Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the International Academy of Business Disciplines (IABD) conference in St. Louis. I was a contributor on a paper that was accepted for their publication and we were invited to present at the conference. As I was flipping through the program searching for other talks we would like to attend I was reminded of a question I’ve had since returning to the academic world – Why do they talk that way?

Has anyone else in the IMC program had this experience? I normally don’t have problems reading and understanding my textbook. I appreciate and enjoy the extra assigned articles. They are normally written by journalists in business publications. They really bring to life the practical aspects of the theories we are studying. Then I sit down, ready to read the stack of assigned academic journal articles. And that’s when I run into that foreign language – Academicese. My eyes glass over, I read and reread the same sentences over and over, I may nod off (we’re all lacking sleep) and struggle to finish. And mostly I feel like ?

Why is this? Almost a year into the program and I still feel like a foreigner. Sure, I’ll sneak big esoteric words into my papers and posts once in a while, but to a much smaller extent. Some words are exactly what they are and can’t be reworded. But that is not what I’m talking about. In general it seems descriptions and phrasing is intentionally overly complicated. Are these words necessary for meaning?

One talk at the conference was about “Punctuated Casual Textures: A Rejoiner.” I spent a good five or ten minutes reviewing the title and description trying to figure out what it was about. Eventually I gave up and attended a talk I at least understood “Transforming yourself into a more valuable organizational member.” Days later spending more time with that talk and after consulting my dictionary, I’ve translated that original talk into “Emphasis Caused By Distinctive Characteristics.” By studying the symposium descriptions more carefully I believe the “Rejoiner” part is about joining together reviewers’ suggestions to the author’s theories proposed in previous articles. Yet the description says that their “Rejoiner” argues that those “joined” suggestions reflect a “cross level fallacy.” Are you following me? (I’m not). After failing to locate the original journal article on EBSCO Host I’ve given up for now. Instead, I decided to conduct a non-scientific survey of top business academic journals and put together a fictional journal article title of esoteric terms:
Reflections on the Pros and Cons of Explorative, Effectual Empirics Implications Frameworks for Fuzzy Models in Interfirm Relational Drivers of Disciplinary Systemic Bias in Internationalizing Nascent Fields with Affective Need Knowledge Utilization of Tertiary Followership and Contextual, Contingency Relationships Punctuated by Cross Level Fallacies, Boundary Objects and Regression Analysis: A Rejoiner.

I know I am not being fair by stringing them all together, but it does make a point. I’ve spent a career simplifying and explaining: “translating” a client’s complicated industry jargon into something understandable and appealing to their target. So who is the target in these academic journals? Who is translating their insight and knowledge to the business person? Besides advancing education, shouldn’t business and communication schools be leading the way in advancing business and communication practices? Are we just talking to ourselves? Is that okay?

What are the best selling business books doing? A recent Fast Company article reported the results of a study that applied standard reading-level assessment formulas to some of the most popular management texts. Fish! and Good to Great both tested at an 8th grade level with Who Moved My Cheese? testing at a 7th grade level. Am I missing something? I searched the Internet to see if there are official reading levels above “College Level (13)” and could not find a reference to a “Masters Degree” or “Ph.D. reading level.”

So what does this all mean? I don’t know. I guess that leaves us graduate students stuck in the middle. Somedays I feel squeezed and other days I feel pulled. What’s your view on pedagogy, I mean style of teaching?

Thanks, Keith