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HBO's Silicon Valley is back, with its pitch-perfect renderings of the culture and language of the tech world — like at the opening of the "Disrupt" startup competition run by the Tech Crunch website at the end of last season. "We're making the world a better place through scalable fault-tolerant distributed databases" — the show's writers didn't have to exercise their imagination much to come up with those little arias of geeky self-puffery, or with the name Disrupt, which, as it happens, is what the Tech Crunch conferences are actually called. As is most everything else these days. "Disrupt" and "disruptive" are ubiquitous in the names of conferences, websites, business school degree programs and business book bestsellers. The words pop up in more than 500 TED Talks: "How to Avoid Disruption in Business and in Life," "Embracing Disruption," "Disrupting Higher Education," "Disrupt Yourself." It transcends being a mere buzzword. As the philosopher Jeremy Bentham said two centuries ago, there is a point where jargon becomes a species of the sublime.

To give "disruptive" its due, it actually started its life with some meat on its bones. It was popularized in a 1997 book by Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School. According to Christensen, the reason why established companies fail isn't that they don't keep up with new technologies, but that their business models are disrupted by scrappy, bottom-fishing startups who turn out stripped-down versions of existing products at prices the established companies can't afford to match. That's what created an entry point for "disruptive innovations" like the Model T Ford, Craigslist classifieds, Skype and no-frills airlines.

Christensen makes a nice point. Sometimes you can get the world to beat a path to your door by building a crappier mousetrap, too, if you price it right. Some scholars have raised questions about that theory, but it isn't the details of the story that have put "disruptive" on everybody's lips; it's the word itself. Buzzwords feed off their emotional resonances, not their ideas. And for pure resonance, "disruptive" is hard to beat. It's a word with deep roots. I suspect I first encountered it when my parents read me the note that the teacher pinned to my sweater when I was sent home from kindergarten. Or maybe it reminds you of the unruly kid who was always pushing over the juice table. One way or another, the word evokes obstreperous rowdies, the impatient people who are always breaking stuff. It says something that "disrupt" is from the Latin for "shatter."

Disrupt or be disrupted. The consultants and business book writers have proclaimed that as the chronic condition of the age, and everybody is clambering to be classed among the disruptors rather than the disruptees. The lists of disruptive companies in the business media include not just Amazon and Uber but also Procter and Gamble and General Motors. What company nowadays wouldn't claim to be making waves? It's the same with that phrase "disruptive technologies." That might be robotics or next-generation genomics, sure. But CNBC also touts the disruptive potential of an iPhone case that converts to a video game joystick.

These days, people just use "disruptive" to mean shaking things up, though unlike my kindergarten teacher, they always infuse a note of approval. As those Tech Crunch competitors assured us, disruption makes the world a better place. Taco Bell has created a position called "Resident Disruptor," and not to be outdone, McDonald's is running radio ads describing its milkshake blenders as a disruptive technology. Well, OK, blenders really do shake things up. But by the time a tech buzzword has been embraced by the fast food chains, it's getting a little frayed at the edges. "Disruption" was never really a new idea in the first place, just a new name for a fact of life as old as capitalism. Seventy years ago the economist Joseph Schumpeter was calling it the "gales of creative destruction," and he just took the idea from Karl Marx.

The wonder is that "disruptive" is still clinging to life out there. There's a market in language, too, and jargon starts to lose its market share when its air of novelty fades. "Thought leader," "change agent" and "disruption," too — as the words get stale, they're in line to be disrupted themselves by scrappy new buzzwords that can once again convey an illusion of fresh thinking. That's why jargon always has to replenish itself, the same way slang does — though like slang, it takes a while to work its way from the cool kids' table to the outskirts of the lunchroom. It wouldn't be surprising if some people are still saying "disruptive" a decade or two from now. After all, there are still people saying "far out" and wearing those big 1970s eyeglasses, too. The only difference is that slang owns up to being no more than a matter of fashion, while jargon always has to pretend that it's something else.

Smartphones have become an essential part of many people's lives — 64 percent of Americans own one. And just as smartphones grew in popularity, so too have emojis. There are now more than a thousand emojis and some of them can really say a lot about how people are using language and communicating.

So what emoji do people use the most? That's the central question in a new study that looks at emoji use around the world. The company SwiftKey analyzed more than a billion pieces of emoji data, organized by language and country. According to SwiftKey's chief marketing officer, Joe Braidwood, the results were fascinating. Here's a sample of what researchers found:

People are mostly like to send happy faces:

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"The overall thing we noticed is that 70 percent of all emojis sent are positive and so that's probably a good thing that we're talking to each other positively and using emoji to enhance that," Braidwood says.

Canada loves poop:

"Canadians lead the charge in their use of money, violence, sports-related, raunchy, and even the poop emoji," he says.

Americans love their guns ... and their pizza:

Americans are second behind Canada in their love of violent emojis, such as guns.

But one thing Americans also really, really love is pizza.

"Pizza was one of the most frequently used [emojis] in the U.S., as well as the chicken drumstick ... and I think it shows you that, versus other nations, you guys have particular food habits," Braidwood says.

It's a party in Australia:

"In Australia we found that emojis that referenced drugs, alcohol, junk food and holidays were used much more than any other nation," he says.

He also notes that the French really are hopeless romantics, they use heart emojis four times more than anyone else. And Arabic speakers are big fans of the rose emoji, using it 10 times more than other language speakers.

Spanish-speaking Americans aren't as happy:

"On a slightly less positive note, one of the really fascinating things that we found out is U.S. Spanish-speakers were the most negative," Braidwood says.

Spanish-speaking Americans used sad faces more than any other language. "The most popular emoji that they used out of the sad faces was the crying emoji," he says.

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This week, the bodies of 24 unidentified migrants were laid to rest in Malta, the European island nation in the Mediterranean Sea. They were among more than 800 people who lost their lives last weekend off the coast of Libya when their ship capsized as they were trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach a better life.

Lieutenant Keith Caruana of the Armed Forces of Malta spoke with NPR's Arun Rath about the situation in the Mediterranean — and the toll it has taken on rescuers after more than a decade of trying to save the lives of desperate people seeking safety.

Interview Highlights

How the situation has changed

We have experienced this phenomenon for the past 12 years. The first migrants started leaving Libyan shores during the time that there was still the government of [Moammar] Gadhafi in place. They used to come in small boats, mostly wooden boats, not bigger than a few feet.

Now we have boats of 500 at times, 700 at times, people on board.

What happens in a search-and-rescue mission

You first receive a call, and when we receive a call, it could be a Swedish man on his luxury yacht or it could be a migrant boat. We try and investigate that call. After that, we deploy our vessels to give further assistance. These migrants are mostly sending calls using their satellite phones to our search and rescue coordination center. We proceed accordingly.

On whether migrants or smugglers make the distress calls

At the time, we wouldn't know and it doesn't really make a difference [who is calling], because our aim is to save lives. The identification of the person calling and how he got that phone and who paid for that phone, that comes at a later stage and it is not exactly in the armed force's remit. But of course we try and restore any evidence that is on those boats and then we hand it over to the local police force that conducts the investigations.

On the dangers of crossing the Mediterranean

Can you imagine a boat that is five meters [15 feet] and you would have so many people crowded that sometimes they can't even sit properly? We have had dinghies with 300, 400 people on a dinghy. Sometimes they spend two days, three days, at sea. Most of them are sub-Saharan [African] and have never seen the sea before. All of sudden they're in middle of the sea and the fuel runs out, water runs out. They wouldn't know even basic survival aspects. For example, we have had cases of dehydration and they start drinking sea [water].

On the effects on rescuers

I have spoken to a lot of these men ... after journalists ask for interviews, and some of them would say, "Do I really have to speak about this? Because it's such a trauma." When you especially take up corpses and see children ... it is not pleasant at all. It takes a toll psychologically. It takes a toll on the administration that has to provide psychological assistance to these men.

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On-air challenge: Every answer is a familiar two-word phrase or name in which the first word starts with L-O and the second word starts with G.

For example, a professional organization that seeks to influence legislation is a LOBBYING GROUP.

Last week's challenge: The challenge came from listener Steve Daubenspeck of Fleetwood, Pa. Take the first names of two politicians in the news. Switch the first letters of their names and read the result backward to name something that each of these politicians is not.

Answer: MARCO (Rubio) + TED (Cruz) —> DEMOCRAT

Winner: Marilyn Comerford of Clifton, N.J.

Next week's challenge: This challenge comes from listener Dan Ezekiel of Ann Arbor, Mich. Name a famous actor whose first and last names both are seven letters long. Change the first three letters of the actor's last name to three new letters and you'll name another famous actor. They share the same first name. Add the three letters you changed in the first actor's last name plus the three letters you changed to get the second actor's name, and you'll spell the last name of a third famous actor. Who are these three Hollywood stars?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to next week's challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern.