Jargon is prevalent in every profession and activity. In its positive aspect it is a useful shorthand to describe a complex set of actions. In its negative aspect it is used as a code to exclude those not in the know.
Problems arise when people form different traditions come together using the same jargon (most often acronyms) for completely different things or different terminology for the same things.
This is even more prevalent in the martial arts where secrecy was paramount. Nobody wanted to reveal their techniques to outsiders who could then work out ways to overcome these techniques. SunZi aptly expresses this in his classic work "Know your enemy , but do not let him know you".
Thus when I demonstrate a technique and call it a specific name, people often come up to me and say that they know the technique by another name. Thus a simple hip throw may be termed "ogoshi" in Karate or White Crane Flaps Its Wings in Taijiquan or some other appellation in some other tradition but it is still essentially a hip throw. This enables me to tell my students to practise techniques and technique combinations without a long winded explanation as to what they have to do. Different traditions may teach the techniques differently but they are essentially the same technique.
Everybody, assuming they have a full complement of limbs, has the same attacking and defensive capabilities. The martial arts were developed using this knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. The only variations are in physical size, speed, flexibility , coordination, balance and strength all of which may be increased to some degree with training.
So if all the arts teach essentially the same methods what differentiates them ? The answer to this is the method of application, areas of specialisation (such as kicking, groundwork, grappling etc.) and the intent. Martial Arts nowadays like to describe themselves as Self Defence Arts but this can be understood in many ways. One School of thought emphasises attack as the best defence, another to avoid fighting at all costs. Taijiquan stresses avoidance (redirection), control(unbalancing) and counterattack (striking or trapping) as a single continuous action.
In Taijiquan the names of the techniques follow the poetic Chinese tradition that explains certain attributes of the technique. Thus White Crane Flaps its wings, uses the knowledge of the Crane's legendary stability to emphasise the stability of the legs as key to performing the technique properly while indicating the use of both arms in a manner suggestive of the crane spreading its wings.
Of course such poetic descriptions leave it open to interpretation. A certain Yang Style master describes Grasping the Bird's Tail as Grasping the Sparrow's Tail explaining that since the sparrow is so small the technique should be applied very lightly. For my part I describe it as Grasping the Chicken's Tail as if you were about to pluck it to indicate the simultaneous use of both hands in opposite directions, the use of the waist and the circular motion of the application. This is an example of the difference between Yin and Yang.