In Language Crimes, Dennis Dutton acknowledges that there is a decline in student literacy due to the highly sophisticated prose style in the professoriate group. Dutton comes to search the most extravagant and complicated utterance that exists out there; subsequently the “Bad Writing Contest” surges. He asks for submissions of scholarly or journal entries were is not to exceed two sentences. He states that the use of elaborated prose is an artificial way of elevating the value of the subject. He also declares that this prose does not demonstrate its essential value but instead abducts the values from other sources. Dutton declares that by using jargon prose it transforms the value of the communicative idea. The use of this “detailed prose” suggests that the writer is in fact, describing to its best but in reality it does not transmits an accurate understanding. An original idea is not expressed but takes a radical transformation to express more than what it actually is. Dutton concludes by describing this prose as obscurity were Kant, Aristotle, and Wittgenstein also engage in this professoriate group were they describe the most difficult scenarios encountered by the human.
Synthesis
I suggest that the use of jargon used by professors does not decreases a student’s capability of learning, rather it enhances their ability of writing as well as understanding. Of course that the presence of such material can be overwhelming and most likely the student will have to search most of the words in the dictionary but at the same time it will provide him engagement techniques. If one is provided with material that easily apprehensible than there is no “critical thinking” taking place. There should be a need to discover and search what is unknown. When finding the solution or the significance of something our mind becomes, in a sense, more independent. As Dutton explicates, a statement could be of little importance but by using artificial vocabulary it elevates its value. “The pretentiousness of the worst academic writing betrays it as a kind of intellectual kitsch, analogous to bad art that declares itself “profound” or “moving” not by displaying its own intrinsic value but by borrowing these values from elsewhere.” (Dutton) In other words, the value of a jargonized writing is due to its choice of words. Thus it is never original but rather enhanced.