Shared Language and Shiny Buzzwords

Any social group has its argot – its special words and phrases that speed up communication between the cognoscenti. (Argot has another meaning: the secret language used by groups to protect their conversations from eavesdropping. In this sense, cants and rhyming slang/back slang are argots. We'll stick with the jargon sense for this book.) Think about what the word "tree" means; now think about what it means in a computer science context. That meaning is part of the argot of computer scientists.

In a sense, jargon terms define group boundaries because they're exclusive. If you haven't learned the buzzwords in one context, you aren't included in the conversation among people who have. So, while jargon facilitates conversation among those in the know, it also keeps people who aren't in the know from understanding that conversation; it's a cause of inequality and division.

It's important to realize that, sometimes...