Does anyone else get the sense that maybe we’re over-complicating things? Or maybe the opposite: grossly oversimplifying complex things? Or maybe, we’re just intentionally obfuscating our meanings. Despite strong cultural pressure to “fit in,” it seems like we all like to distinguish ourselves in some way. Many people seem to feel that being privy to specialized language is a good way to be distinguished and appear intelligent. Thus, we invent dialects where words get all tangled up and only those others in the same subculture or profession have a hope of understanding.
There is a strange drive to initialize/acronymize any phrase that gets significant usage. What’s funny about this is that these abbreviated phrases sometimes lose so much meaning that part of the origin of the abbreviation later gets added back on. For instance, I’ve heard the phrase “ATM machine” on a number of occasions and recently heard “ATS system” in professional context (where ATS = Applicant Tracking System).
Artificial redundancy is a good way to make ourselves sound more complicated because everyone knows that the longer it takes to say/spell something, the more complex the meaning. Computer-wise, I’ve heard the phrase “login in” and more recently, corp-speak about the “going-forward approach” and also “directionally where we’re going.” It’s especially amusing when you can adequately condense a 5 minute speech into a 10 second sentence.
We also like making up new words that only we and our elite group know and, even more fun, is to take an existing word and invent a completely different meaning for it (whip=car, etc.). This kind of thing has been going on for ages, but seems to be proliferating even faster in the current social landscape where communication technology keeps connecting us better and faster (although I recognize this technology is slower to reach some areas of the world) and the need to differentiate is becoming stronger. Also, I’m sure that advertising plays no small part as it steals and commodifies our subcultures nearly as fast as we can invent them, so we’d best keep running.
However, I’m not sure jargon is really the way to go. I think it’s so much easier to communicate when the language isn’t so slippery (and if you’re not continually inventing special meanings, the ad industry can’t coopt them). I think the real problem is that on so many other levels, we’re trying so hard to be the same, that jargon is a natural rebellion against our conformist instincts – a way of keeping them at least somewhat in check.
jar·gon [jahr-guh
n, -gon] –noun
| 1. | the language, esp. the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group: medical jargon. |
| 2. | unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing; gibberish. |
| 3. | any talk or writing that one does not understand. |
| 4. | pidgin. |
| 5. | language that is characterized by uncommon or pretentious vocabulary and convoluted syntax and is often vague in meaning. |
