I think the point is that academic writers use large terms, despite using them wrong, when diminutive ones would suffice.

They use big words for the sake of using big words. Whether they make any sense whatsoever, is entirely beside the point.

The text, as I understand it is essentially saying the same thing, using big words to obfuscate that they're actually saying something rather boring and simple, which also has the point of obfuscating the meaning of the text to anyone who isn't an academic; aka someone who isn't used to such nonsensical word play.

There's a good reason I've avoided any work in academic fields. They incorrectly use terms, which just muddies the water on what the hell they're actually saying. Not only because the terms are big/less known, but because they're often used wrong.

IMO, academics are morons who like to sound smart.

... Do you concur?

It's saying that it uses terminology that is well-understood, specific and explicit within the field, but depends on a common understanding of the language used. So people outside the field are unable to understand it, even though they would be able to understand the actual concepts.

I think the meaning of the actual words that he chose is less important than the fact that it sounds absurdly convoluted.

Also I don't think his point is true. If you read academic papers come up most of them are pretty easy to understand.

That also sounds odd to me. I've been consistently taught in school to avoid passive voice and it was a huge struggle for me for a long time (case in point). I'm attending a college in Canada for the record.

Yeah, it's dumb. We write like normal people in academic papers too. I don't know why they ever taught it this way.

I think this leaves out the "epistemological imperative", which I understand as the compulsion to use this specific language for the sake of being scientifically accurate. Particularly when dealing with peers, who will all too readily hold you accountable for inaccuracies, being precise is important, possibly even necessary to avoid the scientific community's habit of tearing into any error to prove their own proficiency by showing up your deficiency.

I can't find my source any more, unfortunately, but I read an article once about how students are essentially scared to have their writing torn to shreds because they were too direct in their assertions. I recall that it related an anecdote about birds on a movie set that were supposed to all fly away at the sound of a gunshot. Except they tried to fly away beforehand, so the solution was to tie them to the branch and release that wire when they were supposed to fly. Then the birds tried anyway, didn't get anywhere, ended up hanging upside down and falling unconscious. When they tried again (after restoring the birds to consciousness), they released the wire... but the birds had learned that trying to fly away was unpleasant, so they just sat there instead. Why bother, if you go nowhere?

In the same manner, academics who write too clearly will end up getting bad grades, have papers rejected, essentially be punished for it. They may learn that, by carefully coaching their assertions, assumptions or just about anything that could be conceived as a statement of facts in a multi-layered insulation of qualifying statements and vague circumscriptions to avoid saying something wrong and show the acknowledgement that, like science in general, the causation they're ascribing this phenomenon to is at best an educated guess and, while we can narrow down things that are not true, we can never be certain that things we assume are true really are and won't be refuted somewhere down the line, making them look like morons...

I lost track of the sentence. Anyway, if you make mistakes, you'll get attacked. Most people don't like being attacked. So if you've been attacked enough, eventually you'll either give up or adopt strategies to avoid being attacked.

Being complex and obscure in your phrasing makes it harder to attack you. And if it's hard to understand you, people might just skim the points and not bother with the attackable details anway. If you notice that people who write in a difficult style don't get attacked as much or as badly, you'll adopt that style too.

Eventually, your writing is read by students stepping to fill your shoes. They may not understand why you write this way, but they see that many successful academics do. They may also experience the same attacks and come to the same conclusion. Either way, your caution has inspired a new generation of academic writers who will continue that trend.

Finally you'll end up with a body of scientific knowledge that only experts can still navigate. They know to skim past the vagueness, indirections and qualifications, mostly understand the terms and can take the time to pick apart the details if something strikes them as odd. The common rube doesn't understand jack shit. Your research may further the understanding of a small group of people, possibly see some practical use, but the general public can't directly make any use of it.

Not bad

French scholars are famous for their mastery of obscurantism. That's what this is called.

I hadn't actually considered academic writing as an expression of sociopathic manipulation until now, but it explains a lot.

One of my favorite Calvin & Hobbs. :D

This is perfect

'floofier' should be standard academic jargon

I understood about 45% of that, and I also hate them.

Many professionals (not only scientists) are really bad at crafting sentences and texts, even without jargon.

I get jargon, but even if you replace all of the jargon in a typical paper with simple words, the writing style is often horrible. It's often weirdly repetitive, has fluff-pieces and empty phrases, and just doesn't get to the point. (I'll ignore the inherent worthlessness of many articles here, since this is a symptom of funding policy)

I don't expect a scientific article to be understandable for someone outside the field, but do yourself the disfavour and ask a random scientist, what it is they're actually doing and to explain it in simple terms. Most can't. And that says to me, that these people never learned (or were taught) how to actually boil a concept down to its essence. And that I think is pretty bad.

As an example, two scientists from different fields could work on almost the same problem from different angles, but they would never know that if they talked to each other, because they are unable to express their work in a way the other person can understand.

Jargon is only legitimate when it clarifies more than plain English. If it does, fine, use it.

Academic security research is constitutionally bad because academia as an environment selects people with a “hacker mentality” out at the freshman stage.

It’s inherently biased towards rule-followers. That’s not a bad thing, but it means it’s bad at some things. Such as computer security research.

It's legit a great topic. Scientists need to remember that communication is an important skill.

realize they're just using an esoteric term to describe something you've used forever.

Programming is applied math. Mathematicians say "theory of mass service", programmers say "schedulers". Well, it's "theory of mass service" in Russian, but in English it is "queue theory".

IT guy here, we suffer from a similar problem where everything is an acronym so it sounds like alphabet soup that if said as a word means sometimes you can't even quietly go look it up later. You either nod along knowing what it means or nod along not knowing what it means but having no chance to learn without outing yourself.

If you're reading an academic paper, you just follow the citations until someone defines it.