Word Spy - Marjorie Garber
A Web site by Paul McFedries Marjorie Garber
Jargon, as always, is in the ear of the listener.
Marjorie Garber, American academic and writer, Academic Instincts, 2001
Posted on February 23, 2004 at 9:42 AM
Marjorie Garber quotations | Permalink
Whatever happened to public speaking and debate and rhetoric as serious academic exercises, with the speaker doing the writing as well as the speaking? What would happen ... if we banned speechwriters at the same time that we banned soft money? Maybe that's more authenticity than the public really wants.
Marjorie Garber, American academic and writer, Slate Magazine, September 11, 2000
Posted on November 26, 2003 at 4:41 PM
The word jargon, when used to describe and dismiss the language of critical theory in the humanities, is in fact describing what for practitioners of those disciplines are terms of art. The quarrel is often picked over vocabulary and syntax, but what is at issue, very often, is not language usage but the legitimacy of critical theory as a discipline.
Marjorie Garber, American academic and writer, Academic Instrincts, 2001
Posted on May 16, 2000 at 10:44 PM
Resentment of jargon comes from several sources, as we have already seen: resistance to being left out of an in-group conversation; fear (often transmuted, as a defense mechanism, into dislike or even hatred) of what is not understood or recognized; suspicion that something subversive may be going on, enabled by a code or cipher; and, on the other hand -- if it is indeed another hand -- aesthetic recoil at language that is perceived as ugly, pretentious, or anomalous. Nonetheless, I want to insist here that jargon is language in action, or rather, that jargon is a sign that something is happening in language.
Posted on August 11, 2000 at 9:31 PM
Meritocracy, impressionism, and formalism were all terms of contempt when they were first introduced. As indeed was neologism itself, which first appeared at the very end of the eighteenth century, already under a cloud.
Posted on September 28, 1998 at 11:28 AM
A neologism is the only kind of word that isn't jargon, because it has been invented to suit the particularity of the moment and the needs of thought.
Posted on August 14, 1998 at 8:52 AM
Yesterday's neologisms, like yesterday's jargon, are often today's essential vocabulary.
Posted on November 13, 1998 at 11:29 PM
To resist jargon is to protest against professionalism, professionalization, professions  and, not incidentally, professors.
Posted on November 24, 1998 at 4:43 PM