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Academic Language, or why they done got to talk all fancy-like
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You mean poetic metaphors as stand-ins for concrete examples, which themselves don't really add any meaning anyway. It's only superior if your aim is to awe a superstitious audience. If your intent is to convey detailed information with precision that poetry becomes counterproductive.
There isn't a metaphor in that passage. Those are examples: the strong don't win every battle, the wise don't earn all the money, the skilled aren't always the most popular. Time and chance happen to them all. In this particular verse, there is no invocation of anything supernatural. Its quality is not based on superstition, it's based on nuts-and-bolts techniques of composition: parallel structure, chiasmus, accentual meter. Any "awe" that it creates occurs because of its rhetorical power, which is what good writing does.
Except that it treats "chance" as a force. You know that chance and luck don't exist outside of the human mind, right? And I still don't buy those as examples as that's not the way they're used in the sentence.
Don't be a dick. "Shit happens" isn't much of a metaphor, either, and that's what "time and chance happeneth" equates to.
Edit: Also, chance probably does exist outside the human mind. quantumphysicsolol.
Yeah I'm such a dick for letting you call me messed up on the grounds that I find precision more pleasant than vague poetry.
You are being a dick because you're being pedantic. Also, the Orwell quote is not precise. It's actually longer than the Bible quote and provides no more value -- rhetorical or factual -- than simply saying "If we look at the facts, people's success has more to do with outside forces than their ability." So if the precise communication of fact is all there is to writing, then hey -- I just beat the author if Ecclesiastes! But even in an academic context, reaching the reader requires a certain level of artfulness that the Orwell translation just lacks.
O_o Do you, like, not have any idea what "precision" is? And no, it doesn't say people's success has more to do with outside forces than their ability, it says that greater ability doesn't necessarily equate to a win on the grounds that sometimes unlikely things happen. Whereas the first quote makes the occurrence of low-probability events out to be magical.
My point stands: "If we look at the facts, people's abilities determine success no more than unexpected events." Still more precise than the Orwell extract. And no, the Eccl. verse does not make the occurrence of of those events seem magical. It does not speculate on their origin at all. It just says they happen. You're reading a level of mysticism into the text that just isn't there, because you know it comes from the Bible.
Yeah that's not what it says either. The first one could be said to say that, sure. The first one could also be said to say the wrong answer you gave last time. Because the first one lacks any precision. And if you can't tell that that's from some kind of parable or religious-text just looking at the word-choice and structure (choices made for the express purpose of awing superstitious people) I question whether or not you've ever read one of either.
"Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."
Who is doing the considering? What phenomena are they talking about? Where's the evidence for this argument? Despite its clinical language, this passage by itself does not stand up to logical rigor. Meanwhile, the author of Ecclesiastes provides his catalogue of examples to illustrate the larger point. The larger point is true, an utter truism in fact, but the Eccl. author forms a more persuasive argument by giving the reader the images of those strong men, those swift men, and those wise men, and by composing the argument in emotionally stirring language. I'm not arguing that the tone of Eccl. is appropriate for an academic paper, but I am saying that academic writing is inescapably rhetorical; it's all about arguments, bringing the reader to the author's way of thinking. Having a logical point is important, but you don't want to just write a paper that is correct, you want to write a paper that is correct and convincing, so buttressing your writing with effective rhetoric is essential. The case can be made that the Orwell's parody is an example of academic decorum -- getting rid of the first person pronoun, striving to be objective -- but it strikes me as nothing less than cowardly: the hypothetical author is not accepting responsibility for his argument but trying to pass it off as some disembodied observation.
No two separate strings of words are going to mean exactly the same thing, obviously. But they say essentially the same thing, and if you disagree with my paraphrases, that just goes to show you that Orwell's translation isn't as unambiguous as you seem to think it is.
I've read Ecclesiastes in its entirety. Even if I hadn't, I probably would have been able to guess that this passage came from the Bible. But it could also have come from Shakespeare, or some writer hanging around during King James's time. Regardless, the source of the quotation is totally irrelevant to our discussion, but you keep harping on it as if it matters. Would this argument be substantially changed if the Orwell extract turned out to be from an internal memorandum of the Nazi party?
Edit:
Fuck it, I'm just going to quote Orwell:
I bet you've said "the race is not always to the swift" some time in your life and are just embarrassed to admit it. There's nothing wrong with enjoying the good bits of the Bible.
Not so sure about the meaning of "objective" either, huh?
Contemporary ones that make sense in context.
What argument? I see a statement or if you want to pretend it's made in the context of a debate then a claim. And where's the evidence in the first one?
Um, you mean to say "doesn't stand up to rigorous logical analysis". But you haven't substantiated that because what you just did was more a rigorous attempt to ignore logic than anything else.
You mean his catalogue of poetic metaphors. He's rather clearly not talking about battle or racing so much as life in general.
Actually he doesn't present an argument either. And those images are not necessary if you're literate, and it's not an utter truism as often ability/capacity to perform does predict success.
Arguments in an academic paper have to be A) arguments and
No shit.
Then you have no idea what you're talking about. No one's impressed that you think x, that's not compelling. X is the case because evidence y actually carries some weight though. Instead of you stating your opinion and expecting me to give a shit, you're stating a claim and providing evidence. Which neither of these examples did. Cowardly? It's cowardly state a claim without prefacing it with "well this is just my opinion" so that no one can tell you you're wrong?
Uh, no, I haven't. I've heard it maybe once or twice, always from incredibly pretentious and/or stuck-up people, so I've never repeated it.
I'm not exactly shocked that Orwell would be wrong. He is pretty much pushing a political agenda with this overall attack on academia and defense of scripture, you know that right?
Saying "battles are not always won by the strongest" isn't a poetic metaphor, it's an example. Jesus.
Oh he's not? So who exactly is he suggesting is responsible for this shift toward precision? Because it looks to me like he's praising and rationalizing the style of scripture and scrambling frantically for excuses to criticize the style used in academia.
Oh so I'm supposed to assume the "not always" bit? Because if it's so much clearer as you claim I would expect it to explicitly state what it means.
That he chose a passage from the Bible is unimportant. It's simply a famous passage that has endured, ostensibly, on the strength of its writing. He uses it as an example because it will be a touchstone for most readers, and its qualifications as effective writing would generally be unquestioned.
But I mean you didn't answer the question of whether you had actually read the entire thing or not, you simply became flippant and over-simplified his argument. Based on the way you're discussing this essay, I'm left to assume either (a) you've only read what was quoted in this thread or (b) you've grossly misunderstood it.
It does: "time and chance happeneth to them all." You're willfully pretending you don't understand it.
Exactly.
Man, what? "Time and chance happeneth(not a word) to them all" when? And how often? The only reason I know the "not always" is implied is because "time and luck count" has never been unknown to me in the first place, it's fucking common sense. Already knowing the correct version of what is being claimed doesn't lend any precision to the word-choice used in the claim. It is poorly phrased. And no, I'm not "willfully pretending I don't understand it", I'm analyzing it and criticizing phrasing and word-choice.
I can't believe there's so much fear of "big words". And bear in mind that "everyday English" isn't immune to time either, that shit was written in the '40s. Golly do people ever speak a bit differently now.
"happeneth" is an archaism; the book's old, so pointing out slightly out-of-date words isn't exactly a compelling argument. It can easily be replaced by "happens" (as it is in newer Bibles).
Not addressed by either version of the sentence. Your point?
You must hate nearly all phrases then.
If you think Orwell (or I) object to big words because he's afraid of them, you're an even bigger fucking idiot than you usually appear to be. The point is that academics / politicians / forum posters use big words that are:
Yes it is. The first sentence is the only one that is explicitly an absolute claim, the second uses "must be taken into consideration" which is actually accurate.
I'm not sure how that even responds to the quoted bit, nor how it makes any sense. Perhaps if you were more accustomed to reading writing that employs precision you wouldn't feel compelled to make shit up to read into everything anyone says.
Some do, others use big words that are:
Nearly everything that can be expressed can be expressed more than one way, so "unnecessary" doesn't make sense as a complaint, "preening" would be dependent on context but regardless it's going to make a better impression than "bed-head", "boring" and "un-memorable" sound like a personal problem, and "exclusionary" only makes sense in a context where people are barred from access to books.
So he failed to learn from that quote that allegedly stood the test of time on its merit.
Actually that would be "anti-propaganda" or "anti-marketing".
Clearly it hasn't endured on the popularity of the bible and of quoting scripture to tell people how to live. *snrk*
If he was misrepresented in the argument he was quoted to support that's not really any of my concern. I'm not the one forming an argument against polysyllables, it's not my job to form my opponents' arguments for them. And if your claims are true then most of the essay isn't really relevant to the discussion anyway as propaganda isn't the subject at hand.
Wow, you're really hung up on the fact that that came out of the Bible, huh?
EDIT: I get the feeling you just looked up "preening" in the dictionary. Here's a hint: in this context, it does not refer to grooming.
Nope. Quit making shit up, everything I mean is already included in my writing, there's no need for "reading in" since I employ the style that Orwell is allegedly decrying.
I get the feeling the idea of a "play on words" is completely foreign to you. And that you can't actually respond to my argument since all you can come up with is to attack me. It's one thing if you attack me in the same post as you respond to my argument, but when your entire response is just "ololz ur dumm" that's actually argumentum ad hominem.
Edit: Also, "metaphor". If your writing is all disheveled and unkempt it reflects on you a great deal more than when your hair is disheveled and unkempt.
Read the essay.
Read the essay or stop fucking talking about it.
Having read the essay many times at different stages of my life, and having discussed it in multiple college classes, I have my criticisms of it as well, but the most basic point he's trying to get across is that word and idea should be married as closely as possible, and your language choices should be made to get your ideas across as effectively as you can. The second sentence, in his example, is absolute trash compared to the first one, in both effect, execution, and aesthetic. If you can't see that, well then that's why you're not a writer yourself.
No. "Anti-sloppy English" doesn't follow from your characterization of the paper.
No. The essay isn't relevant.
Stop citing it. And based on your description of the objectives, the second sentence is still the better sentence. It's more precise. If you understand it you will remember what it said even if you don't remember the exact words and phrasing. Writing an essay ≠ writing a novel or a poem.
Husserl: Terrible writer, and it obfuscates his intentions to the point of incoherence.
Heidegger: Great writer, but never really synthesizes his poetic style with the erudite complexity of his analyses.
Sartre: Both poetic, concise, complex, and extremely coherent. I agree with him the least, but he is the best writer, which makes his arguments stronger.
The essay isn't what's under discussion, it's being quoted in support of relevant arguments about the topic under discussion, which is how academic language is good or bad, and the quoted bits don't support those arguments. And the second sentence is still the more precise.
Yeah, the play on words fails, since smugness contributes to "unkempt" writing. Your suggestion that Orwell is conducting a linguistic crusade on behalf of religion against academics is so preposterous - and so revealing of your own paranoia - that it really doesn't deserve any response at all. And this is just a bizarre non sequitour. I've avoided making other responses because you're not really worth the effort. But since you so desperately want to have at it, here goes: The first sentence does not make an absolute claim. Here's an absolute claim: being strong doesn't matter at all. See the difference? "Must be taken into consideration" is one of the especially cowardly academic formulations. It is unobjectionable because it means almost nothing.
This is stupid. It is not difficult to find writing which is universally boring, nor ways in which is might be made more interesting.
Also stupid. Orwell takes political pamphlets to task for sloppy language.
You have a habit of assuming that you and you alone really know English. This leads to embarrassment when you invent private definitions or restrictions on words and try to foist them on the forum at large, or when - as here - you act as though another poster really doesn't understand the difference between sloppy language and propaganda.
Also stupid. The Bible is full of things that no one outside the fundamentalist community has ever heard because the writing is bad or unexceptionable. That passage - like Paul's description of love, Genesis 1, John 1, or any number of passages from God's reply in Job - is remembered for its literary power. I know that acceding such power to a religious document is threatening to you, and that you would prefer everything in life be expressed in anti-septic jargon. Unfortunately, the rest of the population does not share this preference.
Yes. The intended audience is a group of human beings who do not possess debilitating developmental disorders. No, it won't go over well with the severely autistic. Congratulations on ferreting out that particular weakness.
Are you high? Seriously.
It was easier when Orwell was just pro-religion and anti-academic, wasn't it VC?
He didn't. All he did was say how dumb and bad he thinks I am. That's not support.
He still is, based on you guys' representation of his argument. But hey, pretend he's a rebel if it gets you off. And hey good job failing to support your arguments too. Once again "ololz VC" isn't support for your argument.