On Sunday I asked, Why Don't Social Scientists Want To Be Read? I accused much of social science of using unnecessarily complex jargon.
This post prompted many excellent comments - including responses on other blogs e.g. Andy Balmer and Graham Davey.
The most common argument against my post was, in essence: Every science has a specialized, technical vocabulary. You wouldn't criticize a neuroscience abstract for being inaccessible to a layperson, so it's unfair to expect that from sociology.
This is a good and convincing point. Yet I think that, on closer inspection, it relies on some rather major assumptions.
The natural sciences do have a 'specialized' vocabulary, but only because they deal with things that are of special interest. What is 'special' or 'technical' about the word forebrain (to borrow an example from Andy Balmer) is merely that only neuroscientists are interested in the object, forebrains. It's not part of ...
