Jargon - was RE: [Sigia-l] Breadcrumbs - case study

[Jon Hanna]

> BTW, I don't mind professional jargon among professionals. As was pointed
> out, it's both useful and inevitable. (I use plenty of it when I'm
> sailing.) I just don't like jargon when it gets in the way of
> communicating to outsiders.

Of course that is also inevitable to some extent, though it generally stops
being considered jargon (e.g. "computer", "mouse", "memory").

The biggest problem is when jargon is used or created with the deliberate
intention to confuse (used successfully by many star-speakers in many
fields) as marketing (the big language disconnect between techies and
marketers seems to be that marketers seem to use jargon to be more vague and
slang to be more specific, where techies do the opposite) or simply to
pretend the signified is different than with a signifier you deliberately
avoid (the coinage of "shock and awe" rather than adopting "spectacular"
which the IRA have used for the same thing for decades).

I prefer not to avoid jargon I would use naturally when dealing with someone
outside of the field. If I am attentive to when I've used a term they don't
understand and I explain it I avoid difficulties when they hear, and
misconstrue, the term elsewhere.