Pedagogic Treatise or Academic Discourse, or Teacher Talk:

“Not knowing to any degree of certainty, I decline to elucidate lest I should prevaricate.” This was one of my grandfather’s favorite expressions and one that I use on my composition students when we talk about word choice and voice. Do you know what it means without using a dictionary or thesaurus? When I my students what I just said, they usually answer, “I don’t know.” I tell them they are correct. Then they are really confused.

Do academics talk the way they write? I don’t think so. Several years ago my father went on a weekend trip with a group of men from the church we attend. Among the men was the pastor of the church. My father came home amazed at the sense of humor, down-home attitude, and genuine earthiness of the pastor. He was surprised that a man with his education and devotion to God would tell jokes in the ice cream store at midnight. I think academics are the same. When they are with a group of people they are not trying to impress with their erudite dialogue (I did not look up either of those words), they probably use slang and begin their sentences with coordinate conjunctions. They may even split their infinitives and mix their metaphors. It is only when they try to impress an audience (or scare them) that they resort to multi-syllabic words from the academic-speak side of the chart. They probably speak from the other side of the chart. This is not to say that a few words won’t eventually cross over from academic-speak to Realspeak, but most will remain enshrined on the academic side.

This type of vocabulary building and use engenders inert knowledge. Think back to the vide we watched on our first night of class. Inert knowledge is that information we posses but do not use. This is the same as dividing our words, or encouraging our students to, into separate lists, some to be used regularly and others to be saved for special occasions. This is not to belittle the use of a thesaurus or dictionary. A good vocabulary is a wonderful thing. But it only serves its function when it enhances communication, not when it obfuscates it. (Do you like that word? It is on my academic-speak list. I know it but don’t use it. Is it better than obscures? No. neither is it worse because both are clear.) While building a good vocabulary is to be admired, the goal should be to communicate, to share ides, to be inclusive. Otherwise we are writing without an audience.

To change metaphorical horses in mid-stream, I want to tell you about my literature class this morning. The students are each leading the class discussion one time over the course of the semester. The instructions state that the student does not have to come to class with answers, or explanations, or an analysis of the reading. They simply need to have done several careful readings of the text. The presentation this morning was about “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. As the student was finishing, he referred to a criticism he had read that alleged that the jagged form of the right had side of the poem on the paper was a symbol for the violence in the African-American community. The jagged edge represented broken class or the points of a knife while the smooth lines of the ending stanza represented a razor blade. The class was amazed when I disagreed with this interpretation. They seemed to be of the opinion that if it is published it must be true.

The people who are creating these long-winded, dense, bewildering articles are doing a disservice to students and young scholars. While I don’t think we want the simplified language if elementary students, and while I strive to achieve and use a good vocabulary, the words must be used to enhance the ideas, not to obscure them.

Here is a P.S. for you. Each time I compose any writing to be submitted as part of a class, I check the Flesch-Kincaid reading level. If it is less than 12, I am mortified and revise until it reaches at least 12. (Does anybody know how high this thing goes? I read a 15 a few days ago.) Can you guess what this writing earned? Do you care? Did it make sense? Do you care?

3 thoughts on “Pedagogic Treatise or Academic Discourse, or Teacher Talk:

  1. nafiseh

    Edith,
    I really enjoyed your post.  To be honest I still feel reluctant about many of my writings because I feel the wording is too "simple".  My peer revision groups in creative writing classes applauded me for being really clear in the plot of my stories.  Personally however, I wanted to enhance my vocabulary and write longer sentences.  I just didn’t know how to do so without making it confusing.

  2. tlarson

    Ironically, on a daily basis, I strive to bring the writings of others down a grade level… or 6. (I think the scale goes to 20.)  Perhaps it’s the journalism degree. Certainly, it’s the intended audience. But if the goals of academics and journalists are so similar, as Graff claims, why such a disconnect in what is valued in terms of writing?

    What is it about academia that when all else is equal, big words are better than small ones, longer sentences better than short ones? Elitism? Pretension? "Intellectualism?"

    What gets me more than vocabulary is sentence construction. Academia tends to take a complicated idea and obfuscate it by burying it in a complex sentence structure. To be fair, this is probably how it came out in the brain dump of writing, rather than an intentional obfuscation. It’s hard to write with clarity because it’s hard to think with clarity. In academia, too often it seems that the emphasis is not actually on spreading ideas, but on getting published. Without the emphasis on communicating ideas to a real audience, too much academic writing ends up as a complete nightmare for readers to unravel. If you’re not writing to help an audience see your point, why are you writing? Elitism? Pretension? "Intellectualism?"

  3. naomip

    Yes, Edith, I want to know what level you got, and I do care.  I have never heard of the scale and I want you to show me how to find and use it.  I love Tania’s observation that writing clearly is difficult because thinking clearly is difficult.  Like you, I realize that writing is thinking, but I never pondered the notion that thinking clearly is difficult.  Truly, it is.  When we talk about difficult concepts, we demonstrate our struggle to articulate with pauses, and phrases like "I can’t think of how to put it," and respond to feedback by trying to put it a better way or adding an example.  I want my students to realize that kind of struggle is called revision if they put it on paper. 

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