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 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).