Pretentious, Moi?

'A User's guide to Artspeak' in The Guardian on Monday discussed an essay written by an artist and a critic, on what they describe as 'International Art English.'  In brief, this is the sort of wordy, imitative and pretentious language that you too often come across in writing on art (although you might also add cultural studies and philosophy too).  To paraphrase a sentence from the essay, it is language that asks for more than to be understood - it demands to be recognised.

The original essay is very interesting on the possible genealogy of this language, its peculiar lexicon, syntax and use.  And for anyone who has ever struggled with this stuff (and haven't we all?) it's pretty funny too.

By coincidence, this Monday's Start the Week programme on Radio 4 was a special on Political Writing, which took George Orwell's essay 'Politics and the English Language' as its starting point.  Orwell famously offered the following six rules:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. 

However, it is two sentences from his conclusion that I'm most impressed by:

If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.

As Alix Rule and David Levine suggest in the essay referred to above, a certain kind of academic writing can be more about showing that you belong to particular tribe, than it is about communicating something original about a topic.  It is this sort of posing that one should try to avoid.

Consider, for example, Mathew Reisz writing last year about scholarly work on his father - Karel Reisz:

Some of the analysis seems overly elaborate or to miss the point. Even stranger is the stuff I simply can't understand. While there are vast amounts of academic writing in technical or specialist areas I obviously can't follow, it seems peculiar not to be able to decipher what someone is saying about my own father and his films.

It is possible to write lucid and incisive academic work, which gives proper weight to the complexity of any given topic.  There is lots of good writing out there (as well as bad), so why would anyone bother with the boringly pretentious?

Helen Sword, whose book Stylish academic writing was published last year, identified a number of myths which seemed to be preventing academics writing better.  These include: 'Academic writing has to be difficult,' and 'Academic writing has to be dense' (there is more on this here).  So, it's no wonder that some academic writing is both dense and difficult.

Since writing this post, I have been sent a link to the publisher's page for Helen Sword's book.  It includes links to some of the interviews etc which she did last year, and also to the interesting video about 'nominalizations' below.  I have to confess I have never heard of nominalizations before, but I will be on the look out for them now.  I can think of one particularly irritating example already.

There is power in the union

Wouldn't it be great if you could search loads of great libraries simultaneously...?

Well, you can.

Take a look at the presentation below introducing Search25 and Copac - two great union catalogues.

Search25 and Copac from James Lbrrn

Information seeking behaviour in The Big Lebowski

What can you learn about ‘information skills’ from watching the Coen brothers’ 1998 film, The Big Lebowski?  This is the question addressed in an article submitted to The Journal of Popular Culture (Dill and Janke, 2011).

The authors discuss the information seeking behaviour of four of its central characters - Donny, Walter, 'The Dude', and Maude - relating them to some interesting research into information seeking behaviour.

I summarise below how each of the characters shape up, and there are some illustrative clips from the film drawn from Box of Broadcasts.

NB: Box of Broadcasts requires Adobe Flash Player, and is therefore not viewable on an iPad.  You may also need to login first, and then refresh this page.  For University of Westminster students, go to the BoB National Site, and enter 'University of Westminster' into the 'Where are you from?' box; then refresh this page.

Donny

Donny has low-level information seeking skills.  He uses inappropriate information sources (i.e. Walter and The Dude), who are not authoritative nor courteous or inclusive.  They do nothing to help establish the self-confidence he needs to develop a more active information seeking strategy.  He therefore is in a cycle of not knowing.

'So you have no frame of reference here, Donny'
 

This recording is to be used only for non-commercial educational purposes under the terms of an ERA Licence. For terms of use and to find and record more programmes please visit BoB National.

Walter

Walter seems to formulate a goal-oriented plan.  However, he makes a number of false assumptions and mistakes.  In the terms of 'personal construct theory' he has an 'indicative' attitude - he depends too heavily on the construct he currently holds, and rejects new information that conflicts with that view.  As Dill and Janke suggest, "If one of Donny's failures is poor self-esteem, then one of Walter's is hubris."

His overconfidence is an indicator of incompetence - "he repeatedly dooms his searches to failure with quick assumptions and a lack of self-assessment." The clip below is just one of many instances of this (he happens to be right here, but more often he gets it wrong).

'Forget about the toe!'


This recording is to be used only for non-commercial educational purposes under the terms of an ERA Licence. For terms of use and to find and record more programmes please visit BoB National.

And here's Walter getting it wrong...

'This guy's a fake'


This recording is to be used only for non-commercial educational purposes under the terms of an ERA Licence. For terms of use and to find and record more programmes please visit BoB National.

The Dude

The Dude's information seeking behaviours are ultimately successful.  Although, he is not a proactive information seeker, he has a 'invitational' attitude, which contrasts to Walter's 'indicative' attitude - he is receptive to "new shit."  He also assimilates information from a variety of sources.

The Dude also exemplifies how a positive attitude can benefit an information search, enabling him to incorporate dissonant (conflicting) information. 

'New shit has come to light'


This recording is to be used only for non-commercial educational purposes under the terms of an ERA Licence. For terms of use and to find and record more programmes please visit BoB National.

Maude

Maude exhibits the most successful information seeking behaviours.  She has good self-esteem, clear goals, an 'invitational' attitude, and uses a variety of information sources.  She also  proactively seeks information to close her knowledge gaps - for example by obtaining the Logjammin' tape as shown in the clip below.

'Take a look at this, sir'


This recording is to be used only for non-commercial educational purposes under the terms of an ERA Licence. For terms of use and to find and record more programmes please visit BoB National.

So, what do we learn?

So, what do we learn?  What are some of the aspects of more successful information behaviours?  Having read the article a few times, and having watched the movie again to compile this post, here is what I think will improve your information behaviour:

Good self-esteem and a positive attitude
Choosing appropriately accessible and authoritative sources
Using a range of sources
Not being overconfident (not having a ‘indicative’ attitude - looking for information that supports your thesis, and dismissing information that doesn’t)
Being open to 'new shit' (i.e. having an 'invitational attitude')
Having clear goals
Being proactive
Being in a good mood

From my perspective, what is most interesting is that effective information behaviours seem not just to be about cognitive ability or knowledge, they are also attitudnal.  Dill and Janke comment on this, suggesting that poor mood leads to poor information behaviour.  They also suggest that it is the mood-enriching experience of coitus that helps 'The Dude' finally understand what is going on.  Now, there's a suggestion for your essay schedule!

'Oh man, my thinking about this case has become so uptight'


This recording is to be used only for non-commercial educational purposes under the terms of an ERA Licence. For terms of use and to find and record more programmes please visit BoB National.

References

Dill, E. and Janke, K. (2011). “New Shit Has Come to Light": Information Seeking Behaviour in The Big Lebowski. The Journal of Popular Culture. Preprint, submitted September 21, 2011. [online] Available from: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00874.x [Accessed 17/01/2013].

The full movie is available here:



This recording is to be used only for non-commercial educational purposes under the terms of an ERA Licence. For terms of use and to find and record more programmes please visit BoB National.

Some suggestions for guided independent study week...

If you are new to the university and looking for inspiration as to how to spend the next week, here are a few suggestions drawn from Safari Books Online - accessible via Library Search.

Don't be be fooled by the name of this resource, it also includes videos!

Get to grip with a Mac - video

Need to get to grips with the Mac OS fast?  Try this thorough video.

Learn Your Mac: Mac Video Training

Adobe Creative Suite - videos

New to Adobe Creative Suite?  Learn by video with these great videos.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Learn by Video

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Learn by Video Core Training in Visual Communication

Camera guides

Have you spent a small fortune on your DSLR?  Or are you borrowing some superior kit?  Get the best out of it with these guides.  Search Safari Books for other models.

Nikon® D700 Digital Field Guide

Mastering the Nikon D700

David Busch’s Nikon® D700 Guide to Digital SLR Photography

Browse the library

Take Steve Simon's advice in The Passionate Photographer: Ten Steps Toward Becoming Great - also available on Safari Books Online.

Whenever I’m looking for ideas and inspiration, I love going to my library, grabbing a book, and finding inspiration between the covers. Nothing to plug in or charge, the sweet aroma of ink on paper, it’s an intimate experience that lets me get inside the head of the photographer who created it.