In the House of Jargon Horrors: Multiple
In recent years jargony use of the term “multiple“ has spread through the language like mildew through a loaf of day-old bread. Let it rain, and some newscaster will tell us that “multiple intersections are flooded” and “multiple streetlights are out.” Scholarly writers are especially attracted to the word, because it uses three syllables to express an idea that could be conveyed in one or two.
What’s wrong with multiple?
Well, in the first place, it’s uglier than pussley. Just say it: “multiple multiple multiple multuhpull . . .” Sounds like your mouth is full of marbles.
Aesthetic concerns aside, it’s vague and, outside the scientific and statistical contexts in which it performs effectively, it has no meaning. Like “area” when used to denote job, understanding, training, profession, or square footage, “multiple” could mean anything: some, a few, many, more than one, diverse . . . and any number of other possibilities.
We have here an author who has fallen helplessly in love with the word. This is a case where love went altogether blind at the garden gate:
There are multiple convergences between STS and feminist thought….
What is Author trying to say to us? If all she means is “more than one,” then we need no adjective at all, since more than one is inherent to the plural form convergences. Could she mean “many”? “Several”?
There are convergences between STS and feminist thought….
There are many convergences between STS and feminist thought….
We might want to get rid of the gassy “there are” construction: “Some convergences exist between STS and feminist thought….”
Moving on:
Embracing partisanship and struggle as they do, reconstructivists have taken to heart multiple critiques of objectivity, among which feminists figure prominently.
Many? Several? Diverse? Various? What does this mean?
Heaven help us:
[T]he maldistribution of the costs and benefits of technoscience occurs along multiple axes of difference….
Here, too, we have no idea what Author means. Are we looking at two such axes, a few, or a lot of them? Whatever, we’re assaulted with multiplicity in the very next sentence:
However, multiple categories of difference remain un- or underspoken in reconstructivist thought….
Can thought be clear if language is not? This statement is effectively devoid of clarity, because we cannot know what “multiple” is supposed to mean. By now, we begin to suspect Author’s intellectual credentials. It gets murkier:
[K]nowledge production would have to be generated by multiple counterpublics….
[K]nowledge production would have to be generated by multiple counterpublics….
We have fallen to the seventh circle of meaninglessness. Let us ascend:
Calling for democratizing technoscience, multiple and disunified as it is,…
Author appears to mean “multifaceted.”
This situation not only renders technoscience less relevant but less accountable to multiple constituencies.
Some of us would take umbrage with relevant as another example of jargon, but that’s a topic for another post. We’re stuck (again!) with “multiple” here. Does it have meaning? Many? Diverse? Various? Manifold? Who knows? Does Author herself know?
With a little thought, we all can find more precise terms that express what we mean. For example…
Real words for multiple:
a few
assorted
diverse
heterogeneous
manifold
many
more than one
multifaceted
multifarious
multiform
multipartite
nonuniform
numerous
of all sorts (or conditions, or kinds, or shapes, or descriptions, or types)
several
some
sundry
two (three, four…or whatever is appropriate)
various
Multiple can indeed mean “many.” The problem is that with overuse speakers and writers have come to imagine it means any of the various senses given above. The word has clear scientific and mathematical definitions (the product of a quantity by an integer; a group of terminals that make a circuit available at a number of points; formed by a coalescence of the ripening ovaries of several flowers). But when used carelessly, it fades, like a spirit in Hades, to a ghost of its former meaningful self.
by V.H.
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