Friday, March 16, 2012

Random Academic Quote Generator


I dislike the jargon that clogs academic journals. So I was amused when I came across the Random Academic Quote Generator. A typical example of such gobbledygook the site cooks up is "The interdependence of isomorphism is very nearly influential in its romanticism."

There is a illustrative story about how such convoluted language was used to foist a hoax. Physicist Alan Sokal pulled this off when he submitted an article entitled
"Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" to the journal Social Text. Sokal filled his essay with jargon that amounted to gibberish. It created quite a stir when the article appeared in a peer reviewed journal.


I'd suggest writers read George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language and follow the advice he gives.

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