To ask about contemporary academic lingo bingo

[GodAgainstAll]

Just started my thesis having not read a book in over a decade…wrote the word ‘agency’ which was de rigueur when I did my masters a good 15 years ago and wondered if it’s now a bit passe? ‘foreground’ was another one. Deconstructing….etc. For those who have been in academia for a long time, what are the concepts/words that are getting bandied about (rightly or wrongly) now? I’m curious if times have changed.

@Copen I was about to contribute ontological too, from DH's MA proofread 15 years ago: also, liminal and heuristic. I think eschatologies (plural) got in there too somehow.

I want "chthonic" to become an academic buzzword, I can think of about 5 ways it could be used to confuse and obfuscate...

.....Lived experience as discerned through extensive interactions with patient / stakeholder groups....

Edit... even better.

.....Lived experience as discerned through extensive, semi structured conversations between key members of the investigative team and patient stakeholder groups....

Don’t think I’ve seen it appear yet………. In my working sphere I hear a lot about the fact we’re all about the “deep dive” into topics and making sure we understand and can convey the “narrative”.

Up there with 'my truth'.

So glad I did a STEM PhD.

<high fives Eleganz>

While STEM departments are not immune to the nonsense over in the humanities building there is enough cynicism that you can still point and laugh.

.....in order to ensure that out impact targets were being fully and rigorously implemented, key members of the investigative team sought to understand the effects of these policy shifts upon the lived experience of the target population. This was achieved using a semi structured protocol to guide conversations between key investigators and a number of differentvstakeholder groups. The outputs from these interactions were then subject to formal analysis using protocols detailed elsewhere, and the results of this analysis used to populate a database that was securely maintained under conditions that accorded with the Helsinki accords.

....wondering why I retired now. I could produce page after page of this shit...!

Edit....I did a STEM PhD but ended up in public health / education at the end of my career.

@Xiaoxiong ooh, nice one. I'm holding out for 'omphaloi' (plural). In Scrabble and in day-to-day academic wankery.

Don't you mean "people who identified as members of patient stakeholder groups"? C'mon now!

Hybridity felt like it was becoming a thing for a while but I don't know if it stuck around.

I confess to liking both liminality and paradigm to the extent that I'll use them in everyday conversation but I'm usually just talking to the walls so it's ok. Also very much like chthonic and will ramp up my use.

How 'bout....
Caledonian Antisyzygy
I dare you to say it 10 times as fast as you can.

I'm a sociologist and have been for 20 years. All these 'new' terms in here have been pretty commonplace for at least as long as I've been around. So nothing really new. I think that it's just the people who seem to be so irked about them weren't even aware of what was going on in academia 20 years ago, probably because some of them were still in primary school.

The only thing I've found people really using a lot in the last 5 years is 'sense checking' but I don't think that's specific to academia. My neighbour (not an academic) came to 'sense check' with me about the otter situation in the river the other week.

As a new-again student, what I would say has changed is expectations about plagiarism and use of AI. Since you were a student last, there is now a lot more emphasis placed on checking student work for plagiarism (using TurnItIn), which we didn't do back in the dark ages. There is also increasingly AI being used in education and also by students to generate written work. Do check your universities policies about this and their expectations because they are changing rapidly and you want to make sure you aren't caught out. Otherwise, not much new in terms of language use I wouldn't think. I'm laughing at all the terms everyone is suggesting are 'new' just because they never heard them before it became questionable to be 'woke'.

I almost forgot....paradigm shifting

If any wants a REAL laugh, I suggest you check out the book by Francis Wheen, "How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World" - especially the chapter called "The Demolition Merchants is Reality (in reference to post-modern theory).

Some of it is a bit too high level for me, but that chapter I revisit every few years to enjoy some laughs to the point of tears rolling down my face.

Swirling hog wash indeed.