Walking Seminar March 2019

One of the first beautiful spring days brought us to the coast where we walked an around 14km walk from Overveen through the dunes, to the beach and over the beach to Zandvoort aan Zee. Our topic this time was “Big Words”: They tend to be called concepts. They can be helpful as when they give you some focus while you assemble materials. They can be helpful in writing as they link what you write to what others have written using the same concepts. But then again. Big words may also stand between you and surprising things in your field that you cannot smell out as the concepts cover them up. Or you may be using them in a different way than others using the ‘same’ concepts. You may try to present this as inventive and creative on your part, but it may as well increase confusion all round.

Concepts come from somewhere. They have heavy histories – often a few – in this or that discipline – they resonate fights from diverse pasts. How to not get caught up in that? Not so easy. You cannot, after all, re-invent language from scratch overnight. How then to deal with it otherwise?

And then your informants. They talk, too. They may be talking in the same big words that are in use in the literature. They attach similar or different meanings to them. They know what you are talking about already – ah, no, they don’t. But how to talk about something else, or in a new way? How to not just represent your field, but add to it?

Coining concepts may seem attractive as big words often get to travel between texts – and you would like your insights to travel. But then again. Terms often get stifled along the way. Or simplified. Or amputated. What about making stories travel instead, how to do that?