This is the Business English Podcast Episode 317, Downplay versus Playdown.
Are they the same? Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Ears English.
Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business.
For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is real business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsey and Aubrey, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
What is the difference between B1, B2, and C1 English?
And what is your English level?
You'll get all of these answers with our free quiz.
From small talk before Zoom meetings to complex negotiations with clients, you need to know where you are now so you know how to improve.
Take our free English level quiz at allearsenglish .com slash fluency score.
That's allearsenglish .com slash fluency score.
Hello, Lindsey. How are you?
Excellent. How are you, Aubrey?
How's it going? I'm great.
I have a question. Do you think you can ever be too honest?
Yeah, I do think so.
I think sometimes it's not that we need to lie, but we need to choose what we decide to highlight, what we decide to place emphasis on.
What's more about sometimes we can be too transparent or like highlight the wrong things, right?
Yes, 100%. It's a great question, though.
Where did it come from?
Well, this is going to be really interesting.
This is part two of a two -part series where we're talking about highlighting.
A listener gave us a great question about highlights, lowlights.
How does this work in English?
And the more we thought about highlights, we realized when we're talking about the opposite, if we used today's vocabulary, de -emphasize, downplaying, it's not just that we're not highlighting something.
We're doing more. We are de -emphasizing.
We're wanting to make something seem less important.
Yes, and there are a few things we say, very native and natural words that we use when we decide we want to do this, right, to talk about doing this.
Yes. If you missed it, scroll up, check out episode 315, How SWOT Makes Business Meetings More Effective.
We shared, sometimes people will talk about highlights, lowlights, but there's lots of other interesting ways to structure a meeting.
So don't miss that episode.
All right, so today is that part two, right, Aubrey?
Good. Exactly. We're going to share vocabulary for not highlighting, but that actually implies reducing how important or maybe how negative something is.
We have to do this a lot at work.
Yeah. So let's dive into the first one, which is an interesting word, de -emphasize, right?
Yeah, which means to reduce the importance.
We might say, we should de -emphasize our lack of sales.
Imagine you're going into a client meeting.
The first thing you would want to share would not be that you're struggling on the sales front.
Right, or an investor meeting, right?
Obviously, they're going to need to know your numbers in the end if they're going to invest in you, but the way you present it, there's always a story we can tell to show why those sales are not working out yet.
Exactly, right. If you have competitors and you have weaknesses or you have strengths that you should be highlighting, if you can share that first, sure, everything else is going to come out.
You have to be transparent.
But if you start with your weaknesses, you're really setting yourself up for failure.
Yeah, you're not going to start off a sales meeting with, well, not many other clients really wanted to buy this, but they just haven't seen the vision yet.
No, no, no. You do want to create that feeling that people want this product, right?
I mean, that's number sales 101, I would imagine.
So, all right. Maybe if you're a hiring manager, right, and after an interview, you might say, she seemed to be de -emphasizing her lack of experience during the interview, which fair, right?
During an interview, we're wanting to highlight our strengths, share what we've done, and if we don't have a lot of experience, we might want to de -emphasize that.
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
And there are ways we can go another episode into, how do you actually do this?
How do you de -emphasize things?
How do you downplay things?
Right? That's tricky vocabulary, right?
To do that without seeming insincere or seeming like you're trying to hide anything.
Yes, that could be a whole other episode.
Guys, hit the follow button.
So, what do we need to know here about American English?
Yeah, this is a quick little grammar note about hyphenating.
So, in American English, the guideline is to avoid hyphens usually if you can.
For example, the words re -educate, preempt, re -employee, re -elect, we don't have hyphens on any of those, but there are a few exceptions, and this is one of them.
De -emphasize and de -escalate, we do put a hyphen here.
But it's interesting, in British and Canadian English, they will use hyphens more often.
A lot of these words will all be hyphenated.
Interesting. I didn't know that.
Okay, good to know.
Good to know. Often with hyphens, it's nice.
You'll see it both ways.
Don't stress about it so much.
But if you are a stickler and you're wanting to know, should I hyphenate this or not?
It's interesting to know that sometimes it depends on if it's American English or somewhere else.
Yeah, I prefer the hyphen, actually, because if you see re -educate, without a hyphen it looks like re -educate.
Re -educate. Re -educate.
That's kind of strange.
Preempt is prepped.
Right, I don't mind always having a hyphen in these.
It's British English.
I'll take the hyphens.
I'll take it. I'll take that part of British English.
Yes, okay. So number two, what is another thing, another way to say this, essentially?
Yeah, so our next option here is downplay.
Yeah. And this is interesting.
This is making something appear less important or maybe less negative than it really is.
And I feel like there is a little bit more of a connotation of subterfuge here, right?
You're downplaying something a little more than just de -emphasize.
A little more active kind of agency going on in what you're trying to do.
Yeah, yeah. So for example, the client seems to be downplaying their need for our services.
Maybe you're in a negotiation.
This will happen a lot.
Someone might downplay how much they need it in order to get a better price.
Yeah, for sure. Another buying strategy, I guess.
Or I've been trying to downplay how overwhelmed I am, but it's time to admit it.
Right. I kind of love this, right?
When we have anxiety, when we're feeling overwhelmed, we might downplay it to coworkers, to family.
We're just trying to put our best face on.
Sometimes you got to admit it.
Yeah, for sure. Never good to do that for sure.
Okay, Aubrey, we are back.
So play down. This is cool because number two is downplay.
Number three is play down.
Yeah, this is interesting, right?
So we have this phrasal verb.
It means the same as downplay.
They're both verbs.
Downplay is written as one word, but it's really interesting that we flip down and play, but have the same meanings.
It's kind of strange.
It's really interesting.
So, for example, he had been playing down his stress until he became overwhelmed.
Okay, it really does mean the same thing, doesn't it?
It does, right? You could also say he had been downplaying his stress.
These are very interchangeable.
Yes, or we should play down how much we need this account.
You could see this being said before a meeting, right?
Okay, we're going into this negotiation.
We're going into this meeting.
We don't want to overplay our hand, make us, you know, we don't want to seem desperate, right?
Or the classic scenario of buying a car, right?
Oh yeah. Well, I could keep my, you know, my dusty old 2004 Toyota for another year.
She's doing great, you know, right?
We definitely want to downplay how desperate we are for this new car because we're trying to get a better deal.
Right, for sure. A lot of scenarios where this happens.
Let's do a role play.
We work together in HR.
So we are coworkers.
Yes. So I'll start us out.
We may need to have a conversation with Marcus.
He's been arriving late a lot.
I haven't looked at the numbers.
He said he was late once last week.
I think he was downplaying it a bit.
He was actually late four times last week.
Oh, he was definitely de -emphasizing it when we spoke then.
We'll need to schedule a meeting with him to highlight the importance of being here on time.
Yeah, this is tricky.
That's interesting.
I kind of like this role play because in, at least in the US, in business culture, we really hesitate to outright accuse someone of lying.
If someone says, oh, I was only late once.
We might say this like, oh, I think he's downplaying how lady was.
I'm not going to say he's lying about that.
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
But when it comes to numbers and things like that, you really can't.
I mean, we're basically what we're saying is he's lying under the surface.
That's what we're saying.
Interesting. We're just using different vocabulary.
That's less harsh. That is really interesting.
And this is what it could look like between colleagues.
Right. Different between friends at home or something when you don't need to hide anything, but between colleagues, we're creating an air of professionalism, not wanting to accuse anyone of anything.
Exactly. Interesting.
Let's go through this.
I first said you were saying, oh, I think he said he was only late once.
I said, oh, I think he was downplaying it a bit, which, and then when I say, you know, the records show he was late four times.
Really, what I was saying is he's not being truthful, but I'm saying that in I'm sort of trying to give a positive spin.
Maybe I'm friends with him and I'm trying to spin it for him.
Yeah, for sure. Could be could be the case.
And then I said, oh, he was definitely de -emphasizing it when we spoke then, meaning when he and I spoke.
Right. Yes. You're like, oh, okay.
It's not just that he didn't highlight how late it was.
He's trying to de -emphasize that he's trying to make it seem less important.
Yes, exactly. And then what did I say?
I used highlight here.
We'll need to schedule a meeting with him to highlight the importance of being here on time.
So I wanted to share that as well.
Right. Just to make sure he understands how important it is.
All right. Good stuff.
Yeah. These are high level words.
So if you're not currently using them, guys, put them into your professional vocab.
And I think another, another day we'll revisit this and talk about how to do it.
You know, how would you do it?
Let's say, for example, in an interview, how would you de -emphasize or downplay the fact that you don't have any actual on the ground sales experience, but you know a lot about this industry or this product, something.
Yeah. I love that. I remember when my daughter got her first job, um, but we got some advice from people cause we're like, she has no experience.
Yeah. You know, what can she say if someone asks her about this?
How can she either downplay that or just emphasize, you know, it's interesting.
You got to think about it.
Yeah. I mean, everyone has their first job.
Right. So everyone somewhere you got to, they know, you just came out of high school and so it's, you know, you have to figure out what's your angle and that's kind of your first lesson in the career world.
Kind of cool. Yeah.
Let's definitely do an episode about that soon, Lindsay.
That would be interesting.
That would be excellent.
Any other final takeaways, anything you want to leave our listeners with today, Aubrey?
Yeah, I really loved this series.
Send us your specific questions like this.
You hear highlight and low light.
You're not sure exactly how you can use that at work or in conversations.
As you can see, it leads to really interesting episodes with great vocab that can help you make those connections at work.
All right. Great stuff.
Aubrey, I'll see you back on the show very soon.
And you have a good week.
Awesome. See you next time.
All right. Bye -bye.
Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
Want more from All Ears English?
Don't miss our biggest and best podcast with 8 million monthly downloads.
Just search for the All Ears English podcast and hit follow to get four new episodes per week on fluency, American culture, grammar, and so much more, or tap the link in the show notes.
Remember, we believe in connection, not perfection when it comes to learning English.
Follow the All Ears English podcast now.
