Professional Jargon

Professional Jargon --the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group. 

Jargon - unintelligible or meaningless talk or writing; gibberish. any talk or writing that one does not understand.


What you need to know:

  • Professional jargon is a thing

  • Ask your speech therapist to use plain english to explain things you don’t understand

  • Send me stories of times when someone used professional jargon with you


Most professions have a professional jargon. These are terms used in the field that most Muggles (anyone outside the field) probably wouldn’t understand. Speech language pathologists (the name alone should tell you something), aka speech therapists, are no different.  We love words, and we love to throw around words that have particular meanings. Jargon is super fun for us!


Agreeing on and using terminology within a field, or even across professional disciplines is fine. It’s a good thing. It keeps everyone on the same page. It helps us know what we are talking about colleague to colleague. But the problem arises when professionals use their jargon with someone outside the field. When that happens, we risk appearing removed and academic at best and downright insensitive at best. Being able to translate professional jargon into words that a nonprofessional would understand is an act of cultural competence. It’s just good manners.  Basic kindness. It’s something speech therapists in particular should be GOOD at. And yet, we struggle just like everybody else. (In fact, I’m probably still using jargon right now!)


In my case, I’m dealing mostly with parents of young children, and I know I’m guilty of using professional jargon with them. In fact, my husband calls me on it when I do it with him (“why can’t you just speak regular english?”, he’ll say). So, in this series, we are going to cover some common terms that come up in early intervention circles. I’ll do my best to explain them in ways that make sense in “regular english”. And I’d love to hear from you! What terms do you want clarity on? Do you have a story about a professional who was baffling you with professional jargon? How did you handle it?

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