One of the books I've been asked to read as background for my forthcoming course is a work called "Situated Literacies". I've started and it seems to me to be the kind of thing that you inevitably get when you give a large grant to a bunch of academics with too much time on their hands and too loose a grasp on reality. Every sentence requires extensive deconstruction for anyone to have the faintest chance of understanding it and the end result always seems to be trite, trivial or gibberish. Sometimes all three.

Here are some randomly chosen examples from the first few chapters.

From the Introduction

She identifies the situation as an intersection of academic, informational and technological literacies and traces the students' changing practices as they negotiate a set of conventions to govern this new, virtual space.

My translation?

She works out how students deal with technology.

From Chapter 1

Domains and the discourse communities associated with them are not clear-cut, however: there are questions of the permeabilities of boundaries and leakages and of movement between the boundaries and of overlap between the domains.

My translation.

Sometimes we work at home.

From Chapter 2.

The perspective of social semiotics is attractive in that it recognises the existence of regularities in the meaning signified by particular features of images, whilst understanding these as cultural resources that are drawn on and created by the producers and viewers of the images in particular contexts and social relationships.

I'm still working on that one but I think it means that what you see in an image depends on what the photographer took a picture of and on who you are.

From Chapter 3

One of the key "social goals" which necessitates the instantiation of literacy practices in literacy events is the transcendence of the transience of time: the use of literacy practices to create history.

My translation

History books exist.

From Chapter 4

In this chapter I shape the discussion around my belief that within incarcerative environments, theoretical aspects of literacy and prison need to be seen beyond the binary contexts of autonomous singularity or social multiplicities.

My translation

I'm going to talk about the things prisoners read.

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Tomorrow I'm going to start chapter five. I feel a headache coming on. Is all this the rubbish it seems or is it just me?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

This is the worst kind of pseudo-academic bullshit. I cannot tell you how many of my colleagues wrote like this. It is a major part of the reason I departed academia. I simply refused to write that way, and that put me out of the club.

I used to have a sign above my desk:

The most revolutionary act any writer can commit is to write in plain English.

My sympathies to you.

Bob, waaaay back in July of 2002 I posted this favorite verse of mine. It surely applies here.

Write to the editor and tell them to "laconicize!"

Use of the term, "whilst" suggests British origin. Have THEY forgotten how to speak English too?

To be honest, I do think British writing does tend to be more flowery (that's what I call it) than ours is.

The question is, is it a dialect or a language?

I don't know whether you have an equivalent in the USA but in the UK we have the Plain English Campaign http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/ which seeks to eliminate the kind of nonsense we have been discussing here.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by BobHale:
The perspective of social semiotics is attractive in that it recognises the existence of regularities in the meaning signified by particular features of images, whilst understanding these as cultural resources that are drawn on and created by the producers and viewers of the images in particular contexts and social relationships.

I'm still working on that one but I think it means that what you see in an image depends on what the photographer took a picture of and on who you are.[QUOTE]

It's just a lot of "ponderous piffle predicated upon pernicious presumptions".

Hey, I just became a "member"! Didn't think my post was that perspicuous. Maybe I should shoot from the hip more often.

[Love these smileys.]

Or point them to these links: Fowler Brothers - How To Write Plain English and Sir Ernest Gowers - The Complete Plain Words. That's the third time I've posted them here this month!

P.S. Congratulations on your graduation to membership, straightarrow; we look forward to many more posts!