What Makes Annoying Terms Annoying?
Another really, really annoying phrase is "going forward." Why is that like fingernails on a chalkboard?
No idea.
But how about "narrative"? (Discussed in the previous post and comments.) Why does that drive me up the wall? Well, with terms like this it is, I guess, the conceptual background of the thing. It apparently first came into vogue among LitCritters and suchlike, who find it entertaining and titilating to believe that everything you can say or write down--our best science included--is just a story. Our best science, according to such folk, is no closer to the truth than is some crap doggerel pop song or explicit lie. (Perhaps because there's no such thing as truth; perhaps because there's truth but we can't know it; perhaps because everything is true because all assertions generate their own facts...the folks in question are usually none to clear about the why of it...)
So it's all just stories.
But, of course, 'story' doesn't sound erudie and quasi-technical.
So 'story' won't do.
Oh no.
And so we get 'narrative.'
As Anonymous points out, it's handy to have something that means 'story' but without the overt sense of fiction lurking in the background. That's true. Tho I think 'narrative' does have that--given its conceptual background, it's supposed to subtly suggest that all accounts are fictional. Or something similar. Or something worse.
And then there are the vague god-knows-what's-going-on uses of the term as in: "the conservatives' problem is that they are bad at narrative." (roughly here.) WTF is that supposed to mean? Not much, that's what.
And why is the left so much more adept at generating dopey irritating terms than the right? Logocentrism...phallocentrism...phallogocentrism...valorize...celebrate...deconstruct...intervention (in the lefty intellectual sense)...bleh. The list goes on and on.
(James directs us to this discussion of irritating terms at Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanze Refuge.)
Take everything around this place with a grain of salt, as usual.
Another really, really annoying phrase is "going forward." Why is that like fingernails on a chalkboard?
No idea.
But how about "narrative"? (Discussed in the previous post and comments.) Why does that drive me up the wall? Well, with terms like this it is, I guess, the conceptual background of the thing. It apparently first came into vogue among LitCritters and suchlike, who find it entertaining and titilating to believe that everything you can say or write down--our best science included--is just a story. Our best science, according to such folk, is no closer to the truth than is some crap doggerel pop song or explicit lie. (Perhaps because there's no such thing as truth; perhaps because there's truth but we can't know it; perhaps because everything is true because all assertions generate their own facts...the folks in question are usually none to clear about the why of it...)
So it's all just stories.
But, of course, 'story' doesn't sound erudie and quasi-technical.
So 'story' won't do.
Oh no.
And so we get 'narrative.'
As Anonymous points out, it's handy to have something that means 'story' but without the overt sense of fiction lurking in the background. That's true. Tho I think 'narrative' does have that--given its conceptual background, it's supposed to subtly suggest that all accounts are fictional. Or something similar. Or something worse.
And then there are the vague god-knows-what's-going-on uses of the term as in: "the conservatives' problem is that they are bad at narrative." (roughly here.) WTF is that supposed to mean? Not much, that's what.
And why is the left so much more adept at generating dopey irritating terms than the right? Logocentrism...phallocentrism...phallogocentrism...valorize...celebrate...deconstruct...intervention (in the lefty intellectual sense)...bleh. The list goes on and on.
(James directs us to this discussion of irritating terms at Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanze Refuge.)
Take everything around this place with a grain of salt, as usual.
posted by Winston Smith at
9:49 AM
3 Comments:
I'm not totally sure what I think about these kinds of terms, though my gut instinct is simple annoyance.
However, I do think "narrative" evokes a narrator (and therefore a perspective and bias) in a more forceful way than "story" evokes a "storyteller." Often when I hear "narratives" being invoked, it involves a kind of skepticism or criticism of power that is better served by the evocation of a perspective.
That's not all the time, though.
It's not just certain words of course. In addition to "relativism", I have never seen quantum mechanics, time travel, or Godel's Incompleteness theorem invoked in a philosophical discussion without everything that follows being manifest BS...
The reason the left comes up with more of these terms than the right is that so many of them are academics, clearly; it's not as though typically leftist concerns are more amenable to nonsense. (This is shown by the success these terms have on the right once they are developed.) Catra-D'Souza & friends, the explosion of PC euphemism and doubletalk is not due to the left's domination of campus, but the campus' domination of the left.
"going forward" reminds me of "Towards a " x, where x is whatever the academic in question is really attempting to accomplish, but would like to weaken his claims and sound smart while doing it, so he slaps a "Towards a " in the front.
That way, if anyone has a problem with what he says, he'll just say "Well, my work really wasn't designed to address that issue... it's really just setting us in the right direction."
I've had people say that about works in conversations until I was, quite frankly, left wondering what the hell the work WAS addressing.
Lame.
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