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39 lines
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Chapter 7. Hacker Speech Style</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="pt01.html" title="Part I. Introduction"/><link rel="previous" href="email-style.html" title="Chapter 6. Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions"/><link rel="next" href="international-style.html" title="Chapter 8. International Style"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Chapter 7. Hacker Speech Style</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="email-style.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Part I. Introduction</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="international-style.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><div class="chapter" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title"><a id="speech-style"/>Chapter 7. Hacker Speech Style</h2></div></div><div/></div><p>Hackish speech generally features extremely precise diction, careful
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word choice, a relatively large working vocabulary, and relatively little use
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of contractions or street slang. Dry humor, irony, puns, and a mildly
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flippant attitude are highly valued — but an underlying seriousness and
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intelligence are essential. One should use just enough jargon to communicate
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precisely and identify oneself as a member of the culture; overuse of jargon
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or a breathless, excessively gung-ho attitude is considered tacky and the mark
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of a loser.</p><p>This speech style is a variety of the precisionist English normally
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spoken by scientists, design engineers, and academics in technical fields. In
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contrast with the methods of jargon construction, it is fairly constant
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throughout hackerdom.</p><p>It has been observed that many hackers are confused by negative
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questions — or, at least, that the people to whom they are talking are
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often confused by the sense of their answers. The problem is that they have
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done so much programming that distinguishes between</p><table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0"><tr><td><pre class="programlisting">
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if (going) ...
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</pre></td></tr></table><p>and</p><table border="0" bgcolor="#E0E0E0"><tr><td><pre class="programlisting">
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if (!going) ...
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</pre></td></tr></table><p>that when they parse the question “<span class="quote">Aren't you going?</span>” it
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may seem to be asking the opposite question from “<span class="quote">Are you
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going?</span>”, and so to merit an answer in the opposite sense. This
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confuses English-speaking non-hackers because they were taught to answer as
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though the negative part weren't there. In some other languages (including
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Russian, Chinese, and Japanese) the hackish interpretation is standard and the
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problem wouldn't arise. Hackers often find themselves wishing for a word like
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French ‘si’, German ‘doch’, or Dutch
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‘jawel’ — a word with which one could unambiguously answer
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‘yes’ to a negative question. (See also
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<a href="M/mu.html"><i class="glossterm">mu</i></a>)</p><p>For similar reasons, English-speaking hackers almost never use double
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negatives, even if they live in a region where colloquial usage allows them.
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The thought of uttering something that logically ought to be an affirmative
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knowing it will be misparsed as a negative tends to disturb them.</p><p>In a related vein, hackers sometimes make a game of answering questions
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containing logical connectives with a strictly literal rather than colloquial
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interpretation. A non-hacker who is indelicate enough to ask a question like
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“<span class="quote">So, are you working on finding that bug <span class="emphasis"><em>now</em></span> or
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leaving it until later?</span>” is likely to get the perfectly correct answer
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“<span class="quote">Yes!</span>” (that is, “<span class="quote">Yes, I'm doing it either now or later,
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and you didn't ask which!</span>”).</p></div><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="email-style.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="pt01.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="international-style.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Chapter 6. Email Quotes and Inclusion Conventions </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Chapter 8. International Style</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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