neljapäev, oktoober 23, 2008
Why?
Why do people write so complicated texts? Isn't the point of writing some kind of scientifical article to make people understand what they want to say there? Why M Bourdieu for example has just so complicated sentences? They're like half page long! By the time I reach the end of the sentence I've forgotten what he tried to say in the beginning. Actually I know - I should only read the other half of the sentence, because the point is usually anyways at the end of the phrase... You have to read that long long sentence just to discover that most of it isn't important. But why waste paper then?!?
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Think it's just an academic habit. Over the centuries, academics have developed their own language. Now, this language might look like English, or some other language that you know, but if you look more closely at it, as you obviously have done, you'll see that they use longer sentences, more scientific terms and in general more nonsense than others. Usually they don't need to be conscious about it as they usually write for other academics who already know the subject. But if one of the commoners incidentally happen to read the text it will create a distance between the reader and the writer, and hopefully the reader will get some respect for the writer and other scholars, as the commoners by reading that text will get the impression that the author is wise and know what he/she is talking about as he/she can use so long sentences and scientific words.
Thomas, you seem to have an answer to every question:)
Nah... I just like to come up with answers.
The disease thing was simple, but this one I had to think about for 15 sec. Then I started typing. It was kind of interesting to see how it ended.
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