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Is there a purpose for the military-technical jargon beyond sounding serious and sophisticated (and thus expensive)?
by kevinmchugh 8y ago
Is there a purpose for the military-technical jargon beyond sounding serious and sophisticated (and thus expensive)?
- athenot 8y agoI'm not in that industry but if it's anything like other fields, I'd say this jargon has specific meaning to them.
- monocasa 8y agoIf it's anything like it was ROTC, the jargon here is mainly to signal conformity.
- Fomite 8y agoDefense guys love that kind of language.
- bitwize 8y agoIt's the kind of language that makes colonels' and generals' ears prick up. Just like how the marketing verbiage for enterprise software ("scalable", "five nines", etc.) is meant to impress decision makers in the private sector.
- oconnor663 8y agoPeople always come up with ways to judge the reputation/in-group-membership/status of someone they're meeting for the first time. We can do it with clothes or accents or special jargon or StackOverflow badges, but somehow or other we always do it.
- jschwartzi 8y agoThe technical language serves to divorce the purchaser and the manufacturer from any moral responsibility by disguising what it's for. Nobody would buy a remote-controlled bomb for soldiers to blow each other up with, but a "man-portable delivery system" sounds much better. The more technical the language the more dangerous the weapon.