On Sunday I asked, Why Don't Social Scientists Want To Be Read? I accused much of social science of using unnecessarily complex jargon.
This post prompted many excellent comments - including responses on other blogs e.g. Andy Balmer and Graham Davey.
The most common argument against my post was, in essence: Every science has a specialized, technical vocabulary. You wouldn't criticize a neuroscience abstract for being inaccessible to a layperson, so it's unfair to expect that from sociology.
This is a good and convincing point. Yet I think that, on closer inspection, it relies on some rather major assumptions.
The natural sciences do have a 'specialized' vocabulary, but only because they deal with things that are of special interest. What is 'special' or 'technical' about the word forebrain (to borrow an example from Andy Balmer) is merely that only neuroscientists are interested in the object, forebrains. It's not part of the everyday English language, because it's not part of everyday life.
There's nothing inherently 'academic' about forebrain, in other words. Plenty of similar terms like 'forearm' and 'foreskin' are part of everyday English, not because they're somehow less precise or less formal, but just because they crop up more often.
Everyday English is inadequate for natural science because scientists study things outside everyday experience. But the major object of the social sciences is everyday human life. Social scientists are interested in things that everyone is interested in - why people think, feel and behave the way they do.
So if the social sciences have need of a technical vocabulary, in the same way as the natural sciences, this would imply is that our everyday language is fundamentally inadequate to understanding the everyday world - in other words, that it is just inadequate, period.
Everyday English has developed to allow people to talk to one another. And the main thing people talk about, is one another, i.e. about society. Like any other branch of science, the social sciences need a rich vocabulary to describe all of the things they study: but don't they already have one - English?
Maybe not. It may be that ordinary English can't express the truth about society. But if you take that seriously, that's a pretty radical claim, akin to saying that the great majority of people are in the dark about how the world works. It's much more radical than saying that chemistry or neuroscience needs special words.
To be clear, I'm not making the populist argument that "Social science is all rubbish - the average man in the street knows better than these eggheads!" The average person is wrong about all kinds of important things, but I suspect that they're sometimes in the right ballpark, as it were, and that their errors are not a matter of lacking the proper words.
37 comments:
"[...] the great majority of people are in the dark about how the world works."
I think that just about hits the nail on the head. If you look at much of the past 60 years of social science, it essentially is an attempt to peel back the blinders that our imperfect mind and complex society places on seeing how things actually work.
As far as I understand things, this is quite an uncontroversial claim at this point in time.
That ordinary language *can't* express the truth about society would be a radical claim. That it is easier to express truths about society with specialised language is less radical, and that it all you need to admit for the permissability of social scientists use of technical terms
I totally agree with you. Also you will generally find that top impact papers are written in a more accessible style. This may be part of the reason why people diss high impact papers but simplified writing is almost a prerequisite for getting published there. Nature Neuroscience have a nice list of guidelines on their website about how to be a successful author. Using simple terms instead of specialist ones (e.g. saying 'mouse' instead of 'murine') is one of the suggestions.
I still don't agree with you. Social sciences have technical terminologies too but its more developed and academic in expression. Science communication is still behind - lay thinkers specialized in technical jargon if you ask me. Subservient to the model of Capitalism.
I think you have left out some important things. 1. ordinary words especially those that cover the ground of social science tend to have a lot of emotional baggage which is in the way of good science. 2. ordinary words often have very broad means where the author only wants to use one meaning. 3. ordinary words cannot be specially defined because people will continue to use the meaning they learned as a child and use a dictionary to prove they are right.
I agree there is a problem. I would like to read social science papers but cannot hack it. But someone has to think of a better solution that using ordinary English. I have tried to think of something but have failed so I have nothing to offer.
I do not agree. I don't see a convincing measurement/indicator for "of special interest" vs. "everyday life". As a physicist, I think it's very relevant to know about the universe we live in, gravitation, thermodynamics... it affects our self-image as humans. It's not so relevant if specifically men have a specific way to talk in a specific way about weight loss in an online messege board.
"Forearm" can't be compared to "hegemonic". Forearm is more like solid state laser diode heatpipe.
Hegemony is a huge concept, maybe better comparable to "free will" as the brain is concerned.
Most people are _not_ interested in teh concept of hegemony. Of course they are in the dark on how the social world works. They/we do not even know why we do what we do. But they might be interested in a poplular version of the topic.
I'm also in the right ballpark if I say "Things fall to the ground". But to make it science, I use Lagrangians and differential equations, not "English".
I don't intend to say that the original paper actually needs/justifies the use of technical vocabulary.
Still, I agree that in ALL disciplines it would be nice to write an introduction for non-experts.
NS you are missing an important point here. When a social scientist talk about society, she must speak in a disinterested manner, out of necessity, since that would be the only way to make research in the social domain "wieldy" and effective. In other words, social scientists need to look at social matters from the outside.
Compare this to lay people. Emotions and biases are inextricable to the way they approach life. They are in its midst, and few of them can really take a few steps backwards and look impartially at a given situation. Even if they could, I doubt this can help them much as individuals.
Logically speaking, if two different people try to describe a certain subject, it does not necessarily follow that they should perceive it in the same exact way. Each looks at the aspect they are most interested in, or have the capacity to look at, and that will definitely be reflected in the terminology used by either.
Baseball, for instance, is perceived and described by physicists in a language completely unfathomable to baseball players, and visa versa.
Likewise, when a lay person think about obesity, she/he is more concerned about how others view her/him, and how much this is effecting her/his chances of, say, sexually attracting a certain person. They don't approach the matter from a scientific point of view, and even if they do, again, I doubt this would have a significant effect over their actions. When it was the last time you advanced a scientific argument while arguing with your significant other over your relationship?
Also, in the case of sociology, I seriously doubt that its findings are of much significance to individuals. Such findings are meant to inform the decisions of public authorities, NGOs,... etc, while Emotions us in our capacities as individuals are much more stronger than reason.
H
Firstly, I agree that many social science papers use unnecessarily complex jargon. I also think that social science, as a discipline, should attempt to better engage with those outside of their discipline - whether that be the general public, or other academics.
However, I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding what the project of social science is about. (I note here, not without irony, that this misunderstanding may well be due to the impenetrable jargon of much sociological writing). Social scientists *are* trying to understand and examine things outside of everyday experience. Simply writing about ‘everyday human life’ would be journalism, not social science.
In your last blog post for example, you replaced the term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ with ‘conventional masculinity’: these are not synonyms. The conventional male social role is part of hegemonic masculinity, but hegemonic masculinity also refers to the ways in which masculine norms are enforced by cultural power structures.
The fundamental questions of the sociological approach, such as; ‘who holds power in society, and how do they exercise it?’, and ‘do people choose their actions, or are they a result of a person’s social position?’ of course relate to everyday life, but they examining something more than that. They are seeking to examine the causes behind social behaviours. Just as we use our ‘forebrain’ everyday but we rarely consider how it produces our actions. A specialised vocabulary is required for both of these kinds of academic thought.
I suspect that your argument conflates two related but ultimately different phenomena which is why it doesn't sit well with so many people.
1. Any field of expertise needs to develop language to describe the understanding of its subject. Even if the subject is entirely familiar, the language can be used to disturb that familiarity. It takes work and effort to learn that language which is necessary to give the field justice. Which means that even if we used familiar words, we would be using them in unfamiliar senses.
2. Practitioners in any field are socialized into ways of speaking that they then follow whether or not they are appropriate to the subject or to the audience. A large part of this socialization is signalling to their peers that their work is trust worthy. Universities teach their students how to mimic the language of their discipline. Journal editors and peer reviewers give feedback on language. This is what made the Sokal hoax possible. But it's the same thing that makes it possible for fakers to impersonate scientists and even physicians. I've had the same objections about maths papers I've seen. I also recommend the Century of the Gene on this subject.
There's nothing unnatural about this. But obviously both of these phenomena can become counterproductive. The first in that it will lead to reification of concepts that started out as heuristics, and the second in that it will lead to unnecessary opacity where none is needed.
I think your critique was aimed at 2 but it was couched in terms of 1. Which is where the positive and negative reactions come from.
Horace in English tranlation (Ars poetica):
"(...)
You who write, choose a subject that’s matched by
Your powers, consider deeply what your shoulders
Can and cannot bear. Whoever chooses rightly
Eloquence, and clear construction, won’t fail him.
Charm and excellence in construction, if I’m right,
Is to say here and now, what’s to be said here and now,
(...)
If you need to indicate abstruse things by novel terms,
It’s your chance to invent ones the kilted Cethegi
Never heard: licence will be given you if wisely used(...)"
Pretty much all scientific fields have two different types of jargon:
1. Technical terms for speaking concisely about things that are specific to the field, and for which there is no common term available. A term like "neurotransmitter" falls into this category. These are pretty much unavoidable. Particularly unfortunate is the case in which common terms have been repurposed and given technical meanings that are more specific than their everyday meanings. For example, pharmacologists use "potency" and "efficacy" to distinguish very different aspects of drug action, even though the two words are nearly synonymous in everyday English.
2. Traditional jargon that uses a technical term in place of a common one, and that has no real value other than identifying a practitioner as a member of the "club." A lot of Latin terms in biology and medicine fall into this category, such as the use of "proximal" and "distal" in place of "near" and "distant." Although ideally, common words should be substituted wherever possible, it can sound odd to other readers in the field who are accustomed to the jargon.
The central point has already been made by other commentators, which is the error in the assumption that what social scientists do is attempt to describe everyday life.
Even if this were true -- which it isn't -- one of the points of departure for the critical assessment of culture and society is that their profound effects in shaping our interpretations and experiences are frequently invisible to us because they become routine and habituated.
We often don't perceive the influences of the myriad cultures and sub-cultures in which we participate just as we don't think about the existence of our stomach unless there is something that specifically draws our attention (i.e., pain, nausea, hunger, etc.)
The applicable idiom here is that birds are not ornithologists. Accordingly, the point of departure for some of this work is precisely that it is not for, and is from the outset extremely unlikely to be apprehended by the people about whom social scientists write and investigate.
Given this, there is really little basis for the distinction you attempt to draw between natural and social scientists.
(Disclosure: I am by training a humanities scholar, not a social scientist, but read widely in med soc and med anthro).
Maybe the problem is that you don´t get it. Maybe it is you...
is this any easier to read?
The classification of Kleinian surface groups, II: The Ending Lamination Conjecture
Pages 1-149 from Volume 176 (2012), Issue 1 by Jeffrey F. Brock, Richard D. Canary, Yair N. Minsky
Abstract
Thurston’s Ending Lamination Conjecture states that a hyperbolic 3-manifold N with finitely generated fundamental group is uniquely determined by its topological type and its end invariants. In this paper we prove this conjecture for Kleinian surface groups; the general case when N has incompressible ends relative to its cusps follows readily. The main ingredient is a uniformly bilipschitz model for the quotient of H3 by a Kleinian surface group.
Thanks for the good comments.
Daniel Goldberg: "The central point has already been made by other commentators, which is the error in the assumption that what social scientists do is attempt to describe everyday life."
I didn't say they only try to describe it. I said it's the object of their study - which, of course, includes trying to explain it, interpret it etc. as well as describing it.
But on the 'everyday life' point, I do think that's largely true. There are exceptions, specialities who are interested in other topics (someone on Twitter mentioned child language acquisition, and it's a fair point: that's not what I had in mind.) But the In Pursuit of Leaness paper was certainly about (an aspect of) everyday life for British men.
"The applicable idiom here is that birds are not ornithologists."
That's a nice idiom, but my argument is that it doesn't apply, because unlike birds, who live an unexamined life, one major part of human life consists in trying to understand ones own life & ones own society.
Anonymous: "is this any easier to read?"
Not to me, but it's not about me. I'm not a Kleinian surface group, but I am a modern British man.
I think the most critical dimension missing from this entire conversation is the reward structure of academic life. As a sociologist, I've been told innumerable times from mentors at all stages of my career -- as have my friends in departments including biology, physics, economics, and history -- that "wider impact" and "accessibility" are the kiss of death with regard to hiring and tenure. Most institutions and highly-ranked journals reward speaking to ONLY your discipline in the (admittedly obfuscatory) language of said discipline.
Is this a problem? If you ask me, yes, it absolutely is. But when the options are 1) write in a friendlier way to the lay reader and run the risk of being denied tenure or 2) write in jargon and be promoted, one can hardly blame people for navel-gazing.
(FWIW, I know the academic world is slightly less black and white than I suggest it is here, but this is a real and genuine problem at research I universities.)
Just had another thought on this:
My argument that everyday language developed to deal with the social world, could perhaps be criticized as follows:
"Yes, but only on a small scale. Until very recently people inhabited small social circles of (let's say) 150 people. Our everyday language may be fine for talking about relationships on such a scale, but sociology is about nations of 150 million. The modern mass society is a new phenomenon, so we need new words".
I'm also finding myself thinking about Freud and psychoanalysis; it seems like many social scientists are taking a position rather like that of an analyst who thinks dreams have 'hidden' motives and meanings that require expert interpretation, while I'm denying that and saying "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"...
@Dominik said "Any field of expertise needs to develop language to describe the understanding of its subject. Even if the subject is entirely familiar, the language can be used to disturb that familiarity. It takes work and effort to learn that language which is necessary to give the field justice."
This seems very odd to me (a biologist). Could you explain?
I used to be a social scientist and would use language to be really specific. So for example the term democracy is used in everyday language but as a social scientist studying political systems I need to know if it is deliberative democracy, representative democracy, single party democracy or direct democracy. These are all radically different but covered in everyday language by the term democracy.
The term democracy really annoys me because it doesn't really mean anything.
In any field it is difficult to achieve the right balance between jargon (specificity) and accessibility and not to tip over too far on one side of that balance or the other. Keeping the right balance also depends on the subject you write about, the audience you write for and the academic or other constraints that shape your writing.
Kleinian surface groups?
Wow, you're comparing what social scientists talk about to what mathematicians talk about? I do know what that abstract is referring to, and I couldn't for the life of me tell you how to make it more accessible. I think the authors did a pretty good job of telling me what I can expect if I decide to plow through their 149-page paper (!). As an indication of how non-obfuscatory that abstract is, note the use of the word "ingredient," which means exactly what you think it means. (I sort of wish mathematicians had a more jargony term because I think "ingredient" sounds stupid.)
Mathematicians rarely throw jargon around to make their work seem more important. I'm not in the slightest convinced by the commenters claiming that social scientists (or humanities scholars) don't either. Good call by Neuroskeptic.
Kleinian surface...
I am saying that as lay persons (non-mathematicians or non-sociologists), it is easy to have the gut reaction of "I do not get this, so it must be the fault of the writer." In math, it is quite clear that that gut reaction is incorrect, whereas everyone is a sociologist, a mens-studies expert and a psychologist who understand how things REALLY work and should be said.
I mean, gee, how many times has an fMRI study been described as a map of neural activity. (rather than a thresholded map of the statistical fit of a GLM on a time series of BOLD data overlaid on a pretty template MRI) I think those papers suck because they are not precise.
Maybe we would all be better off with more, rather than less precise language when writing papers. Then the science can be made accessible to lay persons by people who are good at that.
This really does come across as you saying these disciplines are not really as sciencey. It doesn't matter that you say you're not saying that. The fact that even after thinking about it you still even see why and how social sciences would need to have specific terminology and be as esoteric as other sciences, at least in academic contexts, just as biological sciences do is just as clear an indication as anything that, you do indeed follow what you call the populist argument. As a neuroscientist with interdisciplinary training and interests, and thus with respect for the "softer" sciences, I amsad that such narrow minded attitudes persists in the biological sciences. A mathematician can make the same argument about neuroscience. (see also http://xkcd.com/435/)
One possible reason for using jargon that just came to my mind was that maybe a scientist is trying to avoid affecting the object of study? I can imagine that social sciences in particular could be problematic when the act of discussing the research actually affects the results. In many cases this is actually desired but in others I could imagine it would not be.
As someone with a social science background, I have to again agree with neuroskeptic on this. Yes social science, like any science, must have very specifically defined terminology. And, unfortunately, much of what we see in in social science writing is use of language that does not add specific understanding but does mystify and conceal intended meaning. Unintentional. But nevertheless, the culture of the social sciences promotes this.
I do not mean for my comment to be global. We do have important terminology that illuminates and discerns but we also have a lot of unnecessary obfuscation that we should be working to get rid of. "Post Modernism" was a less than helpful influence, for instance, in my most humble opinion.
As a neuroscientist with training in molecular and cellular neuroscience I have to agree that the problem is not reserved to the social sciences versus the natural sciences. We are all guilty of using jargon, convoluted language and unstructured writing. One person's "natural language" can be perceived as "jargon" to another. I think we could all benefit from identifying troubling terms and gearing our writing towards a larger audience. Social neuroscience should be able to inform and guide research in the cognitive, systems and cellular neurosciences and vice versa.
This discussion all presupposes that the precise meanings of the jargony terms are agreed upon by everyone within a field.
My experience within psychology at least is that technical terms often mean different things to different "experts" and that the same jargon can be used in different contexts to mean quite different things. "Working memory" and "central coherence" are just two examples that spring to mind.
The danger for me is that by using jargon we kid ourselves into thinking that we're being precise when we're not - and distinctions that are important get lost.
The perennial complaint of humanities scholars is that they aren't taken seriously as scholars, esp. since their research isn't scientific, potentially lucrative, etc.
I was surprised to read in EDGE a bunch of scientists complaining that humanists are read by a wider audience -- that humanities have a better way with language, etc.
Social scientists get the worst of both sides, I fear.
But in the original case, that's just an example of bad writing. I can't imagine any scholar saying with a straight face, "No one in MY field writes badly!"
There are plenty of awful tendencies among my fellow literature scholars, even though they read literature for a living. Because writing is itself a skill above and beyond the skills of teaching, research, hobnobbing, and the rest.
Very well put. I think the "specialized language" as well as the "specificity" arguments are largely bunk. "Kleinian surface" refers to a specific, well-defined concept that cannon be expressed with non-technical language, but I have trouble believing that the same can be said for the way in which "embodiment" is used. It's also nonsense that a "lay" audience can't understand what's meant by "embodiment." But that kind of opacity is hardly an invitation to keep reading.
I strongly object to the use of the word Populist. It has the same quality as the word Denier in climatology. It is meant to denigrate things which can be perfectly valid.
This is ivory tower speak. We the scientists know what populus doesn't. Very telling.
Mmm. I liked the previous post, but mainly because it was about an abstract, which in my mind should be more accesible and inviting than the paper itself. However, I also find the central argument of 'Social sciences write about somehting that is part of everyday life and wide human consideration' slightly weak. You can (and in my mind, should) be able to write up your research conclusions in a way that can be understood by a wider audience, particularly if you write about 'society'. However, that technical vocabulary is there for a reason: to strive towards universal conclusions and to be able to qualify ideas and concepts. Embodiment is a common English woird but also a term that has been discussed by Bordieu and others, so it has a specific function in a detailed, universalist and detached (scientific?) discussion, but (and here I agree with nskeptic) it can also be trasnlated or explained into common English losing only part of its meaning. And this translation is easier in Social Sciences and Humanities because they are less burdened by scientific terminology. Trying to understand society from a lay perspective is fine by most people (including myself) but you might not be able to do that in a consistent,reflective way, taking into account your own point of view, the distinctions that you can make among concepts such as 'society' 'power' or 'image' depending on what do you mean exactly, etc. Again, you don't need this to have a satisfactory insight into the issues affecting a society (which might have already benn inflitrated by terminology and ideas taken from Sociology), but this is just a way to make it systematical. Likewise, a shaman might not need medical training to heal a limited number of maladies in his community, but he won't have the necessary understanding to reflect on how how to extrapolate his methods to other illnnesses, the chemical composition and active principle of the remedies he is using... etc. He might not need any of that, of course, but his art is not a science either.
Re Embodiment:
http://www.embodiment.org.uk/bibliog.htm
http://sexualitystudies.net/files/Lecture%206%20Embodiment,%20sexuality%20and%20ageing.pdf
http://mh.bmj.com/content/29/1/4.full
This is beyond the use and understanding of the common people. As a Social Sicencfes term, this is taken form everyday language, but it does not mean 'to embody' as we normally use it. Paradoxically, taking its termonology from everyday language makes Social Sciences language more confusing to non-experts.
It is also a less stable term that those used in natural sciences, because it might mean different things and you can understanding (or challenge it) it in several ways, but that is a characteristic of Social Sciences and Humanities: the terminology is constantly discussed and you might have to explain and qualify your own methodological and theretical framework before you actually use that termonology in your analysis.
Excellent post. Here's a link to an article by Orwell, "Politics and the English Language", which makes similar points. Apparently writing in the social sciences is about as inaccessible now as when he wrote the article in 1946.
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
Just want to add my to cents: it happens that I'm a computer programmer, and my everyday work is to write algorithms, the funny thing is that many times the algorithms are just trying to describe an effortless human activity, like search my name in a short list and make shure that it is not duplicated, or search for an adress in a building... The point is that programming have a complex and especialized jargon even when is only describing human "doable" activities, so maybe complex and technical languaje is developed while studying any subject, and it is related with the convenience of making shorter words for complex elements.
@Neuroskeptic: "Everyday English is inadequate for natural science because scientists study things outside everyday experience. But the major object of the social sciences is everyday human life. Social scientists are interested in things that everyone is interested in - why people think, feel and behave the way they do.
So if the social sciences have need of a technical vocabulary, in the same way as the natural sciences, this would imply is that our everyday language is fundamentally inadequate to understanding the everyday world - in other words, that it is just inadequate, period."
Surely the opposite is true? That is, since the social sciences are dealing with everyday things that affect humans on a daily basis, then it must be true that social scientists would require specialised terminology in order to differentiate their terms from the concepts used in everyday language.
For example, if I'm doing some behavioral research, it can be hugely important for me to describe something as "the relative reinforcement rate for differential responses", which simply just means that different choices get different rewards. But simplifying it as such brings about a whole range of connotations that I wouldn't want to imply, like "choice" which in ordinary language can denote the notion of voluntary action, or "rewards" which implies some positive bribe in recognition of a certain behavior. And, of course, it misses out on the qualifier 'relative', which is essential for making heads and tails of the methodology and results.
Of course, that was an example from psychology which isn't technically a social science (as there is no focus on humans or society), so maybe that doesn't fall into the area you were criticising.
I would critique, with others, the idea that just because we speak to each other of our societal relationships means that we necessarily have the conceptual and linguistic resources to describe societal systems as a whole. There is simply no reason why you should presume that this should be the case. Indeed, quite the opposite, I’d rather suggest (as per Janet Kwasniak above), that the language with which we negotiate society is strongly loaded in a way that “hand” or “forearm” is not; the precise and (attemptedly) objective description of social phenomena is a necessary starting point for objective discussion of social systems.
Bear in mind that, also, the use of pre-existing non-technical vocabulary in the hard sciences often obscures the fact that in the context of that domain the term has taken on a technical meaning which is different in its extension to the standard use.
So, for instance, to a geologist a “pebble” is something rather specific (according to Wikipedia it is “a clast of rock with a particle size of 4 to 64 millimetres based on the Krumbein phi scale of sedimentology. Pebbles are generally considered to be larger than granules (2 to 4 millimetres diameter) and smaller than cobbles (64 to 256 millimetres diameter).” So a geological paper discussing “pebbles” is actually not only more technical that it appears to the lay reader, but consequentially that language use is (not intentionally) somewhat deceptive.
So though sociologists often deliberately neologise (partly because of the emotive correlates addressed above), but this does not make the neologisms any more technical than a geologist’s use of “pebble”, and it has the very advantage that the opacity means effectively “you have to look this up to understand this paper,” which avoids misunderstanding by non-specialists not realizing they are reading a technical vocabulary.
@Neuroskeptic: "Everyday English is inadequate for natural science because scientists study things outside everyday experience. "
Please watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos series right away. Everyday english has never been more adequate for describing the discoveries of our humanity's most important natural scientists. Natural science is nothing but trying to understanding our everyday experience.
Specialists need scientific language in ALL sciences in order to communicate with one another most effectively. To ask them to use plain english is like asking a math scholar to use terms only out of a 5th grade algebra book, it's just not as easy to get a complex idea across.
That said, we definitely need more Carl Sagans in the world. We need more intermediaries who can digest specialized language from scholarly papers and distribute the information to the public. Thankfully this blog and many others are continuing the Sagan tradition.
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