Your Daily Decontextualized Scholarly Word

December 7, 2007 — Sarah

“The baby looks at you again.” – William Wordsworth

This has been your daily decontextualized scholarly word.

Posted in Academia. 6 Comments »

6 Responses to “Your Daily Decontextualized Scholarly Word”

  1. BACON Says:
    December 7, 2007 at 11:13 pm

    On the one hand I’m tempted to point out that these are not single words but entire phrases, yet on the other I am in sheer awe of such a concoction as “decontextualized”, which is a scholarly word in its own right and, thus, the salvation of each and every one of these posts.

  2. Sarah Says:
    December 8, 2007 at 12:39 am

    And as we all learned from the Reality Overbites debacle, I believe in casting my own spell on language, rather than humbly bowing down to it. You may only be 13, Bacon (I know this because you use the kind of new slang we need around here, like ‘teh win’) but you’re smart enough to know that ‘word’ has many definitions. Decontextualized I refuse to look up, because it makes sense and that’s all that matters. Either way welcome back Bacon. I was missing getting comments.

    Hey! This looks like a good time for a soapbox! If I think a word means something and when I say it to you, you understand what I meant – then the word has serves 100% of its purpose. Forget dictionaries – since when did it get cool to be unoriginal?

    p.s. People seem to like the ‘Word’ so I’ve been keeping it up. And I don’t think you’re 13. What… 15 maybe? :)

  3. BACON Says:
    December 8, 2007 at 4:01 pm

    Well, not necessarily. At least, the condition of “[and] you understand what I meant” is essential. In this case, obviously I was being a nitpicking jerk about it. However, for me personally, there’s tons of words whose meanings I don’t know and yet I’m tempted to (and actually have) insert them into conversations because they just seem to “fit” (aesthetically? phonetically? I don’t know). There’s one word that always trips me up that is such a perfect example, but I can’t think of it now. Two others I can remember are “abstract” (in the non-programming sense) and “organic”. I have no idea what those words actually mean, and sometimes I wonder if anyone else does either, or if we’re all just winging it.

    See, but that’s when it comes down to your audience and how much you trust them to not know what it means, too. If you suspect their vocabulary is better than yours, then you risk leaving them either confused or thinking you’re an idiot. Which, in this particular instance, would suggest that, by trying to slip one passed the goalie here, you don’t give me/us enough credit.

    As far as age goes, you’re talking physically, or mentally/socially/emotionally/relationally/organically? If it’s the latter, then you give me way too much credit.

  4. Sarah Says:
    December 9, 2007 at 12:55 am

    Oh no, it’s the exact opposite. I trust you to know what a word means, and know that I used it incorrectly. I expect you to be intelligent and in the very least know about using dictionaries. It’s all part of the message – that’s what I mean when I say my message never suffers when I disrespect the current laws of language. I LOVE the feeling of a word that fits even when I don’t know what it means! Trusting your instinct and making it work because it feels like it fits. Yeah, I risk people thinking I’m an idiot, but that is part of the message – that if you think I’m smart, then you ought to respect an aesthetic (yeah!) word usage. It’s kind of an intentional button pushing, to challenge what I feel are unfounded hangups. Maybe that was too honest?

    It’s like this. You ever see those purses made out of gum wrappers, and belt buckles made from seat belt buckles? Those people used an object with a set purpose, for a different, more impractical purpose. And instead of ruining the object, it enables it to communicate something entirely new thanks to its context. Practically, Language is art, not science, and I purposely treat it that way. I hope you’ve come to expect a folded up gum wrapper in my writing.

    The typos are just laziness.

  5. Masten Says:
    December 10, 2007 at 2:51 pm

    “I LOVE the feeling of a word that fits even when I don’t know what it means! Trusting your instinct and making it work because it feels like it fits.”

    Rock on.

    Language is a beautiful thing precisely because it’s so pliable– it can be played with and molded in any number of ways by any number of different writers and still be understood. if a word feels right in your gut then that’s what you use, pure and simple.

    When I write with Sam and Gerrit, they think it’s hilarious that I often hold out for one particular word of phrase over another. It feels right. I just know in my gut that one is infinitely funnier.

    That said, half the time we’re arguing over the kind of blistering profanity that would make a blog-reading mother blush. Or we’re talking about a fart joke. But still.

    Anyway, generally speaking if you give your audience enough credit and respect their intelligence, they’ll figure out where you’re coming from and you still get to have fun writing. Win/win.

  6. Sarah Says:
    December 10, 2007 at 5:39 pm

    A meeting of the minds! I can’t even add anything, I’m a little tiny bit speechless.

    I **will** say I’m glad you chimed in… I take a lot of a licks around here for this kind of thing.

    p.s. To anyone interested… The Scholarly Word is coming back, I’ve just been wrapped up in other stuff this week. Sorry!


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