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Archive 1Archive 2

Original Logorrhoea article talk archive

This is an archive of the original Talk:Logorrhoea, which was a mishmash of linguistic and psychology/neurology discussion, because the article needed to be split. The split was performed 16 January 2010. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 14:03, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

What to do with this page?

OK, it's time to talk turkey on this article. As I wrote the bit on mental health I don't have an objective view on it, so if anyone would like to critique it please go ahead. As for the paragraph "logorrhoea as a description of rhetoric", my personal inclination is to remove all of it save something like "The word logorrhoea may be used pejoratively to describe prose that uses long words yet makes little sense." At present there are several rather jarring sentences, e.g.:

"Since abstract writing is hard to visualize, it often seems as though it makes no sense and all the words are excessive" I don't think this sentence makes sense.

"Writers in academic fields that concern themselves mostly with the abstract, such as philosophy and especially postmodernism" Is there a study of postmodernism? I agree that many people throw that word around at inappropriate times, but that could be within media studies, sociology, politics, history, whatever you like really.

"The widespread expectation that scholarly works in these fields will look at first glance like nonsense" As someone's pointed out, I see no references for this widespread expectation.

"Several computer programs have been made that can generate texts resembling the styles of these fields but which are actually nonsensical. A physics professor even had such an essay published in a respected journal as a practical joke. See Sokal Affair." I think this is about the only important point made here, but surely that's covered in the Sokal affair article itself. That and some external links should suffice, but the quality needs tidying up.

I'd be interested to hear what other people think before I start deleting stuff, I'm off to add in a properly referenced bit of material which I read a few weeks ago... --PaulWicks 16:57, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I rather like the prescriptionist text, but this may be a function of the fact that it expresses a view that I have deep sympathy for. I tend to agree that the use of logorrhea as a fancy synonym for bullshit might be separable, but I'd like to see most of it kept. I can start to find sources that describe this usage. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 17:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like diarrhoea

According to one person....
[unsigned]

No-one cares.
Don't clutter talk pages.
Please.
Lunakeet —Preceding comment was added at 14:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
That's actually the entire point of the word, as I thought the article made pretty clear. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 13:47, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Strategy

I think that saying "strategy" is a symptom of logorrhoea is like saying that being human is a symptom of logorrhoea. Marketroidspeak ("...a strategic initiative to provide action items and bring your game to the next level") is certainly a terrible use of language, but "In some sense, every game has a strategy that is a Nash equilibrium" is the best possible way of saying what it says, any vulgarization would take away from the precision of that statement.

In fact, one sees that the examples of logorrhoea quoted from literature in the article are very, very far from a simple list of "symptomatic words." After reading this article, the reader might thing the word list is a shitlist to be avoided at all costs, which is completely false.

I would suggest removing the list of words, since in my field (mathematics) that list is so completely impertinent as to be in fact false, and the opposite of reality. When we use words such as "strategy" in mathematics, we really mean it, we're not just using it to write some CEO's speech.

If you want to discourage people from abusing english in market-driven team players who have power lunches with go people and yes men, then say so, but don't mislead everyone else into thinking that "dialogue" and "resonance" are devoid of meaning and just sound cool.

-- Loisel 03:58 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Removed this:

Symptoms of academic or quasi-academic logorrhoea include regular use of one or more of the following terms or phrases (the list is far from exhaustive):

  • In terms of
  • Impact on
  • Indicate that
  • Engage with
  • Notions of
  • Issues around
  • Both... but also...
  • Strategy
  • Resonance
  • Hegemony
  • Dialogue
  • Conversation (in the sense of dialogue)
  • (Members of) the X community (logorrhoetes do not say "academics", "scientists", "soldiers", "punks" etc. Instead they say "(members of) the academic/scientific/military/punk etc community".)
  • Optimal(ly)
  • Maximal(ly)
  • Proactive
  • Impactive

-- Loisel 02:37 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Having written the section on mental health I disagree with the rest of the article. Especially the idea that "logorrhoea" is "often used perjoratively". I guess I just haven't been arguing with the right nerds, but I've never heard it used in this way. "Verbal diahorea" perhaps or "excess verbiage", but a lot of this article is sub-par. --PaulWicks 11:15, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

NPOV

Removed as highly POV:

Examples of logorrhoea can be found in the work of the following writers (the list is again far from exhaustive):

- Montréalais 15:28 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

It seems this article still suffers from being fundamentally an attack on abstract writers. And once that is removed, it becomes little more than a definition and some examples. Is that even worth having? -- Nohat 21:45, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree, mainly because "unnecessary usage of words" can differ greatly from one person to the next, especially if one is not used to reading "abstract" works. A definition and examples warrant an article. However it still needs some further NPOV work. - Dejitarob 03:14, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The page is probably worth having, IMV, if improved. Pleonasm links here, and would probably not benefit from examples on-page. Why is the NPOV flag still on the page, two weeks now? What is still in dispute? --NathanHawking 01:51, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)
I initially thought the section on Orwell was criticizing his statement as an example of logorrhoea, but he was just giving an example of it. I reworded the section a bit for clarity. - Dejitarob 05:07, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

lame examples

the last two are MEGA-LAME

You could also say that, "I am of the opinion that the final brace of examples given in the list above are highly deficient in terms of quality; in fact, I believe that they are exceptionally unimpressive, to the millionth degree." As for the article, I too am dubious about the sentences on academic writing, not so much for the sentiment but because they are unreferenced and come across as an original observation. It is noticeable that the "References" section is blank. On the other hand I am thankful that this article has not attracted the kind of awful, cringe-making student-type humour whereby the article is written in the style of the condition it describes. -Ashley Pomeroy 10:08, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed the second external link down 'This Day in Paradigms' was missing when I tried it. I'm not too sure whether it's just temporary, but if anyone has the same problem and is so able and inclined to remove the link, it would probably be for the best. -- Mattscarth 17:57 04 Jan 2005 (GMT)

How-to

Maybe someone should write a section on how to write logorrhoea. I'm sure a lot of students would want to know this, to extend their papers and reports, and to look smarter.

Good job, could use improvement

218.102.35.111 13:25, 22 May 2006 (UTC)(Edward G. Nilges)

The problem with using Saint George (Orwell) as an anti-logorreah champion is that if you actually READ 1984, you find that the Party is trying to eliminate words from the Newspeak lexicon. Orwell, to be sure, was a critic of bullshit complex speech such as thug Communism uses to cover up massacre, but here, his conclusions were NOT based on the mere syntactical form of speech, but on the ordered pair (words, behavior).

You can't understand why Communist speech was bullshit until you understand that the Reds helped lose the Spanish Civil War by spending more time on ideological correctness than fighting Franco, and assassinating their enemies literally and metaphorically. You can't understand why Commies spouted bullshit until you know that they systematically murdered the Polish elite in a bitter wood in the Second Partition of Poland.

Orwell's central complaint was against bullshit whether simple or complex. Whether a given document is logorreah requires a substantive investigation of the goddamn facts, not sitting back and pompously havering about "simple English".

Whereas sincerity goes a long way to making apparent logorreah the real thing. Jacques Derrida, in using language, realized that an honest and sincere philosopher will continually and in real time reflect that he is thinking about thinking in a recursive fashion and as such should (in something at least metaphorically like a complex recursive program) cover what seems the same ground in what to an ignorant English-speaking journo is "logorreah".

I am heartened to see how Wikipedians see through ruling-class talk of "logorreah" that is at base an attempt to enforce a sumptuary law of language, in which the nonelite can't use big words, so that Tony Blair can bullshit the rest of us.

What a fine example. --PaulWicks 14:13, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Pedally Operated Humus Redistribution Device

I'm sorry to not replace the example with something better... maybe I ought to just try and think of something? Anyway the point is I wanted to say that this is not a good example of the technique of "translation" (as it were) being discussed, simply because it translates the proverb word for word - the resulting statement makes no sense. - 61.9.204.168

There, I replaced it with something slightly better. 61.9.204.168 08:38, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

The benefits of being concise

Man I don't know about this study but the example given is really inadequate. If the study only demonstrates that using inferior synonyms in place of certain words creates a sense of a lack of intelligence among readers, then the study says absolutely nothing about being concise. That's not what concise means. Personally, I would suggest the removal of this section altogether. 61.9.204.168 08:38, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

And one more thing

At the risk of making myself look stupid, I'd just like to say that I also think this article attacks abstract and educated language. Just because you don't have the ability to speak in an educated manner doesn't mean you ought to get angry about it. Your problem is not logorrhea but condescension. Take your anger out on someone else please. 61.9.204.168 08:41, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Irony within this topic

Without getting too circular and philosophical, i would like to ask if anyone else has noticed the irony of concision versus logorrhoea as a linguistic issue coupelled with Chomsky's apparent logorrhoea. This becomes doubly ironic when he rants about the uselessness of concision -- if i remember the video on which i saw this speech, i will certainly post it. That aside, i find this article quite amusing, but found it rather than finding information on the term for such phrases as "almost positive". elle 05:42, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Definitely feel free to improve the article! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

The benefits of being concise

Does anyone else feel the section is very opinionated? "Whilst some authors may feel that writing with long and obscure words gives them the appearance of greater intelligence" for example seems to (pretty directly) say, "If you use big words, you're a pompous fake" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ClickForth (talk • contribs) 03:28, 31 March 2007 (UTC).

Did a partial revert on your change, as I felt it went much farther than necessary to make your point (kept other changes because they made the point very well, esp. w/r/t "whilst"). — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 08:29, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes Prime Minister

I don't think that this quote actually says what it is being said it says. At no point does it mention anything relating to a key, it merely talks about restrictions. Surely the real meaning is "I don't like a locked door being there". I feel this quote, while a good example of the subject, could be replaced by a better one which requires less outside explanation. mattbuck 12:00, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The point is that there is a door between two adjoining buildings (No 10 and the Cabinet Office, to be precise). The Cabinet Secretary used to have a key to that door, but fell into temporary disgrace for intruding on conversations the PM would rather have kept confidential, especially from Sir Humphrey. So the key was taken.
I agree that some context is required to understand the situation referred to in the example, but the logorrhea aspect does get across. Chrullrich 20:23, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Language Wars and Medicine?

Perhaps, the field of societal disorders directs our attention to intellective concerns as it lacks the physical concreteness (the body) with which medicine, classically, concerned itself. Medicine always operates -- so I would say -- upon the body, as a fixed term of reference. Medicine is not, in this sense, concerned with spiritual matters of the alleged soul that a being may have.

Societal disorders concern the soul, the conflicts of souls. Analogically, perhaps, some say that language properly builds from concrete foundations towards universalized abstractions. Hence, in that view, a statement is meaningful when it can be reduced; otherwise, it might be nonsense.

Even accepting that view, though, does not dispose of the question of human values: how should we (precisely, you or I) value nonsense among all the many concerns that may occupy our lives? To what value thesis is nonsense antithetical? I'd say, one parse is this: "man works and plays" -- with work being necessary and play an optional joy. Bodies may find work satisfying but souls aim to enjoy life (or its consequences).

We can see examples of the primacy of values, in action, according to the uses to which the pattern of "nonsense" is put, above, in the various discussion elements appended to this very topic, of "logorrhoea". One rhetorical ploy in the Language Wars, a battlefield of the eternal Culture Wars, aims to undermine its perceived opponents by reputational attack in the technique of validation. Propositionally, if a disliked group of speakers can be shown to use a speech pattern that can be successfully portrayed as "invalid" in some sense, then (so it is claimed) the contents of their speeches may be ignored, as valueless (ie, nonsensical), regardless of whether what they may happen to be saying is true or false, meaningful or not, and so on.

Why does such a rhetorical attack work? I speculate that it is easier to attack the form than the substance (speech content) of what someone says. Parody is, most commonly, a form of put-down, and not a form for praising others. In parody, we see a representation that has been somewhat intentionally distorted, but not so much or so far as to lie beyond the superficial familiarity of every resemblance.

Sokal, for instance, might think his parody of some post-modern writing a successful put-down because he was able to have it published, by pretending to be an author with serious intentions and substantial qualifications. However, if we value free speech and accept the usual indicia of competent testimonial trustworthiness, for what reason should any editor have rejected his manuscript? In effect, Sokal says, "What I wrote was 'nonsense', compared to any true beliefs and similar suspicions of the truth that I may happen to have." He places blame upon the editors, particularly, and upon the "school" of postmodernism, more generally, for failing to detect that he was lying, about his beliefs.

But, is the success of a liar sufficient and proper evidence, or not, that an editor, a publication, or a school is to be disbelieved, in their entireties? The sad fact would be, even referreed "scientific" journals, presumably favored by Sokal, have been successfully deceived by good liars, faking observations and data. Truths, as post-modernists might say, have intertwined double edge to them -- one of form and one of content -- and both can be imitated, by clever person. Hence, we often turn beyond indices of truth, in some fields of professional publications, to more subtle questions of trust and trustworthiness -- why should we think a man intends to deceive us? When should we think that a man is acting like Sokal, intent on causing us harm?

If the post-modern school learned anything from the Sokal'ed experience, that moral should be one that is tinged with distrust and suspicion.

Similarly, abstractions are not issues, nor is concision an issue -- these terms are merely subterfuges for proper arguments. Yet, parody will play upon the abstract signs of the less familiar and the more difficult. To this end, the rolling-stone-gathering-no-moss example involves a parody. The parody simply shows that a longer string of words may always, per definition itself, be substituted for some shorter and more sensible strong of words. Yet, the begged question of any and every proposed redaction or editorial reduction is how some alleged concision (against some alleged abstraction) serves the conflicting purposes that may distinguish and even characterize a writer and a reader. Some people favor the ornate; some do not.

The questions of sense and nonsense, of work and play, involve such issues of value as these. The Language-Culture wars have and should have no synthesis, perhaps, except in those truces, we knowingly make, as necessary, and diligently honor, enjoying our souls. 216.165.158.169 19:28, 9 November 2007 (UTC)DL EMERICK

"he was able to have it published by pretending to be an author with serious intentions and substantial qualifications" - as I understand it, he submitted the article under his own name, as himself, with his own qualifications and telephone number etc.[1] By publishing it, the editors at "Social Text" at best showed themselves to be slipshod, and at worse demonstrated that their entire oeuvre was just a lot of stylistic flash, with no underlying substance. Like Adam Ant. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 23:30, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Has anyone else noticed that it's next to impossible to find this page? It's impossible to spell it accurately, so I can never google it. Is there anything we can do to fix this, b/c this is a really really interesting article. Paskari (talk) 13:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

It's probably for the best. The article isn't the greatest illustration of Wikipedia's strengths. The bulk of it is about rhetoric, and reads like one person's essay; it has no sources. The description of the Sokal Affair is oversimplified to the point of being wrong. The medical section has some sources - good work, that man - but it's only three paragraphs long. And the article finishes with one of those "see also" lists that doesn't explain why the reader would want to see any of the entries. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 23:14, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Too many examples

It's a bit embarrassing that this article provides far more example than are necessary for the average reader to understand the concept and then follows them with a section called The Benefits of Being Concise. I know its fun to come up with examples, but 2 or 3 is enough. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.107.236.253 (talk) 09:09, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, thank you. --PaulWicks (talk) 15:00, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

UNFG

The link http://www.unfg.org/ directs to an Islamic website which is irrelevant and somewhat seems like religious propaganda —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.179.177.170 (talk) 12:47, 28 September 2009

Removed. The first line there claims the site has been hacked. Hopefully they get it fixed eventually. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal (old)

Resolved
 – Unclear which merge proposal was under discussion.

Merge proposal to Logorrhoea (linguistics)

This has been pending for about three months now. Going once, going twice... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 09:07, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Merge proposals

Merge proposal from Wordiness

  • Oppose Wordiness is a subject within writing. Dreamdissolve (talk) 20:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC) However, I agree that it WAS a stub. I have added sufficient content, and in fact am directing students to the page as a resource.

Merge proposal from Prolixity

Merge proposal from Grandiloquence

I concur. Provided that it was given its own section with the political instances, I think it would fit well into the article on Logorrhoea. Metaphilosopher (talk) 09:01, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I do not support the merge. I Wikipedia quickly educated me on the word I needed to know (grandiloquence) and was a top Google search result. I wouldn't want to wade through a longer page on Logorrhoea to find that information. I simply suggest a See Also link to Logorrhoea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.96.146 (talk) 21:31, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
  • Conditional support - These articles obviously need to be merged, but 'logorrhoea' is the most derogatory of the three words and thus should be avoided as a title. We should instead merge to verbosity.   — C M B J   08:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal to Logorrhoea (linguistics)

Merge proposal to Logorrhoea (linguistics)

Why the hell does verbosity redirect here??

Verbosity is not the same thing as prolixity. But if it were, it would be the preferred term for the article. Ridiculous. 24.199.122.123 (talk) 05:53, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

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