bUlLsH!t

I thought it would be appropriate to give the article, "A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing" by Eubanks and Schaeffer its very own post. Immediately, before even reading the article, I thought about a PowerPoint presentation I listened to last year on the first day of my English 105 class. My professor, Mr. Carleton, displayed every profane word you could think of on a slide with animation of the words coming at the viewer. His intention was not to offend anyone, but for everyone in the class to realize how the power that language can indeed offend. After all, the point he made was that a word is simply just a word and every factor from society to context is how words (and language as a whole for that matter) carry any bit of significance and communication value.

The start of the article immediately outlines the weight of context that the word "bullshit" has and I had an "ahah!" moment with the connection I just mentioned above.

I loved how Eubanks and Schaeffer use an abundance of examples to really convey this notion. They go on to explain academic bullshit versus prototypical bullshit and the varying degrees of quality that "bullshit" may have. That said, I found it a bit confusing to follow what exactly the authors were trying to argue...Perhaps this is because they were referencing an essay about bullshit by another author, Harry Frankfurt.

Nevertheless, the main message I took away from this article was that as writers, we tend to conform to the audience, the task at hand, or the assignment. But regardless, we must also keep in mind the advantages and disadvantages of doing so and thus channel that into a better production of our work.

And here's a quote from that article to take away and further reflect upon:
"...we have to investigate not whether academic writing is consider to be bullshit but whether or not prototypical academic writing is considered to be prototypical bullshit--and in whose estimation" (Eubanks and Schaeffer, 381)