While there are a few rebels who attempt to write scholarly articles with clear and engaging prose, most academics are actually trying to do the opposite. They make their sentences as convoluted and jargon-filled as possible because it signals that their work is hard and advanced, and because they don’t really want anyone outside their field to understand it.
This strikes me as so cynical that I’d want to see some evidence before I can take it seriously. Many academic write in the way that they do because they’re writing to an audience of insiders (should they not?), but I can’t imagine why they would want to be intentionally obscure.
This strikes me as so cynical that I’d want to see some evidence before I can take it seriously.
I think this is going to stagger you. Check out this article: it deals with the academic theorists who are actually willing to state, in print, and repeatedly, that clarity of writing is not their goal.
“On one side stand academic luminaries like University of California at Berkeley rhetorician Judith Butler and University of Pittsburgh English professor Jonathan Arac, who take their inspiration from critical theorists like Michel Foucault and Theodor Adorno. Arguing that their work has been misunderstood by journalists on the left, these radical professors distrust the demand for ‘linguistic transparency,’ charging that it cripples one’s ability ‘to think the world more radically.’”
“Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.”
(The article goes on to cite specifics and is well worth a full read.)
Okay, but this is a) a case where someone is writing obscurely because they believe they have good reasons to do so (not so as to make it seem hard and advanced), and b) has nothing to do with physics or mathematics.
If anyone here thinks, like, leftist critical theory is worth a damn, I’ll be surprised. But that’s not part of academia at issue.
I think your a) is wrong—making it seem hard and advanced is part of the “good reason.” But like I said originally: “This effect is pretty much confined to the humanities and the social sciences.” In other words, two thirds of academia.
This strikes me as so cynical that I’d want to see some evidence before I can take it seriously. Many academic write in the way that they do because they’re writing to an audience of insiders (should they not?), but I can’t imagine why they would want to be intentionally obscure.
I think this is going to stagger you. Check out this article: it deals with the academic theorists who are actually willing to state, in print, and repeatedly, that clarity of writing is not their goal.
“On one side stand academic luminaries like University of California at Berkeley rhetorician Judith Butler and University of Pittsburgh English professor Jonathan Arac, who take their inspiration from critical theorists like Michel Foucault and Theodor Adorno. Arguing that their work has been misunderstood by journalists on the left, these radical professors distrust the demand for ‘linguistic transparency,’ charging that it cripples one’s ability ‘to think the world more radically.’”
And here’s Richard Dawkins on the phenomenon:
“Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.”
(The article goes on to cite specifics and is well worth a full read.)
Okay, but this is a) a case where someone is writing obscurely because they believe they have good reasons to do so (not so as to make it seem hard and advanced), and b) has nothing to do with physics or mathematics.
If anyone here thinks, like, leftist critical theory is worth a damn, I’ll be surprised. But that’s not part of academia at issue.
I think your a) is wrong—making it seem hard and advanced is part of the “good reason.” But like I said originally: “This effect is pretty much confined to the humanities and the social sciences.” In other words, two thirds of academia.