SCHOLARLY LANGUAGE

Carl Trueman is always worth reading.  Here he reflects on some (many?) scholars penchant to write gibberish:

Years ago, while I was on faculty at the University of Nottingham, a colleague and I used to play a game with the students. We would give them a quiz consisting of paragraphs drawn from great theologians and philosophers, which they had to attribute. In every quiz we included one paragraph of complete gibberish, which we had made up ourselves over a pint of beer in the faculty club. Words such as “alterity,” “the Other,” and “subjectification” abounded, along with nouns used as verbs and a plethora of hyphenated neologisms and random capitalizations. The students never failed to attempt some kind of attribution (Paul Tillich, I think, was usually the most popular) and to profess admiration for the depth of thought and insight contained in the paragraph.

The rest is here: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/06/reflections-on-being-the-dumbest-man-in-the-room

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