[jamesrcole]

> papers that lay the foundations for a whole field are usually very approachable. i'm not sure why this is

Kuhn talks about this in his works[1]. If I recall correctly, his argument is that when someone is creating a new field (new paradigm) there isn't pre-existing jargon to describe it in terms of, so it has to be described in accessible language.

It's once people start doing work inside the field that they start developing jargon and assuming things.

[1] I think it would have been The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and/or possibly The Copernican Revolution

[raincom]

New theories come up with new concepts. Jargon is different from new technical terms. Best example of jargon is post modernism stuff in humanities.

Can you help find the page number where Kuhn talks about jargon?

[samatman]

I would say that for our purposes, the best example of jargon is the Jargon File: http://catb.org/jargon/html/

A useful quote from the above:

> Linguists usually refer to informal language as ‘slang’ and reserve the term ‘jargon’ for the technical vocabularies of various occupations. However, the ancestor of this collection was called the ‘Jargon File’, and hacker slang is traditionally ‘the jargon’. When talking about the jargon there is therefore no convenient way to distinguish it from what a linguist would call hackers' jargon — the formal vocabulary they learn from textbooks, technical papers, and manuals.

What you call new technical terms is the jargon of technical pursuits. The post modernism stuff is the jargon of "studies" departments. There is also military jargon, for another example. The term is not inherently derogatory.