((Click to enlarge - will take you to the Socks and Barney site))
The application to academia is obvious, I hope. This comic summarizes one of the biggest problems I have with academic writing. The way I see it, the point of research is to find out new information or make interesting observations about a topic, then share what you've learned with as many people as possible. Using restrictive language (big words, field-specific words, too many words) seems contrary to the whole idea. Why do academics need things explained to them in such painfully complicated terms? Perhaps they feel that their intelligence is being insulted when they read something that non-specialists can understand. I'm sure the writer feels much smarter after writing a completely incomprehensible 200 page masterpiece of excessive citation, as well.
I try to avoid this in my own writing whenever possible. Being early in my academic career, there are certain hoops I have to jump through to pass courses with decent grades. My personal writing, though, the academic writing that I do for my own private research, is very different from the forced BS that assignments are made of. Whenever someone in the field reads it, though, they immediately start criticizing. Their critiques are generally that I am not using the "accepted language of the field". I feel like thanking them at that point, because that's my goal - to explain things in terminology that everyone can comprehend. Though I keep getting slammed for it, I'm planning to stick with it. Part of being young and stupid is being overly-idealistic and thinking you can make a difference in things larger than yourself. At the very least, I figure people will eventually get bored with worrying about my writing style and either accept it or blacklist me from all future conferences. At this point, I'm not entirely sure which I'd prefer.
Honestly, until someone catches me opening my essays with "hokay, so, heres sum dataz," I don't particularly care.
