Jargon Words

[Pinkie-Dawn]

Before I can begin the discussion, let me copy/paste the definition of jargon words for those who haven't heard of it:

"special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand."

This goes way back in the old days, like around 17th and 18th century, when people use to talk like this:

Spoiler:

Today, there are still people who speak in jargon, but it's slowly dwindling because people are speaking in more simple words. I remember back in my high school during the 12th grade, where we've read an article about how the world is getting dumber because of the choice of words we use. The use of jargon words were suppose to make us smarter and increase the intelligence of the U.S., but after adopting simpler words for a wider audience, our intelligence start to dwindle. Instead of saying "bad guy," we should start saying "villain" for sounding more complex. Do you agree that everyone should go back to speaking jargon words like we have in the old days to prevent our IQs from dropping, or was the article I've read in article a bunch of rubbish?

 

[curiousnathan]

Well no. I think we're all entitled to use what words we like; it shouldn't be a matter of "we should be using these or those words because we don't want our nation to sound dumb." I think it should be an individual's choice on whether they'd like to use jargon words or not.

Personally myself, I don't really invest a whole deal of thought into ensuring I always use jargon words; I like to increase my vocabulary so I can better express and illustrate my thoughts, though.

 

[Kanzler]

I don't think we need to use jargon words, don't they refer to vocabulary used by a select group of people for a specific interest - like professional slang if you will?

Words change meaning over time. Some words gain connotations while others become more general. The word villain does mean a bad guy, but there's a connotation that this villain is a character in some kind of narrative. Even when we're using the word out of that context: "He's a real villain, all right" - it sounds to me that we're still trying to evoke a comparison to narrative, say a comic book or movie, so the word as we currently use it has limitations. "Bad guys" on the other hand, it's so casual it's almost euphemistic, and that kind of caricature can be very powerful. When you call a mass murderer a "bad guy", you're taking away whatever respect, fear perhaps, can come out his actions by describing him in such simple terms. I think there's a lot of irreverence in society today, and that is reflected in the way we use words, but I think it's very powerful when you take a serious matter and cut it down to size.

We do use a lot of simple words, but simplicity can carry a lot of power. Big things come in small packages.

 

[exitseraphim]

(a) The notion that using simplified language "makes us dumber" is pretty specious and has no experimental evidence to back it up. It's related to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the grammatical construction of language influences the thinking styles and perception of native speakers, an idea which is — as far as I know (since I'm not a linguist) — overwhelmingly rejected by modern linguistics. But there's no reason to believe that using "bad guy" instead of "villain" either indicates or dictates the intelligence of the speaker or their audience; nor is there any reason why "villain" should be considered more 'intelligent' than "bad guy" except that words of French origin are typically perceived as more complex than their Anglo-Saxon synonyms due to historical classism from a period in the development of English as a language when the English upper classes exclusively spoke French and English was the language of the lower classes.

(b) Jargon gets a bad rep because of people inventing and using it to obscure rather than clarify ideas and using it to mask the fact that they don't actually know what they're talking about. But in highly-specialised fields it's often irreplaceable. How would physicists talk about complex physical ideas without the use of jargon? The key point is that your choice of language should always be appropriate to your audience and promote maximum understanding of the concept you're trying to convey.

 

[LoudSilence]

I don't actually believe in the concept of "complex" or "difficult" vocabulary. You either know a word or you don't. The same amount of effort is put into learning what "choking" and "asphyxiation" means in that you memorise a definition for each, no more no less.

As such, I think it's a poor yardstick for gauging intelligence. Anything can be learned through determination and work, and an extensive lexicon is no different. I've met plenty of stupid people who were articulate.

Dunno if I believe in IQs either, but that's another discussion haha.

 

[Kanzler]

As such, I think it's a poor yardstick for gauging intelligence. Anything can be learned through determination and work, and an extensive lexicon is no different. I've met plenty of stupid people who were articulate.

This. When people learn long words for the purpose of sounding smart, they run the risk of learning how to sound smart, without having any kind of intelligence gains. The internet can tell you that much. Messages do not occur in real time, and so every message has the potential of being carefully edited and tweaked while the substance might be less than what it seems.

 

[Poki]

Everybody should just stick to their own way of using words. People who use complex words for the sake of sounding smart risk being humiliated, because 90% of the time they have no idea what they're talking about.

 

[Elite Four Grimsley]

Jargon should be used where necessary. A great example being presented by exitseraphim. You can still be a talented individual if you don't utilise jargon words.