3 ms·

I suspect aesthetics has more to do with it than people think. Everyone loves a secret code, and Hollywood has made an art of of technobabble. When you say "I

I suspect aesthetics has more to do with it than people think. Everyone loves a secret code, and Hollywood has made an art of of technobabble. When you say "It's fine, we're on a class 2 supply" you sound really cool and high tech and professional. It's almost like sprinkling in a latin phrase or some legalese, but instead of conveying a very precise meaning, where even the informal general implications are well known, it adds confusion. There's always a sense of mystique to these "Domain specific natural languages", but not that many reasons to use them, so people are probably kinda drawn to slip them in.

bsenftner 5y ago
This. I call the drive to sprinkling one's language with technical terms, acronyms and industry/specialist jargon "going Scientologist". I use this term because, if you've ever known one, they have specialize meanings to a lot of terms and that creates an "in crowd" feeling for their members and an exclusionary club sensation for those on the outside peering in. It is ordinary high school popularity clique dynamics, which works perfectly well on far too many "adults".