At 06:42 PM 4/21/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Maybe they use it to disguise the fact that they really haven't got a clue
>what they are talking about (or maybe they are talking about nothing).  So
>if it is couched in convoluted complex terms using words that have to be
>looked up in the Oxford dictionary, no one will catch on to the
>truth--there's nothing there!
>
I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.  In fact I sat down the other
day with the intent of reading a book a friend had recommended to me.  And
soon realized that my inability to penetrate the jargon used in the text
completely precluded my gaining a detailed understanding the intent of the
author.  I was forced to look up a number of complex words in the dictionary
and was not all too happy about it.  The book was an introduction to
statistics in the social sciences.  If you feel as I do, that we should
abandon all books that at first reading are too difficult to grasp easily,
then join me proposing that heretofore we should publish our work at the 8th
grade level, or even better in comic strip format.  Maybe then we wouldn't
need any education at all to engage in academic discourse.
                                J. Cameron Monroe
P.S.
If one has such a difficult time understanding French Postmodernist
philosophy in English translation, then one should learn French and read it
in the original before lofting such heavy criticisms.  Its actually quite an
easy read.

P.S.S
Why do we have dictionaries if we are uncomfortable using them?


>                        Lucy Wayne
>>In a message dated 4/21/99 4:33:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>>[log in to unmask] writes:
>>
>><< He claims that this is by intent, that there is something of a scholarly
>>trend in which authors are now consciously choosing to write densely in order
>>to make the reader pay more attention or something like that. >>
>>
>>In that case, Geoff does get to blame it on Foucault. I think it is utter BS.
>>It seems to me that people use academeze because 1. They want to sound like
>>they know more than they do, 2. They want to sound like they know more than
>>you do, and 3. They want to make their writing exclusive and inaccessible to
>>all but those they believe are on their level.
>>
>>Michelle Schohn
>>Dept. of Anthropology
>>University of South Carolina
>>
>>
>