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 _____________________________________________________________________
Barry Wellman wrote:
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/
That applies to young scholars in the US, since MacGyver or any other US-American show made (makes) it with great delay into the German or French market (dubbing, localisation etc.), so you would definitely reach a young scholars' audience in such countries like me (Germany grown up, early 30). Johannes -- Johannes Strobel Assistant Professor - Educational Technology Concordia University, Montreal, Canada 1455 DeMaisonneuve West Montreal, QC Canada H3G 1M8 jstrobel@education.concordia.ca Phone: (1) 514 848 2424 x 7338 http://education.concordia.ca/~jstrobel/ "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." - Howard Thurman
that is a strange one, perhaps you should remind your editor to use his or her American dictionary.... http://dictionary.reference.com/ search?r=2&q=McGuyver the verb 'to mcguyver' is actually an ongoing reference in many current tv shows and has been used in many references, there are two or three online communities that track its use.... I suppose it is cultural jargon though. On Mar 2, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Johannes Strobel wrote:
MacGyver
jeremy hunsinger jhuns@vt.edu www.cddc.vt.edu jeremy.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ LI-the journal
That applies to young scholars in the US, since MacGyver or any other US-American show made (makes) it with great delay into the German or French market (dubbing, localisation etc.), so you would definitely reach a young scholars' audience in such countries like me (Germany grown up, early 30).
Hmm, I'm 31 from the US, and remember the show, though I didn't watch it. I'm definitely too young for Perry Mason but see references to that a lot. I think with any TV show, you probably have to assume that at least some people in the audience might not have seen it, so wouldn't really consider it an "ageist" issue.
This is really interesting - I agree the jargon/not jargon issue is a real challenge possibly particular to those of trained in academic writing (although I am sure there are other arenas where it is an issue). I am intrigued as to how this plays out though the challenge of interdisciplinary and multiple languages, is I think creative and productive. I would agree with that we might all know what IM, CMC or CSCW are - I would still think it polite in writing a document to put all short hands in full in the first time of use or at least in a foot note although not on this list serv. I have no idea what regression coefficients or significance tests are but I would have made the opposite guess that "performativity" was a common term across the social sciences. At the same time the hypothetical scenario with partners makes no sense to me at all! (And of course, OTOH is a jargon term I assume is commonly understood.) - Again not for me although - as with the above - I could make a guess or look it up - something I would expect to have to do at some point in most reading. Id also observe that the McGyver reference is not only to do with age considerations, and certainly TV is infinitely re-runnable, but it does seem also to be a very nationally specific reference which would be obscure in many national contexts. The thing that really interests me about all this (and why I have found it interesting to reflect on how my interpretation differs) - is the productive tension in that I think any attempt to categorise what is jargon/not jargon has some kind of politics of normalisation i.e. what is acceptable and for whom. At the same time it is a useful and necessary exercise. I would imagine that this would be seen differently by almost everyone on the list I would also imagine that we might all have different points of difference and agreement with this categorisation (and any other) and that seems to me to be part of the creative challenge of this kind of network. I wonder if it would be possible to refine guidelines of this kind to meet a general consensus in this context or if we would always have too many exception clauses? Many thanks, all the best Kate ORiordan
participants (5)
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Barry Wellman -
Jeremy Hunsinger -
Johannes Strobel -
Marcela Musgrove -
O'Riordan, Kate