truth from falsehood, etc. Knowledge itself, much to the dismay of proponents of political correctness, depends on clear categories to distinguish and define the realities we discuss.
So what?
For a while now, I have wondered why and how certain catchphrases/slogans/buzzwords become so prevalent in a given public policy context at some specific point in time.
The problem is that if you are (as I was) just a cog in very complex institutional machine, it is difficult to capture the complex dynamics of this process.
Therefore, I decided to investigate this phenomenon with a “reverse engineering” approach, starting from the corpora of documents themselves to see if I could identify some patterns or trends over time. (Head over to this page to see my specific research questions.)
Why focus on the World Bank?
The World Bank simply presented, from my point of view, a convenient “study case” because:
- Its documents (related to lending projects and other publications) are available and openly accessible.
- The Bank has a long history and a vast amount of digitized documents, which allows for a longitudinal analysis.
- The Bank’s sectorial and thematic coverage is very broad, which allows for an interesting analysis.
- Last but not least, I am familiar with the Bank’s documents’ nature, structure and jargon, having worked there for several years.
References
Footnotes
Buzzword: The term probably originated in the 1940s as jargon used in business and marketing circles. More recently, it has taken on the meaning “fashionable jargon”, especially common in business, technology, and politics, where they often signal innovation or forward-thinking but may lack clear, practical applications.↩︎
Catchphrase: The notion is of a short phrase that will “catch” in the mind of the hearer. The word was used in the 1840s of a line of music that was easy to catch and remember. It describes, in the modern sense, a memorable, often simplistic phrase or expression that becomes widely recognized and associated with a particular individual, group, or concept. It is designed to stick in people’s minds and to evoke a specific idea or emotion, usually through repetition in media, advertising, or popular culture.↩︎
Slogan: from Gaelic sluagh-ghairm, i.e. “battle cry”, used by Scottish Highland or Irish clans. The metaphoric sense of “distinctive word or phrase used by a political or other group” is attested from 1704. It still carries the connotation of a rallying cry, a motto, or a watchword, deliberately crafted to be persuasive, promote a cause or sell an idea.↩︎
Actually, “sustainable development” was first used in the so-called Brundtland Report, also known as “Our Common Future”, presented to the World Commission on Environment and Development led by Gro Harlem Brundtland.↩︎