 - 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 example: The teaching pedagogies explored in this article represent best practices in second languages classrooms. The pedagogical implications of the strategies discussed should influence teaching approaches across the language arts.
The authors of this paper should have written, “The pedagogies explored…” and the second sentence is an example of trying too hard to sound authoritative.
polysemous - a fancy way of saying a word or phrase has several meanings.
postcolonial - (buzzword)
postmodern - (buzzword) seldom used with clarity, now meaningless. Suffers the same fate as “existential angst.”
post-postmodern - We are not sure what was meant by this, but we have seen this in print.
problematize / problematization / problemize -
public - sometimes used superfluously in academic phrases. Example: public culture (as if culture isn’t public).
queer [quare | kuaer] theory -
reappropriate / reappropriations -
reconceptualize / reconceptualizationing - among the many ways of saying “rethink” in academic papers, reconceptualizationing might be the longest. Some advice: Any word with more than one prefix and more than one suffix is not a common word.
rearchitect / repurpose / reimagine / rethink / reimaginings -
social construction - (buzzword)
structuralist / structuration -
symbolic interactionism - an academic way to state that the mind and body each have an effect on each other. Credit (blame) the Chicago School of Interactionists for this phrase.
technologizing - to make something natural seem technical or mechanical.
territorialization - (1) staking a claim on a concept or field of study. (2) thinking of a space, real or virtual, in terms of a territory to settle.
transdisciplinary - see interdisciplinary
transnational - across national borders or global. Be more specific and use common terms: use “global” or “multinational” when possible.
unproblematizes - (buzzword) explains.
webify / Webify - (buzzword) to find connections between concepts. The capitalized version apparently refers to making conceptual connection