No. I don't understand you so I'm asking you questions.
>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 live in one of the biggest military towns in this country. I shop weekly at the commissary here. I work, ride bikes, train, work out at the gym with, and fuck members of the military - navy, marines, army. career members. my best friends: members of the military, current or former. three of my others sons: members or recently retired members of the military.
military people don't use the term insurgents. they might use vulgar epithets - though actually very rarely.
>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?
i'm trying to understand how you distinguish between acceptable technical jargon v obfuscatory jargon.
> 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.
Well, you had said that you used examples with your students so I'm assuming that you could use the same examples here.
> >
> >
> > >
> >> > 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.
OK. I assumed when you mentioned students and jargon that you taught something related to it. As for the freud stuff, I still don't see how it's obfuscatory. Frued's language or the translations have never been an issue for me. It was never difficult to understand the concepts, and I've never heard anyone say that it was obfuscatory jargon.
There tends to be in the discussion around this a kind of assumption that either people use jargon on purpose to exclude others OR that there is some larger social process that goes on that inevitably creates jargon that then, thereby, excludes people. As far as I can tell, YOU aren't saying this. So, I was wondering what you meant by claiming a distinction. Beintg a sociologist, I assume you've given the social processes some thought to help understand either why people maliciouslly exclude or why social processes inevitably create jargon.
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