Why is Academic Writing So *Needlessly *Ridiculous?

[EL CORINTHIAN]

So im in my second year of university as a mature student and we have a week break from school, which most people use to catch up on reading. This week i decided to catch up on and also read in advance for one of my courses and it occurred to me that a lot of academic writing is just so needlessly complex in how it's written.

Take this little excerpt taken from the Atlantic expressing this very idea:

The idea that writing should be clear, concise, and low-jargon isn’t a new one—and it isn’t limited to government agencies, of course. The problem of needlessly complex writing—sometimes referred to as an “opaque writing style”—has been explored in fields ranging from law to science. Yet in academia, unwieldy writing has become something of a protected tradition. Take this example:


The work of the text is to literalize the signifiers of the first encounter, dismantling the ideal as an idol. In this literalization, the idolatrous deception of the first moment becomes readable. The ideal will reveal itself to be an idol. Step by step, the ideal is pursued by a devouring doppelganger, tearing apart all transcendence. This de-idealization follows the path of reification, or, to invoke Augustine, the path of carnalization of the spiritual. Rhetorically, this is effected through literalization. A Sentimental Education does little more than elaborate the progressive literalization of the Annunciation.

That little doozy appears in Barbara Vinken’s Flaubert Postsecular: Modernity Crossed Out, published by Stanford University Press, and was recently posted to a listserv used by clear-language zealots—many of whom are highly qualified academics who are willing to call their colleagues out for being habitual offenders of opaque writing. Yet the battle to make clear and elegant prose the new status quo is far from won.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/complex-academic-writing/412255/

Like why has polluting your message with language so beyond recognition that no one can understand it become the standard? It's not even for any purpose other than to impress other intellectually snooty von snootersons, It doesn't help anyone to write like that. Worse yet is that it plagues the social sciences WAY more than anything else which is so cringy as they try to sound like real scientists.

It's a dick measuring contest, that's all it is.

I have read countless pages of this type of bullshit and I want to go into my Profs office and fill the room with uppercuts.

Anyone else agree with this assessment?

 

[mb23100]

Hell I know people who speak like that in everyday life

 

[MMA since 1993]

Rediculous?

2nd year you say...

 

[minute bull]

 

[EL CORINTHIAN]

Rediculous?

2nd year you say...

That's how bad it is. I can spell de-idealization but not rediculous. Don't blame me, blame the system.

 

[JayPettryMMA]

I can't figure out if the title is supposed to be horrifically misspelled as a goof. By the use of "fill the room with uppercuts" I'm on the fence.

Edit: The title was originally "Why is Academic Writing So Needlessely Rediculous"

 

[Estemachine]

You have no idea how difficult it is for a non English speaker to read books that have a ton of words you are not familiar with, I have to look up the dictionary every minute or so.

 

[EL CORINTHIAN]

I can't figure out if the title is supposed to be horrifically misspelled as a goof. By the use of "fill the room with uppercuts" I'm on the fence.

 

[MMA since 1993]

That's how bad it is. I can spell de-idealization but not rediculous. Don't blame me, blame the system.

 

[minute bull]

When mother fuckers learn some shit they gotta run the hell out that shit until the wheels fall off. You know how when someone fancies a new word they try to work it into every sentence? Or a kid starts mastering the rudiments of conversation, or jerking off? Collegiate writing is the same thing: folks trying to figure themselves out but now with some training and extreme prejudice.

Are we still saying don't hate the player or are we done? We done? Shit, I liked that one.

 

[JayPettryMMA]

But to your point, as an academic I know exactly what you're referring to with the needless flowery language. As an undergraduate, we were instructed to write as if you were reaching an audience that had no idea what you were talking about. When going to graduate school, that changed. We instead were taught to assume that everyone reading what we wrote could speak the same language, so we were encouraged and almost needled into making things unnecessarily complicated. My thesis could have been ten pages shorter if I had pulled out all of the bloviating and chest-puffery I did.

Academia is a very exclusive and uninviting group, as some refer to it as the "ivory tower" of intellectuals sitting high and above everyone else. By and large they're kind of disconnected from life and the world around them, and instead prefer to keep everything restricted to their own community. Preparing for a conference once, I felt a little disgusted by some of the people I ran into along the way that were so insulated in their own texts and treatises that they couldn't relate to another person. It was almost a game of one-upsmanship for everyone involved, to have the last word and go "hah I'm the winner," as if that mattered at all. They're happy with it, and they feel comfortable in that little world. It's a hell of a thing.

I still have some of that writing style in me, as you can tell from above.

 

[IIIIIIII]

i've noticed that most of the great writers don't even use overly-complicated terms when they write. what they do use, is complicated and interesting sentence structures. if you see a lot of complex words jumbled together, it's probably not going to flow, or you'll realize that most of it is unnecessary fluff.

 

[EL CORINTHIAN]

But to your point, as an academic I know exactly what you're referring to with the needless flowery language. As an undergraduate, we were instructed to write as if you were reaching an audience that had no idea what you were talking about.

This is what bugs the hell out of me. The TA's request that you write as clearly and concisely as possible (to make their lives easier) while we source the information for our assignments from articles we can hardly understand.

 

[franklinstower]

I think that it is insecurity bolstered by arrogance and pride.

 

[Loiosh]

Like why has polluting your message with language so beyond recognition that no one can understand it become the standard?

The obfuscation of simple or otherwise transparent content can summon the illusion of merit.

 

[Headkicktoleg]

Check out the war room. There are numerous posters who write novels for posts and say next to nothing.
Its because
1. It makes them feel smart
2. If discourages people to respond because nobody has time for that, thus making them feel as if they won

 

[Loiosh]

You know how when someone fancies a new word they try to work it into every sentence? Or a kid starts mastering the rudiments of conversation

I was an incredibly annoying kid when I learned a new word. The day I learned "ludicrous" I must have used it fifty times. At dinner my string beans were ludicrous. I could not be stopped.

 

[Headkicktoleg]

I was an incredibly annoying kid when I learned a new word. The day I learned "ludicrous" I must have used it fifty times. At dinner my string beans were ludicrous. I could not be stopped.

LLLLUUUDDDDAAAAAAA

 

[Kaybee]

Some people just think that using large obscure words constantly makes them smarter. In high school there was a chick with down syndrome who pretty much just talked in a jumble of long words you'd see in an academic journal; of course everyone else in school including the guys who ended up in MIT, BYU etc would speak like a regular human being.

In college and grad school I never hear people talking like that unless they are describing some kind of complicated topic that would require terminology that has no layman equivalent. Now the readings on the other hand...

 

[Bullitt68]

But to your point, as an academic I know exactly what you're referring to with the needless flowery language. As an undergraduate, we were instructed to write as if you were reaching an audience that had no idea what you were talking about. When going to graduate school, that changed. We instead were taught to assume that everyone reading what we wrote could speak the same language, so we were encouraged and almost needled into making things unnecessarily complicated. My thesis could have been ten pages shorter if I had pulled out all of the bloviating and chest-puffery I did.

Academia is a very exclusive and uninviting group, as some refer to it as the "ivory tower" of intellectuals sitting high and above everyone else. By and large they're kind of disconnected from life and the world around them, and instead prefer to keep everything restricted to their own community. Preparing for a conference once, I felt a little disgusted by some of the people I ran into along the way that were so insulated in their own texts and treatises that they couldn't relate to another person. It was almost a game of one-upsmanship for everyone involved, to have the last word and go "hah I'm the winner," as if that mattered at all. They're happy with it, and they feel comfortable in that little world. It's a hell of a thing.

I still have some of that writing style in me, as you can tell from above.

Speaking for myself, I have a very extensive vocabulary and I don't "dumb down" my academic writing; when I'm writing something for publication in a scholarly journal, I'm writing at a high level of intellectual sophistication and the fact that not every college freshman will recognize every word in my writing isn't a knock on my writing. There are levels to this game. By the same token, however, I don't worry about hitting a jargon quota in order to impress the pompous doofus club; there's something to be said for being able to convey complex ideas and arguments without burying them under specialized language that only the other handful of nerds in your tiny corner of academia can understand.

Just express yourself honestly. If when you read what you write it doesn't sound like you, if it isn't true to your voice or the manner in which you express yourself, then you're a pompous doofus just showing off for the pompous doofus club, but if it does sound like you, if it is true to your voice and the manner in which you express yourself, then only insecure rubes who feel threatened by intelligence will bitch.

And we shouldn't sleep on the latter point. If your writing is so fucking abstruse that you need six years of intense study just to decipher a single essay, then yeah, there's a problem. But it's also a problem thinking that every college freshman should understand everything ever written. There are levels to this game and we should still aspire to always be learning and growing and reaching higher levels with our vocabularies and our ability to communicate both effectively and eloquently.