The Batemanism as Method: Two Performances of Epistemic Authority
This post reads two brief but revealing comments by John Bateman—made on the SYSFLING list in 2017 and 2019—as performances of intellectual authority. Rather than focusing on their substantive claims, it examines the rhetorical strategies they share: reduction masquerading as rigour, dismissal disguised as clarity, and a confident tone that silences alternative views before they can be heard. In doing so, it explores how academic discourse often secures its power not through persuasion, but through the performance of epistemic certainty itself.
John Bateman has a distinctive style—part rhetorical flourish, part epistemological confidence, part sweeping dismissal. On two separate occasions on the SYSFLING mailing list (2017 and 2019), he delivered what might now be called Batemanisms: pronouncements on modelling, meaning, and method that tell us as much about a certain academic posture as they do about the subjects themselves.
This post reads those two moments together—not to litigate their truth claims, but to show how they function as performances of intellectual authority, and what assumptions lie beneath them.
1. The 2017 Claim: “There Is No Such Thing as Text”
“well, actually there is no such thing as text. There's just variations of patterns of pressure gradients in the air and contrasts in brightness in the visual field...”—John Bateman, SYSFLING, 10 Feb 2017
This declaration begins with a rhetorical tic—“well, actually...”—that signals correction, superiority, and finality. It goes on to dissolve the notion of “text” into raw physical stimulus: sound waves and brightness contrasts. The implication is clear: if we want to talk about language seriously, we must begin not with meaning, but with signal. Anything else is interpretive fluff.
2. The 2019 Claim: “Better a Non-Fuzzy Model That Is Wrong”
“…fuzziness in the modelling means that fuzziness in the modelled may become inaccessible... better to have a non-fuzzy model that is wrong... that can show real fuzziness rather than imagined fuzziness. difficulty may always be interesting; fuzziness often not.”—John Bateman, SYSFLING, 6 Aug 2019
This passage, on first glance, reads as pragmatic modelling advice: use sharply defined models to detect fuzziness in the data, rather than modelling with fuzziness from the start. But the closing line is the giveaway: a dismissive flourish that devalues ambiguity itself. Difficulty is interesting; fuzziness is not.
The tone is not analytical, but evaluative. And like the 2017 line, it tells us what is worth discussing, and what isn’t.
Connecting the Two: A Pattern Emerges
These two remarks, separated by two years, share a common structure. They are not just claims about modelling or meaning; they are epistemic performances. Together, they enact a vision of scholarship in which certain ways of speaking, seeing, and knowing are elevated, and others excluded.
Here’s how the pattern unfolds:
i. Reductionism as Authority
In both cases, Bateman reduces complex interpretive phenomena to physical or formal substrates:
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Text becomes “pressure gradients” and “brightness contrasts”
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Fuzziness becomes an artefact of bad modelling
This is not explanation—it is ontological flattening, delivered with the rhetorical tone of certainty. What is interpretively rich is made materially banal, and the banality is presented as rigour.
ii. Dismissal Framed as Method
Neither comment engages alternatives. They operate not by argument, but by pre-emptive dismissal:
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“There is no such thing as text…”
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“Fuzziness often not [interesting].”
Such statements don’t merely assert a position—they deny the legitimacy of discussion. They function as gatekeeping moves, policing what counts as worthy of attention, and what can be brushed aside.
iii. Epistemic Superiority by Tone
Both emails rely on affect:
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The “well, actually” of 2017 performs corrective authority
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The offhand tone of 2019 signals wearied expertise
This isn’t just content—it’s tone as epistemic posture. The point is not to convince, but to assert. We are meant to defer, not debate.
iv. The Elision of Perspective
Perhaps most tellingly, both statements erase the role of perspective in constituting the object of knowledge. They treat “text” and “fuzziness” as ontologically fixed: things that either exist or don’t, things that can be definitively judged.
But neither acknowledges that:
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What counts as a text depends on interpretive framing
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What appears as fuzziness may be a sign of unresolved potential, not poor modelling
In each case, Bateman speaks from nowhere—a voice of neutrality that presumes the right to define the terms of inquiry itself.
Conclusion: The Batemanism as Genre
These two statements are more than idiosyncratic comments—they’re examples of a broader academic genre: the discursive assertion of authority through reduction, dismissal, and tone. They mark out epistemic territory while denying their own framing. They tell us what is real, what is not, and why further discussion is unnecessary.
To read them carefully is to see that intellectual authority is often maintained not by better arguments, but by performances of certainty that foreclose alternative possibilities before they arise.
And to critique them is not simply to disagree, but to insist that meaning, ambiguity, and perspective are not epistemic failures. They are part of the world, and part of the work.
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