Academic humour from the Swedish West Coast!

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I've got something for those of us who enjoy satirical linguistics (looking at you speculativegrammarian) and/or jokes based on adventures and anxiety during grad school (looking at you whatshouldwecalllinguistics & @researchinprogress). Two comedy gems from the Gothenburg!

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First, we've got "Conversation as Paranoia" by Hugh Aelgh from 1976 (free original PDF here and digital specgram-version here). There we can learn the 11 principles of paranoia. It starts with:

This paper has arisen as a direct reaction to Allwood 1976. In his thesis, Allwood tries to show that human beings are rational and cooperative and that this is particularly true of them when they talk. This, of course, is utter nonsense. Such an absurd view can only be the result of the author’s complete neglect of all serious research in the study of human behavior, such as the work of S. Potter and C.N. Parkinson. I now want to show that human communication behavior is not guided by any principles of rationality and cooperation but rather by the UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF PARANOIA.
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Then there's the follow-up work by Öste.. I'm sorry Sam Ask in which s/he elaborates on the importance of the above principles, and a few more, on the topic of writing a doctoral dissertation. It's called "How to avoid graduation".
This text exists in three versions, Swedish, German and English. One of the many ways to avoid graduation is by translating the text into another language, or perhaps illustrate it (the option I'm considering). Here we can learn things such as

Shorter periods of procrastination should not be deleted either. “At-This-point-there-is-too-little-time-left”-strategy can be mentioned as especially relevant here.

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Yes, that's it. Enjoy!


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