Das habe ich nicht verstanden

The other morning I caught the last five or so minutes of a show called "Yo Gabba Gabba" whilst eating my breakfast.

I gotta say, that show is seriously weird. I can't help thinking I would have appreciated it better if I was stoned. I spent those last five minutes (and the next ten or so minutes afterwards) saying "What?" a lot.

Then, I had a strange repeat experience later in the day - only this time I was reading Widdowson's 1979 book on applied linguistics - specifically the chapter on authenticity in texts supplied to language learners. This is one of those works which are referred to by every man and his dog, so I thought I should read it. I couldn't understand it. Bits were making sense, the rest of it may as well have been recited by people dressed as robots and hopping on one foot.

I found myself saying "What?" a lot.

What is it with applied linguistic theorists? They say something perfectly reasonable, and then "explain it" by saying something that seems barely coherent. It's as though the spend all day studying how people communicate, and then decide to see just how much they can mess with it.