[Air-l] levels of jargon

[Barry Wellman]

Someone responded to my "minimize jargon" post to this list yesterday
with a query, saying "how do you know it is jargon?" (I paraphrase.)

As I am teaching a writing workshop tomorrow, this caught my interest.

My initial thoughts are that there are at a minimum 3 different kinds of
writing.

1. Within your discipline (or sub-discipline) where commonly-known jargon
is not permissible, but useful shorthands. For example, almost all of us
should know what IM, CMC or CSCW are. In social network analysis, we all
know what blockmodeling or degree are.

2. Across disciplines to intelligent readers, such as the Association of
Internet RESEARCHERS:  I would never use "blockmodeling" or "degree"
without defining. Just as I would never use "performativity" or
"performing gender". They are in-group terms. (Test for this: ask your
[hetero?] partner tonight if s/he wants to "perform gender" and see what
you get). OTOH, I would assume I could talk about regression coefficents
or significance tests on this list, because they are common terms in all
social sciences.  AOIR has a special problem in this respect, because we
reach into the humanities, which, for example, normally doesn't teach a
basic stats course. (And of course, OTOH is a jargon term I assume is
commonly understood.)

3. For intelligent readers in the general public -- basically those who
read Harpers, LeMonde, etc. You really have to avoid jargon here. I've
doing a fair amount of this writing. See my piece for "revolver" on my
website and the recently coauthored Pew Internet report, "The Strength of
Ties" (www.pewinternet.org). Trouble is, many of us don't recognize jargon
when we "perform scholarly writing" ;-).  This really hit home around
Christmas, when after I had tried my best, the Pew folks edited my writing
for the aforementioned general public. (BTW, Pew goes to a great deal of
trouble to make stuff readable -- a 1.5 page press release which is all
that many commentators [especially bloggers and news media] appear to have
read; a 9 pp. summary, and then the fat report itself.)

4. Of course there is a 4th level, for the remainder of the general
public. That is really hard.

5. Also hard is writing in a foreign language, and even harder, using
foreign norms for constructing papers/chapters. Which basically means
writing/thinking in American English.* I'm intrigued that a Portuguese
university has invited me to teach in June a workshop on this stuff.
(*Linguisitic imperialism is a whole other topic.)

PS: An amusing piece of ageist writing is getting edited out of a paper
that Jennifer Kayahara and I are writing, "Searching for Leisure". The
editor has asked that we take out the term "MacGyver" on the grounds that
young scholars would be unaware of that great 1985+ TV show where Richard
Dean Anderson saved himself weekly from dire situations by do-it-yourself
tricks. If you're under 40, see:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088559/

 Barry
 _____________________________________________________________________

  Barry Wellman         Professor of Sociology        NetLab Director
  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman

  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
	     To network is to live; to live is to network
 _____________________________________________________________________