Re: <nettime> The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage

["Benjamin Geer" <benjamin.geer@gmail.com>]

On 30/01/2008, ruth weismann <weismann.ruth@gmail.com> wrote:

> the idea of a dictionary of "standardized inter-bred vernacular" is
> very interesting! Just in general, concerning theory, I also quite
> sometimes have the feeling that certain expressions are just used but
> don't mean anything at all.

I think you can find this phenomenon in journalism, political speeches
and bureaucratic language as well as academic and activist language.
I think it happens when the writer really isn't interested in what
they're saying, doesn't know what they want to say, or isn't really
allowed to say anything, but wants it to sound important anyway.  I
call it "blahblah".  For a while now, I've thinking that there should
be a field of study devoted to it, and I've been imagining launching a
Journal of Blahblah Studies, which could publish articles with titles
like:

"Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Quantitative Blahblah Studies: A
Longitudinal Approach"

"When Harry Met Blahblah: Liminal Performativity in the Logosphere of
Bureaucratic Blahblah"

"Blurred Genres and Fuzzy Identities: Foundational Blahblographic
Issues in the Study of Journalists' Note-Taking Strategies"

Ben


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org