adopting discourses

 i'm trying to figure out (and articulate) exactly why the new language du jour that's getting adopted by everyone in the "correct" circles bothers me so much. Part of it, i think, is that it's language that has been conceived in a particular socio-cultural-historical context, and therefore is tied up with a whole network of ideas, concepts, historical baggage, and then it gets transferred, baggage and all, into foreign contexts with very different socio-cultural-historical conditions. All kinds of bad thinking (as in, badly-thought-through ideas) can get passed around that way. Like a virus.

But a bigger, more fundamental part of it, i think, is just because i write, and i work with language. And i just can't bear it when language becomes a discourse, becomes a social world with its own barriers to entry and inner circle jokes. When language becomes cliquishness and a means to exclusion, and one is required to mouth the right words to be accepted. i've never been able to write in "academese" -- the language of theory in English studies. i understand the concepts, but somehow cannot bring myself to use the terminology, and find myself always trying to find my own words to express myself, even when my ideas in themselves are not new. Maybe it's a kind of stubborn resistance to having to pass a "test" to be seen as worthy -- a test, really, that seems to me more about a kind of cronyistic linguistic in-club than any kind of real, original thought. Strange for a field where so much value is assigned to linguistic originality.

And the thing is -- it's just lazy. Lazy language is lazy thinking. It's a lack of rigour, a resorting to cliches and using them as a substitute for thought. i think that's it. That's why i've been so resistant to the discourse that's been floating around academia and the cybersphere of late. It's boring. We're writers, dammit! We're supposed to do better!

Anyway, that's my 1 cent's worth of grumbling for the day.