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winterbadgerThree things that drive me crazy in academic writing:
OK, so that was four.
I'm reading a book, Qualitative Research Methods in the Social Sciences. There's a passage on symbolic interactionism. Briefly summarized (if I'm understanding it), this is the theory that humans attach meaning to objects, events, and phenomena either due to those things' intrinsic nature or through "psychical accretion" (the attribution of meaning to a thing by the way people react to other people in relation to the thing). The theory goes on to posit that "meanings allow people to produce various realities theat constitute the sensory world (the so-called real world), but because these realities are related to how people create meanings, reality becomes an interpretation of various definitional options." In other words, what people treat as real *is* reality.
This is all right as far as it goes. We're talking Emperor's New Clothes, here. But let's remember the eventual lesson of that story: calling nothing something doesn't make it something, even if everyone agrees that it does. Or, as Shylock says, "If you prick me, do I not bleed?" Saying "It's only a flesh wound," doesn't make the Black Knight's arm grow back--that's why we find that scene in Holy Grail so funny: someone is trying to define reality in contradiction of physical fact.
And the example that follows is very poor. The author suggests that if a group of college students show up for a class, and a man hands out syllabi, discusses course requirements, and begins to lecture, they will assume he is their professor. And if he is later revealed to be a dog-catcher (do people even *say* "dog-catcher" any more?), "the question then becomes whether the reality of the classroom experience durign the previous weeks is void merely because the dog catcher was incorrectly interpreted as a professor."
OK, is this the most lame, stupid example in the history of the universe, or what? Can any of you who have been to college remember a professor who didn't give his/her name and departmental contact information at the beginning of an undergraduate semester? If a random person off the street wandered into a college classroom and began speaking, is it possible that no student would at some point say, "Your observations about the difficulty of catching a really bad-tempered dog are fascinating and not without merit, but what on Earth does this have to do with the poetry of Walt Whitman?"
And, most importantly, if a dog-catcher walks into a college classroom, hands out syllabi, explains his grading schedule, and lectures for several weeks on the poetry of Walt Whitman, does the fact that he's *not* a college professor really have anything to do with what the students learn? If someone is actually capable of teaching a college-level course, does his or her lack of credential reallychange what the students learn? Obviously hundreds of thousands of professors (not to mention tens of thousands of bursars and deans) would like us to believe it does, but I doubt it.
To me, this all seems like an illustration of the fallacy of Thomas's statement that "It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct--if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."
But then I don't suppose the point of this assignment is for me to obbsess over three pages of abstract theory; it's to read two chapters of this damn book and do the research exercises.
- a lack of structure
- sweeping overgeneralization with is then treated as fact
- reliance on theory to the exclusion of application
- failure to provide meaningful or well-thought-out examples or demonstrations of principles
OK, so that was four.
I'm reading a book, Qualitative Research Methods in the Social Sciences. There's a passage on symbolic interactionism. Briefly summarized (if I'm understanding it), this is the theory that humans attach meaning to objects, events, and phenomena either due to those things' intrinsic nature or through "psychical accretion" (the attribution of meaning to a thing by the way people react to other people in relation to the thing). The theory goes on to posit that "meanings allow people to produce various realities theat constitute the sensory world (the so-called real world), but because these realities are related to how people create meanings, reality becomes an interpretation of various definitional options." In other words, what people treat as real *is* reality.
This is all right as far as it goes. We're talking Emperor's New Clothes, here. But let's remember the eventual lesson of that story: calling nothing something doesn't make it something, even if everyone agrees that it does. Or, as Shylock says, "If you prick me, do I not bleed?" Saying "It's only a flesh wound," doesn't make the Black Knight's arm grow back--that's why we find that scene in Holy Grail so funny: someone is trying to define reality in contradiction of physical fact.
And the example that follows is very poor. The author suggests that if a group of college students show up for a class, and a man hands out syllabi, discusses course requirements, and begins to lecture, they will assume he is their professor. And if he is later revealed to be a dog-catcher (do people even *say* "dog-catcher" any more?), "the question then becomes whether the reality of the classroom experience durign the previous weeks is void merely because the dog catcher was incorrectly interpreted as a professor."
OK, is this the most lame, stupid example in the history of the universe, or what? Can any of you who have been to college remember a professor who didn't give his/her name and departmental contact information at the beginning of an undergraduate semester? If a random person off the street wandered into a college classroom and began speaking, is it possible that no student would at some point say, "Your observations about the difficulty of catching a really bad-tempered dog are fascinating and not without merit, but what on Earth does this have to do with the poetry of Walt Whitman?"
And, most importantly, if a dog-catcher walks into a college classroom, hands out syllabi, explains his grading schedule, and lectures for several weeks on the poetry of Walt Whitman, does the fact that he's *not* a college professor really have anything to do with what the students learn? If someone is actually capable of teaching a college-level course, does his or her lack of credential reallychange what the students learn? Obviously hundreds of thousands of professors (not to mention tens of thousands of bursars and deans) would like us to believe it does, but I doubt it.
To me, this all seems like an illustration of the fallacy of Thomas's statement that "It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct--if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences."
But then I don't suppose the point of this assignment is for me to obbsess over three pages of abstract theory; it's to read two chapters of this damn book and do the research exercises.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-05 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-05 06:04 pm (UTC)I'm sure there's a good piece of terminology out there for it, invented by a theoretician. Something like "dissociative terminological displacement." :-)
no subject
Date: 2004-08-05 06:24 pm (UTC)Academic sociologists are almost universally appallingly bad writers. I was trying to think of a few counterexamples, and came up with Norbert Elias, Erving Goffman, Sharon Zukin, and my intellectual guru Richard Sennett.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-05 06:26 pm (UTC)I have lectured to college classes, and it's amazign what students will take for granted, based on perceived social position. (I lecture; what I say must be true-- NOT.)
But let's not use me as an example. Two weeks ago, a professor of Sports Psychology lectured to our group of entering students, as part of a two-pronged exercise. This professor is the head of the Exercise Science Dept., a theorist, *and* soemoen who's worked in the field-- as a psychologist and both a coach and the owner of a competitive gymnastics team. He purposely-- because he ws introduced to students as all the above, with all the trappings of the University-- made as part of his .ppt fallacious but believable statements which the students dutifully copied into their notebooks but which theprofessor *then* told them were "true" but mislading OR just hype. The actual point of the lecture was not to provide information about sports psychology but to make the point that being passive recipients of information is antithetical to the goals of higher education.
Whether professor or dogcatcher is lecturing, if the audience presumes all they are told to be fact-- as though our ears refused untruth, we do in fact have an example of symbolic interactionism.
Mind you, in the example you cite, the dogcatcher may in fact be an expert on Whitman (as you allow may be the case) so the example seems to me to be (also) typical of academic snobbery.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-05 06:41 pm (UTC)*Sometimes* what people treat as reality is reality. But what the author fails to acknowledge (and, if forced to in conversation would probably retort in a fussily dismissive way, "Well, of course...") is that in some cases it doesn't matter a damn what people perceive, reality (the physical world) is not always changed by people's perception of it.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-05 06:59 pm (UTC)This is how we can medically define delusion, for example. But even that definition is based on a consensus.
I think in certain cases, unfortuantely, reality is not a fact, but a n agreed-upon perception. I know the other person is delusional, because that person sees somethign I don't AND others don't see it, either!
no subject
Date: 2004-08-05 07:15 pm (UTC)