In the article “On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo—Profound Bullshit,” Pennycook uses words that cause the readers to have difficulty understanding his article. My first time reading the article, I could not interpret the specific words that Pennycook uses in his reading and it is still difficult for me to understand some of his jargon. In order to interpret the special words, I had to read the article several times in order to have an idea of what the article was about. One thing that really helped me understand jargon was to write the words or phrases in a list, and then to look for the definition of each. In my experience, reading these types of articles require more than one reading, to look for definitions and try to apply the best one in order to grasp all the information. Additionally, noticing the concepts of the reading makes the jargon more understandable. When we are writing a specific piece of work, it has to be written with specific terminology. The terminology that we are going to use depends on what the article that we are writing is about. For example, if it is going to be a research about the worst diseases in the world, the research would have to include medical terminology. Having the correct terminology is important because it is part of the structure of the writing, and adds to the article’s authority.
If an author is writing a piece of writing, the author should know the audience that they are targeting. For example, if a scientist is writing an article and his audience are non-scientists, the scientist should apply an explanation of all the jargon that he uses. The way in which Pennycook attempts to solve the problem of jargon in his paper is by defining some of the jargon that he used. For example, the article talks about bullshit. In order for the readers to understand what “bullshit” is, in his terminology he provided some definitions of bullshit such as “something that is designed to impress.” To boost the audience understanding, he also provided examples to help understand bullshit statements by using buzzwords.
He might have employed this approach of defining and navigating jargon to appeal to more people. By defining his jargon, he makes his writing more accessible to a broader audience. Pennycook acknowledges that the more jargon he uses, the less people outside of the specific community can read it. If writing is easier to read, it is more accepted. However, his use of jargon also shows that he is extremely knowledgeable on the subject.
Pennycook’s failures as a writer can inform my progress as an author because I would try my best to make my writing understandable for any group of people. One of the things that make his writing complicated for the majority of people is the complicated tables. The tables that he used in his article have a lot of complex statistics and for that reason people might not understand them. The majority of the people that can understand these tables are those who have a deep understanding of statistics. I am going to take this as an example of what not to do in my writing, because if I am writing an experiment paper, one of my goals is to make my paper understandable for every person. His successes can inform my progress as an author because I can apply the organization that he used to make my experiment paper detailed and comprehensible.
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