Posted By Daniel W. Drezner
Friday, October 22, 2010 - 7:11 PM
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Foreign Policy's AfPak channel tweets the following query:
I don't understand why political science, as a discipline, rewards bad, unclear writing. Don't these journals have editors??
To the Blogmobile -- there's some explaining to do!!
Let's get one thing straight. The problem isn't just the political science discipline -- it's all academic disciplines. Open up any academic journal and you're likely to be exposed to an overwhelming number of run-on sentences, obscurantist jargon, and fancy Latin words displacing of good-old-fashioned, no-BS Anglo-Saxonisms.
Nor is AfPak the only lamenter of this fact. Via Rob Neyer, I see that Bill James, the godfather of sabermetrics, doesn't like it when academics talk all jargon-y.
It modern America it is the accepted practice for experts in each field to develop their own language, their own expressions and reference points, and to write to one another in professional jargon almost indecipherable to the public.
I feel very strongly that this is a mistake. I have felt this way for 40 years; I have argued against this for 40 years, and I've never made any headway, but that's still what I think and that's still what I argue. People complain about anti-intellectuatlism in American life. I live in an academic community; many of my friends are academics. They complain frequently about the lack of respect for intellectuals in the mainstream debate, about the difficulty in getting the public to accept science and to accept the knowledge that experts in the field generate -- yet they insist on speaking and writing in ways that the public cannot understand. Well, duh. If you write in a way that excludes the general public from reading what you are saying, the general public will not accept your conclusions.
To use academic jargon is rude, lazy, elitist, and counter-productive. It diminishes the influence of the academic world; it diminishes the influence of thinking people on the general debate. If you want people to accept your ideas, you have to speak in language that others can understand. This is common sense, and it is common courtesy.
As someone who has a Bill James bobblehead in his home, I take this kind of critique seriously -- far motre seriously than, say, Charles Murray's blatherings about academic elites. The problem is that I'm not sure it's right.
First of all, a lot of jargon exists for a good reason. All disciplines, professions, and careers have their own specialzed argot that's used as a way to economize on communication. If I use the phrases "two-level game," "credible commitment," "moral hazard," or "beggar-thy-neighbor" to people in my profession, they're going to know what I'm talking/writing about without me having to spend paragraphs explaining the point.
For example, if I say,
we're approaching a CreditAnstalt moment in the global political economy
to a bunch of international political economy scholars, they get it. To the rest of the world, I'd have to write:
In the near future we could face a financial crisis when in which foreign economic policy leaders prioritize nationalism and geopolitics above preservaing the integrity of the global financial system. Since the CreditAnstalt crisis played a leading role in making the Great Depression the ten-year agony of mass unemployment, poverty, famine and despotism that we remember today, this would really suck.
Yes, jargon is a time-saver.
Now, it could be argued that academics should be smart enough to use jargon when speaking with each other and use plain English when speaking to, you know, outworlders anyone outside their field.
There is a big problem with this solution, however. Most academics spend most of their time writing, responding and talking to other academics. They already know the jargon, so there's no reason to drop it. [Um... what about the students?--ed. One could argue that an awful lot of instruction is teaching students the concepts behind the jargon, so that doesn't count.]
If you spend 90% of your day using one kind of language, it's actually pretty hard to switch conversational styles to engage the outworlders rest of the public. As Paul Krugman wrote some many moons ago:
I hope you think that I am an acceptable writer, but when it comes to economics I speak English as a second language: I think in equations and diagrams, then translate. The opponents of mainstream economics dislike people like me not so much for our conclusions as for our style: They want economics to be what it once was, a field that was comfortable for the basically literary intellectual.
This goes for most of the social science disciplines.
I grant that the failure to communicate to the rest of the world is a flaw of many academics. What it's not, however, is inefficient. If we're writing for political science journals, then the audience is other political scientists (and these journals, my dear AfPak, are edited by other political scientists as well). They already know the jargon. By using professional argot, political scientists -- and academics in general -- are able to write and communicate with each other more quickly and efficiently than by using ordinary plain language.
My non-academic readers might claim that this is absurd, preposterous, and a particular failing of the academy. Maybe, but I don't think so. Bill James' original complaint was levied against baseball stat geeks. Journalists and editors throw about "lede," "graf" and "TK" without even thinking about it. All occupations and organizations have their own forms of shorthand that sounds like jibberish to the outsider. No one would accuse most members of the military as being obscurantist, but go to an Army staff meeting and try to decipher the glut of acronyms that fly around like so much schrapnel.
Is that the only reason for bad political science writing? Probably not. We get rewarded for coming up with new jargon like "Bradley effect" or "Stackelberg leader" or "bandwagoning" that catches on. And, yes, there are scholars who write in a deliberately confusing manner because their ideas ain't all that coherent. As a regular reader of political science journals, however, I'm pretty sure these are the exception rather than the rule. I'm so inured to the jargon that I can read these papers without conscious translation.
Some political scientists (ahem, cough) do try to write for a wider audience. Some political science journals like Perspectives on Politics are intended for a wider audience. But the bulk of political science publications are intended for other political scientists -- and there's little upside to eliminating jargon if that's how everyone in every field communicates.
So this is my very long-winded answer to AfPak. Whereas if I was using jargon, all I'd have said was:
The specialization of knowledge leads actors to reduce the transacton costs of communication with each other. Naturally, this phenomenon creates a barrier to entry for outside consumers, while instilling a common identity among specialists.
Am I missing anything?
UPDATE: Yes, I did miss something. FP editor extraordinaire Blake Hounshell tweets:
[B]ut jargon is only one aspect of bad academic writing. There's also the passive voice, nominalizations, bland verbs, etc.
Oy.
There's no way I'm going to be able to offer a single explanation for bad academic writing beyond the jargonese. That said, I'll suggest that many of the tropes that editors don't like about academic writing are actually an effort at hedging. The classic academic answer to whether something will happen is, "It depends." In academic journals, political scientists can articulate all of the qualifications, exceptions, and emendations that come with their central argument.
This hedging instinct makes it very tricky to convert a scholarly article into something more accessible to the general interest reader. Editors everywhere want the writer to get to the point with clear, forceful prose. Academics are a bit leery of the declarative statements that get editors all hot and bothered -- because the simple direct statement is often far more sweeping in scope than the academic's original argument. This is a natural tension, and one that breeds resentment on both sides.
I'm just here to play peacekeeper. [Me too!!--ed.]
I agree that jargon, used in the appropriate context, is not a trait of bad writing per se. However, I think that one can convey nuance in strong prose at the same time. For instance, articles in The Economist are arguably amazingly written, and, more often than not, present nuanced arguments.
Good cite.
I agree that there is no excuse for a lack good, strong, economical prose (no pun). It is indeed possible to write technical and academic work without resorting to the most abstruse lexicon or to drown your points in unnecessary language.
The Economist is indeed a good example of excellent writing; however I expect most academics would retort that it's nothing but providing laypeople glosses of far more complicated issues. Executive summaries, if you will. But my response would be to look to historical examples of classic writers in various disciplines; if these people could establish groundbreaking theories without recourse to specialized language, why is it the modern academic is so reliant on its own self-referential dictionaries? I think it's all a product of modern universities creating increasingly specialized sub-genres, discouraging mastery of core skills (like the *English Language*)in favor of more obscure technical areas where they can more easily justify their own existence in the academy.
As an afterthought, I will point out that the most horrible, unreadable, meaningless garbage I have ever come across in my education and wider readling life, were produced by "Communications Studies" professors. Damn them and their ilk to the darkest corner of hell. I admit with pride I made my professor cry when I explained my reasons for dropping the course within the first 3 weeks. They were tears of shame.
I wonder if you find prisoner's dilemma (between academics and editors) applicable to this scenario. It would be an interesting exercise to analyze that from various perspectives of IR schools of thought.
Jargon is trading in borrowed thoughts
Arguably, jargon dependence is trading in borrowed thoughts and underscores a speakers's limitation of conceptualization and ability to communicate abstractions. Cliches burden the ship of thought with useless ballast and make its travel tardy.
Original thought ought to be clothed in its distinct and unique idiom. Its ability to reach universal audience instantaneously reflects its clarity and succinctness. It is a demanding business and presupposes utmost clarity of the concepts involved.
Jitendra: Jargon is trading in borrowed thoughts
Original thinkers if they are lucky produce original thought that borrows from and adds too other original thought, before or after its original expression has been mangled and has come to be misused and overused and whether or not this failing and fault is labeled as jargon.
Original thought is not alien mambo jumbo
I am not suggesting that the so called original thinkers acquire their knowledge while in womb or as a direct communication from heaven. No certainly not. Like all human beings, thinkers, original or not so original, also acquire knowledge from society's available pool of it.
But, when it comes to offering a view point , a solution, a thesis or articulating some abstract thought, a thinker whose grasp of the subject is complete and the concepts reside in his or her mind as abstractions and not ideas clothed in language, is bound to use an idiom and language peculiarly his or her own. That implies that there would be minimal use of jargon, except for that which has become accepted terminology of the subject concerned. That would make the person an original thinker.
Why does DWD think he can comment on economics?
Why does DWD think he is capable of commenting on economics, when the simple ECON 101 theories of exchange rates escape him?
Couple of lay person (or an engineer's) comments here:
- The end point of jargon is mathematical or statistical or algorithmic argumentation. So the maturity of a discipline can be judged by to what an extent 'formalism' has developed in that discipline. Where are we in that regard in Political Theory, Professor?
- String Theory has one of the most formidable formalization. But it is still a theory until Hardon Collider proves or disproves that in coming years. Point is formalization is the first step; but the theory has to subject 'falsification' criteria too. Again, where are we there as far as Political Theory goes Professor?
- If you are not there, why are you calling your discipline of study as Political Science? It is no Science and even Economics also is no Science; especially after how it landed the whole world in funk due to Financial Engineering as well as how it fails to prescribe us the right remedy (Christina Romer computed wrongly how much Stimulus was needed to hold unemployment at 8% and Krugman does not get any credibility for his Keynesian measures any more).
- There is only one Science that is Physics, everything else is 'pragmatics' to make our living on this Earth.
- Jargon and attempts to explain in common language - didn't Philosophers spent centuries trying to resolve the knot - called as Philosophy of Language? Do we need to say anything there after what Ludwig Wittgenstein said? And then Philosophy of Language landed in the safe hand of Neuro Science which is a humble attempt to understand brain using Physics.
- Finally, unrelated comment: for centuries learned people - Brahmin - attempted to stop commoners from learning Sanskrit in India. There was a primary motivation of guarding 'repository of knowledge' and not to loose means of earning. What happened in the end? Low Caste Indians went to Pali and other languages so that in the end Sanskrit became the dead language. How far today's academic 'jargon' is from that fate unless you talk in Equations? (The only other practical usage of jargon is in Law where it might stay there because in the end it matters for everyday incidental life.)
Ive never hear arguements about physics being the one true science before! How original. You actually badly betray your ignorance of other academic disciplines throughout this letter. If you knew anything about linguistics you wouldnt have cited Wittgenstein as the ultimate theoritician thereon. Ultimatly this has no bearing on the article or the discussion.
Second the your arguements completely ignore Drezner's. He states that Jargon, in political science is not used for mathematical aguementation, rather as academic shorthand. It is quicker and easier to write prisoner's dilemma than explain the concept behind it. This is invaluable when writing shorter papers. Additionally math is the crutch of most physicists and engineers. Oftentimes it is possible to explain certain concepts using the english language, but sicentists choose not to.
In summation, Ill let you write papers containing equations if you let me write papers containing jargon.
As a former student I can say that we simply aren't being taught this jargon, indeed if we had been we probably wouldn't have had the time to learn anything else. I had to learn it myself and I still have to reread articles and books to understand what the author is saying.
Academic articles aren't essays
I think that Prof. Drezner misses the real point. The key distinction between an academic article and an essay (or even an article in FP) is that an academic article isn't designed to be read in full from start to finish. In fact, the words are frequently the least important part of the article. When I read something in IO or APSR, I typically read the intro, skim the lit review (usually looking at only the citations!), check out the variable operationalizations, and then spend at least as much time with the graphs and tables as with all the words sum together. Maybe I'll read the conclusion. Then I'll go back and reread the theory section.
An article in FP, by contrast, has only words with maybe some illustrative graphs and descriptive statistics. There's certainly never any game or mathematical appendix. And yet for academics the citations, the math, and the empirics are 90% of the value of a paper.
I would go so far as to say that the better the paper, the less likely it is to be read linearly. Contrariwise, if a reader is jumping back and forth in an FP article, either the reader is deficient or the article is.
Blake should also realize that the point of an editor at IS or AJPS is different from that of an editor at FP. FP editors are generalists who are very good at writing. Journal editors are specialists who may be more fluent in math than in English. (The Krugman comment here is exactly right.) So it's unrealistic to expect them to also do line-edits, especially when, as I mentioned before, few academics really "read" articles for the writing in any sense.
Does this make journals impenetrable to the uninitiated? You bet. But that's why Yglesias, Klein, et al in the John Sides-led pundit reeducation campaign will soon run into a wall in their ability to arbitrage political science findings for blog posts. After a certain point, you really do have to spend a couple of years reading theory and methods to understand what's really going on. As it is, the selection bias for Yglesias et al is strongly toward fluent writers, who have thus far incidentally happened to be good political scientists.
I once heard that to communicate efficiently to all levels then we should speak basic. If you start using jargon, then you're going to lose half the audience. Come on, it is important to have this as we are gearing into a society of ADHD. Don't want to lose their attention now, do we?
Plus they don't teach us this at our university in International Relations. They just expect you to go out and decode it through your degree. Which is a time consumer.
Plus they don't teach us this at our university in International Relations. They just expect you to go out and decode it through your degree. Which is a time consumer.
not to be too picky, but is that really "jargon"? I'd consider that simply a reference that may be less familiar to laypeople than political scientists/economists. Nothing wrong with that. There's a reason we have Wikipedia. I read lots of books that make references to events/terms I may not be immediately familiar with, but that's just something I need to look up. I think "Jargony" books/writers are the ones that rely on frequent use of technical and/or systems-related terminology as a replacement for clear arguments or analysis, usually to make a vague claim without having to really prove it in detail, or just qualify their non-points into seeming relevance. Its usually to satisfy specific peers rather than a wider readership. I am familiar with this stuff myself as a former management consultant and subsequent equities analyst; you can smell bullshit a mile away when people need to overuse certain terms and drown their sentences in an institutional lexicon rather than make a few, simple clear statements in some kind of logical sequence.
A recent piece in FP that gave me the impression of jargonized BS was this one (at Best Defense) =
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/27/kandahar_diary_watching_conventional_forces_conduct_a_successful_coin_campaign
Now, this was not "academic", but rather military jargonese; and the flavor of the BS was one of, "things are getting better!", but nothing in the actual piece did much to demonstrate that. And it was mostly a combination of jargonese and silly, vague metaphors. You read it, and ask yourself, "what is this saying?" Usually the answer is, "something bloody simple that could have taken far less time:.
e.g.
" STRIKE BCT has also been involved in Operation DRAGON STRIKE since its movement to Kandahar Province in September. This operation is part of HAMKARI (Dari for "cooperation") Phase 3, the coalition's effort to partner with Afghan forces to stabilize parts of southern Afghanistan. The goal of DRAGON STRIKE is to reestablish control of Highway One, Kandahar's busiest route and a vital line of communication for Afghans. Since this operation began on Sept. 16, STRIKE BCT has fought hard to clear and hold the area, helping the local Afghans to benefit from some semblance of stability."
read: "we have gained control of a road." later paragraphs qualify, "well, sorta. Maybe. Wait & see!".
I suppose it's not really the same point at all as what Drezner is saying; this isn't obscure jargonese, it's drowning the points in lots of 'military detail' such that you can say little with more words.
"Keep advancing the ball"
"We did the 'crawl' phase with them, now they're starting to take 'steps,'
"We just don't know. It's like the blind men with the elephant."
"We're catching them on their heels and plowing over these guys,
"under-promise and over-deliver"
It's about as bad as certain "think outside the box!" presentations I've read in the business world. Deloitte & Touche (I think) once marketed a Office plug-in called the "BS Detector" to help proof business writing. I thought this particularly funny because they, as well as others in their field, were among the most prolific Bull-Farmers in the world. Or rather, perhaps they *were* the bulls. I suppose that made them experts.
When reading deconstructionist literary analysis in college (god, why! why! please erase it from my memory!) I thought you could pretty much boil down most books into a single page if you just deleted all the self-referential, unnecessary terminology and intellectual bloviation. Every now and then I am surprisingly pleased to come across academic works that are written by people who seem to have an acute sense of economy of language. But they are few and far between.
Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
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