INTERESTING
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James Joyner | Monday, January 12, 2004 |
Will Baude passes along a quotation from a book he’s skimming:
Under the old scholarly method was constantly under correction; one’s mental knuckles, so to speak, smarted continuously. Today, by contrast, I suspect that the typical experience of a student in an English university is of a sort of matey neutrality: “Yes, that’s very interesting,” says the tutor: a dreadful word, that “interesting.” Iago would have used it, if it had been available in Shakespeare’s time. One of the advantages of being told when you are wrong is that you gradually build up a sense of what it might mean to be right. — A.D. Nuttall, Dead From The Waist Down
I’m particularly amused by this because of the commentary on the word “interesting” rather than the actual meaning of the excerpt (although I tend to agree with that sentiment as well).
“Interesting” is a word that often comprises the entirety of the commentary on blog posts:
So-and-so says such and such. Interesting.
It’s a frequent device here on OTB as well, useful for when the quotation speaks for itself, of course, but also when I really don’t have a lot to add or know what to write about it. I don’t necessarily intend to stop this practice, merely to note it.
Update (2132): As to the issue of pedagogy, I would note that I seldom used the “interesting” device in my professorial days. Both my then-colleague Steven Taylor and I used what became a catch-phrase, “not so much,” to signal to students that their response to the question, while certainly appreciated, could use some polishing.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.
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Yes, I believe that it is illegal nowadays to correct a student. Interesting.
Yes, and I really dislike it when a professor writes "good" on a paper, or "nice" at different places. WTF? Tell me *what's* good or nice. I've done it myself before, and it's just a way to say: "this isn't chopped liver, but it's not up to snuff. Since I don't have the time or the inclination to really point out what's wrong with it, you get 'nice'."
Bryan,
Nice comment. Good.
Dr. Lemon,
Not so much the giving-up-blogging.
--LMA (who should by now be getting points for persistence, if nothing else)
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