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CuriousG
Half-elven
Jan 8 2019, 2:19am
Post #26 of 45
(887 views)
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I was thinking of "old modern" English too
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How you'd see sentences from Colonial times with capitalized nouns like: "And now we will discuss how the Nature of a Republic is respect for the Natural Rights of Man." But definitely not something you see now that's considered appropriate.
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SirDennisC
Half-elven
Jan 8 2019, 4:51am
Post #27 of 45
(886 views)
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If I understand the article, kenning is something more than stacking nouns, for instance word nerd, or lightbulb; rather, it’s doing so to evoke an idea apart from the words. This is why a lightbulb is just a lightbulb, but kindergarten (childrengarden) is a school for little ones.
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dernwyn
Forum Admin
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Jan 8 2019, 11:48am
Post #28 of 45
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The concept of a "garden" where little minds can grow. 
A question for any of our 'sibs who are German-speakers: what are some of the longest words in this language?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I desired dragons with a profound desire"
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Jan 8 2019, 3:06pm
Post #29 of 45
(859 views)
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Ah, thanks for the clarification on that nuance. Makes more sense now. //
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Annael
Immortal
Jan 8 2019, 4:08pm
Post #30 of 45
(864 views)
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I struggled to get one author to use "racist attitude" instead of "negative and racist collective shadow projection" . . .
I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the words begin to move around … The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young.
-- Gaston Bachelard
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NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Jan 8 2019, 4:26pm
Post #31 of 45
(860 views)
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don't you feel that academia pressures people to overload their jargon? And I remember you got a PhD yourself--did you feel the pressure then while working on it?
I bring up this point as someone who isn't an academic but has had them as customers for 20 years, and it has always seemed to me that they felt obliged to pile on the jargon and make their language obtuse or they wouldn't be taken seriously by their peers. I can't count the number of conversations where they would self-correct, first saying something in "regular speech," then catching themselves as if they'd made a faux pas and then repeating it a hailstorm of obfuscation. I guess in a way I always felt a little sorry for them, that they couldn't express things the way they wanted to but were forced by peer pressure to make things sound more abstract than they were.
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jan 8 2019, 4:34pm
Post #32 of 45
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as if this writer were painting instead. The old adage about a picture being worth a thousand words. I can imagine you had an interesting set of conversations!
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jan 8 2019, 4:36pm
Post #33 of 45
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to answer essay questions when I didn't have much to say, or wasn't sure of the answer . . . 
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Jan 8 2019, 4:50pm
Post #34 of 45
(854 views)
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Well, there's that too. And what's more, it usually worked. //
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jan 8 2019, 4:55pm
Post #35 of 45
(854 views)
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*whispers* (it did). 
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Annael
Immortal
Jan 9 2019, 3:17am
Post #36 of 45
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I knew that jargon basically accomplishes two things: 1. it provides a shorthand language that allows people within the field or company or whatever to communicate particular ideas quickly, and 2. it excludes those who aren't in the club. But I made my living for many years editing and writing patient education materials, where the point was to empower those who had previously been excluded. I was good at taking even the most complicated medical topics and explaining them in terms most people could understand - even kids.
So I made a point of writing all my papers, including my dissertation, in plain English.
My professors LOVED me. "Your prose is deceptively simple," one of them said. "I mean that the language seems simple, but your concepts are intricate."
And I tell all my clients that -- unless your professor is one of those twits who wants you to prove that you belong in the club by using inaccessible language -- he or she is probably going to love it if you write plainly too.
I wrote an article about why jargon is bad: https://www.linkedin.com/...rgon-jody-bower-phd/
I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the words begin to move around … The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young.
-- Gaston Bachelard
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NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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Annael
Immortal
Jan 9 2019, 3:19am
Post #37 of 45
(834 views)
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ah, what I call the "dust in the eyes" approach?
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Throw a lot of terms at the page in the hopes that you sound like you actually know what you're talking about?
I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the words begin to move around … The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young.
-- Gaston Bachelard
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NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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Annael
Immortal
Jan 9 2019, 3:21am
Post #38 of 45
(825 views)
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I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the words begin to move around … The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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squire
Half-elven
Jan 9 2019, 3:32am
Post #39 of 45
(838 views)
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Your comments reminded me of the frustration I felt when reading one particularly 'theoretical' article in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, a few years back. Here is the brief Diary-style review I wrote (I've left out the author's name, whose work I respect and can usually understand in other contexts):
"Subject Theory and Semiotics [in Tolkien], by X. Review by squire, 2007"
"I have too much respect for X's writing, which when I can follow it is extremely engaging, to call this article gibberish. The fact remains, on a second or third reading I still can't make head or tail of it. Something about how all elements of fiction must be understood as being from some subjective point of view, which incorporates influences that are both internal and external to that subject?? I dunno. This makes his "Silmarillion" article seem clear as day.
I can only guess that even X cannot write an essay about "subject theory and semiotics" without using the peculiar vocabulary and syntax of that discipline. I daresay that usages like "problematize", "pointing attention to", "highlights the subject's embeddedness in these discourses", "identity is seen as an aspect of", "constitutive aspects of the subject" would in more mainstream venues be red-penciled and returned to author for a rewrite. Here I have to assume they are part of a compressed technical vocabulary comparable to higher mathematics, or similar abstruse disciplines. Perhaps more self-explanatory expressions, if possible at all, would require three or ten times more words to make clear to laymen what adepts can quickly scan, nodding in easy comprehension.
Probably, too, X was constrained by the Encyclopedia's word count to keep this piece too short to allow any other approach than to reproduce subject theory in its own terms, rather than explain it to inexperienced readers in understandable language. Could anything have been done? What is he saying that subject theory tells us about Gollum? about the Ainulindalë? Can I ask, in an educated layman's frustration, Who was the intended audience for this article?"
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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Annael
Immortal
Jan 9 2019, 3:04pm
Post #40 of 45
(830 views)
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"compressed technical vocabulary"
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is an excellent description of what jargon is.
Any word that is a noun with "ize" added is a warning that here be jargon.
In my field, the post-structuralists (or post-phenomenologists), a/k/a the "French theory" school, are notorious for inaccessible writing. My friends and I took it as a challenge to quote Lacan or Derrida or Cixous and then say "in other words . . ." and boil the lengthy and incomprehensible quote down to plain English, just for fun y'know (and of course, to make it clear we had actually managed to read and understand them).
have you heard about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the words begin to move around … The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
(This post was edited by Annael on Jan 9 2019, 3:11pm)
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Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jan 9 2019, 3:27pm
Post #41 of 45
(820 views)
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I would pad it with complicated, unnecessary phrases and redundant words--the "bigger" the better--overly describing any facts I did know (mostly high school. I cared too much in college to embarrass myself by pretending). I was going to try to provide an example, but I'm not sure I can do it anymore!
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SirDennisC
Half-elven
Jan 10 2019, 1:40am
Post #42 of 45
(819 views)
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Tolkien had the entire Oxford dictionary at his command, but used relatively simple words, knitted finely.
(This post was edited by SirDennisC on Jan 10 2019, 1:41am)
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Ataahua
Forum Admin
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Jan 10 2019, 4:55am
Post #43 of 45
(800 views)
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Now that's an eye-opener and no mistake.
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I struggled to get one author to use "racist attitude" instead of "negative and racist collective shadow projection" . . .
Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."
"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.
Ataahua's stories
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Jan 11 2019, 11:40pm
Post #45 of 45
(772 views)
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That's a nickname I've seen applied to a more recent prank whose creators intended to show that the "grievance studies" field is hopelessly flawed. There has been, however, a lot of controversy about whether the pranksters demonstrated what they think they did. Also, by submitting papers with bogus empirical evidence (which was not something Sokal did), one argument claims, the pranksters themselves committed fraud--and also that they violated ethics standards when they "conducted research on human subjects" (the editors of the journals to which the papers were submitted) without getting approval from a review board first.
(One comment I saw responding to an article on this: "Isn’t it more like a concerned citizen trying to buy beer with a fake ID? Even if their goal is to expose the seller, it’s still against the law.")
Treachery, treachery I fear; treachery of that miserable creature.
But so it must be. Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend.
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