Dílseacht bhómánta?

D'iarr duine orm cúpla lá ó shin Gaelainn a chur ar théacs gearr ar son chluiche teileafóin agus ghéilleas dó. Duart leis ná fuil mo chuid Gaelainne mórán níos mó ná lagmheasartha agus sin cuma liom, de reir cosúlachta. Inniubh fuaireas an téacs agus é lán de bhotúin. Tá a fhios agam ná fuil Fraincis líofa ag an aistritheoir, ach bhí súil agam le rud níos fearr. Cad a dhéanfad anois? Tá sé ar intinn agam an téacs d'aistriú chomh litriúil agus is féidir--botún sa leagan Gaelainne ar comhréir le gach aon bhotún amháin sa leagan Béarla. Ach cad'na thaobh agus go bhfuil a fhios agam fós go dtabharfad níos mó meancóg dom féin?

You can pry my jargon out of my cold dead brain

So last week's post about Ostler was originally conceived of as a post about my mild disappointment with both him and Abley, but I went on so long about the one, I couldn't see how to shoehorn in the other. Now whereas Ostler is a linguist but not a historian, Abley is neither linguist nor historian but journalist. Nothing wrong with that; as he points out, "you don't have to be a veterinarian to describe cats". Fine if he stopped there, but in preempting the assaults of us vicious philoglots, he goes farther and says:

I beg the forgiveness of linguists for trespassing on their territory and perpetuating whatever blunders have found a home in these pages--and I would gently remind them that their own voices are unlikely to be heard on the subject unless they speak out in terms that are lucid, intelligible, and free from jargon.

To which I reply, "Bite me. Is that free enough from jargon for you?" I can't tell you all how damn sick I am of being upbraided by people outside my field for using "jargon". Why is this always a pejorative term among laymen? This is linguistics, not pop psychology or pomo theory. Our "jargon" is not some hermetic cant to fool everyone into thinking we know what we're talking about when we don't. If "laymen's terms" or "ordinary language" were sufficient to describe what we need to describe, then we would never have needed to invent any "jargon".

Moreover, I've never found that it makes much different anyway. The fundamental problem with talking to hoi polloi is not that we use jargon but that they are so blinkered by their own biases and idées-fixes that they can't comprehend the basic tenets even when they are couched in the plainest language imaginable. If you need examples of what I mean, just browse Language Log for a bit. The good souls there have spilled billions of pixels striving to debunk as much nonsense as they can, and yet it just keeps coming. Particularly depressing is the numbing regularity with which you see the same canards resurface (e.g. talking pets, sex differences in the brain, etc.) and the same blitheness with which the experts are misunderstood each time.

I'm reminded of snousle's frequent comments on the theme of what makes science hard: it's not the language the concepts are explained in, it's the concepts themselves. The most important scientific discoveries are painfully counterintuitive; we believe them not because the conform to our preconceptions nor out of blind faith, but because rigourous application of the scientific method consistently shows them to be valid. This isn't less true of fields like behavioural psychology or linguistics simply by dint of their being less "hard" than nuclear physics or microbiology.

Given this, jargon is not only an important tool for experts to state what they mean precisely but also an important reminder to non-experts that the nature of these things is not what they think it is. For instance, "phonemes" are a qualitatively different concept than "sounds" or "letters" and can't be reduced to either; the sooner a neophyte accepts that, the closer they are to understanding how language really works. Jargon is vitally important in the struggle to keep people (both within and without the field) from interpreting everything according to their "folk models"; so why do people keep trying to take it away from us?

Also, he misspells "Kabardian" as "Kakardian". Repeatedly. Maybe that's an error introduced by a copyeditor but even so, what the hell?