Graduate students will write "menciona" in their papers as almost as a default. Foucault mentions that....
That will also talk about "académicos" when they are talking about anyone who has contributed to the field. I don't know where they get these habits from.
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It's avoidance of strong verbs like "says that", "argues that", "claims that", "shows that", etc., which commit them to attributing an intention to the person they're citing, i.e., commits them to claiming to understand what they're talking about.
At least they're not saying "Foucault theorizes that..."
This post reminded me of an exchange we had 14 years ago.
It could be that. I just take it as a lazy habit taken from class discussions, where people aren't choosing their words carefully.
I guess the difference is whether its lazy writing (they have the knowledge to decide what the right word would be but they don't make the effort to choose it) or lazy reading (they don't know how the source uses the ideas they're citing and they can't be bothered to find out).
Undergraduates also do it.
I think it has to do with describing other peoples' lazy reading and writing. If the author of a study just uses a quotation or a fragment but does not engage seriously with the source, they are in fact just mentioning it, and the students notice that.
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