Who can understand doctors?
We all use jargon. If we used it to help us communicate better then more people would
understand us not less. As it goes our language is becoming more and more specialised with
fewer and fewer people understanding us.
I heard two MA students in English from different Cambridge University colleges talking
about English usage . Grabbing a phrase one of them had uttered I asked what they had said
and what it meant.
"'Meta-ontological values' but it doesn't really mean anything specific."
Said one.
"Sort of beyond a metaphor I think, but it is true we don't actually know what
each other is on about.. We are both from different colleges" Said the other. After
that we all got drunk and then started making sense.
The cause of jargon seems to be either:
? a desire to exclude others
? a desire to be thought of as more intelligent than we actually are
? a need to make our knowledge seem more obscure or precious
? a desire to form a clique
? simple laziness
? a desire to produce brief, exact linguistic construct enabling clarification of status
issues.
Isn't that interesting?
I would welcome it if you send me bits of interesting jargon you come across.
j.carling@ndirect.co.uk
Here for your edification are two lumps scanned in from a manual on programming. The
manual I suppose is meant to help people learn. You can see it does just that. The first
thing you learn is to read no further.
Librarian warning bad GCD type in GRPDEF, extended dictionary aborted bad GRPDEF type
encountered, extended dictionary aborted The librarian has encountered an invalid entry in
a group definition (GRPDEF) record in an object module while creating an extended
dictionary. The only type of GRPDEF record that the librarian supports are segment index
type. If any other type of GRPDEF is encountered, the librarian won’t be able to
create an extended dictionary. It’s possible that an object module created by
products other than Borland tools may create GRPDEF records of other types. It’s also
possible for a corrupt object module to generate this warning.
With C++ 2.1, when an operator++ or operator- is declared as a member function with no
parameters, or as a nonmember function with one parameter, it only overloads the prefix
operator ++ or operator -. You can only overload a postfix operator++ or operator- by
defining it as a member function taking an int parameter or as a nonmember function taking
one class and one int parameter. For example add the following lines to the previous code:
Turbo C++ for Windows Programmer's Guide
The reason for the size argument is that classes derived from X inherit the X::operator
new. The size of a derived class object may well differ from that of the base class.
You can overload a prefix or postfix unary operator by declaring a nonstatic member
function taking no arguments, or by declaring a non-member function taking one argument.
If @ represents a unary operator, ~a x and x@ can both be interpreted as either
x.operator@() or operator@(x), depending on the declarations made. If both forms have been
declared, standard argument matching is applied to resolve any ambiguity.
Under C++ 2.0, an overloaded operator++ or - is used for both prefix and postfix uses of
the operator.
I teach people this stuff and I don't understand it either.
Love and peace
John Carling
j.carling@ndirect.co.uk
j.carling@ndirect.co.uk
BHTA
Clifton Mews, Clifton Hill
Brighton and Hove, East Sussex
United Kingdom |