[lbo-talk] On the Limits of Rhetoric

hari.kumar at sympatico.ca hari.kumar at sympatico.ca
Mon Nov 29 15:47:27 PST 2004


Jon Johanning <zenner41 at mac.com> replies to joanna bujes woh wrote:
> The verbiage/obfuscation that has come out of >academia in the last thirty years has depressed >the level of writing (and intelligence) and
> removed the ideal of a common public discourse >from our consciousness. .... There has been no >Dante, no Casirer, no Orwell, etc.

Says JJ: "I think there may be two tendencies at work here. One is the proclivity of academics in the humanities and social sciences to adopt a more technical-sounding language in order to up their prestige in the academy vis-a-vis the hard sciences and philosophy ..... The other is the increasing percentage of the general public that has had some post-secondary education..."

I think it is a much more general phenomenon. One that is linked to the observation that by a great respiratory physiologist I knew, who had on his door in Sick Kids Hospital the slogan: "Bullshit Baffles Brains".

It is also linked I believe to the general trend ot 'politically correct' thinking. What this translates into is the true 'substituionism' - as opposed to Leon's.

When I came to North America, I was started to hear 'refuse manager' for 'dustman'. In academic hospitals such 'substituionism' for plain speak is very common. Hari



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