Argot is found wherever people to be manipulated are found, but argot at the University of Puget Clowns bamboozles on many levels.
In my senior year of high school, I wrote an occasional column called “Tlansrations” wherein I commented on absurd communications. I had learned to expose absurdity from MAD Magazine’s “What They Say / What They Mean” features. Down a left column MAD would list banalities that seemed straightforward. To the right MAD would list ironic meanings often masked by the banalities. I adapted MAD methodology to Blanchet High. Classmates were amused. Teachers were less amused: “What we have here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t teach.” One reaction was pretty much the same as the other to a teenager who was usually playing "I'm Looking Through You" in his head.
In looking over some previous entries in my blog, it appears to me that I have retraced “Tlansrations” by discussing the latent usages of “responsible,” “civil,” “professional,” and “inter-disciplinary,” among other terms of art deployed about the campus. Although the movie Cool Hand Luke and the newspaper feature “Tlansrations” explain much about “The University of Puget Clowns,” administrators, apparatchiks, and accomplices at our school use ironic expressions in a manner far more nuanced that my teachers at Blanchet or Luke's bosses. [Of course, the foregoing juxtaposition between my high school and a road prison was strictly unintentional. The prison did not teach theology, for example.]
“The Senate has raised a technical objection.” tlansrates to “To invoke explicit rules is in poor taste and perhaps malicious.”
When apologists for campus rule-breakers thus dismiss violations of the Faculty Code or Bylaws, they go beyond Harry Callahan’s beliefs that rights and rules are for prisses. They explicitly or implicitly claim that rule-breakers have pursued higher justice by any means necessary. [Stop laughing! They are serious!] What is more, this “mere technicality” trope subtly incorporates the Confidentiality Con: if confidentiality permitted decision-makers to explain their actions, faculty of good will would understand and applaud but, alas, such accountability is not permitted by custom. By a remarkable, pithy sentence, then, practices warranted by no explicit authority overpower mandated rules. What the Faculty Code states in so many words becomes the merest trifle; decanal self-aggrandizement and/or committees' evasions and delusions that contradict the explicit rules become controlling authority.
“This is getting personal.” tlansrates to “This may expose too much truth.”
In ordinary usage “personal” denotes what is private or individuated, but campus usage incorporates the connotation “inappropriately candid, open, or transparent.” When a person or side with whom a colleague identifies is being confronted by truths that hurt, the colleague may say that “this has gotten personal,” especially when the truths relate to governance and are vigorously being denied. “Personal issues” include matters eliminated from public discussion by decree or by confidentiality, no matter how crucial the matter to governance, understanding, or integrity. The variability of subtext that invocations of “personal” permit boggles the mind, which is of course the political purpose behind the professed solicitude for feelings. “This is getting personal” tlansrates sometimes to “I do not care to answer,” sometimes to “I do not know what to say,” sometimes to “You are very rude to raise what I cannot plausibly deny,” sometimes to "I have a very small penis," and on occasion to “How unkind of you to respond in kind to my attacks on you.” In governance, “pursuing personal agenda” or “for personal reasons” connotes that actions or arguments are not consistent with the personal agendas or motives of the speaker who deploys “personal.”
Although “personal” might be used in a sincere attempt to elevate discussion or debate, I know of no instance in which that usage has been employed on campus.
“Are we being rigorous enough?” tlansrates to “Are you as exacting and severe as I claim to be?”
It is well known across campus that a moment before his death, Goethe uttered, “More rigor!” “Rigor” combines common, straightforward understandings of scholarly virtue or virtues with presumptions about the scholarly superiority of whoever wields the Sword Rigor. This or that peer may from time to time exemplify rigor, especially if the peer bought the first round or a recent autobiographic anecdote, but the campus Wigger Patwol – those so busy espousing rigor that they leave themselves little energy for practicing rigor – epitomize rigor in their febrile fantasies. Such self-glorification is a common symptom of inferiority complex, so academe teems with variants on this demand that colleagues’ prowess measure up to one’s own. That persons of actual prowess so seldom make such demands underscores the insidiousness of Wiggerspeak: no one can measure up to rigor that cannot be detected.
The examples above do not exhaust my trove of tlansrations. I shall note more in future postings and highlight those that I have incorporated in past postings. Watch this blog for such campus favorites as “mandated confidentiality” [what a decision-maker would just as soon not explain], “personal and professional characteristics” [respectable camouflage for why we really don’t like you], and, of course, “interdisciplinary” [matters covered by an existing discipline in which one has no competence or credentials].
However, we must remember that some tlansrations are so common in academia that campus usage and users merely follow longstanding fashion:
“We have decided to be prospective, not retrospective.” on many campuses tlansrates to “We have decided to minimize accountability and maximize chances of recurrence.”
“Let’s be proactive on this matter.” on many campuses tlansrates to “Let’s make sure that this does not happen to me or mine, but otherwise let’s avert our eyes.”
“Civility” on many campuses tlansrates to “Use ineffective argumentation that reinforces existing elites or authorities.” All too often, civility is a proper synonym for servility.
“Collegial” or “collegiality” on many campuses tlansrates to “Serving [my/our] greater good.”
“Culture of evidence” on many campuses tlansrates to “A cult worshipping spin.”
“That matter has been addressed by the appropriate body.” on many campuses tlansrates to “We have covered that matter up and would appreciate its staying buried.”
5 comments:
Arguably the most important term that gets "mistlansrated" is liberal arts, which at most liberal arts colleges comes to signify a breadth of learning tilted toward humanities, whereas the original 7 liberal arts were, if memory serves, grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, music, geometry, and arithmetic. Also the term "vocational" is uttered in a way that resembles the manner in which the pod-people point out non-pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. What is wanted, apparently, is rigor that does not apply directly to a vocation, a calling. How rigorous is non-applicable rigor?
You muse at least two good points.
First, "liberal arts" was and is almost always argot. It is what our friends the philosophers call an essentially contested concept because each of us would stipulate different studies as those that most become [sic] the educated human. We sincerely disagree about what matters most, so we attach to our preferred circles of learning the shibboleth "liberal" and deny that other academic runs are as "liberal." If we truly glorify our own learning, we take the next step and say that Liberal We must battle Illiberal They to preserve a tradition that Liberal We match less than many members of Illiberal They.
Second, sloganeering via "liberal" versus some imagined opposite(s) hits a "town versus gown" snag in today's economy. Illiberal They tend to teach more marketable skills than do Liberal We. I know that much of our marketing maintains that liberal learning is the best preparation for success, but that marketing exists to deny the obvious truth that much that is denigrated as merely "applied" will profit our students economically far more than much that is aerily "pure." Were liberal learning what its proponents have claimed, it would yield a good life rather than a good job. [Why so many proponents of liberal learning are themselves gnarled and stunted is an applied, not a pure, question and thus not worthy of comment in this liberal locale.]
In [soiled and unworthy] practice rather than in intellectual lore, "liberal arts" might be tlansrated as "that which advances my interests and devalues the interests and learning of competitors."
Tlansrated thus, "liberal learning" is revealed as mean and mean-spirited competition for honors and profits. Those who traffic in such invidious distinctions think themselves better than merchants and tradespeople when in fact merchants and workers own up to what they are actually all about.
One who lauds liberal learning, in sum, engages in ritualized self-glorification that demands high-sounding incantations and occult gestures to be found in "The Twilight Zone" or various classic texts.
In my department, "Let's reschedule the meeting to next week" means "Let's give me time to work the hallways and to attack colleagues."
awesome blog, do you have twitter or facebook? i will bookmark this page thanks. jasmin holzbauer
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