Plain speech

I laughed until I cried. As a teacher I can unite with what you say; and, as a Quaker, my only comment to your article is “THAT Friend speaks my mind. Thanks for the time you have taken to do this.

Thom Jones, at 4:45 pm EDT on July 30, 2008

Thank you! Thank you!! Thank you!!!

Thank you, Rob.Please consider my immediate and unpretentious application for your journal.

I now know the reason that the myriad of FAS Faculty around the (so-called) higher education world are instituting fallacious votes of “No Confidence” in their leaders. They can’t stand plain talk!

Edward Winslow, A tired “retired” business professor, at 10:51 am EST on March 3, 2006

sympathetic, but only to a point

I don’t know Robert. At first glance I am tempted to join you. I mean, making fun of obtuse, jargon-filled academic prose is just fun, and has become a popular sport and a quick way to amass large crowds of anti-intellectuals with burning torches, and that’s where it gets scary for me.

I also can’t help but notice that in your first paragraph, when you are giving examples of the absurdity of academic prose, you mention African-Americans, racism, Marxism, and a female scholar. Hmm. . . . . could it be that your SIC PUPPY group is a little nostalgic for the days of good, old-fashioned white man’s history without the messy complications of a postmodern, post-colonial revisitation of said history? I wonder.

The truth is, I don’t know anything about your work, except that I think you wrote a book about knights and labor organization, which I haven’t read. You might be a top-notch scholar who keeps up with the latest ideas in the field. But regardless, your argument here is fun, and we all can laugh with you, but it invites more of the anti-intellectualism that continues to erode the structure, the mission, and the environment of the academy, and that gives me cause for concern. Sometimes ideas are complex, and the prose that articulates them presents a struggle for the reader. Let’s work on producing the readers who are ready to meet that challenge.

Best wishes, Violet

Violet, Professor at Mid-Western Private, at 10:55 am EST on March 3, 2006

short parenthetical or long footnote?

Mostly I agree, but your comment on citations surprise me. The reason that social science style guides (mostly notably that of the American Psychological Association) uses in-text parenthetical citations instead of footnotes is precisely to stop common humanities practice (encouraged by the Chicago guide) of writing pratically an entire second article in the footnotes. While you may hate sentences being interrupted with citations, I hate looking at a page that has four lines of text at the top and 40 lines of small-font footnotes below. Generally speaking, if it’s worth saying, say it in the text. If it’s not worth saying in the text, say it to your colleagues over drinks at a conference and don’t bother the rest of us.

non-Chicago in Toronto, at 10:55 am EST on March 3, 2006

Remarkable, I think, that the only place Marx (Freud, too) has any traction these days is in literary journals and faculty cocktail parties.

Bill Dockery, University of Tennessee, at 11:00 am EST on March 3, 2006

Violet, I think you may be confusing “intellectual” with “incomprehensible.” If “intellectual” is a prose style that requires sociopolitical jargon, then I guess I’m anti-intellectual.

Bill Dockery, University of Tennessee, at 12:40 pm EST on March 3, 2006

Thank you, sir!!! In graduate school (in the 80s)"peacocking” by way of flaunting , postmodernist, post-colonial (pomo-poco in the business)jargon was regarded as being cool and “down with theory". Now, after teaching undergraduate classes in African literature, culture, and spirituality for quite a while, and across colleges in the USA, I have gained enough wisdom to respect plain-speaking in the classroom.

The issue of language also needs to be part of an ongoing discussion about the relevance of jargon in scholarly publications; especially in the humanities. For example, in literary studies journals, one is almost guaranteed getting published if one uses the overwrought codes of critical theory. Some of us have a hard time getting published because we do not “quack the quack". The use of jargon seems to have been reified (is this a jargon!!!?) as the admission ticket to the “pantheon” of published sscholarship.

My two cents!!!

BioDun J. Ogundayo, at 1:20 pm EST on March 3, 2006

Giggle. Grin. Yawn.

I’ve been hearing this since I was an undergrad. “That’s not how it was when I was a kid.” Twits are twits. It doesn’t matter if they’re mo or pomo. If we want to get back to basics, in language or ideas, why is it always back to the zone of comfort where the ranter wants to hide. Sure, let’s go back, but back to victorian academe. Upset about usage? Why go back to Fowlers. It has all been downhill since 1066. Anglo-Saxon all the way. And Lingua Franca? Make mine French.

The giggle becomes a yawn when the foundation of the argument is located in wanting everything in one’s own comfort zone.

Jason, newbie prof at RyeHigh, at 1:50 pm EST on March 3, 2006

website?

Is there a website for the Society? Also, is there a list server I can sign up for?

Thanks,Ric Jensen, PHD

Rick Jensen, Instructor, Journalism Dept. at Northwestern State University, at 2:50 pm EST on March 3, 2006

Yawn is right. I think that with this article the parodies of academic jargon have officially become as stale and formulaic as the jargon itself. I mean, at least Fred Crews had the Pooh thing — at least Dennis Dutton hosted a freakin’ contest. SIC PUPPY? Is that really the best you can muster? And, yes, guys, I understand that this is all “Satire and Irony,” that I shouldn’t take it seriously... I got that little in-joke, but just barely.

Archie Bunker, at 5:15 pm EST on March 3, 2006

Calling Professor Wislow

Tired Professor Winslow,

If you want to see real obfuscation, look to your field, business. Here is quote from an Inside Higher Ed article entitled, “Risky Business".

“His argument is supported by information the company provides to what it labels “solutions providers” — in other words, vendors — that are scheduled to attend the event side by side with about 100 financial officers from universities nationwide.”

“Solution Providers"? Come on! “Pre-owned” cars, “personal accounts"! I’m sure anyone who has read a management guru’s book or read the copy of a coporate ad would agree, business is the last bastion of limpid prose. (I’m using irony by the way). Businesspeak has rightfully been parodied for its insipidness.

Those in glass houses...

Finn, at 5:25 am EST on March 4, 2006

Hey, Finn...

From this Glass house, You are right! One of the reason for being “tired” of the battle is the obfuscation of businessspeak that originates in the attempt to appear sohpisticated by flaunting one’s education. In attempts to imitate apparent philosophical knowledge it to “baffle them with ....” Straight talk usually prevails in an honest global society.

The Battle goes on...

Edward Winslow, A tired “retired” Business Professor, at 10:20 am EST on March 4, 2006

towards plainificiation

Isn’t the plainification of speech, or, in other words, discourse, simply transforming the countervailing modality of resistence into a subversion of difference itself? Come now. As plainification valorizes the subtraction of hybridity from the double bind of identity taken as a transexual but barred subject, it is evident that it re-presents the donnee, or, as we say, the Maussian gift, in an economy of repressive ocularism (sold at stores everywhere for $9.99!). The subtending domain, as it imbricates the subaltern neuter, tends towards an engagement with plainification that abuts in a false transcendence of true alterity.

Apopemptically, I think that is plain, or plainfied, as the nose, or the maskable proboscis, on your face!

roger, at 4:40 am EST on March 5, 2006

To Private Violet and All You Yawners

What Rob and his ilk are attempting to root out, thank god, is the urge to conform to cleverness rather than step out onto the often shifting sands of original thought. The true problem with jargon is that it occupies otherwise serviceable minds with the learning of metalanguages. While “love” means something different from “agape,” it does not follow that every theorist with a grand new way of translating an existing idea into his or her own private lingo has produced an actual new idea. When I observe that mere skepticism toward the reverencing of such Olympian linguistic gymnastics should always have to suffer the accusations of anti-intellectualism or intellectual inadequacy, I am ashamed I did not take up gardening instead of joining this strange circus known as the academy.

Sarah, at 4:45 am EST on March 5, 2006

Hi Sarah, I read your message several times and I’m still not sure I get your point. Maybe we can start again with this: why do you think Rob’s “targets” (as another reader calls them) are women, African-Americans, and Marxists? Whether or not it’s his intention, Rob links incomprehensibility with the cultural writing and interests of these groups, something I think we should address.

Many of the behaviors and language patterns (what some refer to as “discursive practices") that we see in our culture as “normal” or “natural” don’t speak to or for all members of our community. Finding ways to articulate the often subtle ways that our “normal” cultural traditions maintain unfair power relations between groups of people is very important work if we are serious about eradicating discrimination of all types in the interest of strengthening democratic society.

I am as tired of any academic I know of pretentious and fluffy prose, of deliberately murky jargon that clouds rather than clarifies. However, I am not ready to boycott all difficult prose. I think we need to leave room for the thinkers who, like you put it so well, venture out on the shifting sands of new meanings (sorry if i’m misquoting, i can’t see the page while i write this comment!) and try to find the words to tell us where they have been, and how we can get there. Such efforts as these have opened my eyes to the obstacles we face as members of our larger community, and I like to think such readings increase our chances of overcoming them.

[Now you have me hyper-conscious of my “Best wishes” closing, so I will try another one. ]

Thanks for reading, Violet

Violet, Professor at Mid-Western Private, at 3:50 pm EST on March 5, 2006

Hi Violet,

Thank you for responding to my post. I appreciated and enjoyed reading your comments and apologize for the hyperconsciousness my humor apparently caused (the “Best” and “Best wishes” thing is just a pet peeve of mine; nice alternate closing). I do not agree that Rob’s article “targets” anyone. Have you seen Chris Rock’s standup “Never Scared” (I hope I got the title right)? In it, he makes fun of women who dance to rap lyrics that are demeaning to women. The lyrics are demeaning to women—that’s not in question. The joke is that these women don’t care—they’ll dance to anything, and when Rock, in the anecdote, points out that they’re dancing away to verses that should cause complete outrage in any self-respecting woman, the women respond with something like, “He’s not singing about me!” and go on dancing. Rock, anecdotally, then says, “Look, he said your name!” The hypothetical woman retorts, “I don’t care, he’s not singing about me!” and keeps dancing. I don’t think Rob’s article targets women, any more than I think Chris Rock’s standup targets women. I could deconstruct this joke for the history of female self-destructiveness it seemingly mines, until it bore no resemblance to its original nature: a joke about the fact that sometimes we humans will dance to anything with a good beat. Yes, there’s a subtext about denial and the strange lack of solidarity among women, but I think it’s infinitely more intellectually valuable to appreciate the joke in its undissected form. (Wouldn’t Derrida agree?) I do take issue, as a woman and as a female writer, with the idea that there is one version of “cultural writing” that belongs to the group “women.” I once suffered through a horrendous semester with a literary theory teacher who, given the excuse of the completely obvious excesses of one popular French Feminist writer, made fun of all Feminist criticism in truly absurd, excessive, offensive ways. What I learned from this (besides that there were some classes it would have been better just to drop) is that to assent to being categorized is to cooperate with reactionaries. I consider it a fact that some writing by women advertised as self-consciously “women’s writing” is really bad writing. The same goes for other categories, but I’ll limit my stone-throwing to my own glass walls. The reason the groups you mention are able to be singled out as rhetorical categories is because they advertise themselves as such. In contrast, you don’t see mathematicians, for example, lobbying for their writing to be recognized as a special category, but if they did, you can bet they’d be mentioned in a humor piece like Rob’s, since their writing, even when they do use actual words, is usually more incomprehensible than is really necessary. I don’t think any of the language patterns or behaviors “we” see in “our culture” as “normal or natural” speak to or for all members of our community. But wouldn’t that be a bit 1984? Every culture has its own norms—not least the subcultures and greater culture of academia. And these should not go unquestioned. One use for humor. How can people seriously speak of eradicating all types of discrimination in a democratic society by advocating a brand of cultural communication that equates itself with not only the alternative languages but the extremely abstract subject matters of fields like math and science? It’s a cliche that “literary criticism is the quantum physics of the humanities.” This is self-congratulatory and bogus. Do those who pass this phrase around minus its grain of salt or smile even remember what the word “humanities” means? There is little that is humanistic about quantum physics—probably a good thing; there is little of quantum physics about literary and cultural criticism—again, a good thing. It’s ridiculous and embarrassing to wave the flag of democracy or “equalizing power relations” as an excuse for uncommon language. There is nothing more exclusive than a secret code, a private language, and that is what much academese has already become, to the detriment of the value of higher learning in the eyes of many non-academics who are neither idiots nor cynics. I guess we will have to bracket for the moment the question of how one draws the line between “difficult prose” worth reading and “deliberately murky jargon.” It can be a fine line, much like the line between humor and seriousness. Intention is definitely not the decisive key to this—as others have pointed out, murky writers are usually not intentionally trying to be murky but rather intentionally trying to articulate an elusive idea and/or be perceived as incisive and more brilliant than the next gal. The question is how we judge the value of the ideas put forth in such writing. The problem is that sometimes the idea gets away, or it wasn’t really that good an idea to begin with—or it just wasn’t new. Scientists believe you don’t really understand a concept until you can explain it to a layperson. Maybe writers who like to think they’re the Humanities’ answer to string theory should remember that.

Sarah, at 7:55 pm EST on March 5, 2006

Frank Conlon’s post

Right on, Frank! I got your back.

Literary (or cultural) criticism has its roots in trying to explain an insight or a perspective to people who don’t understand the literary work (or cultural phenomenon). If the people who don’t understand the work can’t understand your explanation, you’ve added to the confusion, not cleared it away.

Some ideas are necessarily complex — not everything can be suitable for a Dick & Jane primer (or a whitepaper for Geo W Bush) — but to have to learn a complex and ever-shifting LSP (language for special purposes) is destructive to the educational enterprise.

Conlon’s notion of contemporary criticism as aesthetic performance sees especially insightful.

Bill Dockery, University of Tennessee, at 11:55 am EST on March 6, 2006

Implications of jargon and bureaucrat-speak on academe

“Plain talk: An idea whose time has come. And will likely be ignored.”

Love this article; it got me thinking, which is always dangerous :). My only regret is that I didn’t see it earlier so I could have “jumped-in” on some of the conversation.

It seems to me, a humble grad student from “fly-over country,” that academics sometimes use jargon and gobbledygook as an academic crutch (either because they are not intellectually capable of going beyond the jargon or desire to stifle the open and free exchange of ideas). I’m sometimes not so sure how much some of these people actually know. Not at my university of course! They are all fabulous here.

Are they capable of understanding what the theory actually means? And then translating it into everyday language that the average grad student, or dare I say the average undergrad can make sense of (never mind the average American)?

In technical communication the brunt of the responsibility for communicating is on the communicator, not the recipient. Can professors (whose job description includes “professing") communicate to their audience (students) in a way that is clear, succinct, and accurate? (Allow me to provide a potential answer: some can and do; others choose not to out of laziness; and I’m not so sure the rest are capable of doing so.)

In order to “know something,” one most go beyond terminology and pointing students to the latest and greatest theories that often reflect the interests of the professor and teach the student next to nothing or little about “how” to think but instead “what” to think and say if you want a good grade.

It seems like academics know a lot of terms. Hooray for them, I’m sure other academics are very impressed with this ability to memorize lots of words and reference theories which have little real-world value to someone who is not going to be pursuing that identical subject in painstaking detail, i.e., getting your Ph.D., which is most undergrads and dare I say probably a fare amount of grad students as well. It must be one heck of a party when they (you? :) ) all get together and parrot back whatever the latest in-vogue academic theory is to one another (to all the academics enter own experience here ____ ).

Terms and their meanings—as I’m sure many of you know—are frequently malleable to which discipline the term is being associated. (See I’m capable of not ending some sentences in a preposition; I just choose not to.) Theories are just that—-theories. They provide a conceptual framework for us to view the world. They are often not scientific, let alone facts. They are helpful in providing guidance, but theories should be treated as a tool to knowledge, not the ends of knowledge.

To fully understand something, you must be capable of analytical thought, i.e., to make sense of the subject by (a) integrating it to your experiences and knowledge-base in some way and then to (b) evaluate that subject based on your experiences and knowledge, and then to © communicate/share/defend your perspective. Academia should be about the open discussion of ideas—even ideas we don’t agree with—and intellectual maturation. That seems to be like a universal principle that most of us should be able to agree with and a decent starting point.

Using jargon and avoiding plain speech simply makes the open exchange of ideas and robust debate more difficult; hopefully, I can connect the two concepts and not make this too much off topic. Jargon and bureaucrat-speak are the thinking individual’s enemy and often serve to allow others to promulgate their theories and go unchallenged. They call merely for recitation and make no use of anything other than surface level information—-the bare minimum involved in communication. There is little attention paid to making connections or gaining insight, let alone sharing those connections or insights with others. In other words, the focus is again on “what” to say, not “how” it is said or “why.”

Making sense of information does NOT simply begin and end with regurgitation. Snap your fingers and watch Spot sit! It seems in academe it’s the professors who snap their fingers and expect to hear the “right answer.” Amazing! We’ve given the students the same amount of credit we’ve given our pets. Such high expectations will surely bring out the best, right?

Thomas Aquinas might have been on to something when he tried to synthesize theology and reason. Reason can be debated. And it involves some scientific or systematic approach that calls for justifications to be made. Something is right or wrong because of “a,” “b,” or “c.” Someone can answer: I agree with “a” and “b,” but “c” seems wrong, and here is why. It seems like for some professors in modern academia, “theory” has replaced “faith” and “reason” has little to no place in the educational/cognitive process.

It seems these days like it is mostly “True” or “False” dichotomy (in principle if not in practice). Maybe some multiple-choice questions if they feel like challenging the students. After all, anything else would take research time away from the professors and that is why the entered the halls of academia, is it not?

I am much more impressed with the approach of a medieval theologian than what I sometimes see and frequently read about today in academe. I’ll leave it to others to provide specific examples, you all at “Inside Higher Ed” seem like a group of well-educated ladies and fellows.

In sum, thanks to those who “profess” and teach. On behalf of myself and others I say to them: teach me! (Not “what” to think or say but “how” to think so I can make up my own mind on the “why.") Thanks for taking advantage of your opportunity and responsibility to shape the minds of the next generation of leaders so we can make decisions for ourselves. To the rest who choose not teach out of laziness or because you’re not capable of doing so, stop wasting your and my time. You should be ashamed at your breach of the responsibility you’ve been given in educating students so they can be productive members of society and informed citizens.

To those who consider yourself an “academic’s academic": please take some of what I said with a grain of salt. It was meant to get you thinking. Perhaps your use of jargon is not a crutch or mechanism to stifle debate, merely an old habit that is hard to break.

To the rest: have a good day,

My name here.

SWS, at 4:20 am EST on March 7, 2006

Comment

If you have this much time to debate online satire,get a life.

U.S.Paratrooper, at 10:10 pm EST on March 11, 2006