Discourse analysis, pragmatic, jargon..questions?

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by konungursvia

define: jargon - Google Search

There's only one of those quotes that mentions pejorative - and it's not from a linguistic source. Most simply define it, quite rightly, as being the specialised vocabulary of a group of people, which is the definition I claimed for it, and which is how linguists use it.

Naturally, as we are discussing the technical linguistic use, it would be best to use linguistic sources. I'm aware that lay people use "jargon" pejoratively in most cases, just as they use "style" to mean a lot of things that linguists don't mean. I've never seen this word being used pejoratively by a linguist, but I accept that some might.
Note that the same applies to "dialect". It doesn't matter how many lay people find this word offensive when applied to their language, the technical definition doesn't carry this connotation.

[konungursvia]

Only one definition uses the word "pejorative," that is true. But several refer directly or indirectly to difficulty of understanding, slang, pidgin, and obscurity.

Maybe we just see the word differently. I consider it an informal word, not much less so than "lingo."

To me, it sounds like a playful nickname, not a proper term like "lexicon."

But there are many words that have different connotations in different places.

Edit: Here's another source, the more serious Columbia Encyclopedia:
http://www.questia.com/library/encyclopedia/jargon.jsp

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by konungursvia

Only one definition uses the word "pejorative," that is true. But several refer directly or indirectly to difficulty of understanding, slang, pidgin, and obscurity.

Maybe we just see the word differently. I consider it an informal word, not much less so than "lingo."

To me, it sounds like a playful nickname, not a proper term like "lexicon."

But there are many words that have different connotations in different places.

Edit: Here's another source, the more serious Columbia Encyclopedia:
Jargon: Free Encyclopedia Articles at Questia.com Online Library

It doesn't matter how serious the source is. If it's giving a non-technical definition, then it's not giving a technical definition from linguistics.
"Jargon" is a technical term in linguistics, and it also has a lay meaning, just as "style" is a technical term in linguistics and also has a lay meaning.
"Jargon" is used by linguists in a non-pejorative way. The word "jargon" is linguistic jargon, and this probably accounts for why non-linguists do not realise that it has a non-pejorative technical meaning.

[konungursvia]

I see what you're on about now. But even in linguistics, it means a pidgin, or pre-pidgin, not a lexicon. That is from the lay meaning, I believe.

[Ever Student]

Lexicon? Sorry I cannot get it. You mean linguists haven't been yet unanimity to approve a real description on jargon, pidgin and so on?

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by taghavi

Lexicon? Sorry I cannot get it. You mean linguists haven't been yet unanimity to approve a real description on jargon, pidgin and so on?

No, it simply means that kon and I haven't yet agreed on a technical linguistic definition of jargon.
I use it to mean the vocabulary used by a set of specialist people. As such, jargon comprises the vocabulary or lexicon of a register. (It also has other less common specialist meanings).

"Jargon" is also used pejoratively by lay people who, like most people, tend to denigrate what they don't understand. Since jargon is, by definition, incomprehensible to lay people, lay people will denigrate jargon. By extension, the term "jargon" has come to have pejorative connotations which do not exist in the primary meaning of the term (as it is still used in linguistics).

In linguistics, when one speaks of 'military jargon', 'medical jargon', 'internet jargon', there is no suggestion that jargon shouldn't be used, or that it is unnecessarily complex or silly. If you cannot use the jargon of your specialist peers, you cannot communicate specialised knowledge with them.

The set of terms like 'tense, mood, adjective, noun ..." is the jargon of grammarians.

[konungursvia]

The use of the term in Ray's way, outside of Australia, seems to be limited to the non-linguistic community, whereas in linguistics it refers to pre-pidgins, not terminologies.

jargon (linguistics) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

[Raymott]

Here’s a list of just a few scholarly linguistic journal articles that illustrate how “jargon” is used by linguists.
None of journals are Australian. None of the articles use the term pejoratively.
I have already conceded that the term is also used in another sense – but not in these articles.
(There are hundreds more where these came from).
I’m hoping we can end the thread here. The argument is becoming futile.

Marcel Cohen, the Survey and the Linguistic Facts, from 1908 to 1928
Boutet, Josiane
Langage & Societe, 2009, 128, June, 31-54
... are analyzed here: his first article (1908) on the jargon of engineers (polytechniciens), in which the influence of his teacher

Teaching Technical Jargon through Word Formation to the Students of Engineering and Technology: Problems and Some Perspectives on Strategies
Malathy, P
Language in India, 2009, 9, 6, June, 347-355
The technical jargon of every field derives its terms from a variety of languages, although these are used in English. Students, who are generally not exposed to such terms in their vernacular, perceive these terms to be difficult to learn ...

Multilingual distributional lexical similarity
Baker, Kirk
Dissertation Abstracts International, A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 2009, 69, 09, 3523
... is virtually unlimited -- proper names, technical jargon, foreign borrowings, newly created words, etc. -- meaning that lexical resources like dictionaries and thesauri inevitably miss important vocabulary items. However, manually creating ...

The Discourse Of News Management
Jacobs, Geert; Maat, Henk Pander; Van Hout, Tom
Pragmatics, 2008, 18, 1, Mar, 1-8
... pseudo-quotations, promotional language, the use of jargon and structural aspects such as the headline, the lead paragraph, and the boilerplate. Its overall objective is to try and explore some of the institutionalized forces (from PR to journalism) ...

[Raymott]

Coherence Relations and Concept Dynamic in Learners' Personal Theories
Strugielska, Ariadna
VIAL - Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2008, 5, 107-129
... the popular notions about language and language learning which are frequently transmitted from teachers' jargon to students' talk are gradually giving way to modified, internalized and perpetuated concepts. Adapted from the source document

Law, Music, and Translation: When a Jurilinguist is a Music Lover and Law Becomes Musical...
Ruffier-Meray, Jahiel
Traduire, 2007, 214, 51-104
... (2) the translatability problems of rendering legal jargon into general language; (3) the tradition of representing law in a language of cadence & harmony in the Greek Antiquity; (4) the 19th-century versified forms of the French civil ...

Vocabulary of Criminal Jargon
Gendre, Renato (Review of: Goria, Giuseppe [Ed])
Bollettino dell'Atlante Linguistico Italiano (third series), 2007, 31, 272-273

The Cavargna Valley: The Locksmiths and Their Jargon, Rungin
Berruto, Gaetano (Review of: AA VV)
Rivista Italiana di Dialettologia, 2006, 30, 300

Translation and Science-Some Considerations
Foley, Stela
TradTerm, 2006, 12, 181-191
... texts, when the translator is not familiar with the jargon to be used. Many believe that these types of texts only depend upon formulae & calculations, which is not really the case, because the objectivity & precision of the linguistic ...

Modality in TV Sports Broadcasts
Nowosad, Magdalena
Studia Linguistica, 2006, 25, 111-127
... the described events & states of affairs. Sports jargon is characterized as a specialized language variety, & Artur Tworek's (2000) classification of TV sports broadcasts, differentiating between reports, parareports, & commentaries, ...

Russian Today
Russian Language Journal/Russkii Yazyk, 2006, 56, 183-185, 79-84
... speech as a model for the rest of Russia is supported in part by noting that the youth of present-day St. Petersburg retain the ability to replace their customary jargon with the standard language when the situation demands it. J. Hitchcock

The Distinctiveness of the Doric: Home-Grown or Imported?
Lorvik, Marjorie
Scottish Language, 2005, 24, 31-63
... northeastern region that have disappeared elsewhere. Historical documentation of trade, especially between Scotland & Norway, supports the notion that a North Sea trade jargon may have developed in Hanseatic times. References. J. Hitchcock

Aspects of Anglicism Use in Informal Language
Stefanescu, Ariadna
Studii si cercetari lingvistice, 2005, 56, 1-2, Jan-Dec, 219-227
... technology (IT) specialists communicating in professional jargon is examined. Noting the pervasiveness of code switching & mixing in such interactions, the two sociolinguistic phenomena are briefly discussed with references to the literature ...

Eliminating Frontiers: The Scientific Summary of Three Discursive Communities
Rivard, Leonard P; Diop, Lamine; Nyongwa, Moses
Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique appliquee, 2004, 7, 2, autumn, 97-115
... text. Their summaries were shorter & included less jargon & fewer sentences. They also employed fewer connectors, both in terms of number & variety. Although the students made more errors than the science professors, the two groups ...

Managers, Managism, and the Tower of Babble: Making Sense of Managerial Pseudojargon
Watson, Tony J
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2004, 166, 67-82
... widely used in corporate settings which is neither a jargon in the sense of the specialized language of a group of experts nor a jargon in the sense of meaningless verbal noise making. It is often criticized by organizational ...


The Effects of the Linguistic Turn on Recent Historiography
Aurell, Jaume
RILCE. Revista de Filologia Hispanica, 2004, 20, 1, 1-16
... comprehensive language that freed itself from scientific jargon. The new historiography evinces a correspondence between the narrative structure of human life & the narrative structure of human history. Such historiography becomes an art while ...

Dialectal Vocational Terminology of Blacksmiths and the Slovenian Linguistic Atlas
Skofic, Jozica
Annales: Anali za istrske in mediteranske studije - Annali di Studi istriani e mediterranei - Annals for Istrian and Mediterranean Studies. Series historia et sociologia, 2004, 14, 1, 179-194
... presented), demonstrates, however, a double standard: in the jargon used by horseshoe blacksmiths there are more adopted denominations for different blacksmith tools than in the language of art & craft blacksmiths, who use primarily original Slovenian ...

[Raymott]

Managers, Managism, and the Tower of Babble: Making Sense of Managerial Pseudojargon
Watson, Tony J
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2004, 166, 67-82
... widely used in corporate settings which is neither a jargon in the sense of the specialized language of a group of experts nor a jargon in the sense of meaningless verbal noise making. It is often criticized by organizational ...


The Effects of the Linguistic Turn on Recent Historiography
Aurell, Jaume
RILCE. Revista de Filologia Hispanica, 2004, 20, 1, 1-16
... comprehensive language that freed itself from scientific jargon. The new historiography evinces a correspondence between the narrative structure of human life & the narrative structure of human history. Such historiography becomes an art while ...

Dialectal Vocational Terminology of Blacksmiths and the Slovenian Linguistic Atlas
Skofic, Jozica
Annales: Anali za istrske in mediteranske studije - Annali di Studi istriani e mediterranei - Annals for Istrian and Mediterranean Studies. Series historia et sociologia, 2004, 14, 1, 179-194
... presented), demonstrates, however, a double standard: in the jargon used by horseshoe blacksmiths there are more adopted denominations for different blacksmith tools than in the language of art & craft blacksmiths, who use primarily original Slovenian ...

"Eurotensions" between Norm and Usage
Pietrini, Daniela; Micheli, Maria Daniela
Italienisch, 2003, 50, Nov, 130-137
... relevant when the exclusively singular usage in technical jargon became pluralized in colloquial language. Special attention is devoted to Italian, where the plural form & desinence of euro are investigated from two angles: one assuming that ...

The Best of Both Worlds: Inflated Terms in IT (and Other) Discourses
Gailor, Dennis
English Today, 2003, 19, 3(75), July, 37-43
... language in science fiction. Parallels with military jargon & legal language are examined, & it is contended that the terminology of each genre may generate the impression of entering an elite group that does important things. 11 References. ...

Metaphor and Genre: The Presence and Role of Metaphor in the Building Review
Caballero Rodriguez, Rosario
Applied Linguistics, 2003, 24, 2, June, 145-167
... regarded not only as a constitutive part of architects' jargon, but also as an important rhetorical device at the service of the goals of that specific discourse interaction (covering issues of writer-reader relationship & textual coherence ...

Canting Terms in Early English Monolingual Dictionaries
Gotti, Maurizio
Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 2003, 46, Apr, 47-66
... in order to trace the insertion of elements of this jargon in publications not exclusively devoted to the language of the underworld. Two of these works in particular - Coles (1676) & The Ladies Dictionary (1694) - have been found to include ...