10 May 2010
Jargon often gets a bad rap. It can be obfuscatory and difficult for laypeople to understand. But it can also be marvelously precise and aid in clarity of thinking.
Steven Novella over at NeuroLogica Blog has a post on the topic, using aromatherapy as an example of how word choice can impact our uncritical opinions about a topic.
Loyal Wordorigins readers may note that I have sort of argued the opposite in the past, that language does not impact how we think, but this example is dead on. We use words to uncritically classify and stereotype concepts. Hence, aromatherapy sounds like it should have some type of medical efficacy. And death tax sounds bad, but estate tax is more reasonable—after all, the heir has done nothing to deserve the money and it does not affect all all equally, as death does, but only those rich enough to have “estates.” But this is just uncritical stereotyping. We can break free of the constraints of language and think critically about topics for which we don’t have words; it’s just more difficult.
