SOCIOLOGESE

SOCIOLOGESE [20c: from sociology and -ese as in journalese]. An informal, usually pejorative term for the STYLE and REGISTER of sociologists, especially when addressed to or used by non-sociologists. Fowler's Modern English Usage (1965, edited by Ernest Gowers) refers in the entry sociologese to ‘the harm that is being done to the language’ and adds:
Sociology is a new science concerning itself not with esoteric matters outside the comprehension of the layman, as the older sciences do, but with the ordinary affairs of ordinary people. This seems to engender in those who write about it a feeling that the lack of any abstruseness in their subject demands a compensatory abstruseness in their language. Thus, in the field of industrial relations, what the ordinary man would call an informal talk may be described as a relatively unstructured conversational interaction.

Critics who condemn sociologese usually make a simultaneous plea for PLAIN LANGUAGE, especially in speeches and texts addressed to the general public. The issue appears to be the need to fit register to audience and be clear in what one says and writes rather than the invasion of the language at large by the jargon of sociology. See ACADEMIC USAGE, JARGON, TECHNOSPEAK.