Jargon is default bad.
I’ll come right out and say it at the top because that’s the key insight. I’ll explain why and provide remedies to jargon, but I’m a believer in more = less with writing so if you just want one idea take it and go.
When I say “jargon”, I mean technical terminology. Don’t confuse “jargon” with “slang”, which also has an in-group but does not imply a deeper barrier to knowledge. Obscure vocab words per se are also not jargon.
Anyway, if you read obscure Substacks like this one you are probably an elite of some form. It’s not a value judgment, it’s just priors. But I do have a value judgment for you: elites rely on jargon and it’s hurting us all.
Now jargon must have a purpose, otherwise we wouldn’t see it crop up and grow like a weed of the mind given the right mental soil. I’ll come to defend jargon in certain places later on, I insist to you it’s not all bad! But mostly it is. And mostly it’s an elite phenomenon.
Let’s examine all purposes, starting neutrally and then moving to judgment on each in turn.
One preliminary: even if you reject all my judgments, you must admit that jargon has a cost in terms of time to learn and master. So it better be worth it! Check the prices in the jargon store!!
Purpose One: Fresh Start
Where standard language overruns with associations and valances, jargon is a fresh bed of dirt that allows new meaning to grow.
That’s great if your goal is rooting new and different thoughts! I like that goal in many cases. Lots of fields of knowledge simply couldn’t exist without jargon, like the impossible names of Chemistry (“hydroxypropyltrimethylammonium”).
It’s often not a good goal though. Consider:
A patently false body of thought. Cults, pseudoscience, questionable ideologies - they use the allure of jargon to plant malign seeds that outcompete normal thoughts.
A mind-numbing organization. Euphemisms are often jargon and make the bad seem banal. I have a longstanding fascination with the Soviet Union because I find the jargon (and propaganda) bewitching. Perhaps my all-time favorite is “Democratic centralism”.
Philosophy. I am 100% guilty of indulging in philosophical jargon for fun and no profit, but for a pursuit with one major goal of understanding how to live well, it’s terribly walled off. Unchecked jargon has allowed Philosophy to lose the plot mostly.
Purpose Two: Shortcut
Jargon allows the user to get where they’re going faster, mentally. It’s a shortcut that skips the longer route of thinking with common terms, like how a shortcut in travel skips common paths.
People like shortcuts! Keyboard shortcuts are pretty great. But divert with me to consider the nature of shortcuts.
If a shortcut is always reliably faster, would it not be the normal route? If not immediately then in time? New words come into common circulation in the same way.
What I mean by “shortcut” is a faster route that requires obscure knowledge, obscure mostly because it’s against some rules or best practice, or entails some risk. If I take a shortcut through the woods, I risk losing my way or seeing homely animals.
Jargon is a shortcut in this way. If the normal route of thought is totally mapped and known, jargon is a nice time-saver. If the normal route of thought depends on changing circumstances or has unmapped edge cases, then a shortcut may mislead rather than hasten.
A further aside: a colleague of mine long ago once noted the advantage of having an experienced hand on a project was so they could “see around corners”. I think it escaped him that seeing around corners (unassisted) is impossible; the logic of the metaphor implies the experienced hand is assuming rather than observing. Same risk as a shortcut - faster in consistent settings but dangerous otherwise.
String enough shortcuts together and you can fashion a complete route. The risk compounds and nearly guarantees error. When you get trapped in abstractions, reality bites back.
Purpose Three: Distinction
Shibboleth encapsulates the idea pretty well. Jargon distinguishes Us and Them.
When you’re the Dutch rooting out Nazis, that’s good!
When you’re talking with coworkers and half of them feel excluded because they can’t understand or contribute to what the other half of you are talking about, that’s bad. Many eyes make shallow bugs. Bugs we need to root out to let one hundred flowers bloom!
I observe many of my fellow elites falling into the same trap. “Exclusionary discourse” is probably a hobbyhorse for some section of SJWs. If so, they’re living the nightmare. If not, there are plenty of other terms elites use on the regular to demarcate themselves from the masses.
Again I 100% admit to this for the purpose of entertainment and in-jokes when in the right company. But it’s a bad default.
Wherefore Elites?
Now that we understand the nature of jargon, we can understand why the bad use of jargon is primarily an elite phenomenon.
To start, return to my definition of jargon at the top: technical terminology. “Technical” implies connection to a field of specialized (not general) knowledge. All people have some specialized knowledge - a welder has jargon a writer can’t parse - but elites have the most specialized knowledge, both in amount and in degree.
In addition, elites have the desire and ability to spend time on topics that can use specialized knowledge. Since their peer group is other elites, they have ample opportunity to display and be rewarded for their jargon.
As a result, elites are far more likely to use jargon, in all settings.
For the same reasons, elites are likely to view general topics through a specialized lens. The most common use of an inappropriately specialized lens is in politics. Elites believe social problems are legible to, and solvable by, those with the right knowledge: elites. They imagine a doctor treating a patient or a pilot flying a plane when conceptualizing the task of operating society.
Consequently, elites use jargon from formal fields like Sociology as well as grassroots jargon from The Discourse (magazines, certain forums) to describe the ills and remedies of the world, from big to small. This is why left-wing terms often sound like jargon (“intersectionality”, “decommoditization”). Jargon is the water elites swim in.
This Panacea’s No Cure-All
My antidote has two parts.
First, think in simpler terms. Try plain English that sticks to the subject matter. Reach for analogies if needed but be wary: no analogy is perfect and your insight may depend on a mismatch.
Thinking influences communication (which we’ll get to), but the goal here is to confront your own self-deception. Do you really know what you’re talking about? Do the concepts really make sense? If they do you should be able to explain them to yourself in plain English, without the time pressure of communication.
Once you can think in simpler terms, communicate in simpler terms. I’m talking about talking but also writing! Even chats!
I’ll give an example from machine learning. There are two similar terms relevant to models: “parameters” and “hyperparameters”.1 Both are jargon.
Parameter = the smallest bit of a model
People measure model size in parameters, it’s like the equivalent of height or weight for physical objects. I think this shortcut is on the path to being a common route because it has an intuitive, accurate (enough) analogue
Hyperparameter = setting, basically
You can pick different hyperparameters when you make or use a model and it will do different stuff. Pretty similar to adjusting settings on your computer or browser etc.
When I talk about these things in front of non-technical people, I’m okay using “parameters” in some settings since I want to immanentize this eschaton, but I avoid using “hyperparameters” uniformly.
Coda
I’m not saying no to jargon. I’m only saying, think before you reach for it. Jargon is default bad so you better have a good reason to bust it out.
A much smaller tip: if jargon is unavoidable, give a commonsense definition. At least you’ll get everyone on the same page, and at most you could reverse false consciousness.2
Thanks to Sean Pennino, Tyler Tsugita, and Nick Roopenian for reading drafts of this post.
The reason “hyperparameters” exists is to avoid collision with “parameters”, which is a fine reason although I think there were other solutions. If only Irving Good cared.
Yes this is Marxist jargon, no I will not give a commonsense definition. Purposes of entertainment!
Fantastic read. Somewhat related, somewhat tangential, one of my posts will be about (with imprecise measures of tongue and cheek) "the etymological fossil record" of "Classification warfare." Most words that now have reductive implications originally had the inverse sentiment or context in its etymology. Words like quaint, trite, contrived, trivial, arbitrary, mere and mundane all had positive implications or neutral-to-positive use cases.
For example, "trivial" comes from Trivium which is literally a common meeting place or common ground (where roads intersect). However, if you trivialize the common people as "commoners," the implication is clearly bad. Ironically, common ground is now valuable because of its... uh... rarity.
Similarly, "arbitrary" came from arbiters arbitrating, a use case which still survives. An arbiter has a specialized role as an umpire or mediator, and therefore relies on trust in their professional opinion. But something that is arbitrary is contrived as if by "mere opinion," and may be no better than any other random opinion. Such a link might seem a stretch, but just look at what is happening to the words "elite" and "privilege" as is implied by your own use.
There's a way in which the rhetorical jargonificationalism manages to draw the exact attention you hope to evade, and your words will resurrect to pataphysique your obdurance.
The etymologies were sourced from etymonline
Great read! I've noticed in my readings lately how writers that are sparse on jargon and willing to write plainly and even informally very often inspires more confidence. The idea is strong enough to be presented in plain clothing.