ABSTRACT
"In-language" can be the technical vocabulary of the specialist—from the astronomer, predicting the new galactic movement of Shoemaker-Levy, to the biologist, tracing the mad-cow obscurities of Creuzfeldt-Jacob, and to the zoologist, classifying all other species-specific properties. One London wordsmith, aware of the evanescence of the short-lived vocabulary he diligently studies, has referred to the brief shelf-life of his subject as "Frantic Semantics." Thus, in-language lasts a spell longer when it is protected by an armor of obscurity, reinforced by secrecy, and underpinned by a dire necessity to keep the password from getting into the hands of the enemy on the other side of the street. One New York-based consultant defended jargon as "an extension to the language," claiming that "it creates a sub-culture". The "sort of/kind of/like" principle of uncertainty has also been detected by William Safire in a column of 1995, commenting on the language used in the O.J. Simpson trial, then in its opening disputatious stages.
