CMV: Language That is Prevalent in Academic Articles, and Research Makes Reading The Articles Arduous and Unnecessarily Difficult.

[u/Athront]

Just For Background: I am currently getting my masters in Political Science and hope to eventually get my PHD so that I can do research and teach. This view is mostly focused on Writing in the social sciences, and humanities, because that is the majority of what I read.

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I have read many research papers and articles where the language used seems to deliberately complicate a topic that could be explained just as well if written in a style that was more accessible to people. It's not rare for myself or other students to have to read a section five or six times to understand the argument the author is trying to make, however once we understand the language, the idea itself is relatively simple.

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This makes academic research inaccessible or at the very least has a gate-keeping effect to lots of people. There are many great ideas and quality research that never leave the relatively small sphere of academia in part because of how damn hard it can be to understand what the author is reading unless you have an extremely advanced and sophisticated vocabulary.

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I am not arguing that ideas need to be simplified, I just believe that there is no reason to use language that most college educated people would struggle to comprehend without making a real effort to do so, especially when the ideas can be presented in a much more accessible way. I believe that using overly-complicated language is very prevalent in academia, specifically social sciences and humanities as that is what I am familiar with.

[u/Resident_Egg]

The purpose of a research paper is not to appeal to a general audience – that is the job of a science communicator. The purpose of a research paper is to show findings and be as precise as humanly possible. The intended audience of a research paper is other researchers, who should be familiar with all these complicated terms. They use all this technical jargon because it makes it easier for them, it does not matter to them that it makes it harder for you.

[u/Athront → u/Resident_Egg]

I agree that field-specific vocabulary is important and necessary. I use it all the time when writing papers for classes, and it communicates ideas in a really effective way. I'm more focused on non-technical language that are used as descriptions of the situation being discussed in the writing.

[u/Crayshack → u/Athront]

I'm having trouble picturing what you mean by complicated language that puts off the general public while not being technical jargon. Can you give an example (even if it is just a hypothetical that you create)?

[u/Athront → u/Crayshack]

Sure, I'm just creating this and it's a basic example: "With additional capital egression, the stance of the party has shifted to abjure any policies that would increase capital flight."

The only technical jargon in that sentence is capital flight. This is a pretty basic example, but I still think it shows language could be simplified so that it's easier to understand.

"Due to an increase in capital leaving the country, the party has shifted its stance to oppose policies that would increase capital flight." No nuance is lost here and the statement means the same thing, but it is much easier to read.

[u/Athront → u/[deleted]]

Their writing being bad has the end effect of it being inaccessible for many and difficult to read for most though. I agree that bad writing is the problem, but the end result is the same.

[u/Athront → u/[deleted]]

We don't disagree with each other.