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Norms, Normativity, Normalcy in the Academy, or WTF is that Jargon?!

Among other startling revelations of the past weekend, which I'll blog on later, it has come to my attention that I'm occasionally prone to slipping in "academic speak" in casual conversation with non-academics.

You know what I mean by "academic speak." No, it is not "talking smart," which is something we occasionally do, but rarely in casual conversation. Nor is it using "fancy words," or being "high falutin'." No, dear reader, I mean talking in tongues, talking in "jargon," using "your school words."

As you know, I'm committed to the project of anti-discrimination law. It is my life's work to research in a theoretical/empirical manner, explain the reasons for the persistence of, and suggest organizational/legal correctives to discrimination against women and minorities, particularly in the workplace. This project is not only descriptive, it is normative. It is by no means the scholarship of resistance, but it is not at all a purely "objective" project either. Yet I do not think scholarship must be divorced from normative commitments to basic principles in order to be valid and rigorous. I do not in general believe that scholarship is "objective" in any case--even in the hard sciences, there is sometimes an underlying argument to be committed to. In the social sciences, this is particularly the case, that the arguments you make and then try to prove are arguments about the staticity of norms or the need for them to evolve to "better norms" to restructure behavior by individuals in society. I would argue that all of social science is normative.

Okay, I just explained to you my work and my reasons for working and its dominant characteristic.

And I used the word normative. A lot.

Tell me, academic people and non-academic people alike, is this word commonly used outside of academia?

The Dude, who is really smart, well-read, well-educated, and dilettantishly coversant in many fields, says that he never heard someone use this word in casual conversation before, and certainly not so often as I do. This is not a criticism, merely an observation.

Reader, I too am scratching my head and wondering "what is up with that." You are probably wondering if you also have some annoying academic quirk of dropping words like "deontological," "teleological" and "heuristic" a lot.

But "normative"?!

Is this just academic speak, or a legitimate plebian-conversant way to describe an argument?

Then again, if I use it to describe my work, is it in fact in context academic jargon, because that's the only word I can think of commonly used to describe such work? And by common, do I mean common only in my field, that is, the "Ivory Tower"?

Help me, dear readers. Help me figure out if I'm just being pretentious with my school speak and smart talk or merely normal and ordinary in my vernacular.

In other words, what is the normal way for talking about norms without using the word normative, since "normative" is just academic jargon?

Vote, and leave comments!

Full post as published by Law and Letters on January 29, 2008 (boomark / email).