Jargon

Jargon is a type of language that is used in a particular context and may not be well understood outside of it. The context is usually a particular occupation (that is, a certain trade, profession, or academic field), but any ingroup can have jargon. The main trait that distinguishes jargon from the rest of a language is special vocabulary—including some words specific to it and, often, narrower senses of words that outgroups would tend to take in a broader sense. Jargon is thus "the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group". Most jargon is technical terminology, involving terms of art or industry terms, with particular meaning within a specific industry. A main driving force in the creation of technical jargon is precision and efficiency of communication when a discussion must easily range from general themes to specific, finely differentiated details without circumlocution. A side effect of this is a higher threshold for comprehensibility, which is usually accepted as a trade-off but is sometimes even used as a means of social exclusion (reinforcing ingroup-outgroup barriers) or social aspiration (when intended as a way of showing off).