California WaterBlog

By Jay Lund

The circles of jargon hell move from “lazy and less effective communication of ideas” to a general audience, to a narrower already-expert audience, to a substitute for substantive communication, to intentionally harmful and pretentious obfuscation, all of which disrupt the reader’s comprehension and eventually destroy all interest in communication.

1. Lazy jargon – occasional unexplained specialized terms for a more general audience
2. Acronyms – a less thoughtful use of jargon, communicates ineffectively for a general audience
3. Technical jargon – The use of jargon intelligible only to those already expert
4. Buzzword oblivion – the use of vague jargon as an annoying substitute for substantive thought.  For California water management, ChatGPT suggests, “Our integrated, stakeholder-driven water management strategy leverages adaptive frameworks and scalable, nature-based solutions to optimize multi-benefit outcomes, ensuring climate resilience and equitable resource allocation across the hydrological nexus.”  Sound familiar?
5. Obfuscating jargon – the strategic deployment of verbose and unnecessary words designed to convolute the otherwise non-elusive meaning of the subject thereby ensuring clarity is entirely circumvented (i.e., use of jargon to obscure or distract the reader from a subject)
6. Pretentious jargon – use of jargon to create insecurity in the reader and sometimes security for the author
7. Acronyms of acronyms – usually integrates all the above disfunctions