Translate Academic Jargon Into Plain English

Academic writing exists in a dialect that is opaque by design and occasionally by accident. Neither is useful if you are trying to learn something. This translates the jargon and the tortured sentence structures into what the passage is actually trying to say.

I am reading academic writing and I need the jargon translated into plain language.

The text I am struggling with: [paste the passage here]
The field or discipline: [say what area this is from]

For each jargon term or phrase, tell me: what it means in plain English, why the field uses this term rather than the plain version, and whether the distinction matters for my purposes or whether the plain version captures enough. Work through the text systematically. If there are sentences or arguments that are unclear for structural reasons rather than just vocabulary, explain those too.