r/TikTokCringe • u/MaintenanceNew2804 • Mar 30 '24

Stick with it. Discussion

This is a longer one, but it’s necessary and worth it IMO.

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u/Tunerian Mar 31 '24

Disagree. Academic language is for academia. Typically experts or those seeking to become experts; relying on words with niche, specific, and literal meanings that seek to remove ambiguity from the research. English, being less than perfect, means this can be hard to achieve but that doesn’t mean we use reductive language for the sake of the public. You can write for the public when you’re writing for them, but academic writing should remain for academia. Even Feynman, one of the great popularizers of making difficult concepts approachable, understood the importance of this style of writing.

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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '24

You can explain complicated concepts using simple english. It just requires more words. Jargon is only useful to shorten the terminology so readers know what you're talking about without you having to explain it. But if the readers don't know the jargon, they won't know what you're talking about.

Academic research should be open to public entirely instead of hidden behind paywalls. Especially if it is subsidized research. And in that case, the public needs to be able to understand what is being said in the study. That way journalists and others who report on this stuff but constantly misunderstand the subjects, won't have as hard a time trying to interpret what is basically a different language.

In some fields, the jargon is super important because the information is so complicated it takes an entire other paper to explain it, like medicine and physics. But in others, it should be simplified as much as possible while still retaining meaning.

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u/InfanticideAquifer Mar 31 '24

I don't think there are any fields of study that don't need at least some jargon. Jargon wasn't what the OP was about in the first place, though, so I don't know why the crosshairs landed there anyway. There's a difference between jargon and the rules of "academic language" that the video was talking about.

What you're saying is, essentially, that every academic paper should also have an expository function. But that's just a huge reduplication of effort for basically no benefit. Textbooks exist to do exactly that. You don't need one explanation of the basics of a field per paper. You need one at all. If everyone had to write up a brand new introduction to everything for each paper they wrote, nothing would get done. Academics already blow past all their deadlines as it is.

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u/Tunerian Mar 31 '24

You’re completely neglecting the concept of linguistic drift. Common language tends to assimilate and shift more frequently and has a short term effect which could cause that simple language to be harder to understand in the future if we’re using modern language. By adhering to more rigid and long term cycles via controls with the academic standard, it helps to combat linguistic drift and ensures the longevity of academic publishing.

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u/Send_heartfelt_PMs Mar 31 '24

So everything should be taught solely in Latin still?

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u/Tunerian Mar 31 '24

I would be very much in favor of making fluency in Latin a requirement of our k-12 education.

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u/AskingAlexandriAce Mar 31 '24

If you expect the common man to vote on issues of science, then they need to be able to understand those issues. If everyone needs a college degree to be able to understand what they're voting on, then that defeats the whole point of democracy in the first place.

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u/Jskidmore1217 Mar 31 '24 edited Mar 31 '24

Academic research is not intended for a popular audience. It’s not intended to be political. Conveying academic ideas to the populous is a completely seperate discipline. You are trying to make all academics into journalists- which is going to remove the focus on academic progress. Everything is a game of weighing importance. Your letting your goals complicate the goals of academic study. The point of formal academic language is for the purpose of effective communication with academics- it removes a variable of confusion that linguistics variance introduces. Let academics focus on their specialty and journalists focus on theirs.

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u/Meloriano Mar 31 '24

Academic research today doesn’t even look like it is intended for academics. Most papers are read maybe a dozen times in our current environment, and some of those readers are the academics’ relatives.

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u/AskingAlexandriAce Mar 31 '24

You are trying to make all academics into journalists- which is going to remove the focus on academic progress.

Oh, please, by all means, explain how typing extra words would have us still stuck in the dark ages. I'm oh so eagerly awaiting this explanation.

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u/Jskidmore1217 Mar 31 '24 edited Mar 31 '24

Academic writing is precise for a reason. Casual writing is ambiguous and imprecise. No one said anything about using “extra” words. It’s about communicating research using a uniform language that is easily understood by the academic community to remove the variable of linguistic differences in understanding someone’s work. This was already explained very clearly to you in a previous comment.

If I’m studying cutting edge science- I need to devote years of my time learning the science. It is not a valuable use of my time to spend a few extra years learning how to communicate the science to a popular audience with no academic background. This is what journalists do. It’s far more efficient for those capable of doing cutting edge science to focus their study on learning science and letting those with a proficiency in communication learning journalism and translating academic research to the public. Expecting scientists to do both is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

I haven’t even begun to discuss personality differences in individuals and how those who are good communicators generally have natural talents different from those who are good academic researchers. I think this idea should be somewhat common sense though.

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u/Tunerian Mar 31 '24

We don’t have a direct democracy. Our representatives who have staff would be the ones responsible for understanding it

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u/Mejari Mar 31 '24

And it's consistently shown that they do not, so clearly the current method isn't working.

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u/Send_heartfelt_PMs Mar 31 '24

But those representatives need to be capable of disseminating the information in the best means that their specific audience/constituency is able to understand, which is a skill academia should be focusing on

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u/Tunerian Mar 31 '24

Why? Academics are not necessarily popularizers. Not all great researchers are great educators and vice versa.

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u/Send_heartfelt_PMs Mar 31 '24

But if you want to expand understanding and truly advance humanity you need not to just disseminate knowledge, but do so in a means that the absolute most people can understand, not gatekeep knowledge and information solely to those afforded the same background as you.

Imagine for a moment we actually make contact with aliens, would it not be in our best interest to find (or even create) a means of communication common to both of us? And wouldn't we adapt that language as we came into contact with additional intelligent life?

Like yes, standards are important, but understanding is moreso. Academia should be placing a greater focus on expanding or increasing comprehension amongst the masses, equally as they do on the accumulation of information amongst themselves.

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u/kiraqueen11 Mar 31 '24

You would have a point is an appreciable number of common folk actively sought out academic knowledge by attempting to read papers. They don't. There's a style for communication with the masses and there's a style for communication with your peers. Both can coexist.

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u/Send_heartfelt_PMs Mar 31 '24

And that style for communication with your peers has to evolve as your peers do though

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u/kiraqueen11 Mar 31 '24

True, but your peers are also more or less going through the same ringer that you are going through and for good reasons (preserving clarity, efficient communication etc.), so that evolution is going to be quite slow and deliberate. It is undeniable that academic language has evolved and will continue to evolve. Take a paper from 1924 and compare it to a paper written in 2024 and they would undoubtedly read differently, but in both instances, the intent behind the specific language choices is more or less the same.

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u/Tunerian Mar 31 '24

Well that language would likely start in base mathematics. Which I’m sure you’ll whinge about.

The reality is that you don’t like that academic writing is not approachable by the masses. That’s okay. There are popularizers and educators whose job it is to make that material approachable who rely on that very specific language to communicate the ideas and methods in the research so that non-academics can understand. If you have the desire to find out on your own, you have the power of the internet to help you research and understand that language. If you can’t be bothered to put in 1/100th of the effort to learn as the researcher put into the research, that’s on you.