Educationese

Peggy L. Placier

Critics of education use the term educationese to describe what they consider to be the pretentious jargon educators use when, in the critics' opinions, everyday English would be more appropriate. Conservatives are the most vocal critics of educationese, as part of their general challenge to the legitimacy of public education and educators. However, educators' use of specialized language also concerns liberals and progressives because it may impede efforts to communicate with families and community members. Educationese is a pejorative term, and educators usually would not use it to describe their language. The -ese suffix can be added to the name of any field to create a term for the language used by practitioners in that field (e.g., legalese and medicalese) . Such terms denote specialized vocabularies, not entirely distinctive languages. They are pejorative because they parody the use of obscure terms or euphemisms when common, everyday words might do. Academics ...

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