An Analogy for the Academe

As technology advances, the world turns flat and time becomes a coveted commodity. Acronyms and abbreviations become the norm world-round, but only certain ones have any commonality within the niche communities that use them. This is problematic. I noticed this first, years ago, when I saw a PSA concerning parental awareness about children chatting online. The commercial informed parents to get educated about their children’s e-activities and the danger of online predators. It listed a number of acronyms and their meaning: LOL (laugh out loud), other commonly known ones; but the final acronym was POS (parents over shoulder).

Woah, I thought. Since when did POS get turned into some covert signal to online friends to be on alert? I’m pretty positive everyone still thinks it means “piece of sh*t” and that no child has ever warned some predator to censor himself because the parents are looking over the kid’s shoulder. But like I said, it got me thinking.

Being active online for well over a decade has given me insight into niche community language. In order to keep afloat in the raging torrent of time sinks, every online community resorts to using acronyms or abbreviations unique to their topic matter; the brevity of communication is a life preserver. The subject matter of an MMORPG, for example, demands hundreds of acronyms/abbreviations: from the typically recognizable conversational to the esoteric and game-related. It is not uncommon to see entire conversational exchanges made in acronyms and abbreviations: “LF2M lock war 25man VoA” is a clear, concise meaning to somebody who plays World of Warcraft. To others, it is coded jibberish.

But the academe has a parallel, not in acronyms and abbreviations necessarily, but in scholarly discourse. To somebody outside the field of English, hearing two intellectuals discussing postmodernism versus poststructuralism as it pertains to Foucault would be as alien as reading the trade channel in WoW (assuming they didn’t play the game). As teachers, if we can create this analogy and utilize it effectively for our students, using whatever niche communities they may be familiar with, we can demystify some of the intrigue surrounding academic discourse and make them comfortable with approaching it. The secret to understanding is in the language.