2004-05-12 - 11:27 p.m.
Folks, I have a nitpicky question. Why, when they're doing their semantic monkeydance for the consumption of an adoring public, do pseudo-intellectual academics say the phrase "sort of" so often? "The work of soandso represents a very sort of incendiary... a sort of sociocritical blahblahblah... a sort of revolution of blahblah, a sort of sort of sort of..." Why do they sort of do this? I have two very sort of theories, one complete horseshit, the other probably not far from the truth.Horseshit: Academics are loath to suggest any true equivalency between any two things, or between an idea and its adjectival representation; they prefer instead, through repeated intonations of "sort of," to demonstrate and affirm the ineluctable approximation at the core of all discursive inquiry, all signifying representation.
Probably Not Far From the Truth: The phrase "sort of" conveniently a) fills the space during which the speaker rummages around in the mental thesaurus for ever more sophisticated-sounding terms while b) avoiding other methods of filling such space, such as "uhh"ing or, worse, remaining silent, and as an added bonus, c) selecting words that are in a certain way very sort of British to boot*.
A few times during such conversations, your fellow may be heard to say the phrase "a very sort of," and appear utterly insensitive to the vaguely silly tone created by a qualified superlative, or a banality in exaggeration, depending on your point of view.
It was only "sort of," but it was very "sort of." And the thing is, well, it probably was.
* Jack Davenport, "Commodore Norrington" in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, uses "sort of" in an interview clip featured in the film's DVD extras. He talks about the grandeur of tumescent Jerry Bruckheimer productions, and what it's like to come to work each day to a set that looks a little like the scene of the merry torching of millions of dollar bills stacked in a colossal pyre, and he says that each day he'd come on set and wonder if "it could get any sort of bigger." Can it just have been c)? Surely it wasn't a) -- was it, uhh, a very sort of b) then?
