Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar
The study was scientific and so has to meet certain rigorous standards. The language used to describe it becomes specialized for that reason. ...
|
I'm sorry but there's nothing "scientific" in writing something like "... [it] appears to predispose readers to a less effortful and comprehending mode of reading – or what we might term non-literary reading – regardless of the actual intrinsic difficulty of the text." That's just lazy and timid writing. College students and professors need to learn to actually say what they're trying to say instead of being timid with language. They write "We
might term non-literary reading." Well, do you or don't you? I think what this writer is trying to say, in his mealy-mouthed, not quite getting to the point way, is that "SF readers are lazy and don't try to understand the difficult concepts in SF novels."
Another G.K. Chesterton quote from
Orthodoxy ...
Quote:
|
It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say "The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment," you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin "I wish Jones to go to gaol [jail] and Brown to say when Jones shall come out," you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."
|