Hot air
空話連篇
Academic writing is getting harder to read—the humanities most of all
學術文章日益晦澀難懂——尤以人文領域為甚
Academics have long been accused of jargon-filled writing that is impossible to understand. A recent cautionary tale was that of Ally Louks, a researcher who set off a social media storm with an innocuous post on X celebrating the completion of her PhD.
學術界長期以來一直備受指責，因其學術文章充斥著專業術語，顯得晦澀難懂。最近的一個警示案例是艾莉·盧克斯的親身經歷。她作為一名研究人員，在X社交媒體平臺上釋出了一篇慶祝自己完成博士學位的無傷大雅的帖子，卻不料引發了軒然大波。
If it was Ms Louks’s research topic (“olfactory ethics”—the politics of smell) that caught the attention of online critics, it was her verbose thesis abstract that further provoked their ire. In two weeks, the post received more than 21,000 retweets and 100m views.
如果說盧克斯的研究課題——“嗅覺倫理”（即氣味的政治）引起了網路批評者的關注，那麼她冗長的論文摘要則無疑進一步點燃了他們的怒火。短短兩週內，這篇帖子被轉發了超過2.1萬次，瀏覽量更是達到了1億次。
Although the abuse directed at Ms Louks reeked of misogyny and anti-intellectualism—which she admirably shook off—the reaction was also a backlash against an academic use of language that is removed from normal life.
儘管盧克斯遭受了充斥著厭女和反智言論的猛烈抨擊——但她並未讓這些負面言論影響到自己——然而，這種激烈反應實則折射出公眾對脫離正常生活的學術用語的強烈不滿。
Inaccessible writing is part of the problem. Research has become harder to read, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Though authors may argue that their work is written for expert audiences, much of the general public suspects that some academics use gobbledygook to disguise the fact that they have nothing useful to say. The trend towards more opaque prose hardly allays this suspicion.
晦澀難懂的寫作風格，正是問題的癥結所在。尤其在人文和社會科學領域的研究中，閱讀體驗愈發費力。儘管作者可能會辯解稱，他們的作品是專為專家讀者而著，但廣大公眾普遍懷疑，一些學者利用晦澀難懂的語言來掩蓋他們實則言之無物的事實。而學術文章日益晦澀難懂的趨勢，更是難以消除這種懷疑。
To track academic writing over time, The Economist analysed 347,000 PhD abstracts published between 1812 and 2023. The dataset was produced by the British Library and represents a majority of English-language doctoral theses awarded by British universities.
為了深入追蹤學術寫作的演變歷程，《經濟學人》分析了1812年至2023年間發表的34.7萬篇博士論文摘要。這些資料均源自大英圖書館，代表了英國大學頒發的大部分英文博士論文。
We reviewed each abstract using the Flesch reading-ease test, which measures sentence and word length to gauge readability. A score of 100 roughly indicates passages can be understood by someone who has completed fourth grade in America (usually aged 9 or 10), while a score lower than 30 is considered very difficult to read. An average New York Times article scores around 50 and a CNN article around 70. This article scores 41.
我們採用了弗萊士閱讀難度測試來審閱每篇摘要，該測試透過衡量句子和單詞的長度來評估文章的可讀性。其中，100分大致相當於美國四年級孩子（通常為9-10歲）就能理解的文章難度，而低於30分則意味著文章難度極高，難以閱讀。值得注意的是，《紐約時報》文章的平均得分約為50分，CNN文章的平均得分則約為70分。而本文的評分則為41分。
From “asymmetric allylation of aldehydes” to “pneumatological and apocalyptically eschatological foundations”, PhD abstracts had an unmistakably scholarly aroma. We found that, in every discipline, the abstracts have become harder to read over the past 80 years.
從“醛的不對稱烯丙基化”到“神學與末世論的啟示性基礎”， 博士論文摘要無不散發著濃厚的學術氣息。研究結果顯示，在過去80年裡，各個學科的摘要都呈現出愈發難讀的趨勢。
The shift is most stark in the humanities and social sciences (see chart), with average Flesch scores falling from around 37 in the 1940s to 18 in the 2020s. From the 1990s onwards, those fields went from being substantially more readable than the natural sciences—as you might expect—to as complicated. Ms Louks’s abstract had a reading-ease rating of 15, still more readable than a third of those analysed in total.
這種轉變在人文科學和社會科學中尤為顯著，弗萊士閱讀難度測試的平均分數從1940年代的37分左右下降至2020年代的18分。自20世紀90年代起，這些領域曾一度比自然科學更具可讀性（正如人們普遍期望的那樣），然而如今卻變得愈發複雜。盧克斯的論文摘要閱讀難度數值為15，即便如此，它仍比總數中三分之一的摘要更易讀。
Other studies of academic writing have similar findings: scientific jargon and acronyms are on the rise. The blame does not fall solely on authors. Specialisation and advances in technology require more precise terminology and a doctoral thesis often covers some of the most obscure research topics.
其他關於學術寫作的研究同樣得出了類似的結論：科學術語和縮寫的使用愈發頻繁。這不能完全歸咎於作者。專業化和技術進步確實需要更精確的術語，而博士論文往往涉及一些最為晦澀的研究課題。
With millions of views, Ms Louks might lay claim to one of the most-read PhD abstracts of all time. She has since posted, “I love that I have somehow equipped everyone with new terminology and frameworks!” But surging interest in olfactory ethics aside, the trend towards illegible academic writing stinks. Clear prose would be a breath of fresh air.
盧克斯的博士論文摘要被數百萬人瀏覽，或許已成為有史以來閱讀量最高的博士論文摘要之一。她後來在帖子中寫道：“我很高興自己以某種方式為大家提供了新的術語和框架！”然而，撇開網友對嗅覺倫理學的關注熱度不談，學術寫作愈發難以理解的趨勢著實令人反感。清晰易讀的文章，無疑將如同一股清流，令人耳目一新。
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