Coyote Blog

The same sorts of folks who are smugly marching to promote their strange, religious version of "science" are producing academic studies like this (abstract):

A Semiotic Landscape analysis, whereby a community or environment’s signage is photographed for linguistic and visual analysis, is a useful means of discovering power relationships within that community’s language use. While Semiotic Landscapes and their predecessor, Linguistic Landscapes, are traditionally used to explore differences between dominant and minority languages in a community, this research extends the concept to analyse hegemonic masculinity at a CrossFit gym. It also shifts the analysis from an outdoor landscape to an indoor, more private setting. Using an autoethnographic approach, the author argues that while many of the CrossFit signs are designed to appear as humorous entertainment or motivation, they simultaneously encourage the subordination of women and certain men, and the naturalizing of a particular view of hegemonic masculinity, as embodied by the ideal CrossFit male.

I wonder if the real point was to get her gym membership paid for through a grant?  By the way, for those not in the know on the words used here, "autoethnographic" means "I didn't do any actual research or study or anything one would traditionally consider scholarship, I just sat around and thought about it and then started writing whatever came into my head."  There is little actual difference between autoethnographic research and posting rants on Facebook, except one has to go to school for years and years to be able to drop grand-sounding but essentially meaningless terms like "linguistic landscapes".

I would love to see a study attempting to count the percentage of academic papers in the humanities nowadays that are autoethnographic.  I am trying to imagine having some of the economics professors I know acting as a thesis adviser and trying to sell them on the idea of writing my thesis as autoethnographic research based on how bummed out I am that I keep running out of money before payday.  Hegemonic masculinity is forcing me to dine on two-year-old cans of Spaghetti-Os I found in the back of the pantry!

If you enjoy this sort of thing in a kind of black humor sort of way, I recommend to you @RealPeerReview on twitter.