A long time ago, I started writing a post about what words are overused in graduate school. I ran into two problems: 1) most of the words were overly specific to literary studies 2) I learned that these words are actually useful, which was kind of disappointing.
Here's the dilemma. If someone uses a word (let's say, "peanut") and then says, "I mean that in the Hegelian sense," I kind of want that person to punch him/herself in the face.* The problem is that if you know what it means for something to be meant in the "Hegelian sense" then you realize that they were saying something rather specific (In the case of "peanut" it wouldn't make sense, and I would get to laugh at them, thus removing the need for self-inflicted face punching). In graduate school, it's also difficult to know that people are using basic words in the same way you would use them (As in, "I sure hope you're not saying 'peanut' in some obscure sense of the word**). So, if you use words with more specific meanings, you're actually being helpful to people around you... most of the time. It's hard to be mad at people who are trying to be helpful.
All of that aside, here is my list of the top three words that are overused and yet annoyingly useful:
- ontology/ontological: inquiry into the natures of being itself/something that speculates about the nature of being (often used to describe a bold claim about something definitely existing, like "goodness")
- telos/teleological: the goal of a goal-oriented process/something that is headed for a specific goal (math problems and political campaigns are usually teleological, but literary criticism and scientific inquiry often don't have a telos unless you count the rather broad goals of knowledge and insight)
- epistemology/epistemological: the study of how we know things or comes to know them/relating to the study of knowledge or the process of obtaining knowledge (philosophers, psychologists, and educators are deeply interested in epistemology whether or not they use the word)
Although this has all been my way of communicating a little bit about what my grad school existence is like, we don't actually spend any time defining these words, we're just expected to pick them up along the way. I hope you didn't mind reading that.
* Being a largely non-violent person, I don't like to imagine myself punching people in face, but I'm totally okay with them hitting themselves.
** I think this is hilaaarious.
