Re: Jargon... LO3361

Jim Michmerhuizen (jamzen@world.std.com)
Sun, 22 Oct 1995 16:21:05 +0059 (EDT)

Replying to LO3252 --

On Tue, 17 Oct 1995, Michael McMaster wrote:

> Jesse's comments on gangs and jargon suggests the power of jargon for
> community. A part of this communicty function is that it identifies
> who belongs and who doesn't. The who doesn't - the exclusion - may
> be more important in many cases than the indicator of belonging.
>
> Michael McMaster
> Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk

I've been trying to pin down in my own mind the difference between what I
think of as "evil" jargon, and "good" jargon. Something clicked here when
I read this.

Two background concepts first: a _name_ tags something in the world so I
can refer to it again. In the (logically) simplest case, a name may be an
utterly arbitrary collection of syllables with no conceptual meaning
whatsoever. No dictionary meaning. In a very important sense, names
aren't even "part" of the language; they're little markers, within our
speech, for everything in the world that our language ISN'T.

_Concepts_, on the other hand, set up logical dividers in our experience:
left/right, up/down, good/bad, light/dark, before/after, etc. They do
not name individual things of the world. A concept such as "learning
organization" can be analysed into a bunch of logically primitive simple
concepts, each one of which would turn out to be one of these dividers.

Jargon, of the bad sort, is concepts masquerading as names. This can
_never_ lead to anything but confusion, like one of John Warfield's
mindbugs. (Come to think of it, it's probably already on his list.) It's
a set of stereotypes playing a special social role on behalf of the
people who use them.

--
Regards
     Jim Michmerhuizen    jamzen@world.std.com
     web residence at     http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
...........................................................................
. . . . There are far *fewer* things in heaven and earth, Horatio,  . . . .
 . . . . .       than are dreamt of in your philosophy...        . . | _ .