Ah, jargon. Make sure you don’t use it. It makes you sound snobby. Or maybe you should use it. It demonstrates your expertise and understanding of a topic. Don’t you want to be taken seriously and speak concisely? Well, it depends on the audience and situation…or does it?
The confusion with jargon beings with the definition itself. The first definition provided by Merriam-Webster, “the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group” is a bit broad but hits on some key points of words or phrases and exclusive groups. But the second definition is, hopefully, trying to be a bit ironic. That is, “obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words.” So, jargon can be uncommon words or phrases used within a specific context that have an agreed upon meaning for those “in the know.”
No doubt, every specialty has jargon. I remember the first time I read the word ubiquitous in an academic paper. Sounds great, but once I looked it up, I discovered it basically just means “found everywhere.” Not very exciting, but sure sounds good. Ubiquitous is used so often in an academic setting, that I don’t usually notice it now. Jargon includes abbreviations and can also be quite technical, like qPCR (quantitative polymerase chain reaction, a common method of measuring DNA). Jargon can be especially difficult to track down when it’s only heard in conversation and pronounced as words, like “Nif-wif” and “Reggie” (defined below).
But the Virginia Sea Grant Commonwealth Coastal & Marine Policy Fellowship has given me the opportunity and reason to learn some more broadly practical jargon — terms in the political and public administration realm. Practical because as a private citizen, these are conversations and topics I should be aware of to inform how I vote or what programs I could support or be a part of. Knowing what these abbreviations stand for makes it easier to look up more information about them. A scientist by training, this vocabulary is not standard to my field.