Which Terms are Subject to Division of Linguistic Labour?

Abstract It is rather uncontroversial idea that there is a division of linguistic labour: laypeople rely on experts for the identification of meanings of some terms. But which terms are subject to this division? This paper demonstrates that the answers “natural kind terms” or “scientific terms” are too narrow and presents an alternative solution by appealing to inferentialist semantics. The main claim of this paper is that “specialist terms” are subject to division of linguistic labour and “specialist terms” are those terms for which certain type of asymmetries arise in the course of the game of giving and asking for reasons.