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Academic language

Academic language

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I wrote my Ph.D. twice. I tried to write in academic language, but I never found my academic voice. Instead, I wrote in my own voice, and then translated it over. I tried to avoid becoming completely opaque, while maintaining the level of technically-precise terminology (or jargon) that seemed to be required.

So I was delighted to see (thanks to Medusa at Professional Mirror Ph.D) that there is a random academic sentence generator from Pootwattle the Virtual Academic. Smedley the Virtual Critic will review your sentence, free of charge.

Straight to you from the University of Chicago’s Writing Program Toybox, here is my randomly-generated sentence, and its review. Heh-heh.

Randomly generated Academic Sentence

Pootwattle the Virtual Academic(TM) says:

The discourse of the unspoken (re)embodies the legitimation of civil society.

Smedley Smedley the Virtual Critic(TM) responds:

Pootwattle’s hastily published paper on the relationship between the discourse of the unspoken and the legitimation of civil society is exceptionally resistant to summary, as befits its project.

Exceptionally resistant to summary. Ha-ha- hah! Perfect! They had fun putting that together.

In my dissertation, it rarely got that bad. However, here are a few real sentences that drifted into that kind of territory:

In the thriller genre’s move from nuclear fears to viral fears, the virus functions as a figure that generates effects of horror and terror – and allows for the mobilization of contemporary discourses to simulate the real – but it also allows for the reinscription of imperialist methods of control.

The confluence of biological and technological viral language at the end of the twentieth century interacts with articulations of health and sickness, literal or metaphorical, already active in other discourses. The viral, in turn, amplifies the concept of the “virus” from the biological into the imaginary realm, drawing on beliefs and fears from the ancient to the ultra-contemporary, assimilating fragments of the rejected, and reinfusing mutated versions of itself into new communication networks.

One strand invests the virus with all our fears and the dynamics of otherness and is a function of paranoia and control, the other figures the virus as a protean bricoleur, a postmodern figure that reflects different standpoints about inherent ambiguities, contradictions, and reversals and picks up different aspects of these to create new assemblages.

There was a kind of strange rhythm – mess, bits, bits, twisted, bits, bits, new stuff. Lots of passive verbs.

I could probably rewrite the whole thing now and it would be great book. I’m probably at the point where I could stand to read it again.

It’s difficult to remember the mind-space I inhabited while writing all this. I really was a “VirusHead.”

Once it became clear that I wouldn’t be allowed to become a comparative mythologist as I had planned, maybe I should have stayed at my second university and written on “Friendship in Aquinas.” Or even “Kierkegaardian Mutations.”

Or maybe I should just have gone to law school.

All this debt, and no job. Sigh.

Done

Done

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Well, it’s done. I got “hooded” for my PhD today. It was a long day and it started early – but it was worth every minute. I had some wonderful conversations with other graduating PhDs and a few of the faculty as well. John was there clapping madly for me, and I didn’t even trip when I stepped up to pick up my large empty folder (the diploma has been on my wall since last September). I was even able to say brief hellos to a few of my colleagues – Steve, Julie, Jay, James – and to give a big hug to VA (a kind of faery godmother who told me that the dissertation was done – when it wasn’t – and made me believe that I would finish – and I did). Even the weather cooperated. The only thing I regret was that I didn’t actually see my director, who was busy handing out undergraduate diplomas. My other local committee member was very nice, and didn’t even topple the cap as he put the hood over my head (I am always amazed when things like that don’t happen at public events).

I highly recommend the experience.

Everywhere I looked, people were smiling at me. I haven’t felt like that in a long long time – it was a liberating sensation. On the way home, we stopped at the post office so that I could mail off my mom’s birthday package. Still in full regalia, I made a bit of a picture. The three postal workers all stopped for a moment and spontaneously grinned at me and started clapping. I have rarely felt such warmth in this city. Then we stopped at a gourmet-food-to-go place that I favor – partly because I have become friends with Mary, who seems always to be working there during the times I drop by. She grinned too.

I hadn’t slept much last night. For some reason I was really keyed up. My relationship with the university has had a few ups and downs, and I suppose I was a little bit ambivalent. But this is one thing that universities do well, and I wanted the ceremony and the closure and the sense of acceptance. We had to get up astoundingly early for someone of my somewhat nocturnal habits – especially since I had only slept for an hour or two and that intermittently. By the time we returned home at about 3:30 – I was dropping from exhaustion. I could have hunted up some friends and gone out to celebrate I suppose, but all I really wanted to do was drop.

So now it’s done. At last. All in all, a lovely day.

Got the PhD today!

Got the PhD today!

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I’m a Phd today! Woo-hoo!!!!! Here’s the abstract.

Imagining the Virus: A Discourse Analysis of Contemporary Fiction

This study seeks to apply the insights of discourse analysis to the epidemic of signification surrounding the virus, marking out the traits and terrain of an emerging discourse. The confluence of biological and technological viral language interacts with articulations of health and sickness, literal or metaphorical, already active in other discourses. The virus has rhetorically metastasized across referential domains. The study takes as its starting point concrete examples of viral figuration, and is structured around contemporary novels concerning HIV/AIDS, vampires, the villains and plots of suspense thrillers, and science-fictional transformations of the human.

Imagining the Virus traces the terrain of the virus along two basic strands: the virus as a figure of the other and the virus as a postmodern placeholder for ambiguity. A comparison of their relative weight and functioning attempts to discern the kinds of relationships that occur between these two strands as they play out in different fictions. An examination along such lines unearths dominant cultural tropes and their attendant anxieties. Particular kinds of metaphors influence our attitudes and judgments by selectively focusing on certain aspects of a concept while suppressing other aspects. This study finds examples of reframings of the virus that resist the more destructive of these, either by refusing to be complicit with them, or simply as a function of imagining new constructions and possibilities. As a mutating viral terminology circulates through a diverse American culture, it draws models of horizontal structures and networks, maps clusters of referential associations, and speculates on newly-emergent adaptations and ecologies.