I’ve recently come across a number of articles that talk about the incomprehensibility, and thus, the irrelevance, of scholarly work that trades mainly in jargon. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart – I often strive for clarity in an academic world that seems to value the obscure, and I struggle with the limited reach of academic journals. I’ve quoted this before, but I think Corey Olsen – The Tolkien Professor – is right to be:
increasingly frustrated with the separation between academics and general readers — namely, the inability for general readers and lovers of literature to enjoy the thought-provoking discoveries made in the cloistered world of academics.
When I first started graduate school, I was in way over my head. I couldn’t understand a single thing anyone was saying because the language was so sophisticated and the references were so specific. And the worst part of it was that it seemed like everyone else knew exactly what was going on. I felt like I’d never be smart enough to follow a lecture, much less engage in a full conversation myself.
I’ve crossed to the other side now, reading and writing and speaking in Academese on a regular basis. There are still many people who speak at a register far above what I can understand, but I can see why the language gets complicated and the vocabulary obscure: sometimes you need to be incredibly precise with your meaning, and everyday language is just too general; sometimes you need to get a lot of ideas into a single word or phrase to preserve causal relationships without creating major grammatical confusion; and sometimes you’re thinking quickly and the jargon is the first thing that pops into your head – and it seems totally normal because your mind is steeped in academic journals and conversations so you don’t even notice it.
But the goal of philosophy is to make something radical sound obvious, to make an idea that requires contemplative vision something that anyone can see. The goal is to communicate with not just other academics, but with everyone. Supposedly, what we argue in our conference papers and teach in our classes is important, so we want the message to get across clearly – but we don’t want to oversimplify things either.
It’s a tough balance. There are aspects of Academic jargon that we need in order to be accurate to our subject matter, but I think they need to be balanced and contextualized in a way that is more generally accessible if we ever hope to step out of a scholastic environment. I know that it is possible – I was just at a wonderful conference full of interesting and thought-provoking papers that were both detailed and accessible – but it is incredibly difficult.
It’s like Einstein said:
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Now for those articles:
- Nicholas Kristof’s Professors, We Need You!
- Joshua Rothman’s Why is Academic Writing so Academic?
- David Russell Mosley’s What is the Theologian’s Place in the Church: A Plea for Theologians-in-Residence
- Gizmodo’s Over 120 Science Journal Papers Pulled for Being Total Gibberish
- Ezra Klein’s The Real Reason Nobody Reads Academics
4 thoughts on “My Love/Hate Relationship with Academese”
SelfAwarePatterns
Well said. I think every field has its jargon that effectively functions as a shorthand for complex concepts. It strikes me as entirely reasonable that people in that field talking to each other would use that jargon, otherwise every paper becomes three times longer than it already is. I know in my field, the use of acronyms save a lot of time and space, albeit at the cost of incomprehensibility to someone not versed in them.
But there are definitely a class of papers which deploy high density jargon that, when unpacked, reveal their actual statements to be inane, vacuous nonsense, or masqueraded opinion. When I was in grad school, I eventually learned which authors tended to write this kind of junk and avoided their work, unless forced to read it by one of my instructors.
The sin though is when authors trying to talk to the general public fail to realize that every use of a jargon word alienates readers. Giving up jargon means giving up precision, and living with the fact that some people will call you out on your use of imprecise language, or misunderstand it (sometimes willfully). But that cost buys the benefit of your message going much farther and wider.
Michelle Joelle
I agree. I think that it’s good respect precision, but too often that translates into lauding the opaque for its own sake, when people assume that a paper they can’t understand must be incomprehensible because it is so brilliant, and that anything clear must be oversimplified. If you can understand something, it must not be worth your time. This attitude isn’t everywhere, but it certainly pops up more than would be ideal.
Lee
I would have more respect for the jargon if it were being used in a place where actual, useful work is being done, such as in the R&D department of a high-tech company. In general, academia is insulated from the need to produce anything useful at all. So for the most part, it doesn’t matter whether an academic paper is brilliant or gibberish, because it’s all talk anyway. Nobody is going to read it except a few fellow academics, and nothing useful or practical will ever come of it.
My own calling is to take potentially complex theological ideas and put them into common language for the average person. My goal is to use those theological ideas to help people negotiate the daily struggles in life, and move forward on their spiritual journeys. I’ve been doing this for many years. Though there are some concepts that are difficult to translate into ordinary language, so far I haven’t encountered any that are impossible to put into plain English. As you say, it just takes longer to say it without the specialized language.
If a particular academic is simply unable to put his or her ideas into ordinary English, there’s a good chance she or he does not have a real, practical understanding of those ideas. It’s all well and good to build fancy, abstract word castles. But if they have no foundation in practical, everyday reality, it’s just a pile of impressive words that collapse into a heap of rubble as soon as they’re put to any real-world application.
Speaking of which . . . loved the linked article on computer-generated gibberish papers that got published in journals! 😛
Michelle Joelle
I agree. I think it’s a good litmus test of an idea to see if you can rephrase it in a way that’s accessible. If you can’t, it’s either nonsense, or you don’t really understand it yet. But then, once you can phrase an idea in a way that isn’t exclusionary, it often gets dismissed as “too obvious”, which leads to an idealization of nonsense.
Hence the gibberish getting by! So funny, but also, kind of sad.