Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
newyorker.com
Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
1–10 of 44 posts
Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
#2It's usually a combination of (1) being afraid of sounding unrigorous or unintelligent and (2) not knowing any better and having been trained on lots of bad examples
This book is excellent: http://www.amazon.com/Stylish-Academic-Writing-Helen-Sword/d...
Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
#3Another perspective from Pinker:
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Academics-Writing-Stinks/14...
Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
#4Could it be because academic writing is simpler than the literary one? For example, in math, 'for all yada, there exists bla' is different from 'there exists bla for all yada'. So, you literally memorize these two cliches because they greatly simplify math. There are many other such very precise cliches in math you keep reusing over and over. Even though, it makes your life simpler, to an outsider you come off as an academic bore. That's my theory anyway.
Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
#5Academic writing suffers, albeit to a lesser degree, from the same problem that has made legalese so annoying to read: the need for specificity.
Also, a need for references. Not just citations, but verbal references. What is jargon, after all, if not a specific and functional set of keywords and referents used in common by a given group or field? Jargon is efficient in academia. It is a common standard. If I write something in my field's jargon, people in that field will know what I'm talking about, and precisely what I'm talking about. This is more efficient, sadly, than trying to turn a clever phrase to describe a phenomenon there's already a perfectly dreadful word for.
Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
#6Another problem with academic writing is the arcane jargon can be so abstract as to be nearly meaningless and easy to exploit. See academic hoaxes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair.
Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
#7I think what the author is missing is the possibility that many academics are simply bad writers. Academic writing in many fields is extremely formulaic just so that the relevant information can be communicated regardless of the writing skill of the author. Add to that the fact that many academics are writing in a language that is not their first, so even if they had considerable skill in their mother tongue, there is no guarantee that will translate to long-form, casual English prose.
That said, I do agree with the article that it is an interesting time to be an academic, or at least to be observing the progress and development of academia. I highly doubt that populist writing in the vein of "Bad Astronomy" or (heaven forfend) the works of Dawkins will ever replace the dry, staid prose of the academic journal. What is happening is that new means of communicating information are forcing academics into media where the traditional formulae leave them in the lurch.
Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
#8Another problem with academic writing is the arcane jargon can be so abstract as to be nearly meaningless and easy to exploit. See academic hoaxes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair .
Well, if you are writing with the intent that nobody read your work, then you're not doing anything of academic merit. The whole point of writing this stuff down is to teach others.
Maybe journals should refuse to publish anything they haven't read and don't understand? Force people to write better...
Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
#9I am reminded of the recent obituary of Grothendieck: http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendie...
Two extremely well-known mathematicians were asked by Nature to write an obituary for the late Grothendieck. They wrote it to be mostly understood by a nonmathematical audience, but Nature ultimately rejected the obituary on it being too technical.
It is almost as if each discipline has become an island. When I submit a math paper, I do not at all imagine a nonmathematician will read it. But then again, I also do not write it so that nonmathematicians could read it. I suspect this is largely the same across different fields.
I'm also not certain if this is necessarily bad; it would be tremendously hard and time-consuming to make each article understandable to another field. Or maybe this is precisely the problem?
Re: Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?
#10Academic writing suffers, albeit to a lesser degree, from the same problem that has made legalese so annoying to read: the need for specificity. Also, a need for references. Not just citations, but verbal references. What is jargon, after all, if not a specific and functional set of keywords and referents used in common by a given group or field? Jargon is efficient in academia. It is a common standard. If I write so…
It's not just specificity. Take for example the physical sciences' tradition of using passive voice, exclusively, when writing about the methods used in an experiment. You never write "We poured the mixture" or "We measured the transmittance", but rather "The mixture was poured into a 250ml Erlenmeyer flask" and "Transmittance was measured using a model 500 spectrophotometer with a 580nm filter".
The reason, as anyone who has read and followed more than a few "Materials and Methods" sections can tell you, is that this style of writing makes it very easy to skim through and find the relevant bits. The last thing you want to have to do with a pipette in hand is wade through someone's flowery prose to find out how many microliters to dispense.