While I understand what the above sentence is saying, I would like to explore and interrogate the geopsychology of its author in order to understand what led her to formulate her spatial epistemology using this odiously unnecessary verbiage.
Every specialization has their own jargon to grok.
From the Wiki page
>defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."
>"a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities... just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."
The essential tool here being overlaid maps of say San Francisco & http://xkcd.com/256/ or a topographic map such as [1]
> Every specialization has their own jargon to grok.
True, but a more subtle observer might point out that the jargon can serve more than one function simultaneously. In fields like organic chemistry which is famous for its compound names that sometimes extend beyond the page limit, the jargon is unavoidable, well defined and categorized, and serves a narrow and specific role (though true, learning that jargon would signal your competence within the field, so perhaps it's a dual one, where the secondary function is to serve as a barrier). In a number of other fields, specifically the social sciences (and even more specifically, the social sciences after they inhaled a large dose of Frankfurtian critical theory), the jargon serves a far more complex role of (1) naming a concept, (2) signaling to peers from other disciplines the "scienciness" of what could (sometimes justly) be criticized as a non-empirical field, and (3) signaling to peers from the same discipline the "political in-groupness" of the author, that is that the author shares their political beliefs.
One could even argue there is a 4th role, where you subtly signal (to potential recruits from the student body): "See how much non-empiricism we can get away with? Join us, and you can get away with it too! Free degree, if only you agree!"
> Every specialization has their own jargon to grok.
True but some communities go out of their way to obfuscate and complicate. I think you might become immune to this stuff if you'd studied related subjects at university but when I hear any of a set of particular words and phrases I begin to get the red mist and start reaching for my favourite book on the Sokal Hoax.
While I understand what the above sentence is saying, I would like to explore and interrogate the geopsychology of its author in order to understand what led her to formulate her spatial epistemology using this odiously unnecessary verbiage.