- Jargon is a necessary part of science communication. It functions as shorthand for specific concepts and is effective for rapid and precise communication, when all parties know the meaning of the jargon.
- Jargon can be good or bad depending on how it is constructed and whether it is used at the correct time or for the correct audience. Convoluted and verbose language is, technically, not jargon.
- Scientists and journalists or science writers are different groups with different goals in mind for communication – scientists want to be as factually correct as possible and journalists want to be as clear and concise as possible.
- Most people are capable of understanding complex concepts, including jargon, if it is explained clearly.
Consider this sentence:
Many urban areas have depauperate flora and fauna due to anthropogenic disturbances.
If we replace the words ‘depauperate’ with ‘very few species’, ‘flora’ with ‘plants’, ‘fauna’ with ‘animals’, and ‘anthropogenic disturbances’ with ‘human activities’, you get:
Many urban areas have very few species of plants and animals because of human activities.
Now, this sentence is much easier to understand. Why? Because the ‘jargon’ words have been replaced by familiar words.
The term ‘jargon’ is usually used in a negative sense to denote obscure and often pretentious language marked by long words or confused, unintelligible language. This word has descended from the Old French word jargoun, meaning twittering or chattering, and later gibberish.
However, ‘jargon’ also has a neutral meaning, as explained by award-winning science writer, Anil Ananthaswamy. “Jargon is essentially technical language that scientists use for communicating among themselves. It can be shorthand for very specific concepts, simple or complicated, and it’s very effective when all parties know the meaning of the jargon,” he says.
Most scientists use a language that fits both these descriptions of jargon. For the purposes of this article, we shall stick to the neutral meaning of jargon.
Why do scientists use so much jargon?
For scientists, jargon is an important communication tool. Using jargon not only signals to others that a person is an expert in their field, but it also helps them communicate rapidly and precisely with others in that field. Words and acronyms, that would be considered jargon, such as DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid), PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction), streptococcus, or microcosm, in fact, convey a huge amount of information in just a word or phrase. This saves time and transmits complex concepts quickly and efficiently.
Take for instance, the acronym DNA. To a non-scientific audience interested in science, this word likely conveys the idea of an information storage system within the cells of living beings. But to structural biologists, the word DNA unlocks a whole compartment in their minds linked to the chemistry of the molecule — its three-dimensional structure, physical and chemical properties, movement, function, and perhaps more. To molecular biologists and geneticists, the word may let loose a ton of facts on how the information system in a cell works, how proteins are encoded and decoded, how glitches in this information system can lead to diseases such as cancer, and much more.
In this capacity, jargon seems to function somewhat like a password that allows scientists to access particular knowledge pools.
Another reason why scientists use jargon is because new discoveries often require new words. Using jargon also helps in precise communication as most jargon words only denote one thing and are not mixed up with commonly-used words.
But not all reasons for using jargon are as logical as the ones above. One of the stranger reasons for using jargon, especially in medicine, is that it allows doctors and medical experts to communicate with each other, in the presence of patients or family members, without embarrassing or horrifying them with gruesome details of medical procedures.
Why then, do people have a problem with jargon?
In many cases, using jargon can have the opposite of an intended effect. Take for example, a team of doctors, talking in medical jargon while a patient and their family try to follow the conversation. Although the doctors may intend to preserve ‘decency’ by resorting to their special lingo, it can create confusion, anger, and even panic in the patient and family members.
While many scientists may use jargon to show-off their professional capabilities, its use, especially at the wrong time with the wrong audience, can be intimidating and exclusionary. Even worse, jargon can also be used to confuse an audience and convince them of pseudoscience.
Another reason why jargon is so disliked is because many jargon words are badly formed. Take for instance, jargon words that are eponymous – named after a person associated with discovering or finding something. Fallopian tubes, named after anatomist Gabriele Falloppio, is one such word. It could very well have been called ‘uterine tubes’, which at least indicates their association with female reproduction. Or jargon words like Pneumoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis, which looks like it was created by a toddler upending a set of Scrabble tiles on the floor. This unpronounceable word is built of smaller words – Pneumo-ultra-microscopic-silico-volcano-koniosis.
There are also good jargon words, such as ‘Streptococcus’, derived from the Greek words Streptos (twisted chain) and Coccus (berries) which is used, pretty accurately, to describe bacteria that look like twisted clumps or strings of berries. The connection between the physical appearance of an organism to its name, makes it easy to visualise and remember.
One other reason for the bad rap that jargon receives is that scientists sometimes convert common words into jargon by using them in a special sense. A case in point is the term ‘uncertainty’. To a scientist, this means that a measurement does not have a single value, but a range of values. But to the public, ‘uncertainty’ often translates as ‘ignorance’; as in, if a scientist says that there is some uncertainty in measuring the damage caused by global warming, the public thinks that the scientist can’t measure what damage global warming might cause. Similarly, ‘error’, to a scientist, means ‘difference from exact number’, but to the public, it means ‘mistake or incorrect’.
But jargon doesn’t hinder communication only between experts and non-experts. In many cases, overuse of jargon can also confuse scientists themselves. A plausible reason for this is that we use more brain power to understand jargon than we do to understand words that we use regularly.
Is science communication without jargon possible?
“Yes, it is possible to have jargon-free science communication. For instance, while sensitising a rural audience to menstrual hygiene, they don’t have to be introduced to the words ‘menstrual hygiene’ or the names of the hormones responsible for the balance of the menstrual cycle,” says Suchita Champak, founder of SciRio, a science communication (scicomm) startup. “By understanding hyperlocal contexts and using the same terms and phrases that the audience uses, it is possible to do jargon-free scicomm. Bottomline, it all depends on the audience you’re addressing and what exactly is the objective to be achieved with the scicomm,” she adds.
Anil Ananthaswamy’s opinion on jargon-free science communication is similar, but he argues that without jargon, many explanations would need to be long and very elaborate. “The important thing is to know your audience: if you think the audience will understand some jargon easily, then it’s fine to use it now and then. But too much of it, even if the jargon is familiar, can make a piece of writing look more technical than it needs to be. So, use it sparingly,” says Ananthaswamy.
“Jargon should be used only when the terminology has already entered the lexicon of popular culture or is familiar to the readership of a particular newspaper or magazine. For example, the acronym DNA would have been jargon a few decades ago, and would have necessitated a simplified description, but today, at least for science magazines, it’s no longer jargon. The advantages are simply that you can use shorthand to get across concepts without elaborating further; but it only works when the jargon is familiar to everyone concerned,” he explains.
While Anathaswamy’s points are valid for proper scientific jargon, often, audiences have trouble recognising jargon. Most people tend to club the use of unnecessarily long words and convoluted sentence structures, with necessary and useful technical language as jargon. Convoluted and verbose language is, technically speaking, not jargon. Russel Hirst, a Professor of English at the University of Tennessee uses a delightfully apt term to describes this type of writing – sentence fat.
“I use this phrase to indicate the unnecessarily difficult, unnecessarily long, or simply unnecessary phrases and words that clog the arteries of professional writing. These words and phrases to which I refer are not the specialized or technical terminology of a science, profession, organization, trade, or activity. They are not vital for precision or universality or economy or any other goal of good,” explains Hirst. “Sentence fat is always bad, and so cannot be jargon, which is often good,” he adds.
Hirst illustrates his point with the following example:
Due to the fact that the compressor ceased functioning prior to our finalization of the work project, we informed the contracting party at that point in time that unless he agreed to convey a functioning compressor to our job site free of additional charge or cost to us, we would render null and void our contract with him.
According to Hirst, the sentence exhibits all three categories of fat: fatty words, fatty phrases, and unnecessary repetition (pure fat). Therefore, although it doesn’t take a specialist—such as an engineer, a doctor, or a physicist—to understand that sentence, it does require more mental energy than it should. If the sentence is trimmed of fat, you’d get something like this:
Since the compressor broke down before we finished the job, we told the contractor to bring us another one, at no extra cost, or we’d cancel our contract with him.
How does one decipher jargon?
Most people are capable of understanding complex concepts, including the jargon, if it is explained clearly. However, this can be quite difficult as scientists and journalists or science writers are different groups with different goals in mind for communication – scientists want to be as factually correct as possible, and journalists want to be as clear and concise as possible. Therefore, the duty of decoding jargon most often falls on the journalist, according to science journalist Rekha Dixit. “Most experts cannot express themselves beyond the set jargon of their fields. A good journalist has to take the effort of deconstructing jargon for the public. And this becomes even harder for quick pieces like newspaper articles, where journalists have stringent word limits,” says Dixit. “In the end, this leads to science news that is gibberish to the ultimate consumer, the reader, and what’s the point of that?” she asks.
In case you do find an interesting, but jargon-filled article that you really want to read about, here are some tips to help you gain a better understanding of the topic.
First, don’t be intimidated by the jargon; just take a deep breath and remember that it’s a word that someone thought up to convey something specific. The next logical step would be to search for the term online, or if possible, ask an expert. A lot of jargon is just acronyms. If you find out the expanded form, usually, it’s easy to understand what information the jargon is trying to convey.
Second, it is highly likely that someone somewhere has posted a simple explanation of or some clever analogies that can help you understand what the jargon means. For instance, this brilliant comic that explains how the rocket Saturn V works.
Third, there are many experts and scientists on your side. Here’s an effort by geneticist Theo Sanderson that takes the elimination of jargon to new heights – the almost-but-not-quite-absurd Up-Goer Five challenge, which dares scientists to explain their research in the thousand most-commonly used English words.
As Pulitzer-winning science journalist, Ed Yong, declares in one of his blog posts, “Writing is a constant battle for attention. Filling prose with jargon, and failing to consider the all-important audience, ensures that you lose the battle before you’ve even published a pixel. Nobody has ever felt obliged to read. Don’t give them reasons to stop.”
Banner image: At the National Expo XIII (in 2009) that organised by the ‘Central Calcutta Science & Cultural Organisation for Youth’ at North 24 Parganas. Photo by Biswarup Ganguly/Wikimedia Commons.
