Re:The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing
by ilamont on Tuesday October 27, 2015 @07:41AM
(#10457380)
I felt that the article missed an important factor: People mimic styles and conventions of a group they want to belong to. It starts in college when students get their first taste of journal articles and scholarly books, which comes with an implicit message: If you want to join the club & be taken seriously, this is what you should strive for in your own writing.
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Re:The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing
by sidchilling on Tuesday October 27, 2015 @08:32AM
(#10457548)
The article does mention this at multiple places. For example, “Their intended audience is always their peers. That’s who they have to impress to get tenure.”, "Others say that academics have traditionally been forced to write in an opaque style to be taken seriously by the gatekeepers—academic journal editors, for example" and some more.
Re:The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing
by ilamont on Tuesday October 27, 2015 @09:22AM
(#10457783)
This is bigger than trying to impress a journal editor to get a paper published, or convincing department chairs and academic committees in order to get tenure.
I am talking the process of matching the expectations of an entire community and meeting the norms of that community. College students and some new grad students are coming as outsiders who don’t know the rules of the game, but they quickly figure out (from reading academic papers and scholarly books that are assigned to them and examining the profiles of their instructors) that “publishing” is the currency of the realm.
They will begin to match their terminology, writing styles, and references to meet the norms of this community and to get their own publishing output accepted. By the time they are ready to publish their first paper they’ve been effectively indoctrinated and will continue perpetuate academic writing styles.