Comments

1. 

   Sam Saunders

   August 8, 2013 at 10:47

   In the years within which I was reading a lot of research writing in education I think I could discern two forms of the writing to which this very interesting article refers. On the one hand was prose written by those like Michael Eraut and Peter Tomlinson (my research supervisor). In this writing specific terms are introduced and defined and used with a precision that enables complex ides and complex realities to be analyzed and illuminated. New wisdom is thereby given full expression, wisdom that can be shared with some accuracy by a careful reader. A superficially similar prose, packed with the tropes and malogisms identified here seemed, to my A-Level ex-teacher's eye to be form struggling to disguise a lack of full understanding. Here were sentences spun beyond breaking point by the important nouns that signified support from (but slender understanding of) authors like Bourdieu or Foucault. To put his simply, a reader must still read for meaning, and respond critically to the possibility that (whatever the form of language) there might be valuable intelligence in the text. Plain speaking can as easily represent bigotry and ignorance as ornate deployment of clichéd neologism can express pompous vacuity.
2. 

   Nick Hart

   August 8, 2013 at 10:48

   In much the same way that a popular book written in accessible language cannot be 'literature', an academic screed cannot be sufficiently 'rigorous' unless it is written in language so inpenitaryily arcane that it is completely inaccessible to a non-'expert'.
3. 

   Jack

   August 8, 2013 at 16:01

   I'm sorry, this whole article isn't clear in itself! One: it has too many long nouns and adjectives in it for me to understand half of the sentences. Two: there's so much garbage in it. Your point could have been said in about 1 paragraph. The last one will do. That goes for the comments made by Nick and Sam above. Thanks.
4. 

   John Doe

   August 8, 2013 at 16:44

   The general point is decent, but there are at least two egregious errors that mar the impression that the writer knows what he's talking about: (1) "Research" is being used as an adjective in "Research Excellence Framework," just as it is in "research paper." So, the following is incorrect: 'Those who work in British universities are aware of the Research Excellence Framework, a group of nouns capable of striking fear into the calmest of academics. By choosing nouns—and nouns alone—our authorities can convey that the so-called “framework” for judging the research of academic staff, has some sort of independent existence (thereby leaving in the linguistic shadows those who devise, run and benefit from all the judging) and that somehow the whole business really does have something to do with a thing called “research excellence.”' (2) There is nothing confusing about using "nominalization" to refer to either a process and to the product of that process, just as we do with "building." So, the following is not only pompous, but uninformedly so: 'Social scientists tend to use their big words and noun phrases in imprecise ways. For example, linguists use the term “nominalization” to describe very different ways speakers and writers might turn verbs into nouns. They also use the same word to describe the resulting nouns, rather than the processes involved in using and/or creating such nouns. And no one seems bothered by the different meanings. Instead, linguists carry on using the term as if it describes a “thing” that they have collectively discovered.'
5. 

   Terence Hale

   August 8, 2013 at 17:24

   Hi, Why academics can’t write. Mr. Billig as a journalist living in a world of tranquil simplicity of words having time you misrepresent scientists. You see things and write about it, we do things and write about it. Admittedly slipping up on a banana skip has produced the most spectacular scientist endeavors but some of the most spectacular journalist revelation have come from the dust bun. Something in between our worlds is a Microsoft installation Manuel.
   1. 

      JM

      October 22, 2017 at 02:02

      What?
6. 

   Tim C

   August 8, 2013 at 18:45

   "The greatest virtue of diction is to be clear without being commonplace" - Aristotle
7. 

   Tammy

   August 9, 2013 at 01:58

   Oh please, people! Write for easy interpretation. This is supposed to be about COMMUNICATION.
8. 

   Jeroen Nieboer

   August 9, 2013 at 09:46

   I can't see why writing about what you do has to be more complicated than writing about what you see. The big difference between journalists and academics is that they write for audiences with different expectations - academics sometimes need to use more words to be specific. That said, many academic papers are needlessly wordy Since we're talking social sciences here, one of my favourite 'writers on writing' in my field (economics) is Deirdre McCloskey. Her 'Economical writing' papers (and short book) are great. I love this quote from the Elements of Style: "Don't be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able."
9. 

   RB2

   August 9, 2013 at 10:08

   Very true. I spent a year studying Habermas while at university; it took years for my own prose style to recover. Some social / political theorists (including H) genuinely use this prose style for reasons of technical accuracy and precision, and their impenetrability is then amplified by translation. Others, I regret, just write in a very obscure way because they actually have little to say beyond hand-waving, waffle and platitude, which would be evident to all if their thoughts were expressed in plain language.
10. 

    Anabela

    August 9, 2013 at 11:31

    Being a non-native English speaker I am puzzled by many of such word constructions. i divide writers in two groups: 1. Those who want to be understood by their readers and embrace a large audience 2. Those who want to show off their "writing skills" and wouldn't care less about the reader This second group is a vain narcissistic lot totally disrespectful of others. I don't think they really have anything to tell the reader , they just want admiration from ignorants who attribute them value because they can't understand what the heck the author is saying. People lacking critical get easily impressed by big words because they don't understand them and then they are seen as more intelligent that the reader.
11. 

    tim ellison

    August 18, 2013 at 17:03

    `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
12. 

    Jason

    August 21, 2013 at 17:01

    Great article. Similar arguments are developed by Howie Becker in his 'Writing for Social Sciences'. Becker shows with some concrete examples how it's easier to write pretentiously, and then to hide behind obscure formulations and 'bullshit modifiers', than it is to write clearly and directly. It could have been Einstein, not sure, who nicely captures the aim of scholarly writing: to express ideas as simply as possible, but no simpler (or something like that). Bourdieu is perhaps partly right to suggest that certain everyday language terms and concepts have 'hangovers'. But then so do esoteric technical terms. Surely the point is always to check and confront such 'etymological loads' (sorry if that sounds esoteric) and then to work with apposite language that is suitable to the task. E.g. there are all kinds of problems with Bourdieu's concept of 'field', particularly as this is borrowed from the physical sciences (as akin to a 'force field' or limited space) that are discussed by Howard Becker in an interview towards the end of the new edition of Art Worlds. I think there's equally a counter-case to be made: to where possible use concepts and metaphors that have at least some common currency, some existing cognitive value, as this inevitably aids in communicating ideas to an otherwise uninitiated reader.
13. 

    Terrence O'Keeffe

    August 25, 2013 at 18:04

    There are some points of interest related to Billig’s piece that he overlooked – perhaps for reasons of limited space or economy. One is that fact that for almost a century people in a variety of non-scientific disciplines have suffered from “science envy”. I.e., the physical sciences have been very successful in describing different parts of the material world, in measuring and quantifying them, and in constructing concise theories (expressed in mathematical language) the tie different parts of this world together; after all, a mathematical equation is a way of stating a relationship of between two or more things (or forces) that seem to be superficially different from each other (Einstein’s e=mc2 is probably the simplest, most elegant, most famous of such equations). These kinds of theories (or general physical laws) allow physicists, chemists, etc. to make hypotheses that can be tested and therefore to discover new and interesting things about our world. The social sciences have attempted to emulate this, sometimes succeeding, but more often botching the job. In cases where the social sciences have managed to quantify things that appear to most of us to be qualitative rather than quantitative, they often prove to have carried out what I call “the formalization of common sense”; that in itself is something of an achievement. On the other hand the vast explanatory claims of vague “theories” (or Theory!) that have emerged from French 20th century academic philosophy are merely self-validating pronouncements of supposed relationships among different social and psychological phenomena. They immunize themselves from constructive criticism by (1) stating that talk (or writing) is always about other talk or writing (discourse) and not about a “real world out there” that must remain opaque and inaccessible to understanding, and (2) they have discovered concealed languages of “power relations” that are the most important thing about all possible relationships in the world, therefore assaulting their ideas is merely a power-grab by or power-defense by their critics. It’s a circular system from which there is no escape. The weaknesses of such ideas as “science” is that they have almost no predictive abilities (unlike new ideas in the physical sciences) and that, to explain their constant failure to describe the world in a plausible way they must resort to all kinds of special pleading and circumstantial exceptions. This strange world of social Theory has invaded literary criticism (or “the humanities”) as well as sociology, anthropology, some branches of psychology, art history etc., but, rather than increasing the rigor of those disciplines, it has made them even vaguer and “more mandarin”. The pretentiousness and muddiness of the writing of men and women who are now employed in these pleasant and financially rewarding pastimes (for that is all they are) is a byproduct of the competition with the physical sciences (now often with the omnivorous and expanding branches of biology, rather than with physics and chemistry). “Social theory” is easily parodied, as the Sokal hoax on the silly editors of the silly journal Social Text demonstrated, and its practitioners are as easily victimized by language-abuse as their own readers (college and university students) are. When it comes to describing and discussing social and psychological phenomena, the old everyday language of desires, intentions, goals, rewards-punishments, motives (a little cloudier), and individual and group self-interest are far clearer and more useful than the specialized jargon of the social sciences. Most people with a decent education and hindsight about the folly of their youthful enthusiasm for “theories that explain everything” understand this, so the respect for difficult and “higher” language is dwindling rapidly; as it should. Here I have avoided the difficulties (in social-theory speak: the epistemic paradoxes) raised by a discussion of the definitions of and distinctions between objectivity and subjectivity. But people interested in this discussion shed more light on it when they use everyday language.
14. 

    Jason

    August 28, 2013 at 15:45

    Thought your post was, on the whole, bang-on the money Terrence. I think there's a tendency in my discipline in particular (sociology) for people to accept the equation that lexical sophistication is a proxy for conceptual rigour. There are those who try to ape the natural sciences directly, and those who, as you suggest, pitch the whole politics of writing as one of struggle: competing power investments and discursive contest. There's definitely something to this idea, but, as you suggest, it can lead to a series of vacuous and circular debates. Sokal and Bricmont did a good job of exposing this tendency in Intellectual Imposters – how insults were hurled at them, and how the substance of their critique was dodged by those defending a particular strand of social theorising with the claim that the critique was part of a more general attempt by physicists to regain ground in the 'science wars'. I think Sokal and Bricmont have lots to say that is worthwhile, lots that strikes as accurate, but I'm not so convinced we can altogether dispense with theory, and sometimes, with technical terms (they weren't suggesting that we should). Some of the most worthwhile terms from my field -- terms like charisma, anomie, alienation, the self-fulfilling prophecy, unintended consequences, etc. -- have become part of everyday language because they have some intuitive value. And sometimes it is necessary to move away from the trappings of every day language to achieve conceptual precision. But it's that precision and rigour that should always be the aim, and again, where it's possible to use non-technical language we as social scientists should seek to do so. Part of the problem, in my view, is that much 'social theory' is theory without an object: ideas about ideas, books about books, the inter-textuality of which only compounds the problem of becoming trapped within the 'bubble' of 'discourse'. Theory without an object, theory partly or wholly divorced from empirical inquiry, theory as a kind of totemic end in itself is perhaps the real problem here.
15. 

    pete

    September 8, 2013 at 23:31

    Unlike most academics, I read my first attempt at a comment. Then I deleted it. Then I did the same with my second. The answer is simple, but why let them know?
16. 

    Steve Sarson

    September 10, 2013 at 15:11

    Here's some thoughts I had about this issue, and what it means about power in modern academia. http://theindependentwhig.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/cascading-emails-or-bizguistics-and.html
17. 

    Michael

    September 12, 2013 at 05:20

    I see where Billigs employs a putative normalized rhetoric to mask a Lacanian pretense of heterodox hegemonic normativity, while somehow eliding a discussion of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, so like, ya know...what gives, Billigs?
18. 

    Alex

    September 13, 2013 at 04:57

    I commend the author for embedding antidisestablishmentarianism in his discursive practice.
19. 

    Ken Emmond

    September 14, 2013 at 06:27

    Many legal contracts deal with complex issues (or, as the lawyers like to say, complex matters). To clarify, one of the first clauses is often titled "definitions," in which terms are given their meanings for the purpose of the contract. In theory, "black" could be defined as "white" for the purposes of a given contract. Those who say that it is impossible to use simple language are wrong. All they have to do is borrow this concept from the lawyers (who admittely in other contexts aren't known for transparent writing), and define their complex words in simple terms near the beginning of their piece. Then they can proceed with language that most of us can understand. It's called "plain language," and that's what all of us should strive for.
20. 

    John Cameron

    September 23, 2013 at 07:05

    I second the call for plain language
21. 

    padraigcolman

    February 25, 2014 at 08:03

    I try to follow Orwell’s guidance about writing simply. When I am editing academic papers, the academics do not usually react kindly to my efforts to bring out the essential beauty of their ideas. While I accept that it is best to avoid big words and the passive mood, I do resent it when Microsoft Word bullies me about these things.