elliotr39•17d agoMost Upvoted

Overheard my roommate's debate team captain say something that stuck with me

I was making coffee in the dorm kitchen last Tuesday and overheard my roommate's debate team captain talking to a freshman. The guy said 'if you can't explain your argument without using 5 dollar words, you probably don't understand it well enough.' I've been thinking about that a lot, especially with all the free speech debates on campus. Some of the loudest voices in the student union use all this fancy language that just makes me wonder if they're actually saying anything real. It kind of applies to how we talk about controversial speakers too - sometimes people get so caught up in jargon that the actual point gets lost. Has anyone else noticed how much academic language gets used to shut down conversations rather than open them up?

2 comments

2 Comments

taylor_fox17d ago

Does anyone else catch themselves doing the opposite, though? I used to think sounding smart meant using the biggest words I could find, especially in my freshman year poli sci classes. But then I realized half the time I was just repeating stuff I'd memorized from textbooks without really knowing what it meant. It took a couple of rough class discussions and a professor who called me out to see that I was hiding behind jargon. Now I try to say things as simply as possible, and it forces me to actually think through what I'm arguing. That debate captain's advice sounds spot on to me.

the_mary17d ago

My junior year I had this history professor who made us explain our thesis statements in one sentence to someone outside our major before we could write the paper. It was SO hard at first. I remember trying to explain the concept of "hegemonic discourse" to my roommate who studies nursing and she just stared at me blankly until I finally said "it's basically when the powerful people decide what counts as normal." That simple version actually helped me write a better paper because I understood what I was actually trying to say. Now whenever I catch myself piling on big words I stop and ask if I'm just trying to sound important or if I actually have a point worth making.