barriers) or social aspiration (when introduced as a way of demonstrating expertise). Some academics promote the use of jargon-free language, or plain language, as an audience may be alienated or confused by the technical terminology, and thus lose track of a speaker or writer's broader and more important arguments.

Some words with both a technical and a non-technical meaning are referred to as semi-technical vocabulary: for example, Chinh Ngan Nguyen Le and Julia Miller refer to colon as an anatomical term