So after applying for ten pay-the-bills jobs in my area (I'm averaging applications 6 a day), I was reading articles and looking through faculty websites, examining my options for potential advisors (or at least employers for a year-long fellowship). The following quote was on a faculty member's listing of research interests.
"Nonfiction, with its pretension of veridicality, and fiction, with its patina of verisimilitude, but no necessary pretension to accuracy, are popularly understood as distinct realms."
"Nonfiction, with its pretension of veridicality, and fiction, with its patina of verisimilitude, but no necessary pretension to accuracy, are popularly understood as distinct realms."
Seriously? Are you kidding me?
Let's try this again. So people recognize nonfiction - presented as a representation of reality - and nonfiction - presented as resembling reality - as separate categories. Wow. Thank you, researcher who shall remain nameless, for that nugget of eternal wisdom.
The last time I was in graduate school, I never understood why my advisor wanted me to use smaller words. Maybe I was still on a vocabulary binge from studying for the GRE, but I am over it.
Really, though... if you have nothing to say, please don't say it with really obnoxious, erudite language.
It's display prose. Gorillas pound their chests, Tony Soprano "gives" you a Cadillac, and sociology theses say nothing with the longest words possible. All to obtain social dominance and obtain mates.
ReplyDeleteIt's very true. Maybe my mating dance ritual is off though... because sentences like that one just give me vertigo.
ReplyDelete::Pounds chest and grunts::
A co-worker, ummm..., no. Let me begin again, because I work in Academe, therefore he is a "colleague"; my blue-collar roots show yet again. So, my "colleague" is starting a "round-table" discussion of any articles any other colleagues has read and wants to discuss. Needless to say, there will be volumes of verisimilitudunous, chest-thumping vocabulary flying about soon. I think he suffers from small penis syndrome.
ReplyDelete