I’m almost at the end of my degree, and I’m tiring of academia. I’m tiring of the fact that each essay I write is supposed to be argued as if it’s of pressing importance to the world. I’m tiring of a system where my essays are marked subjectively by a group of individuals who believe fervently in an objective truth, many of them seeming unaware of the subjectivity of the criteria they are marking it on. But, most of all, I’m tiring of the academic convention which seems to dictate how a lot of articles are written.
This most often takes the form of using latin phrases instead of certain English ones which contain the same amount of words. Ipso facto, A priori, and tabula rasa are examples which particularly invoke my ire. It often happens as well when the whole text of an academic is rendered (often deliberately) incomprehensible by their usage of English words which (they know) you will have to look up in a dictionary. Even worse still, some academics place paragraphs of French or German quotes in their work, without translating them for the readership, who no doubt don’t all speak those languages! The whole time, there are phrases in more popular and common usage, which take up almost the same amount of words, and mean the same thing, that would serve as much more understandable alternatives. But of course, being understandable was never the aim of the writing.
Many academics seem to think that they can demonstrate the irresistible truth and profoundness of their arguments by confusing you with the language they use. Why? Firstly, they think it justifies why they are the expert and you’re not. You think ‘this is so complicated, I can see why I’m reading their book on the matter and not the other way round’. Secondly, because they think it immunises their arguments against criticism. With deliberate verbosity and elusive language, you can’t actually get a hold on what you are criticising. Well, it doesn’t impress me. If a writer cannot express a complex argument concisely and clearly, then that is their problem and not mine.
I will refrain from criticising particular academics in this instance. It doesn’t matter who does it exactly. If you do an arts degree, you will doubtless know what I’m talking about. It happens all over the place anyway, not just in academic material. All that matters is that I, and others too, refuse to acknowledge the supposed ingenuity of completely incomprehensible (but probably reasonable underneath) arguments. I will speak in favour of Stephen Hawking, who, in A Briefer History of Time manages to condense some core, and complicated, principles of physics into a book which people can read and understand. This kind of writing I am wholeheartedly in favour of.
A reason that this irritates me so much is the fact that this kind of language has been criticised before. George Orwell argued clearly and effectively against this kind of stuff in ‘Politics and The English Language’ (1946):
“The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.”
He then labels the kind of Latin jargon that I’m talking about under a category called ‘pretentious diction’. Now, he objects to words even like ‘individual’ instead of ‘person’, and I’ve used the word individual in this post. He wouldn’t uniformly agree with what I’m saying, but then again, he used the word ‘diction’, so everybody is capable of this language. He does object to a couple of the Latin phrases I picked out below, and I only found this out after I wrote that bit of this post. George Orwell was known for his plain and effective (but obviously contentious) prose, and in a way, I would like to do the same. Bit grand eh? Point is, even though one is aware of the flaws of his argument, it has not really taken from the prestige or astuteness that one might attach to them. All academic text should aspire to this. Let your argument be criticised – leaving your argument open to criticism demonstrates you have confidence in it. Still, sixty years on, people have mostly ignored this argument.
Now, I should explain my awareness that there are sometimes Latin phrases which have come in to such a common English usage that translating them each time would be verbose, and confusing. For example, you all know what is meant by status quo, postmortem, alter ego and so on. It is more concise and understandable to use these phrases than their English translation. Language is, of course, constantly evolving, and paradoxically the difficulty with using the phrases I particularly object to would reduce if more people used them. However, whilst there exists a set of concise English phrases and words that are more readily understood, I don’t see any reason to undergo this change.
Also, I should acknowledge that academics are not the only social group prone to using unnecessary jargon. The phrase ‘corporate jargon’ won’t be unfamiliar. I must confess to shirking somewhat when my dad, officially world’s best accountant / management consultant, used the phrase ‘version control’. Apparently this just means which draft of the document is being referred to. He said “what’s the version control” of a tenancy agreement we were looking at. I thought ‘er, God only knows’, but what he meant “what was the date of this particular draft of the agreement”, or “have the amendments we previously suggested been changed for this draft?”. You see, it would have saved time to ask me this instead of using the corporate jargon, and whilst it isn’t always done deliberately to confuse and seem superior (as in this instance with Pops), I would go so far as to call jargon-using a bad habit, one which is sloppy and ought to be, but isn’t, associated with poor elocution.
So there are many phrases which I remember having to look up, and it certainly wasn’t an embarrassing display of ignorance or stupidity on my part which necessitated my so doing. That is what the people who use these phrases often want you to think when you read them. They often seek to demonstrate superior intelligence by using overly complex language. Really, I feel that an ability to use apt, concise, and understandable language to demonstrate complex concepts would be a better marker of intelligence. However, in academic circles, if you leave your argument open to criticism because (horror of horrors) people can actually understand the argument you are making, your argument may be ridiculed as the flaws seem so apparent. Even though arguments necessarily contain flaws, you won’t be able to do the same with their arguments because they may have been caked in incomprehensible babble.Even worse, you may be condemned as an opinionated and naive buffoon (ad hominem, perhaps. Oh the irony. See below if you understandably don’t know what that means). The examples I have picked out below do, I feel, have little benefit above using an English translation, except that they sound more posh and academic, that effect being a mere illusion anyway.
OLLY’S DICTIONARY OF COMMONLY RECITED ACADEMIC PARLANCE: (ODCRAP for short. Hehe).
Ad camptandum = Style of argument used to convince a gullible crowd of the truth in what one is saying.
Ad hominem = When criticising something, arguing ad hominem is to criticise the person making the argument rather than criticising the argument they are making.
A priori = Something known before being proven, or something which happened before an event.
Bona fide = In good faith, or genuine.
De facto = Official, in reality (e.g. Humans thought that they were the dominant species on earth, but rodents were the de facto governors of how things were.
Dramatis personae = Literally, a list of actors, but used in history as a list of important people relevant to whatever the book or article is about.
Ipso facto = normally translates to ‘by that very fact’.
Mutatis mutandis = Means ‘and so on for [examples]‘ when applying changes, e.g. “The house becomes ‘his house’, mutatis mutandis for the car, the children and the plasma TV”.
Persona non grata = Unliked or unwanted individual.
Tabula rasa = Blank slate (often related particularly to the argument that humans aren’t born with innate knowledge).
Terra firma = I know this one is really common and understandable, but I don’t see how using the latin term instead of ‘familiar ground’ is necessary or desirable unless you want to impress people with your supposed eloquence.
Via Media = Middle way (as in ’sitting on the fence’ somewhat).
