> (Some of the material in this post is, I think, relevant to the discussion
> going on between Alan and me.)
>
> I think it is bad practice (and can clutter thinking) to condemn jargon as
> such. There are contexts and contexts and in some it would be foolish NOT
> to
> use jargon (i.e., a special vocabulary for special purposes.) Capital is
> confusing enough as it is; it would be unintelligible had not Marx coined
> certain terms for particular reasons. ... SNIP....
>
> And in the physical and biological sciences it can be argued that the
> jargon
> IS THE SCIENCE. To drop the jargon is to substitute something else (perhaps
> itself useful) for scientific knowledge.
>
>
It is likely that this is misusing the word jargon, but my sense is that
there is obfuscatory jargon - that needs unpacking and can often be better
translated into everyday language - and there is technical jargon.
Technical jargon is essential to complex understandings of complex phenomena. At the same time, however, there are places where technical jargon and everyday language use the same word to mean different relations, processes, etc. The clearest example, in what I do for a living, is the word alienation. Additionally, there are odd, explosive, dynamic, upsetting, wonderful words - think nature, or culture - that are suffused with a vast array of both technical and everyday meanings, referents, etc.
I regularly work to show my students that they expect vast swaths of technical jargon in the natural sciences - however much they complain that there are so many terms to learn - but intensely resist the idea that there might be equally vast swaths of technical jargon necessary to understand social phenomena and that this implies that the social world is transparent in a manner that the natural world is not... an implication they know to be false given how uncertain, dynamic and contested the social world is.
Too many half-thoughts in here, mea culpa.