Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
David Ogilvy
3 thoughts on “Pretentious Jargon”
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Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.
David Ogilvy
Comments are closed.
And jargon achieved warp speed when PowerPoint was introduced.
This comment goes for just about any business. Or profession.
In my first profession, the official name for what the public would call a “retreat” is “retrograde motion.” Then there’s “collateral damage,” and “unlawful combatant,” and “asset”…
It’s the egotism of trying to distinguish the insiders from the n00bs.
Pseudo-sciences use a lot of jargon as an attempt to legitimize their publications; scientists use what looks like jargon, but is meant to be precision (scientists may not be the best writers) – a phrase can give those who know the field a lot of information quickly.
The intended audience should be able to tell, but niches can be so small that only a few members of the potential audience are qualified to comment.
And that is why scientific popularizers are so popular.
Outside the real sciences, jargon is often an attempt to obfuscate, or to make plain English look like academic research.
The problem is that every group needs to publish. And ‘journals’ like the money.