The Science of Jargon

Much of my research on status displays looks at the role of language, particularly jargon. Overall I argue that our use of language reflects and is influenced by our place in our social hierarchy. We use language to 'communicate" about ourselves and our status as much as we do to communicate about whatever topic we're speaking about.

Zachariah Brown, Eric Anicich and Adam Galinsky

Abstract: Jargon is commonly used to efficiently communicate and signal group membership. We propose that jargon use also serves a status compensation function. We first define jargon and distinguish it from slang and technical language. Nine studies, including experiments and archival data analyses, test whether low status increases jargon use. Analyses of 64,000 dissertations found that titles produced by authors from lower-status schools included more jargon than titles from higher-status school authors. Experimental manipulations established that low status causally increases jargon use, even in live conversations. Statistical mediation and experimental-causal-chain analyses demonstrated that the low statusjargon effect is driven by increased concern with audience evaluations over conversational clarity. Additional archival and experimental evidence found that acronyms and legalese serve a similar status- compensation function as other forms of jargon (e.g., complex language). These findings establish a new driver of jargon use and demonstrate that communication, like consumption, can be both compensatory and conspicuous.

Highlights

  • Experiencing low status increases the use of jargon

  • Low status increases jargon use because it activates evaluative concerns

  • Archival analyses found a low status jargon effect across 64k dissertation tit

  • Experiments provided a causal link and mediation path from low status to jargon use

  • The use of acronyms also serves a status compensation function


HBR-Does Your Office Have a Jargon Problem.pdf

Zachariah Brown, Eric Anicich and Adam Galinsky

After discussing some reasons why jargon is so common across professions, we focus on one particular reason for its use: the desire for status. We review some of our research showing that jargon is used for status needs, and offer some practical advice on how to reduce costs from its use.

Popular takes on jargon below

Popular articles on jargon

New York Times


The Economist


Financial Times


Academic articles on jargon

Automatic jargon identifier for scientists engaging with the public and science communication educators

Paper where the authors attempt to create an automated 'jargon identifier' for scientists

This Place Is Full of It: Towards an Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale

The authors use employees perception of jargon in their organisation as part of their measure of "organizational bullshit"

Confronting Indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit

Argues that "bullshit jargon" is one type of misrepresentation at the workplace that can be used in place of outright lying.

Jargon as a barrier to effective science communication: Evidence from metacognition

Authors find that jargon hurts the public's ability to understand a message and leads to disengagement with the topic.

Quantifying scientific jargon

The authors provide an algorithm to measure scientific jargon

Measuring mumbo jumbo: A preliminary quantification of the use of jargon in science communication

Another method of measuring scientific jargon

Don't Dumb it down: The effects of jargon in COVID-19 crisis communication

Authors show studies that show that high jargon science communication reduced persuasiveness for non-immediate topics but for an important immediate topic (like covid 19) the jargon doesn't hurt persuasiveness

Relationship between persuasive metadiscoursal devices in research article abstracts and their attention on social media

Argues that authors use "linguistic markers in the form of metadiscourse" to convince readers to pay attention to or read their abstract and article.

How Experts Use of Medical Technical Jargon in Different Types of Online Health Forums Affects Perceived Information Credibility

Authors argue for aligning jargon use to fit the audience. Jargon leads to higher perceptions of speaker competence but lower benevolence and integrity


Weird Al Yankovic makes a humorous video entirely comprised of business jargon



"Monitize our assets..."

Using Jargon in non appropriate contexts