The perils of pseudo-Orwellianism.

The perils of pseudo-Orwellianism. R. Alexander Bentley (2006) provides a provocative and timelychallenge to archaeologists (and indeed to all scholars) in his quirkyand tongue-in-cheek essay, 'Academic copying, archaeology and theEnglish language' (Antiquity 80:196-201). The dangers of sloppy,jargon-filled, and abstruse language are as great now as they were 60years ago when Orwell's essay 'Politics and the Englishlanguage' (1946) was written. Yet the data Bentley providesconcerning academic 'buzzwords' do not justify his conclusionthat archaeology is in serious trouble when it comes to linguisticusage. Not only are there good reasons (aside from 'randomcopying') why such words are adopted and borrowed within and amongacademic traditions, they are not the primary contributing factor to thesloppiness and ambiguity against which Orwell and others railed. It is, as Bentley notes, hardly an exercise in futurology futurologyStudy of current trends in order to forecast future developments. The field originated in the “technological forecasting” developed near the end of World War II and in studies examining the consequences of nuclear conflict. topredict that new buzzwords will emerge in academic writing. What he doesnot note (although he is surely aware of the fact) is that such wordsinevitably decline in popularity. One would, I suspect, be quiteheartened if one were to compare 'agency' and'nuanced' with similar buzzwords chosen from some decades ago.It is also worth noting, without denying that 'agency' and'nuanced' are buzzwords, that virtually any word may be foundto have increased enormously in usage in the ISI ISIInternational Sensitivity Index, see there Web of Knowledgebetween 1986 and 2004. This occurs because of the very proliferation ofjournals that Bentley bemoans at the beginning of his essay, and inparticular the proliferation of journals that are indexed in suchdatabases. In Figure 1, I show the dramatic rise in the popularity ofthe non-buzzword 'dirt', starting (as with 'agency'and 'nuanced') in 1990. Because they do not account for theincreasing size of online journal indices or the raw number of articlespublished in any given year, Bentley's data thus fail completely tosupport his claim. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Bentley's choice of 'agency' and 'nuanced'as examples of buzzwords is curious. These are by no means the samesorts of words, and their purposes within the information systemcomprising the title, abstract and keywords of articles are entirelydifferent. 'Nuanced' is rarely encountered in either title orkeywords, but frequently in abstracts. It is a poor descriptor (1) A word or phrase that identifies a document in an indexed information retrieval system.(2) A category name used to identify data. (operating system) descriptor of anarticle's topic. Unsurprisingly then, of the 454 instances of'nuanced' in title, abstract or keyword in the ISI Web ofKnowledge database from 1986 to 2004 (the period examined by Bentley),only 18 occur in the title of an article and none in keywords. While itis a neologism A new word or new meaning for an existing word. The high-tech field routinely creates neologisms, especially new meanings. Years ago, there was no doubt that a "mouse" referred only to a furry, little rodent. (though hardly brand-new; the Oxford English Dictionary Oxford English Dictionary(OED) great multi-volume historical dictionary of English. [Br. Hist.: Caught in the Web of Words]See : Lexicography notes its use in print in 1920), and has recently experienced a surge ofpopularity, it is not ambiguous and has no ready synonyms. Thus, whileits appearance in English academic writing is certainly notable from alinguistic perspective and is interesting from a selectionist se��lec��tion��ist?adj. also se��lec��tion��alOf or relating to the view that evolution or genetic variation occurs chiefly as a result of natural selection.n.One who holds or favors a selectionist view. archaeological perspective, it is not an example of jargon orpoliticised language. If there is a problem with language use inarchaeology, the rising frequency of 'nuanced' does notdemonstrate it. 'Agency' is a very different sort of buzzword A term that refers to the latest technology or a term that sounds catchy. If not a flash in the pan, new technologies become mainstream. For example, Java was a hot buzzword in the 1990s, but should remain a major topic for decades. . Bentleyhas included results such as 'European Defence Agency' in hisFigure 1, which if excluded would alter his data. Nonetheless, I cannotpossibly deny that 'agency' as an abstract concept, as heclaims, has become a buzzword both in archaeology and in the humanitiesand social sciences as a whole over the past 15 to 20 years. Inarchaeology, it is frequently used in both article titles and keywords.Its use in archaeology, both as a concept and as a word, frequentlycorrelates with particular ideological commitments, political positions,and/or theoretical interests on the part of authors, both proponents(Johnson 1989; Dobres & Robb 2000; 2005; Dornan 2002) and critics(Saitta 1994). As Mullins (2001: 755) notes in what is almost certainlynot a fortuitous juxtaposition of buzzwords, 'agency can provide anuanced, fine-grained perspective on any archaeological context, onethat confronts dominant patterns and stability with variation andchange'. Whatever one may think of the usefulness of the researchtraditions that focus on agency as a topic of study, it is undeniably atopic of study. Agency may be, as Bentley contends, an academic fashion,but if so, then it is not only a linguistic fashion but also a topicalone. Keyword choice is not simply a matter of random copying, as Bentleyargues, but frequently reflects active and productive authorialstrategies. Ironically, to analyse the increasing use of the word'agency', we must consider the role of agency in keywordselection. In an era in which the ISI Web of Knowledge, not to mentionthe ubiquitous Google, are likely routes by which computer-savvyscholars locate new materials, using a keyword or title word such as'agency' is a tool by which an author self-identifies as amember of a scholarly camp or tradition and promotes his or her work aspart of a particular body of research. While there may be reason forconcern that 'agency' is so broadly defined, or so variablydefined by different authors, that it is not a useful buzzword, I haveno doubt that its use is conditioned by a desire to be read by thoseinterested in similar topics. Turning to 'processual' and 'post-processual'archaeologists, one is struck by the astounding infrequency of theseterms among scholars described (often by their detractors) using suchlanguage. Thomas and Tilley (1992), among many others, specifically denythat there can be such a thing as 'post-processualarchaeology'. Patterson (1989) points out at least three distinctcamps or positions within the broad 'post-processual' label(and, with nearly 20 years' hindsight, one can easily envisionseveral more). These are labels, and as Bentley notes, they may not beparticularly useful descriptors. In any case, as Trigger (2003) andVanPool van��pool?n.An arrangement by which commuters travel together in a van.tr. & intr.v. van��pooled, van��pool��ing, van��poolsTo transport or be transported in a vanpool. and VanPool (1999), among others, note, the theoretical gapbetween members of various camps is not as great as sometimes isenvisioned. Yet there is no reason to believe that ceasing to use thesewords will reform archaeology. It is obvious that virtually allarchaeological research studies processes, but it does not follow fromthis that 'processual' is a meaningless term. The meaning of'processual' in archaeology cannot simply be derived from itsetymology etymology(ĕtĭmŏl`əjē), branch of linguistics that investigates the history, development, and origin of words. It was this study that chiefly revealed the regular relations of sounds in the Indo-European languages (as described , but this is true of virtually every scholarly concept. Regarding the 'ianisation' which Bentley finds soworrisome, I cannot see how 'Durkheimian' is judged to beacceptable whereas 'Weberian' is not. Surely there can beminimal ambiguity in this practice. Moreover, to eliminate'ianisations' requires that we violate Orwell's thirdrule, because it requires cumbersome circumlocutions such as'influenced by Max Weber's sociology'. In any case, is itnot rather Orwellian to dictate which scholars' names may betreated in such a fashion? Bentley is right to view the inscrutable and hyper-theoreticalverbiage verbiage - When the context involves a software or hardware system, this refers to documentation. This term borrows the connotations of mainstream "verbiage" to suggest that the documentation is of marginal utility and that the motives behind its production have little to do with in archaeology with dismay. The extended passages he cites arecompletely incomprehensible to me and, I suspect, to most other readers.The problem he identifies, however, is not primarily one of individualwords, and his error here is the same as Orwell's. No single termor phrase, if defined adequately and used consistently, deserves suchscorn as Orwell heaps upon it. Of course, a single word, poorly definedor ambiguously used, is fatal to clear thought, but it is impossible,either through keyword-based citation analysis or etymological et��y��mo��log��i��cal? also et��y��mo��log��icadj.Of or relating to etymology or based on the principles of etymology.et analysis,to determine where this is the case. To cite what must be the mostoverused buzzword in contemporary academia, Margaret Masterman (1970)pointed out, following the publication of Thomas Kuhn's (1962)'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions', that Kuhn had usedthe term 'paradigm' in no fewer than 21 distinct senses, andnoted that Kuhn's critics had used these discrepancies to refutehis argument. Yet the difficulty was not with the existence or use ofthe word paradigm, but the varied contexts and ambiguous ways in whichKuhn applied the term. Eliminating the use of 'paradigm'simply because of these ambiguities would clearly have been unfruitful,and I suggest that the same is true of 'agency','processual', and even 'post-Althusserianism'. None of this is to suggest that there is no problem with languageuse in archaeology (in English or indeed in any other language). Clarityof expression is the fundament fun��da��mentn.See anus.fundament1. a base or foundation, as the breech or rump.2. the anus and parts adjacent to it. of scholarly dialogue. The predicament,however, lies not at the level of the word, but at the level of thephrase, the sentence, or even higher. Bentley's argument (2006:198) that improved word choice would improve our discipline isreminiscent of a sort of crude linguistic relativity, and is unpromisingas a solution. It is not the existence of the words 'Ministry ofTruth' but the manner in which those words are used and interpretedthat gives power to the Party and other information-wielders inOrwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (1949). Analysing singlewords--even the most noxious and overemployed buzzwords--and applyingsome set of rules of word usage, is therefore a poor strategy fordealing with problems of language use in archaeological publications.Solving these problems thus will require (dare I say it) a nuancedapproach to reading and analysing what we write. References BENTLEY, R.A. 2006. Academic copying, archaeology and the Englishlanguage. Antiquity 80(307): 196-201. DOBRES, M.A. & J.E. ROBB. 2005. "Doing" agency:introductory remarks on methodology. Journal of Archaeological Methodand Theory 12(3): 159-66. DOBRES, M.A. & J.E. ROBB (ed.). 2000. Agency in Archaeology.New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Routledge. DORNAN, J.L. 2002. Agency and archaeology: past, present, andfuture directions. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 9(4):303-29. ISI WEB OF KNOWLEDGE. 2006 [online]. [Accessed 18 July 2006].Available from World Wide Web:<http://portal.isiknowledge.com/portal.cgi> JOHNSON, M.H. 1989. Conceptions of agency in archaeologicalinterpretation. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8:189-211. KUHN, T.S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago:University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including . MASTERMAN, M. 1970. "The Nature of a Paradigm," in I.Lakatos & A. Musgrave (ed.) Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge:59-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). . MULLINS, P.R. 2001. Review of Technology and Social Agency andAgency in Archaeology. American Antiquity 66(4): 755-56. ORWELL, G. 1946. Politics and the English language Politics and the English Language (1946) is an essay by George Orwell wherein he criticizes "ugly and inaccurate" contemporary written English, and asserts that it was both a cause and an effect of foolish thinking and dishonest politics. . The Penguinessays of George Orwell George Orwell (pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, the influential English author and critic) published two volumes of his essays during his life, Inside the Whale and Other Essays in 1940, and Critical Essays in 1946. : 348-60. London: Penguin. ORWELL, G. 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Harcourt, Brace. OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY. 2006 [online]. [Accessed 18 July 2006].Available from World Wide Web: <http://dictionary.oed.com/> PATTERSON, T.C. 1989. History and the postprocessual archaeologies.Man 24: 555-66. SAITTA, D. 1994. Agency, class, and archaeological interpretation.Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 13: 201-27. THOMAS, J. & C. TILLEY. 1992. TAG and'post-modernism': a reply to John Bintliff. Antiquity 66(250):106-14. TRIGGER, B.G. 2003. Archaeological theory: the big picture. GraceElizabeth Shallit Memorial Lecture Series. Provo, Utah: Department ofAnthropology, Brigham Young University Brigham Young University,at Provo, Utah; Latter-Day Saints; coeducational; opened as an academy in 1875 and became a university in 1903. It is noted for its law and business schools. . VANPOOL, C.S. & T.L. VANPOOL. 1999. The scientific nature ofpostprocessualism. American Antiquity 64: 33-53. Stephen Chrisomalis, Department of Anthropology, McGill University,Leacock Building, Rm. 717, 855 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, Quebec,Canada H3A 2T7 (Email: stephen.chrisomalis@mcgill.ca)