People talk about Gygaxian prose being abstruse and difficult to understand. I just can't see it. Listen, I work in a field in which people can write sentences which go "Yet despite its veiled presence in various facets of legal pluralism, both at the theoretical level and in praxis, political power has been ill-defined, and, more challengingly, rather ill-conceptualized; although studies in legal pluralism have referred to issues concerning what State law and law generally are, the concept of what power is and where it lies in de-centred or poly-centred legal settings has been underdeveloped," and they're not even joking.
Compared to some of these idiots who call themselves 'academics', Gygax was a veritable Oscar Wilde.
"Yet despite its veiled presence in various facets of legal pluralism, both at the theoretical level and in praxis, political power has been ill-defined, and, more challengingly, rather ill-conceptualized; although studies in legal pluralism have referred to issues concerning what State law and law generally are, the concept of what power is and where it lies in de-centred or poly-centred legal settings has been underdeveloped,"
ReplyDeleteThat's called a rape of the English language and the perpetrator of that sentence should be punished.
I think this is rather overstated, Mr. Hamlet. The sentence makes sense, it's just very complicated. The "antithesis of weal" is obviously the same kind of self-obsessed wank, an attempted to show how good the writer is by saying "weal" instead of "goodness" (which would be the correct word for a down-to-earth writer).
ReplyDeleteThe difference is that the quoted paragraph is actually trying to say something complicated about the development of legal theory, which cannot be said in a three word sentence; while gygax was looking for a wanky way of saying "killing someone is not good".
"antithesis of weal" is a poetic affectation, and no harm done as the meaning is clear.
ReplyDeleteThe academic has retained the idiot undergrad delusion that there is meaning in piling clunky vague abstract terms one on the other. He is the kind of person who is pleased when his audience admits they don't understand what he is saying. He is a monkey banging rocks together hoping for a spark.
Hamlet: I had to read 22 pages of the stuff yesterday, which is mainly what motivated this blog entry. ;)
ReplyDeletefaustusnotes: 'Praxis' and 'De-centred and poly-centred legal settings' are surely just as bad, if not worse, than 'weal'. I agree that the sentence in question makes sense, but it is really just a stupidly complicated way of saying something that probably could be boiled down to around 5-10 words. I can never work out whether the academics who write these kinds of sentences are just so divorced from reality that they don't realise most readers don't have the patience to pick their way through such stuff, or they simply don't care.
Kent: One day I'd like to write a book about the tyranny of educated fools - how people who aren't very intelligent can appear to be, and become very successful and powerful, merely through picking up lots of knowledge about a given subject and learning how to talk about it in very arcane and difficult terms.
"learning how to talk about it in very arcane and difficult terms"
ReplyDeleteSounds like a few RPG bloggers out there. I won't name names.
Was my original statement an overstatement?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Intentionally so, especially from someone as myself who is just as guilty of such sentences filled with obfuscation and self-importance.
It was a feeble stab at Humor. But don't worry, Humor deserved it, the rat bastard.