Tales of Excitement!
Feb. 1st, 2006 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythI did something tonight I rarely ever have done. I almost feel asleep in a class. See, one of the required classes to graduate is this "introduction to speech communication" thing, and since I'd kinda like to actually graduate, even if it is several years late, I have to take it. And the class is, frankly, boring. And for some reason the classroom was really warm. So I felt myself almost nodding off several times.
The class has one other problem. The book. It's not exactly bad. But it's written in Utter Academic Gibberish. Like, seriously, painfully bad. It's how I'd write if I were trying to parody incomprehensible pretentious academic gibberish. And not just any kind of academic gibberish. it's also excessively PC gibberish, again to the point of parody. I cannot read this book without snickering. Seriously, are they trying to make the book as inaccessible as possible? Especially since, y'know, they're supposed to be experts in communication. Since the book's about communication. Why mask it behind walls of pointless made up long words and the most annoying kind of political correctness possible? I'm all in favor of trying to make language inclusive, but don't be so damn stupid about it. Instead of a "And since English has no gender neutral pronoun, here's how people try and work around it..." we get paragraphs including quotes from a bunch of people and ending with a lame line like "We must strive to be inclusive at all times." For fuck's sake, people. "Some people say "he or she," some alternate he and then she, some use they, some write in second person, some try to make up pronouns, and some don't see the point." There. Cripes.
If your book is about communication, try to make sure it clearly communicates things, kthx.
The class has one other problem. The book. It's not exactly bad. But it's written in Utter Academic Gibberish. Like, seriously, painfully bad. It's how I'd write if I were trying to parody incomprehensible pretentious academic gibberish. And not just any kind of academic gibberish. it's also excessively PC gibberish, again to the point of parody. I cannot read this book without snickering. Seriously, are they trying to make the book as inaccessible as possible? Especially since, y'know, they're supposed to be experts in communication. Since the book's about communication. Why mask it behind walls of pointless made up long words and the most annoying kind of political correctness possible? I'm all in favor of trying to make language inclusive, but don't be so damn stupid about it. Instead of a "And since English has no gender neutral pronoun, here's how people try and work around it..." we get paragraphs including quotes from a bunch of people and ending with a lame line like "We must strive to be inclusive at all times." For fuck's sake, people. "Some people say "he or she," some alternate he and then she, some use they, some write in second person, some try to make up pronouns, and some don't see the point." There. Cripes.
If your book is about communication, try to make sure it clearly communicates things, kthx.
