Re: Jargon & Questioning LO3 LO3309

Barry Mallis (bmallis@quickmail.markem.com)
19 Oct 1995 14:15:37 -0400

Reply to: RE>Jargon & Questioning LO3248

Willard,

The way you have described it, jargon seems to be a black and white,
self-evident manifestation.

"Jargon just is." Yup. Physical nature just is, too. But that doesn't
prevent most every human from interacting with it and having
non-self-evident feelings generated by the interaction.

The question for me is NOT "does it achieve effective communication."
Rather, the question is what IS the communication's net result? Your last
paragraph is reasonable to me. That's the way I want to act toward jargon
use, and toward the list of words you cite. But I don't think I consider
my behavior with these words in light of what I consider a somewhat
sterile pair of principles. There's too much at work in language.

Funny...I spent a year studying Mime and Movement at a professional school
in Europe. Words were eschewed. Movement could express jargon. Life
outside the school walls teemed at six PM daily when we departed classes.
We became aware of the languages and jargons of movements.

You ask it yourself: "In the current situation, is your use of jargon
hindering or enabling building a sense of community?"

Well, yessirree, sense of community involves that community's sense of
good and bad and everything in between. We work at eliminating what the
community thinks is bad, but even that changes over time.

Anyway, enough. Here are four lines from our friend Rumi, on words:

At first, I sang and recited poems,
keeping the neighbors awake.
Now more intense, quieter.
When the fire flames up, smoke vanishes.

Shall we parse?

Best regards,

--
Barry Mallis
bmallis@markem.com