Academese

[paulkincaid]

A few weeks ago I wrote a review in which I spent a fair bit of time criticising the author for his excessive use of academic jargon at the expense of clarity. I now read a lot of academic criticism, and familiarity breeds at least a measure of content: I know what they are saying, or trying to say, but invariably I think there are simpler, clearer, and more precise ways of saying it. The jargon often comes across as being intended to confuse the issue rather than clarify it. This is something that has long annoyed me, it crops up several times in COLOURFIELDS also. Today I came across a piece by Perry Anderson in which he attacked the academic Left for the "baneful effects" of "peer-group fixation, index-of-citations mania, gratuitous apparatuses, pretentious jargons, guild conceit." (This is from a 2000 editorial for the New Left Review) I am not alone: I feel seen!