At -ese: Academese, Legalese, and Other Species of Gobbledygook
The suffix -ese has two main jobs in English, one of them purely functional and the other usually pejorative.Its first duty is to identify certain nationalities and languages, such as Burmese, Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Maltese, and Portuguese. No offense is intended.The other, less flattering job of the suffix -ese is to label a group's characteristic jargon Because such specialized language can be perplexing to outsiders, it's commonly regarded as gobbledygook (read at the end). Here are a few examples.
Academese
Definition: An informal, pejorative term for the specialized language (or jargon) used in some scholarly writing and speech.
Bryan Garner notes that "Academese is characteristic of academicians who are writing for a highly specialized but limited audience, or who have a limited grasp of how to make their argumentsclearly and specifically" (Garner's Modern American Usage, 2009).
- Academic Writing: is something quite different!!
Bureaucratese
The Language Report: English on the Move, 2000-2007, by Susie Dent (OxfordUniversity Press, 2007)
Definition:
An informal term for obscure speech or writing that is typically characterized by verbosity, euphemisms, jargon, and buzzwords. Also known as officialese, corporate-speak, and government-speak. Contrast with plain English.
Initialese
Bryan Garner, Garner's Modern American Usage, 3rd ed. (OxfordUniversity Press, 2009)
Definition: A pejorative term for the excessive and potentially confusing use of abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms. Also known metaphorically as alphabet soup.
Legalese
Legal Writing in Plain English: A Text With Exercises, by Bryan A. Garner (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
Definition:
An informal term for the specialized language (or social dialect) of lawyers and of legal documents.
Generally used as a pejorative term for written forms of legal English, legalese is characterized by verbosity, Latin expressions, nominalizations, embedded clauses, passive verbs, and lengthy sentences.
In both the U.K. and the U.S., advocates of plain English have campaigned to reform legalese so that legal documents may become more intelligible to the public.
Restaurantese
Examples of restaurantese for what might be fruit salad, eggs with oregano, hamburger, and soup made with leftover fish
Definition: An informal and often pejorative term for the specialized language (or jargon) sometimes used by restaurant employees and on menus (also called menuese or restaurant-speak).
Characteristics of restaurantese include euphemisms, circumlocutions, foreign words, and words with highly positive connotations.
Of course there are many other species of -ese, from computerese to Washingtonese.
Gobbledygook:
Definition: Inflated, jargon-cluttered prose that fails to communicate clearly. Contrast with clarity and plain English.
The word gobbledygook was coined in 1944 by Texas lawyer Maury Maverick, who expressed disdain for the "gobbledygook language" of his colleagues. The word was inspired by the turkey, "always gobbledy gobbling and strutting with ludicrous pomposity."