when or if i finally graduate from university, i am almost certain i will hear the following words and phrases much less often by the people around me:
- basically: a word to sum up the main point of an argument that seems to have absolutely no point
- essentially: a fancier version of “basically”, with the same function of masking the utter confusion of an argument
- dichotomy: an intellectual word used to describe two different groups when one could have just as easily said “two different groups”
- playing the devil’s advocate: a phrase mostly used by professors when wanting to stimulate discussion so that they may take the opposing position of the general class consensus; mostly used during student presentations that take a clearly wrong position, leaving the professor to steer the class towards the right one without being perceived as mean or dictatorial
- fundamentally: a cousin of the “basically” and “essentially” group, mostly embedded in the lectures of professors when they themselves have danced around the main point without actually stating it
- homoerotic: heard mostly in english literature classes that wish to dig out some underlying homosexual sentiment (whether it’s there or not) in every single piece of writing known to man
- oedipal complex: everything in academic studies boils down to a boy wanting to kill his father and screw his mother, even in math and science
- gender: heard predominantly in gender history or women studies classes, because sex is biologically assigned while gender is socially and culturally ascribed, blah, blah, blah…