Do you think language and in particular terminologies impede the sharing of information, and more importantly how can we overcome that?

Not for technical fields. They seem impenetrable at first because language is often so precise. However, it must be precise within the field in order to reduce the chance that any statements will be misinterpreted.

It’s a lot of up-front work, and some of it is unnecessary, but most of it is and once it’s mastered you end up preventing holding back your work because you can’t clearly get the concepts across to your colleagues.

Your question would be more intelligible if you’d give some examples of concepts from distinct fields that differ only in the terminology associated with them.

@ratboy what are your thoughts regardless? I’m looking for philosophical analysis, and creative solutions. If you have any specific questions let me know.

I think that while you have a point that jargon, especially in technical fields, serves a purpose. Thw use of plain language would require “dumbing down” of the concepts.

@marinelife can you think of another middle-ground solution?

For the challenges in academia…
I’m toying with giving students a glossary in the exam and making the material focused on integrated knowledge and understanding the concepts. Rather than testing your memory or lack-thereof. Students with bad semantic memory suffer necessarily even if they understand the material. I’ve talked about this with a few profs – what it comes down to is designing a test that is easy for them to mark – but also integrative (though that’s assuming the institution/department wouldn’t allow a glossary or test the glossary).

What’s the subject? I come at this question from a legal perspective, so I am biased to the importance of the jargon, as we need to be really, really certain we’re using the right terminology.

@iamthemob so you may be saying it’s subject-relevant. I am considering it. Although regarding the legal field – I remember a TED talk specifically on that. Redesigning legal language to make sense and be understood – as well as be specific. I’m not looking at any one subject. Any subject, and overarching principles for interdisciplinary / holistic study.

I think what tends to happen is that the different disciplines develop partially independently – inventing terms as they go along. But don’t spend that much time optimizing and calibrating across disciplines. You end up with – according to this view – unnecessary jumbles of terms. Although not indented, I think they impede both the education aspect but also communication in interdisciplinary fields.

One guess is that sometimes that is intentional, otherwise anyone could easily understand and make use of certain ideas/concepts without having to pay for a “translator” to the “cult of a certain discipline”.

I think the vast majority of communities of discourse and practice do not necessarily participate in interdisciplinary enterprises. Hence the particular discourse features of each community is distinct.

It really is just a matter of vocabulary if we’re talking about the overlap between humanities subjects, and if one cares enough to learn it, one can use it.

If you’re talking about a lack of common vocabulary not concepts between subjects as different as, say, computer science and language teaching, then that’s another kettle of fish entirely – in programming, syntax generally refers to features that would be considered features of grammar in descriptions of natural language – the use of switches in a CLI script, for example, are somewhat analagous to morphemic differences in verbs representing information about the object. The terminology is so ingrained in computing, though, that one must just become comfortable with the different meanings in different contexts. Can you imagine your Python CLI complaining about grammar errors?

A function of language is to promote in-group (and out-group) identities. That suggests to me that jargon serves more than a purely technical purpose. Were one to attempt to unify common terms across disciplines (a task fit for Hercules himself) I suspect that other terms would spring up in their stead.

You master language by using it, whether the language is a spoken language, computer language or language of a particular discipline. I have learned a number of computer languages. I could stare at the definitions from now to eternity, and unless I wrote programs, I would not know anything about the languages.

One key thing is how the terms of the language relate to one another. If the concepts being taught have weak coupling, then they will be difficult to learn, regardless of whether the associated language is known. Concepts and the associated language are learned best when they interact so the student can form various gestalts.

Yes, they do. Written Arabic for example is practically a static language, like Sanskrit and Latin. Only the numerous spoken Arabic dialects do actually evolve, but most of this does not get reflected in the written language which is considered sacred by many.