Fagspråk

Fagspråk, also referred to as professional jargon or domain-specific terminology, is the repertoire of terms, phrases, abbreviations, and syntactic patterns used by professionals within a field to convey precise meanings. It allows experts to communicate efficiently and unambiguously about concepts, processes, and standards, but it can be opaque to outsiders such as laypeople, patients, or new staff.

Characteristics of fagspråk include a domain-specific vocabulary, acronyms and abbreviations, standardized definitions, and fixed phrases or constructions that recur across documents and conversations. It evolves as knowledge and practices advance and often varies between subfields, organizations, and languages.

Functions of fagspråk include enabling precise, efficient communication, supporting safety and compliance in high-stakes settings (for example in medicine, engineering, or law), and signaling expertise and professional identity. It also helps in documentation, education, and regulatory processes by providing a concise way to reference complex ideas.

Challenges arise when fagspråk creates barriers to understanding for clients, patients, students, or new staff. Misinterpretations can occur across disciplines or languages, and the specialized language may hinder accessibility. To mitigate these issues, organizations employ glossaries, plain-language explanations, translation, and efforts to standardize terminology or provide user-friendly documentation.

Relation to accessibility and education is a key area of attention. Balancing precision with clarity often leads to a combination of the core terminology for professional use and plain-language summaries or definitions for public-facing materials. Examples of fagspråk span medicine (terms like “intravenous administration”), law (terms like “habeas corpus”), and information technology (terms like “API” or “latency”).