Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 21:58:49 -0500
From: vacirca-AT-charm.net (robert brown)
Subject: Re: No Subject


>RE:  "grave essential meanings"--please, at the risk of sounding Luddite,
>crankish and/or flamish, WTF are "grave essential meanings?"  For the life of
>me, I am trying to imagine a self-conscious, grass roots political movement
>using such terminology.  The explanation of  a "hybrid politics" in which
>people (... Nicaraguan
>Miskitu) "use, discard and partly use again discourses previously imbued
>with grave, essential meanings." , pardon me, doesn't seem to explain
>anything.  As a gentle reminder of this sort of thing--our risking terminal
>jargon-ese, I keep the following over my desk:
>
>        The role of the police is best understood as a mechanism for the
>distribution
>of nen- negotiably coercive force employed in accordance with the dictates of
>an intuitive grasp of   situational exigencies.
>                                                -Egon Bittner
>
>        What the f____ does that mean?
>
>                                                -Sargeant, Los Angeles
>Police Dept.
>
>How about a little--just a little?--effort on the communicative end of
>language (such as it is, this poor old tongue)?
>
>B. Mills
>
>
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        hey Bronwyn,  i'm with you.  enough  with the ponderous academese
already.  academics might want to ask themselves why they find it so
necessary, maybe so seductive, to write and communicate in intellectual
gibberish rather than vulgate( see i can play the game too)i.e. plain
english. personally i think it says loads about the elitism and isolation
of  many academics and the impotence of the academy. there are entire books
i've given up reading because they're written in such heavy academese that
i literally had to translate paragraph by paragraph and still wasn't sure
what if anything was being said. Aside from the obvious fact that it cuts
all but a select few out of the discussion i think it leads to bad science
and muddled thinking.

                sorry if i'm ranting a little but this is something that
has bothered me about the academic world for a long time.  a luta continua
bob brown




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