The article by Swales provides a good overview of several aspects related to academic writing. Though I naturally use language of a more formal nature (even in the non-academic writing I do), this can probably be attributed, in no small part, to my schooling and upbringing during childhood. Personally, I find this style attractive since it provides the text with both a measure of consistency, and it denotes a measure of respect for the reader. However, this is only my perception!!! Others may choose to disagree with my assessment of the style of English academic writing. Consequently, I have often wondered why it would be regarded unacceptable for someone to write an academic text in Bronx ghetto-style English. Is it perhaps because we associate (either consciously or unconsciously) academic style English with the notion that the English of Harvard and Oxford is good ‘well-educated’ and cultured English after all? What then if the writer of the text was indeed well-read, intelligent, and educated? Why should it be wrong for her to write in a "localized" style of language that most represents who she is, both as a person and a researcher? Is there not the danger that a standardized form of academic writing (itself a product of the phantom idea of Standardized English) may disseminate unfair advantages for some (native speakers of English) over others (non-native speakers of English)? I’m obviously considering the implication a greater sensitivity towards ‘World Englishes’ may hold for the future of standardized styles of academic English, and also fully aware that some universities in fact have their own standards for academic English.
I am not campaigning. I merely wonder about this. I do not imagine myself to possess an answer. What do you think?
I am aware that a style of academic writing known as the auto-ethnography allows for a qualified amount of informal language to be used in the academic text. However, such language is used to create autobiographical context; not convey academic concept.
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So Paul . . . if you are asking me personally, I get as annoyed as anyone at "poor" writing, yet I find it just as interesting that the ability to produce a particular style of writing, or oral poetry, or speech is inherently bound to the power structures that created it. certainly you must find Bourdieu's habitus persuasive? Or perhaps Cassirer's "philosophy of symbolic forms? How can one form be privileged over another without the influence of power?
ReplyDeletecheers,
eric
p.s. Read "The ethnographic I: a methodological novel about autoethnography" if you want to get a feel for what autoethnography does. you can get a good taste for it from the google books version . . . I find autoethnography somewhat different from what you characterize here . . . not positivistic, but very well written :).