generally applies to “left-leaning” groups with “social justice” agendas.
deconstruction / deconstructing - (misused, buzzword) traditionally, deconstruction is an approach to philosophy. Academics appropriate terms from other disciplines, sometimes with odd results. Unfortunately, everything is now “desconstructed” by humanities professors. Understand a term before using it.
delegitimated - use delegitimize in most cases.
discourse community - (buzzword) in composition and rhetoric, this phrase is applied to any group communicating internally. We would use this phrase only to describe groups of academics, for clarity. Unfortunately, this can be every “community” the humanities have defined. see community
discursive - (misused) (1) based on reason rather than intuition. (2) rambling, digressive, wandering from one topic to another. Misused as a synonym for explanatory.
discursive strategy - how one writes or speaks. This is a fine phrase, when used sparingly.
“He employed an unconscious discursive strategy when conducting public discourse.”
He used proper English when delivering a public speech.
disempowering - (buzzword) (1) oppressing, dominating. (2) anything that reduces one’s standing. (3) making dependent on others for success or survival. We suggest rewriting any sentence with this buzzword to clarify what is being done and to whom.
enculturation / enculturalization - the slow acquisition of the traits of one culture by another. The term enculturation is misued to imply forcing one culture’s norms upon another culture. Enculturation leads to hegemony in critical theory. These terms are associated with Western Marxism.
essentialized / essentializing -
existential - (misused, buzzword) dealing with the nature of humanity, especially matters of free will and self-determination within an apparently absurd universe. Overused in both academic and popular writing. As with deconstruction, philosophical terms resist simple definitions.
extra-institutional - (buzzword) beyond the “official” campus realm.
feministing - to actively use a situation to promote the cause of feminism.
global sexualities - univeral “truths” about sexuality and gender.
glocalization - the desire to think of global concerns in terms of familiar, local norms. Supposedly a term from Japanese marketing texts, now used in sociology. We cannot even label this a buzzword.
hegemony - (buzzword) to have power or domination over others in a culture. Why does this always apply to the “Western hegemony” and not Islamic hegemony in the Middle East? Chinese hegemony? There is always a dominant power, therefore always a hegemony.
heterodoxy - (misused) heretical, skeptic, departing from the usual beliefs. The horrendous misuse we’ve encountered was intended to mean “hetero-orthodoxy,” as in heterosexuals dominating the world. Political correctness permits this claim against Western culture, but we would at least like to see the correct term used.
heteronormative / heteronormativity -
informed by -
interdisciplinary - see transdisciplinary
intergenerational - (misused) used properly, this means between generations or connecting generations. Unfortunately, we have read this misused to mean skipping a generation.
meme - (buzzword, misused) technically, a meme is a norm that is passed among members of a community, regardless of species, by a non-biological means. It is not an email that spreads virally. Memes are imitation, such as the rich wearing jeans, which were at one time a symbol of the working class.
metageography - the “culturally accepted” misrepresentations of abstract territories. In fiction, creating a parallel world. In composition studies, diagramming concepts, such as the use of programming flowcharts or network diagrams.
overdetermined - (misused)
paradigm / preparadigm -
pedagogy - (misused) the science and art of teaching. The misuses we have encountered include “teaching pedagogy” and “the pedagogy of teaching.” The first is correct if one is teaching about teaching, but usually it appears in sentences such as this from a journal article:
Silly ex