A large percentage (studies suggest over 90%) of the meaning we derive from communication, we derive from the non-verbal cues that the other person gives.
How does one communicate with an unseen audience that can be anybody in the world? In face-to-face communication there is so much information about the audience at hand that does not exist on the Internet.
Does one use language for the 12 year old, or the 18 year old, or the 25 year old, the educated, the non-educated? How to speak coherently to the 12 year old while not infuriating the 18 year old and how to mold an essay for the 30 year old without losing the 18 year old.
People who write books have editors to act as a third party who understands the material and understands the anticipated audience.
How do I, who have been studying the matter at hand for months and even years, know what words to provide a parenthetical definition that some may need but others may consider to be condescending?
Anti-intellectualism (opposing or hostile to intellectuals or to an intellectual view or approach) is so prevailing in the United States that almost every reader has a strong anti-intellectual bias that they are completely unconscious of. This anti-intellectual bias constantly inhibits their effort to read anything that smacks of being ‘intellectual’.
People might pay me money to lecture them on the proper way to swing a golf club but to lecture anyone on matters intellectual is pompous (excessively elevated or ornate—having or exhibiting self-importance).
I think you may be confusing “anti-intellectualism” with “boring the shit out of your audience with incoherent ramblings”.
What is an “intellectual” lecture? You can have a serious, thoughtfull discussion on any topic, but you need to figure out how to connect to their audience.
That sentence either gives me an urge to sing the Beatles (Maxwell’s Silver Hammer) or Gilbert & Sullivan (I Am the Very Model…). I can’t decide which.
(A) extremely degraded and ineffectively applied terminology which fails to communicate properly to a variegated audience composed on non-“intellectual” (which paradigmically creates a self-referential definitional statement) members of the genus Homo Sapiens (Sapiens).
(B) The subject of a not-very coherent post. What do you mean? That poeple like “brains”? Not usually. They don’t like pompous gits. I get pissed when I see people casually drop words like “hermeneutic.” The word has meaning and is ueful, but it’s also a ten-dollar word, if you know what I mean. It’s too much. Academics have a very bad habit of jazzing up their material with enough buzzwords and weird untranslated french quotes to make the most zombified corporate boss-speaking mission-statement maker green with envy. Hermeneutic (which I don’t believe I ever seen anyone, anywhere, EVER, use properly, written or spoken) is very popular, but it’s hardly the only crime against good writing; good writers use the least or most efficient jargon they can get away with. And unfortunately, certain branches of academia (unsurprisingly, philosophy and English take the lead here :rolleyes: ) encourage this to no end.
Once upon a time a noetic minister with several degrees was appointed to a church in middle America. He tried hard to please the member of his parish, but just wasn’t getting through to them. In desperation he asked the parish janitor what was wrong with his sermons. “Can’t understand them,” came the answer. So the next week he asked the janitor to read his sermon to see if he could understand it. “No,” came the reply. So after several editings he got the ok from the janitor. He had simplified the sermon to the extent he was embarrassed to give it, but give it he did. The reaction was spontaneous and almost unanimous. The parish loved it. KIS principle, keep it simple. Also honest and from the heart. You can’t go wrong with writing like that.
Then you should state that in your OP. When you make sweeping claims that are based on anecdotal information you should be aware of the fundamental flaw there…that of your own bias driving your findings. For example, nearly everyone I know, both in RL and cyberspace voted for John Kerry in the last election. This might lead me to conclude that in fact John Kerry won the presidential election. This would be an incorrect conclusion.