Words--We Wield Them

So, I had my first department meeting this past Friday. o_O Holy crap. I'm sure most departmental meetings are similar in terms of making sure you're seen and heard by the right people. But I doubt any of the rest of them take such a keen interest in words as we do. Considering that the purpose of the meeting was do discuss the changes to the evaluation criteria, most people had lots to say.

I knew we were in trouble from the beginning when our Dear Leader opened up with, "Well, can I just say that on page X line X, ...well, what does the rest of the group think about the insertion of the word 'or' there?" Therein followed a short and lively debate on whether "or" was needed or not, which was eventually settled by determining we needed "and/or," which was pronounced "and slash or" for about five minutes or more. The amount of time that took for a word that spans two whole letters really seemed to set the tone.

I'm also continually amazed at what low self-esteem people have when speaking. These are professional people with advanced degrees, all most certainly making more money than I do and having achieved some measure of recognition in their field (some having achieved a LOT of recognition in their field). And yet, I continued to hear, "Well, my opinion is worthless, but..." or "I'm sure this will be of no value whatsoever to the discussion, but..." or even worse, "I'm going to ask a really ignorant question here, because I'm generally dumb..."! I guess even at the upper echelons of achievement people never really get over thinking that everyone else is smarter than they are. Maybe we need a self esteem workshop (or brown bag session).

Perhaps one of the most disturbing things I've noticed is the tendency to preface questions with superflous explanation. Saturday Night Live has rightly picked up on this tendency and mocked it, but I don't know how to search for it on YouTube, or I'd post an example. SNL has a guy who looks vaguely hippy-ish come out with a stack of newspapers to talk to us about his opinion on the events of our time. He'll read a headline, like "Wall Street Posts Record Losses," and then he goes into his commentary, which runs something like this: "Here's a good one: 'Wall Street Posts Record Losses.' See, just...just no, because in order to really understand...I mean, if you consider all the history that went into...look, what you're failing to consider is the methodology...because if you don't take into account the considerable, I mean, really it all boils down to the fact that...in fact, it may be THE most important fact, unless of course you count....but of course you couldn't count that before you considered, but anyway, ..." And on and on he goes, never really saying anything at all.

We seemed to have our own version of this going on at the meeting. "I think we really all have to step back and consider...I mean, just coming from my own personal experience, and granted that's been at several different universities...but really the criteria hasn't really... what I mean to say is that the language...or perhaps if you prefer, the guidelines...because before we can really debate that, we need to understand several....I mean, there are relationships we have to account for that delve further back than..."

and on and on and on. Word up.

-- Virgil