Some say that jargon makes the exchange of information easier by creating a common shorthand. Others say that jargon disguises the lack of information. Maybe jargon is used to create an in-group here?
Funny, because I'd say that jargon is a facilitator of communication between knowledgeable people, and can always be looked up by those with the interest but not the knowledge. Meanwhile, writing everything for a lowest common denominator audience creates a real barrier to communication.
Because jargon is extremely helpful for communicating ideas quickly between experts, and it's a pain to have to switch to entirely non-jargon when communicating with anyone else.
But these kinds of posts don't interfere with learning.
I actually learnt a bunch from those jargon examples - I'll certainly start using some of them at work. Jargon exists to make communication more efficient - I just learned a bunch of new ways to communicate about my craft.
The goal is to communicate, so I'm going to use the words that mean what I want to say rather than trying to dumb it down. It's the same reason why most if not all professions have jargon; the goal is not to gatekeep, but to efficiently communicate well understood concepts within the profession.
All of which isn't to say that people shouldn't occasionally step back and question whether they could convey the same thing without the jargon and fancy words, but frequently the answer is no, or at least not anything like as succinctly and clearly.
A lot of this is also about understanding your audience. I will happily use jargon when talking to peers and plain language when talking to others.
The problem on the internet is when content leaks. Sometimes a piece of writing meant for peers gets shared to others and you get accused of using jargon. Or inside jokes.
In reality the problem is that at first you have a period when you're finding each other's common jargon. You think someone is a peer and you use jargon. If they seem confused, you explain.
But some people feign understanding for fear of seeming dumb. Then you are in trouble. You become the pompous ass with jargon and they learn nothing.
Maybe the answer is to never start with jargon and only upgrade if the other person turns out to be a peer.
But that often offends them if they are indeed a peer.
They are secure in their own expertise and can recognize expertise in others. Their jargon makes their conversations more concise, like ours does for us.
All areas of practice have their own jargon, words that superficially sound similar to regular English but actually have specific insider meaning that promotes faster in-group communication (and a degree of in-group signalling) - this is true for scientists, software engineers, yoga instructors and yes, business people.
Interests must align. People must know common jargon which convey high density information faster. I would like to have positive ROI on the conversations that I have.
You should be able to express your ideas -- with jargon or nerdspeak or technobabble -- in such a way that people can understand you even if they don't understand those words.
Use of jargon is a huge impediment to communication in organizations like NASA and DoD. There's even a glib saying that you won't get your project funded unless you give it a cutesy/cool acronym. This ends up stifling communication because each group has its own pet vernacular that obfuscates meaning unless you are inside the circle.
They could benefit from clear, concise communication that gets to the point
I understand this critique, but I also think there are times where jargon, abstract expressions and acronyms make communication a lot faster and clearer for people who share the same context and domain knowledge.
Trouble is, if you don't have the domain knowledge it's really hard to tell if what you're listening to is really condensed, specific info or meaningless blather.
A lot of times I might say something like "we did data analysis with Python, NLTK and R. The stack is on EC2 running Django with memcached and varnish serving up json and the frontend uses jQuery, underscore and backbone to render it"
To some people, that's a ton of info. To others it probably sounds like gibberish.
The same even applies to the "valley-girl" talking. It sounds like meaningless half-sentences to someone listening in, but to people who know all the social relationships being discussed there might be a lot of information going back and forth.
Actually, similar to the way you can find DSL's galore at all the big tech companies, in my experience people in specialized fields or in close knit groups evolve their own jargon to speed up and increase the specificity of communication.
Acronyms and other jargon are the exceptions, absolutely. But half the time when I see these used it seems more like "intelligence signaling" than an actual means of making communication more efficient. Domain specific jargon might be unavoidable and should be elaborated on, especially for new people, but the business newspeak that gets thrown around a lot is almost always unnecessary, in my opinion.
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