Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 309.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2003 07:15:22 +0100
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: further on acronyms
I don't have another favourite acronym, rather a question about their
proliferation in certain kinds of technical academic writing (TAW). In
these kinds of TAW authors often do what I have just done, in my view worse
than unnecessarily, although the phenomenon is interesting. I'm wondering
in particular about the subtle or not so subtle connotations of such usage.
My reaction to this practice in TAW is to sense an undue reification of the
referent. In other words, I sense a real difference between "technical
academic writing", which is usefully ill-defined but doesn't carry any
pretense of being otherwise, and "TAW", which is just as ill-defined but
rhetorically suggests something well-defined, something you could almost
pick up and put in your pocket. It is, of course, not surprising that a
software engineer, say, should think this way. I'm not suggesting that
there's anything wrong with thinking thus necessarily -- only that doing so
uncritically, habitually can mislead the unwary or put off those unwilling
or unable to read ironically. I don't think we really want to be read that
way. Rather we want to be taken seriously, at least most of the time in
professional circles, which means inter alia demonstrating awareness that
the ontology of "technical academic writing" is rather different from the
ontology of "TAW". Consider the linguistic evidence: unless I mean a
particular piece of writing I cannot say "a technical academic writing" or
"the technical academic writing" (and even if I do the phrases sound
peculiar), but I can easily say "a TAW" or "the TAW".
A flowchart view of the world seems highly problematic unless you can step
outside it. Then it is highly useful.
Comments?
Yours,
WM
Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Oct 18 2003 - 03:02:54 EDT