academic language is often purposely obfuscated

speaking of mencken:

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

yeah that second guy is great!

not sure i get that heiddeger quote. urging philosophers to be intelligible isn't the same thing as urging them to only state 'facts.' just because you're not limited to factual statements doesn't mean the nonfactual ones you do make have to be unintelligible

― flopson, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 11:04 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

my problem with this is that soon 'intelligible' becomes code for 'things that I don't understand.' it's like a yelper who says 'the food here wasn't good' well what is good food 'food that I think is good!'

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Thursday, 16 February 2012 06:42 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is literally the worst exegesis on heidigger, perhaps on any philosopher, that I have ever read btw

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (dayo), Thursday, 16 February 2012 06:43 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you're right dayo, your analogy about how some people say they like food but really that just means they think food is good really openned my eyes about this heiddeger quote, thats definitely a much better exegesis of this text

sorry I posted that stupid quote in the first place

nussbaum says some v contentious things in that piece. her partic brand of clarity reads as a sort of certainty where often there can be none. it seems to obfuscate the inherently openness of what she is talking about, sharpening it into an unrecognisable image of itself. the argument is often evasive but it struts around, seeming sure of itself. it seems its tactics are not dissimilar from those it seeks to condemn.

― judith, Thursday, 16 February 2012 04:03 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd be interested to know more about your take on this. what are the contentious points? also, did you read the last half?

fwiw that medical thing I posted was selected completely at random, and is not meant to be representative of truly horrible science writing

like I said in the other thread, the existence of bad writing in other fields doesn't get the humanities off the hook

otmfm

Humanities really have the most to answer for. In the sense that they are directly engaged with the act of communication, issues of translation, analysis, and application of hard data to 'soft' human squishy stuff, clear writing is more their domaine - and the lack thereof less excusable – than in hard sciences.

fwiw that medical thing I posted was selected completely at random, and is not meant to be representative of truly horrible science writing

― i love pinfold cricket (gbx), Thursday, 16 February 2012 14:37 (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, but that constant drip drip of turgid and unnecessarily crufty/obscure prose is a major downer

I couldn't make heads nor tails of the medical thing when I tried to read it on Zing, but reading it on a computer where I was able to have the whole thing on the screen at once made a HUGE difference in my ability to figure out what was going on (aside from the compound names obv).

So, my solution to demystifying academic writing is to shrink the type so that more of the text can fit on one page. QED!

Full disclosure: DJP has started selling reading glasses on the side

fwiw my "foundations of semiotics" class (which in the very first class the professor said was "a joke" since semiotics is "by its very nature non-foundational") required each paper we wrote to be one page, maximum. it was the only class i ever took where everyone was REDUCING their font sizes.

I think all technical language can feel willfully sesquipedalian to the non-initiated and I also think that such writers often fall too much in love w/their subject's jargon.

1) i dont know what anyone hopes to accomplish by taking tiny bits of texts out of their totally enormous context and then demonstrating their supposed incomprehensibility.

2) it's truly obnoxious that people feel like they can wade into something that I, and other people on this thread, do and pronounce upon it with some sense of authority as if they've, say, spent any time at all trying to read Heidegger (or whoever). He's not writing a goddamn manifesto for mass consumption. You don't have to read and like Heidegger (again, just an example) but if you don't im not gonna take anything you say about him seriously.

3) said this umpteen times: the desire for clear and precise language/communication is something being interrogated in these texts. in fact, most of them find it impossible, and thus clearness is suspect as best.

4) academia does, im sure, incentivize complexity. sometimes bad writing happens. but also it's important to realize complexity is something that HAPPENS to discourses as they evolve. as I pointed out elsewhere, medieval theology is an example of a discourse of comparable complexity (if not moreso) that took place largely outside of the modern academic "publish or perish" context.

this is a really good thread, i thought i would have more to say but i think everything i would say has been covered on both sides, carry on ppl

oh what wz the other thread this spun off from btw

5) also tired of the notion that these hugely popular writers (relatively speaking) are somehow popular due to the mass delusions and insecurities of graduate students.

3) said this umpteen times: the desire for clear and precise language/communication is something being interrogated in these texts. in fact, most of them find it impossible, and thus clearness is suspect as best.

ehhhhhhh

not buying it

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complexity and complex language are not equivalent

in social system that is comprised of language they are.

i don't know what that means

When you're a kid and you don't understand big words in something you're reading, that doesn't mean the writing isn't clear. Similarly, w/in a discipline, idioms and expressions that look obscure to the layperson may carry easy meaning to the initiated.

oh what wz the other thread this spun off from btw

― desperado, rough rider (thomp),

feminists &c

Similarly, w/in a discipline, idioms and expressions that look obscure to the layperson may carry easy meaning to the initiated.

i think the issue isn't just big words or unfamiliar terms - i recall conscientiously trying to read theory with a dictionary by my side years ago - it's jargony terms, or words that connote something very different to their usual meaning, or with nuances that will go over the head of someone not steeped in the subject. plus, as per the example here, horrible horrible sentence structure full of clauses and sub-clauses that stack up on top of each other endlessly. these are all things that can be remedied without simplifying ideas.

i don't think anyone's arguing that *all* academics write like this, either

theory/philosophy = language. it used to be everyone thought they were comprised of "ideas" but then the "linguistic turn" happened and the relationship between ideas and language was overturned. language isn't really considered to "express" an idea that is fully formed in the mind before hand, it can in fact determine ideas, what counts as an idea, what counts as meaningful etc. Emerson called language a "prison house" and you could see theory/philosophy as engaged with push at its boundaries in much the same way Art pushes at the intelligible (within it's field) in order to break out into new domains of what kinds of "meaning" are possible.

geez sorry for poor typing again.

it always seemed odd to me as an undergrad that i had no problems comprehending C17th philosophers but many C20th ones may as well have been gibberish for all i got out of them

To be fair, much 20th Cent philosophy has turned precisely to language itself

Lex i'd be willing to argue part of the reason for that is that philosophy has given up on the Platonic "top-down" organization of knowledge, with philosophy at the top. so, again, there's no need to particularly care or read about this stuff unless it's the kind of thing you care about. i encourage people to care about it, but it's not like necessary for a meaningful life.

prob also a bit to do with the fact that i actively studied (and was actively taught) rousseau, descartes and so on, whereas i tried to plunge into derrida, deleuze and foucault all on my own and got precisely nowhere.

barthes was cool though, i remember that! beautifully written.

this thread has kind of made me want to give it another go, it's been years since i last tried to delve into philosophy (indeed the deleuze experience is probably the reason for that tbh)

and let me back up a few steps: I'm not familiar enough with Butler to say, but yeah Heidegger wrote like shit sometimes. not always. i kinda like how he uses words we all know and infuses them with an odd kind of portentousness. he's a mystic, in his way.

I do think something else is on the horizon, in terms of what this kind of writing will look like in the future. (namely, it's gonna look like Niklas Luhmann, so don't get your hopes up on the clarity front.)

ha lex also the entire edifice of western education and knowledge rests on the rationalism espoused by the enlightenment it's not surprising that guys writing back then make pretty good sense to us now

butler can do one though, enough feminist thinkers out there who can actually communicate clearly - i think someone like butler is more offensive to me b/c the practicalities of feminism are so essential to it - your effect on the world at large is crucial. if the world at large can't understand your ideas what is the point?

or, what nussbaum said

im a very big believe in starting with "introduction to..." texts and even the big "history of philosophy/structuralism/20th century french thought" kind of books. i even think more academics should step back and read/talk about that stuff because having the big picture in mind helps clarify what's going on in the smaller interventions of books and essays.

im a very big believe in starting with "introduction to..." texts and even the big "history of philosophy/structuralism/20th century french thought" kind of books

do you have any particular recommendations?

i am so setting myself up for a fall here but nm

nobody's addressing the bigger issue tho - ryan et al do you really believe there aren't environments that can, in theory, give people incentives for being inscrutable?

i think the point made earlier about academic writers aiming for precision rather than clarity rung true - that's what those pile-up sentences are all about, trying to make an idea watertight and shutting off loopholes

and they're not naturally adept enough with language to be able to edit it into comprehensibility at the same time, and yeah in an environment where there's no impetus to do that anyway

The stupid thing is that editing into shorter sentences would often help with clarity; oftentimes the biggest problem I have with reading academic writing is that the ideas are conveyed in so many overlapping/nested clauses that I half suspect the authors learned to write from studying German syntax.

lex: that depends on what you're interested in! judging by your above posts id say id be just as interested in anything someone might suggest for you because im not well read in those areas.

DJP is right too. It happens to your sentences when you try to write about this stuff. You start to pile on clauses.

You start to pile on clauses.

As I constantly try to remind myself, edit!

I do wish academics would spend more time honing their writing, but to address the "incentivize" question: i think if anything academics are in an environment that prizes novelty (originality) and being prolific. you'd be surprised how fast they are expected to churn out books and articles. that more than anything could be the source of the "problem," such as it is.

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*APPLAUSE*