So there's that tweet floating around about bad academic writing in literature. I have thoughts. First: the text in question, I can almost guarantee, has never been assigned to an undergraduate. No one gets to lit-101 and opens up their book to that. 1/8
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Now I will say that I cordially dislike that style of academic writing. I very much prefer arguments that can be put in plain language (but then again, that's part of why I don't do a ton of narratology). 4/8
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I tell my students never to use a long word when a short one will do and never to use a rare word when a common one will do (though that advice sits in uneasy tension with the advice to 'always pick the word that says exactly what you mean, no more and no less.') 5/8
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So is this good academic writing? Probably not. I think this argument could be rendered into passably normal English without serious loss of meaning. Some of the jargon here (and in the book description also cited) is meaningful, but some of it is, pardon me, performative. 6/8
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But poor writing (or performative obscurantism) is hardly unique to 1) academia or 2) the humanities. I have read economics, physics and political science papers where I understood the underlying theory which were nevertheless about as difficult to read as this. 7/8
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But the main point of the tweet, the 'won't someone think of the students!' bit, is foolish and willfully dense. No one is assigning a book like this to undergrads, you read stuff like this in graduate school, when you are prepared for it. end/8pic.twitter.com/zXAx54zWwS
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