ABSTRACT
Jargon takes on the functions of a Sociolect which can be said of jargon as of another sociolect, the slang of marijuana-users: that it becomes 'one of the most important active media for transmitting certain kinds of social awareness through the culture', a Solidarity of Bureaucrats, whose bureaucratese is their password. Like other forms of secret language, the slang of the 'now' generation, the argot of pickpockets, the Latinisms of medicine, it identifies its users to one another and shields them from intrusion. Combating it calls for something more than instruction in English. The anti-jargoneer encounters the same obstacles as campaigner against environmental pollution: success is not a question of eliminating a few supposed errors but of changing a way of life. Pure jargon would have to be a condensation of only those ingredients shared by no other style, and obviously such an extreme would be annihilated by its own density, a sort of verbal black hole.
