Occasionally I get the urge to post about something that really, really, really annoys me. Perhaps it’s that the grumpy old man in me needs to come out for an airing or maybe it’s just that I reach a sufficient level of annoyance about something and have to get it off my chest.
Today’s rant concerns what I have termed ‘academic-ese’, which is the pretentious, sometimes flowery and often multi syllabic language that academics of all disciplines seem to write in and which bears only a vague passing resemblance to the spoken and written English of the average person in the street.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to have to read an academic text you’ll be aware of the sort of words I’m talking about. Epistemological is my current favourite hate word. It basically refers to the method by which we know things, so why not simply say so? Why use a word many people have to look up in a dictionary? Some academics also stick in foreign phrases that are incomprehensible to anybody who does not speak the particular language. Why? What on earth is the point?
Another fault in academic writing is the use of overly long and densely packed sentences that you sometimes have to read two or three times in order to even gain a vague sense of what they are attempting to say. Again, why do it?
I’m told that academics have to write in this way otherwise their fellow academics will not take them seriously. In any other field of writing using multi-syllable words where simple words will do is frowned upon. The work would simply not be deemed fit for publication. It would be considered bad writing. Why do academics get away with it?
As I’m studying theology at the moment I have had to try and wade my way through some of this stuff. I must admit I tend not to bother with the densely written, multi-syllabic stuff, preferring instead to read works by those who communicate with simplicity and clarity. Occasionally I have no choice and I am then subjected to the ordeal of slowly ploughing my way through something that is literally a chore to get through, partly because it is so dry and partly because I have to reach for a dictionary every so often.
Academics are not the only ones who communicate in a language that is only vaguely analogous to modern English; Christians can be just as bad!
For a start our traditional music and prayers are full of Thee and Thou and Art and other phrases that at best seem quaint and antiquated to the average person in the street and at worst are actually incomprehensible. There is a perfectly acceptable modern wording of The Lord’s Prayer; why is it not used in preference to the sixteenth century version? We use words like ‘sin’ which are often misunderstood and we never stop to explain what they mean. We use phrases like “seeking the face of God”. We know exactly what it means, but does the person who has come to church for the first time have even the vaguest comprehension?
As Christians we must be careful in our communication not to use outdated and quaint language and phrases. Our mission is to communicate Christ to the world and we cannot do that if we are talking a language the world no longer understands.
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