Slang vs. Jargon (An initial 4A N2...?)

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 7/1/02 10:24:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time, TlhovwI at AOL.COM
writes:

> Why wouldn't this work:
>
>  JARGON is a set of terms used by a group across age, class, societal, etc.
>  barriers
>  while SLANG is much more (don't kill me for this) dialectal.

You are claiming that SLANG and JARGON are mutually exclusive.  By my
definition of "jargon", they are not.  Some of the people in this thread who
disagree with my definition of "jargon" also consider that a jargon (whatever
it is) can easily contain words that are obviously slang as well as words
that obviously are not.

>  And bringing it back to the pigs for a moment... I don't think 5-0 use of
>  drug terms counts for anything... they aren't the words of their group;
it's
>  like me learning french and when I mess up my pronunciation, French
>  phoneticians freaking out about new allophones (or something...).

I'm interested in your use of "5-0" to mean police.  As far as I know, that
term comes from the title of the television show "Hawaii 5-0".  Is it in
general use?

>  And one last teeny side note, I won't consider ecstasy as slang for DMA, if
>  that were true, then aspirin would be slang for acetylsalicylic acid,
which
>  would say it is not.

"aspirin" is not slang.  It was originally a trademark, which US courts long
ago ruled had become generic.  The original trademark owner was a German
company called Bayer (something like Bayer A. G.).  The American company
which presently uses the name "Bayer" was originally the US branch of Bayer
A. G., but received its independence from the German ownership thanks to
World War I.

     - James A. Landau