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Should Journalists Embrace Jargon?
ananyo writes "In an opinion piece for Nature, science writer Trevor Quirk argues that researchers use jargon to 'capture the complexity and specificity of scientific concepts.' Avoiding jargon might mean that a piece ends up easier to read, but explaining a jargon term using everyday language 'does not present the whole truth,' he says. 'I find it troubling that the same antipathy that some writers express towards jargon has taken root in the public's general attitude towards erudite language. I submit that this is no coincidence. People seem to resent not just specialized language, but any language that requires a large degree of labour to understand, appreciate and use,' he writes. 'The world increases in complexity every day, and we should not let shrink our capacity to describe it.'"
But first, please stop using "God particle", which is not jargon. It is just stupid.
Link to Nature article http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/487407a (no paywall).
Depends on the audience that the thing you want to say.
The first two categories are obvious:
Complex concept to aimed at people in the field: jargon away
Simple concept aimed at general audience: minimal jargon, spell out the stuff you do use
The other two categories are tricky, and in my opinion, in extreme cases, shouldn't be attempted.
Trying to write too much stuff to a differing audience results in something that is mostly useless for both. We see this all the time in software. People try to write up a design spec / user manual / whatever aimed at everyone from the customers to the project manager to the team lead to the coders who will implement it. All those people require very different information for different purposes and operate with a different vocabulary. You end up with something too technical for the customer, to "clean" for the project manager, and too verbose/lacking of details for the coders.
Better approach is to just make seperate documents.. you actually end up saving more time and a lot saner in my opinion.. and you produce something useful (which is always nice).
Should journalists understand what they write?
I mean really, what possible purpose could understanding the topic of conversation possibly contribute?
Why is this sort of non-sense continuing to come up? If your audience is highly technical, and knowledgeable in the field then speak the language. If they are not, then bring it down to their level. It's common sense. The real question that should be being asked is whether or not to use non-technical, attention grabbing "buzz" words that add no value and are more likely to distance the reader from and hinder their understanding of the subject being discussed.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
If you don't have relevant qualifications, credit and refer to someone who does. Quote them explaining what the jargon means. It's the most honest way of saying 'I don't know what it means exactly, but I took the time to find someone who does'.
It's not like we're filthy primitives who live in caves and don't know how to hyperlink.
Just like everything else, the use of jargon comes in several forms -
Use it sparingly and the jargon can "enhance" the article
Use it to the extreme and lay people get confused to the point of giving up reading the article altogether
Even the way one uses everyday language can effect the read-a-bility of the article, believe it or not
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
There was a BBC article by Will Self on this recently also.
In defence of obscure words
Ralf
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russel
How about we not create so much unnecessary jargon in the first place? Is it really necessary to say "Mr.Smith, you have a serious condition called 'pneumothorax'", followed by an explanation when you could simply say "Mr.Smith, your lung has collapsed."? If there already is a simple descriptive term that adequately expresses what you wish to say, stop inventing argot just so you can look smart. Yes, people tend to think you are smart when you speak of things they don't understand. When you take advantage of that, you're just being a pompous jerk.
Comes down to audience and how much investment in time said audience is willing to make.
If it is a casual interest article, I'm probably not looking to learn a whole new vocabulary.. I'm looking for enough information to facilitate the value I hope to get out of it. As a trade off for this accessibility, I accept that I'm not getting the full story.
On the other hand if I am reading to learn something, then yeah, give me a quick overview of the jargon and then go nuts. You lose a lot of information trying to explain things with analogies and common phrasing .. and if I'm really trying to get something, I accept that I have to educate myself a little on the language that is to be used.
At the very least, keeping in mind who the audience is and what you are actually trying to drive home is important. When you try to write something to please everyone you usually end up with something that doesn't do the job for anyone.
I am totally behind this. The reason we have jargon and technical terms in the first place is specificity,
There are two reasons that jargon are used. First, by a person in the field to another person in the field to convey information based on a common understanding of the terms used. That's fine. That isn't what a journalist is trying to do, however.
The second reason to use jargon is to obfuscate the information or cause the recipient to lose interest. That, too, isn't what a journalist is supposed to do.
So, based on those two reasons, the answer is "NO", the journalist's job in conveying the information to his readers includes translating jargon. And if the journalist doesn't understand the jargon in the first place, he's going to have a hard time knowing which of the two reasons his source used the jargon is correct.
and failure to use these specially created words and phrases only causes confusion and false understandings.
Ever been to a doctor? Do you want him to tell you about your medical condition using jargon or clear language? How about the side effects of your prescription? Which is clearer? "This medication may cause dyspnea, anaphylaxis, or in rare cases pheochromocytoma. If you notice any of those, call an ambulance and come to the hospital immediately". Unless you are up on your medical jargon (most of us are not), you'll either be scared to death of any little event and calling 911 all the time, or not be aware that the "shortness of breath" or "itching" you are experiencing needs immediate attention. Much better to say "when you take this, you might have trouble breathing, suffer a severe alergic reaction, or in rare cases you might develop a tumor in your adrenal glands." Oh, ok. I know "trouble breathing". I know "allergic reaction". I don't know how I'd detect the last thing. Tell me more..."
Scientists typically have a hard time conveying information about what they do to the public, precisely because they become used to the jargon and don't realize that the average reading ability of their audience is 7th grade. The next time a scientists talks to you about "subaerial" events, ask him why he didn't just say "on the land". Yes, it's longer, but almost everyone understands "on the land" while not as many grasp "subaerial" (or the counterpart, subaqueous -- "underwater"). Or how about the ones who continually refer to "anthropogenic" when they could say "human-caused"?
We somehow managed to learn that meat could be chicken, beef, or pork,
"We" did? For many people "meat" means dog, cat, snake, horse, and a host of other things. It's what you deal with daily, so you know what you deal with daily.
How many people deal with dyspnea on a daily basis and have a reason to know about it, before the doctor who uses jargon uses it with you? Other than weather geeks who glue themselves to TWC, who knows "isobars"? Thermoclines? Isohaline contours? Common mode rejection?
how come we can't learn that T1 could be PRI, DIA, or dark?
"We" can, if we deal with it enough to need to know. Most of the public who reads the product of journalists don't study every field he covers so they can be conversant in the jargon. If you force people to look up the terms when they come across them, yes, you'll have "taught a man to fish" in a way, but more likely he'll say "fishing is too hard, I'm going to McDonald's. Call me when Big Brother is on."
By the way, your use of "dark" to refer to a T1 line is questionable. T1 is a copper pair which carries no light. "Dark" refers to fiber optic lines which do have a photonic signal when activated and are dark when disconnected. As in "dark fiber".
Readership of large magazines and newspapers declined rather drastically since the Second World War.
In recent years, large media organizations are often using even simpler language than in previous decades.
So, I have to ask, while there will always be a small segment of the population with the desire to both be 'well-informed' and the discipline necessary to attain that goal, how are you going to bridge the gap between this small audience and the far larger one which primarily seeks non-educational entertainment?
While journalism with solid evidence and sophisticated language is an excellent ideal and a noble goal, the reality of a population with minimal desire to understand issues on a deeper level constrains the business side of things.
While the news media is partially to blame for the situation where many people are minimally educated and willfully ignorant, our education system, politics and cultural values all play a part as well. Are we going to change all of these facets of our contemporary society in order to make journalism with sophisticated language successful, and, if so, how would we go about doing so pragmatically?
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
I'm afraid the DOI system doesn't actually bypass any paywalls. I was simply noting that this particular article was publicly available (most Nature articles are not). A DOI is just a persistent, unique "digital object identifier". It is now extremely common for academic journal articles to have a DOI assigned to them. The DOI for an article remains constant, and resolution from the DOI to the current URL at which the article can be found is handled by the DOI resolution system. The DOI for this article is 10.1038/487407a, and one way to resolve it is to prefix it with 'http://dx.doi.org/'. If you want to read more about DOIs, there is plenty of information at http://www.doi.org./
The jargon of today is - in theory - the plainspeak of tomorrow.
I know of no such theory that would make that claim. Doctors have had a jargon for as long as there have been doctors, and while SOME of their terms have made it into common language, most have not.
If readers (and listeners) take some time on the front end to learn the terms, they will have an easier time in the long run.
No, they won't. Just what terms do you think someone who is going to see is doctor is supposed to front load into his brain? Just which of the tens of thousands of medical terms will you need today? How about learning the jargon in today's newspaper? Got a clue, before you try reading the article, what's going to be there? Nope.
Jargon is used between people who know the terms. If you know one party doesn't know them, jargon is not appropriate. Especially for a journalist whose job is to explain things to normal people.
So let's all communicate like 7th graders, instead of educating people to the 12th grade.
I didn't say that and you know it. Let's communicate with our intended audiences so they understand what we are saying, not leave them stuck running for the dictionary because we're too erudite to actually communicate. When you say "I ordered a PRI T1 line to replace your SLIP over 56k modem, Gramma", you aren't educating her, you're leaving her behind deliberately.
The author's point, which is spot on, is that dumbing things down has created a general sentiment that jargon is hard.
Some of it is. Do you deny that? Some of it takes advanced education to understand, or depends on knowing so many other things that you aren't going to pick it up just because yuo saw the word on the front page. There's a reason why they don't cover calculus in fifth grade, or nuclear reactor engineering in ninth.
What is the purpose of a journalist writing an article in a newspaper about a technical subject? Is it to teach all the readers that subject, or teach them all the jargon? No. Of course not. It's to convey information. If your reader is a layman, use layman language. You'll save time and not drive your readers away. You're competing for his time, and you'll lose as soon as you lose him. Write an article that's too hard to understand because you're using jargon and the first reaction will be "turn the page", not "find a dictionary".
A T1 can be copper or optical,
You've just proven my point. "T1: A T1 line uses two wire pairs (one for transmit, one for receive) and time division multiplexing (TDM) to interleave 24 64-Kbps voice or data channels. The standard T1 frame is 193 bits long, which holds 24 8-bit voice samples and one synchronization bit with 8,000 frames transmitted per second. T1 is not restricted to digital voice or to 64 Kbps data streams. Channels may be combined and the total 1.544 Mbps capacity can be broken up as required." No mention of fiber. It's jargon. Your definition isn't the same as someone else's. You caused confusion instead of clearing it up. And people who don't deal with it on a regular basis aren't going to know what T1 is, so that point still stands. You say "meat vindaloo, please", to one of the Indian tech support high-schoolers, and you get dog instead of beef because "we" don't know that "meat" mean beef at all. Your problem, not mine.
Yes, let's all use jargon when we don't need to.
Pulling it into string theory will give you the "god string" which will be shortened to g-string.
True, and here's a good example.
Geophysicists find oil with vibrators.
I'd prefer that modern journalists embrace journalism. You know, do some research for a story and make some effort to write in a grammatically correct fashion. My high school journalism teacher would have given an F grade to the majority of stories I see in leading publications today. Its sad how far this profession has spiraled down the toilet.
It depends on the audience. A physics review journal or a medical publication for doctors is going to be very unappealing if it's written in laymans terms. On the other hand magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American do a pretty good job of making scientific news accessible to everyone, and take the effort to explain jargon terms when used.
OTH, IMHO, I LMAO at the irony of where journalism is heading in general. DUCY?
Secondly did no one here pay attention in their high school English class. I did I just fell asleep for the grammar portions.
You were apparently pretty drowsy during the lecture on punctuation, too.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
One has to assume a baseline of understanding with one's readers. Take it as a given that a journalist is a competent user of the English language*, and also take it as a given that basic research has pulled together information for a story*, but the jargon used by specialists is about 50/50 worth using or explaining. This guy is out of his gourd if he wants everyone everywhere to either understand industry-specific jargon or STFU. If a researcher can't explain his shit without jargon, then he probably doesn't have a good grasp of it himself. I mean, Einstein explained relativity with both raw math and simple analogies. If you've got something more complicated than relativity to explain and you can't do it without jargon, then fine. But if you're worried about having to use an extra eight words to explain your protein concoction, the, well, the STFU is on you.
*I realize that this is not always the case.
One of the first people to comment on the Nature article has it right. The definition of "jargon" being used here is incorrect, so the article comes off, to me, as fussy straw man b.s. Terms that help you define, for example, a phenomenon specific to your discipline are not at all necessarily jargon. Jargon is calling your laboratory a "lab," or saying 'we did 17 "runs" of an assay to confirm our results.' Jargon refers to the terms you do not use when you publish a formal paper because -- they're informal.