> At 03:30 PM 3/1/2012, Alan Rudy wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 1:55 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com
>> >wrote:
>>
>> > answer is too vauge to understand.
>> >
>> > insurgent as vocabulary where? what discipline? profession? social
>> > movement literature? as social movement participants use them? media?
>> >
>>
>> That's exactly the point. In common usage these days, I think,
>> "insurgent"
>> implies terrorist opposing our will, power and society. It is obfuscatory
>> because, in common usage (usage strategically set by particular gov't and
>> media talking heads/writing hands), the diversity and specificity of the
>> various uses of the term are bracketed.
>>
>
> I guess I don't understand how it is jargon, obfuscatory or otherwise.
>
> Common usage? I mean, who's using it? Because I don't usually hear
> non-journalists use it. I mean, consumers of news don't seem to refer to
> people as insurgents.
But, again, that's exactly the point... and it feels like you are being intentionally difficult. The common, "technical" language of the news/government isn't shared, fully understood, or used by consumers of news (folks who're outsiders to the insider processes - like the technology groups you've described), but it obfuscates both the history of and both what the news/govt is, and isn't, saying. And you may not hang with folks who use that language but all my students with family members in the military, all my ROTC students and a large number of the friends of thees students use this language unthinkingly... I don't hear it among the professional status parents in East Lansing but I hear it from the middle and lower income students at CMU quite often.
>
> >
>> > state's rights? out of context, i don't understand how to is jargon.
>> >
>>
>
> Is the problem that you have a specific definition of the word jargon that
>> doesn't jibe with applying it to a short phrase most often used to veil
>> racist, sexist and classist intent? Is jargon different from code, I
>> guess, is the question. I see them as overlapping. Codes and
>> connotations
>> are part and parcel of the strategic situatedness of the use of all jargon
>> as I see it.
>>
>
> i'm asking *you* because you offered a claim - there is jargon that is
> appropriately technical terminology specific to a field, and then there is
> jargon. you didn't provide examples. I asked for examples as you would use
> with your students b/c you said you drew on conversations with your
> students about jargon in sociology.
>
> So, I'm a student and I'm asking you a question because I don't understand
> you and would like to pass the test, 'k?
But, again, here "you" seem to be choosing to be intentionally difficult, 'k? What I said in the original post is that there is an expectation among students that the natural/physical sciences are going to be filled with jargon but a deep frustration when the social sciences and humanities have their own. I also said something like "There is technical jargon and then there is obfuscatory jargon." It appears that, for you, I came up short in not noting that the examples of obfuscatory jargon I was thinking of and provided tended to be associated with reactively ideological politics and the technical jargon was associated with disciplinary practice. However, I probably muddied the waters by adding Id, Ego and Super-Ego... more below.
>
>
> >
>> > what is id, ego, superego an example of? properly used technical
>> > language or obfuscatory jargon.
>> >
>>
>> All three were obfuscatory jargon, I should have been more clear. The Id
>> =
>> The It, The Ego = The I, Superego = The Super I ... the traditional
>> translation only serves to get in the way of everyday English language
>> readers... as it did me the first time.
>>
>
> again, I don't understand how they are obfuscatory. what are they
> obfuscating? who is doing the obfuscating. why do they do it, if there's a
> who involved? is this something that is theorized in sociology? if so,
> wondering what the theory is about obfuscatory jargon.
Oh, come on. You surely know enough of this stuff to answer this question yourself. It takes next to nothing to find sources that indicate that Freud really meant "It", and that the translation to "Id" was significantly rooted in an attempt to make it seem more scientific to English language readers. But what Freud meant was "It". When I've taught Freud students have gotten very caught up in understanding the "Id" and the use of the term "Id" has made it more difficult than it ought to be to get them to see the "It"-ish, basal, animalistic, and unbidden drives. You want to know who's doing the obfuscating but don't seem to want to try to answer your own question, something most (good?) professors seek to get their students to learn to do for themselves (and something you've [at least implicitly] asked folks to try to do, themselves, here on the list)... in this case, I'd argue, the obfuscatory moment occurred - at an intentional level - long ago but there wasn't really an attempt to be obfuscatory however much it has turned out that way. I don't have a universal theory of obfuscatory jargon beyond the idea that sometimes it is politically or culturally or disciplinarily strategic - whether technical or popular - and sometimes it isn't, as in the ways popular usages of technically specific terms often draw on sufficiently limited aspects of technical definitions as to generate trajectories of connotation that have little to do with the technical meaning... I never claimed to have a universal theory, either.