SOME INCONCLUSIVE COMMENTS 
CONCERNING JARGON 

Rory Ryan 

The attitude of the public to the proliferation, within any dis-
cipline, of specialized terminology (alias 'jargon'), is fickle. 
In some cases, complex verbal structures are regarded as an out-
rage against taste, good sense and propriety, while in other cases, 
c~sperate attempts are made to ingest the correct terms. This 
seemingly arbitrary reaction derives from the very best intentions 
(as a rule), and a crude rule-of-thumb method. Let me first elim-
inate the extreme examples which give specialized terminology the 
bad name of 'superfluous jargon'. There are cases in which the 
use of specialized terms adds nothing but opacity to an issue: 
referring to a lie as an 'etymological inexactitude' would fall 
into this category (if one disregards the intentional humour 
implicit in such a ridiculous substitution). In such cases, we 
may all shriek in horror, but such obvious cases are few. Never-
theless, they have given rise to an entire, and comples, procedure 
for reacting to specialized terms based, as I have said, on a 
crude distinction: if terminology contributes to an area of knowl-
edge, it is said to be enriching, ennobling, and worthy of respect; 
if terminology is seen to exist as a kind of icing, obscuring the 
cake and adding nothing to our understanding of the cake's shape, 
weight and colour, then it is an affront to our sensibilities. 
If jargon is intrinsic to the discipline in which it is employed, 
it is healthy; if it sits uneasily atop the subject, it is danger-
ous and mean. And the public is fickle in that this test is dp-
plied often without any knowledge at all of the subject 'ennobled' 
or 'diseased' by jargon. It is assumed by those who make use of 
this crude test that reality exists apart from verbal structures, 
and that we can have knowledge of reality quite distinct from 
those structures. But the outcome of the test is quite dependent 
upon public myths and the smattering of knowledge to which the 
non-specialist has access. So, for instance, an incomprehensible 
lecture on nuclear physics delivered by a cute teddy-bear of a 
grandfather with a few delightful quirks, is a superb lecture, and 

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https://doi.org/10.25159/0256-5986/5383 



the lecturer is a 'clever' man. If an incomprehensible lecture on 
bottling beetroot is delivered by an aloof and arrogant pedant, 
the lecture is a hopeless and pretentious failure. Society has 
very definite ways of dealing with such lectures and such lec-
turers, a method which contains about the same degree of rational-
ity and mercy as a medieval witch-hunt. 

The entire system of judgement is based on flimsy criteria and 
social prejudice, and would be hilarious if not often dangerous. 
Nuclear physics is allowed to have jargon, because of the average 
man's reverence for science; beetroot bottling is a 'simple' 
issue, and needs no jargon. Physics is a discipline which is very 
often intentionally kept at bay - one may delight (at a distance) 
at those clever men who, in the name of Progress, keep taking 
bigger and bigger bites out of the unknown, keeping us snug in our 
ignorance. And the beetroot bottler? He needs to be cut down to 
size, because beetroot.bottling is an activity already mastered 
and practised by many, which really does not require nonsensical 
and abstract consideration. Many prejudices are at work here -
to question the public's attitude to jargon is to question the 
fabric of society. 

The situation among professionals within any particular discipline 
is not better, but very different. The rule here for defining 
jargon is equally as crude: all of those words with which one is 
familiar (whether they be quite unknown to the layman) are 'neces-
sary', and those words which one does not use are regarded as 
'jargon'. It is very clever to isolate poetic ambiguity; it is 
pretentious to isolate 'controlled polysemy' (which incidentally 
is more precise than the former term). But I do not wish to appear 
biased; in fact, bias is the issue that complicates the entire 
debate, and bias prevents any reaction other than one's prior, 
entrenched prejudice. To those who are unkindly disposed towards 
jargon, regular jargon-bashing is an invigorating pursuit; to 
those who emphasize the merits of jargon, jargon-bashers are total 
brutes. 

The fierce antagonism within particular disciplines, due to dif-
ferences in attitude concerning jargon and its usefulness, might 
never be resolved since, to a considerable degree, this antagon-
ism can be traced to attitudes and prejudices extrinsic to the 
ceritral concern. By this I mean that very often a distrust of 
jargon may be traced not simply and honourably to a healthy ab-
sence of gullibility, but to an insecurity. And similarly, an 
overenthusiastic response to the merits of jargon may be traceable 
to an urge to be obscure, to conceal, to be windy. 

I will e,<a111ine this in more detail, and with reference to an area 
within literary study which provides a focus for much antagonistic 

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debate - literary theory. An examination of the real bases for 
such vigorously defended views on the subject's propensity for 
jargon might clear the air. Airing prejudices is always commend-
able, though one cannot expect them to blow away as a result. 

A basic distrust of the literary theorist's endeavour finds much 
to support itself by means of an attack on jargon. The attitude 
finds voice perhaps most successfully in an article by Thersites 
Minor, writing from the 'Metafaculty' of the 'Famous Critics School', 
entitled, 'How to be a Newer Critic: Metonymic Mumblings or A 
Generative Lexicon of Apposite Apothegrns'. The article begins with 
the following sound advice: 

To write the Newer or Higher Criticism it is not so much a 
matter of pursuing an argument or exploring a text as invoking 
the right Words. One's critical posture is almost immediately 
revealed by the choice of sanctified words and familiar con-
stellations of phrases. Schools and charters of critical 
privilege are, however, frequently dissolved or reorganized, 
so it is crucial that the aspiring critic not be caught on 
the ledge of yesterday's discarded lexicon. 

The implicit critique in Minor's analysis is that theorizing about 
literature is, at least, burdened by excessive jargon, if not 
entirely supported and sustained by it. And in some cases this 
supposition is correct. Incomprehensible theoretical passages may 
sometimes be translated into 'ordinary language', revealing hardly 
anything beneath the flow of pompous language. But all too often 
the situation does not conform to these clear-cut rules: an un-
discriminating and vicious attack on all jargon-impregnated pas-
sages often reveals an insecurity within the proud defender of 
'simple and ordinary language' . In short, this hero may not have 
as clear a grasp on the content of the passage as he should have. 
And for an onslaught against the excessive use of jargon to be 
successful, it requires a familiarity with theories of meaning, 
intention, the communication process; in fact, with far more than 
the clever mockery of terminology. 

But before confronting the problem head-on, one needs to examine 
the efficacy of arguments which posit the necessity of jargon. 
Firstly, and most cogently, it may be argued that jargon is 
necessary for precision of expression. It may also be necessary 
to underline any subtle difference between an older term or con-
cept, and its more sophisticated replacement. But very often, the 
introduction of new specialized words may have no such obvious 
arguments and justifications to resort to. A spe~ialized term may 
have the same semantic content as its predecessor. But even here 
the introduction of terms may be justified: if, in the 1980s, 
the term 'critical strategy' replaces 'critical approach' without 

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the introduction of any significant alteration in meaning, the 
purpose maybe to align the term with a new style of thought, or 
even to suggest that older styles of thought should not be appeal-
ed to. By analogy, the casting of Sean Connery as the hero in 
Zardoz ~ay not have been successful despite excellent acting, 
since, by association, the audience expects the silenced pistols, 
leggy beauties, and supercars of the James Bond movies to dominate 
each successive scene. Terms may become anachronistic, by means 
of purely co-incidental association. If, in the twentieth century, 
we pride ourselves on our knowledge of the concept of beauty, we 
shy away from the use of the term in case it evokes (laterally 
and not logically) the clumsiness and naivete of pre-modern 
theories of beauty. Is this not often reason enough to support the 
introduction of new terms? Ideally, yes ... but if this happens 
every decade, in every new swing of current research and method-
ology, the problem becomes complicated. 

Finally, in order to voice at least a reasonable opinion on the 
use or abuse of jargon, one needs to move beneath or beyond the 
signifier, the signified, and the presumed simple correspondence 
between them, to an examination of how words mean. Perhaps the 
reason why those in favour of cluttering the language still have 
total freedom, and those opposed to it can continue to insult 
every theorist who uses jargon (regardless of the theorist's 
merit), is .that too many opinions are offered too readily. In 
order to explore the issue fully, one may have to resort to 
infinite regression: an examination of jargon leads to an examin-
ation of meaning, which in turn leads to an examination of per-
ception, which in turn leads to an examination of reality and 
finally to Cartesian doubt. This sounds ridiculous, but perhaps 
we need to be thorough. At least such an inclusive perspective 
will help to place the issue in the context of Western knowledge. 
One may begin to realize that the word/concept relationship is 
complicated, or one may dissolve the issue in the far greater 
problem of whether meaning is capable of 'linguistic transmission' 
(in other words, perhaps, 'do words make sense?'). And all of 
this requires the introduction of still newer terms, since the 
notion of language is at stake. Jacques Derrida (after Heidegger) 
resorts to the deletion of concepts in order verbally to defend 
his thesis that meaning is nonpresent in the word. We arrive at 
the (perhaps necessary) absurdity of statements like, 'The~ 
is that ill-named~. What happens then? Silence? One is al-
ways tempted to go back to digging in the garden at this point, 
to be able to say with absolute confidence, when asked, 'I am 
digging with a spade in the garden', smirking all the while at 
Derrida. But the problem of jargon (and its infinite regression 
into silly, profoundly important problems of ontology, meaning 
theory and metaphysics) remains, since there are kinds of spades, 
kinds of digging, and kinds of gardens. 

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