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As the Midwest Modern Language Association gathers at the Hilton Chicago Hotel for its annual conference Friday, I hope the members are more intent on solving the problems in their profession as teachers of language and literature than on perpetuating their image as scholars of the arcane and the irrelevant.

I hope so because the writing skills of American students have been steadily eroding in the last three decades, according to the National College Board. Granted, severe changes in family structure, societal attitudes and technology have all contributed to the decline. But it may also be that the English teaching profession's passion for probing obscure topics with pretentious, often indecipherable prose may share some of the blame.

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A search of the association's Web site for papers and sessions presented at this year's convention hints at the trouble. Take, for example, "The `Endless Knot' of Canadian Postmodernism." So far, so good, as the title is pronounceable. But then comes the paper's synopsis: "Alistair MacLeod's first novel, `No Great Mischief,' moves beyond the critical albatross of `regional realist novel' by engaging readers in a postmodern narrative structured around the centralizing symbol of the Celtic knot."

Or how about the description of a session on drama: "One of the more prolific tropes invested within modernist drama is the inability of characters to conjoin with the ideology of home ... As such, the stage of home-space is manifest as chronotopic in that the nostalgia for the mythology of the theatrical fourth wall is inextricably bound to the space afforded by modern dramatic narrative and staging."

A second reading does not render either of them much clearer. And a third leads only to despair (and the aspirin bottle), especially when you see them proudly featured along side other beauties such as "Disciplinarity, Deterritorialization and Dissensus: Laughing at the Ruined University"; or "Standardized University Writing: Homogenized & Hegemonized?"

I am an English teacher, and I am embarrassed.

Why would language professionals use ambiguous jargon, redundant Latinisms, Legolike sentence structure and generally murky writing in their professional publications? Why would the first MMLA writer excerpted above juggle unwieldy, head-shaking lines instead of simply writing: "Unlike so many regional Canadian novels, MacLeod's `No Great Mischief' reflects the soul of the entire country"?

One belief is that English teachers were ostracized in high school as unathletic, eccentric introverts who sought refuge and exile in their books, and who now exact their revenge by imposing linguistic pain upon the current generation of students.

A more credible theory may be that English departments, low on the university totem pole for both dollars and esteem, sadly try to affect in their journals the complexity and vocabulary of the more revered scientific fields.

Or it may just boil down to the old-fashioned profit motive, whereby the more the PhD's specialize, and the more pages they produce, the more paid positions and grant money will be generated.

Finally, there's the fact that thousands of instructors need to publish countless "original" theses to get tenure, and then their students are compelled to read them all and to emulate the same style to get their degrees.

These last I can sympathize with, for I was there. I remember my own paper on the "concealment of thought in Samuel Beckett's play `Waiting for Godot,'" when I became adept at filling lines with abstract clusters of supersized words that I collected in my readings. It became addictive, like doing card tricks, and it seemed slicker to sell my amateur notions in a vague but expert sounding way, than to commit to clear sentences that actually said something.

So I wrote, "Beckett presaged postmodern sentiment/antithesis with patterned intermittent absurdist relief as counterpoint," instead of "Samuel Beckett mocked his own audience."

MMLA would argue that since they investigate the deepest essences of language and literature, they require specialized academic writing.

But what would the late, great, pioneer critics of language and literature have said to such a defense? A Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Virginia Wolfe--"honorary" Modern Language Association members who could communicate the profoundest truths in beautifully clear, syntactically musical English?

MLA's second argument to defend narrow, esoteric topics would be that such research leads to practical and beneficial breakthroughs for the college classroom.

But college writing competency seems to say otherwise, and it's not a big mystery to see why. The kind of teacher who has just spent a year, say, researching the political implications of eye-rhyme in the work of bisexual French poets, is not likely going to assign readings, writing prompts or discussion topics that will motivate or mean much to 19 and 20 year olds.

There's a disgraceful gap in college writing test scores, and one of the reasons is the reality gap between English professors and their students. Let's hope the MMLA takes a stand on closing them both.

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