In response to Bakhtin - Why is it so hard to make others’ words your own?

A lot of times, language takes on different shapes to suit different groups of people. One example is the technical style of talk often used in the field of Science and Engineering. It involves using technical jargons and phrases to make technical communication more effectively and efficiently.

When I first took engineering classes at Cal, I had trouble comprehending the professors’ “technical talk”. I often wondered whether it was truly necessary to speak in such a way. At one point, I thought that they were doing it just to sound more sophisticated.

However, after a couple of years of taking engineering classes, I found myself speaking the same technical English with other classmates. I had naturally come to acquire the style of speech, because it was the most effective way of describing engineering problems/situations. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to explain an engineering situation without using the language.

Once, a friend came in to one of my engineering classes because she wanted to “get a taste of it”. After the class, she said how she couldn’t make sense of what the professor was saying at all. Of course, the material itself was totally new to her, but it was mostly the technical English that troubled her.

I remember from my past experience of learning English that it’s awkward both to your tongue and brain to say something that you are not familiar with.
For me, the learning process usually involved:
1. Hearing or seeing a word repeatedly
2. Learning the meaning of the word by looking it up on the dictionary or from the context
3. Using the word in the “right situations”
4. Continuing to practice using the word
It’s probably hard for non-engineering students to adapt to this kind of speech, because, unlike someone like me, they have neither the chance nor the need to encounter it.