June 11…Becker and Writing
Comment on the first two chapters of Becker. Any surprises?
Think about and share any links you see between this book on writing and the
other stuff we have been doing in class, thus far.
June 6…Biesta and Burbules (On Inquiry)
Discuss whether the authors’ depiction of inquiry jibes with your understandings of how social science research works.
The link between the first two chapters of Becker and my silent, internal (albeit very present) cringe at the announcement of writing groups spoke volumes to the quirk of writing producing a sense of a deep public vulnerability. It surprises me even in myself that people experience such a sense of self consciousness when it comes to reviewing drafted writing and not in other fields where there exists rounds of preliminary practice and performance such as sports, arts, and so forth. Still, writing appears to suggest a certain permanence of insight into an individual that others cannot unsee; people seem less bothered by the permanence of behaviors as these seem more circumstantial and reconciled than writing. My experiences as an educator from grades 5 through undergraduate college age demonstrates that this protectiveness of our written productions generally increases with age and awareness of our place and role in series of communities and networks. The implications of unpolished writing carries a great deal of emotional and intellectual baggage as one misstep may deem (or confirm one’s fears of) one proving unworthy of a program, a field of study, and out of the running to maintain pace with one’s peers.
ReplyDeleteI have to throw some shade at Becker here. With regards to his critique of the stylistic norms of academic writing, is it ironic that he would likely identify Dewey as one of the worst offenders? If we were to choose ten of the currently most-cited articles in educational scholarship, would we find an array of violations against Becker’s writing principles? I suspect we would. And it’s not necessarily because Becker is wrong, though I believe his advice is a bit misguided. His status as a renowned scholar at the time of the book’s writing and subsequent publication affords him the privilege of adopting his own self-described “plain folks” writing persona. Status is an important component to consider when we talk about the arena of academic scholarship. The reality is (sorry Dewey) that unpublished, newly-minted PhDs have no status. The likelihood of finding a place within their discipline is almost exclusively dependent on new scholars’ ability to publish in their field, which is itself entirely dictated by the manner in which they frame the value of their research through their writing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Becker’s critique of academic writing is fair and accurate. At best, most published scholarship typically comes across as stilted, even to those in the field. At worst, it’s completely inaccessible to audiences outside of the discipline. Academic scholarship is exclusive, canonized, and self-policed by its practitioners. It is modeled and perpetuated by high-status scholars, and replicated by students preparing to enter the field. Moreover, it is also reinforced by the incentive-reward structure of academia, and intrinsically tied to scholars’ financial livelihood. In this way, the structural boundaries of academia are sustained and the viability of authentic community-engaged research and public scholarship (even interdisciplinary collaboration) quickly fades.
Perhaps it’s unfair to take Becker to task so harshly. Maybe, in the later stages of his esteemed career, his intention was to lend a voice of reason to the discipline, to advocate for scholarship that is more open and accessible to all audiences. But I can’t help but find Becker complicit in what he calls “this crazy cycle”. His own students voiced concerns nearly identical to the critique I put forth here. He dismisses them initially as “student paranoia”. And it comes across as somewhat of a throwaway when Becker includes a similar critique of his stance on writing at the end of chapter 2, in a letter to the editors of The Sociological Quarterly. Becker’s own descriptions of “the smart ones”, “intelligent students”, “classy writing”, expose the implicit hierarchy of scholarship, and how that hierarchy is reinforced in the classroom so that it can be reified in professional practice by new scholars. I feel like the best kind of academic writing guide might take more time in discussing HOW WE ENGAGE with academic scholarship. We are taught to read critically for content and validity, but rarely for style. The absence of this emphasis is a form of complicity in and of itself. The implication seems to be that “this is how it’s done”. Becker advises us to do it differently, but we have a lot more at stake than he does. I’m compelled to think that our task as scholars is to write in more diverse ways to different communities and audiences, rather than to write more simply for one.
Your second paragraph... such an effective summary! Do you see this shifting? If so, what could be a catalyst for any change in these expectations?
DeleteAs someone who currently teaches writing, I think overall he makes some great points. Too many times, my students feel the need to put on airs. By using elevated diction and sophisticated-sounding (emphasis on sounding) constructions, they feel they have achieved a more academic persona. The problem is and I have to say I feel it happens in much of the reading we do for our coursework (in all classes), the message is lost. It feels as if critical points are overshadowed by ineffective prose.
ReplyDeleteBy being a part of this program, we (hopefully) are vested in ideas, theories, and knowledge surrounding educational research. That being said, if we feel the work is somewhat inaccessible and convoluted, how much more so do those who don’t share our passion and willingness to struggle with an author or idea?
I think Becker advocates for simplistic language, but I think his voice gets drowned out by tradition- tradition I don’t see changing anytime soon. Pessimistic, I know, but this echoes a bit of what we discussed 2 class periods ago. Perhaps the expectations for scholarly articles contributes to the divide between theory and practice.
Becker’s most valuable wisdom comes from his emphasis on the revision process. Normally, I only offer my students a rubric score on their drafts. I may offer a few words regarding their areas of weakness or I may highlight a point that could be further developed, but beyond that they are expected to use and even internalize this scaled rubric. This can cause some students frustration. With my final assignment of the year, students had to compose a commencement speech to an audience of their choosing. I collected hard copies and gave each a rubric score. In addition, though, this time I made grammatical fixes, suggested a few changes in diction, etc. They had an option to resubmit their final draft with changes. Even though I reminded them that the focus should be on the rubric score and using that score to motivate any changes they made, what I received yesterday was disappointing at best. Of the 17 resubmissions, only 2 students changed anything beyond my suggestions (with had little to do with meaning and much more to do with mechanics.) They proudly turned in drafts expecting score increases which will not ensue as the parallel structure or the added adjective did little to strengthen their overall ideas. I count this as a failure on my part as much as it is on their part. As Becker (1986) articulates, I drew their attention to the “small things” when in reality the rubric score should have indicated more about the “core problem” (p. 22).
I was interested in your thoughts on these chapters, knowing what you teach. As a middle school teacher, I often saw emphasis placed on exploring the range of adjectives possible, and then witnessed the impact of the thesaurus - not even the teacher could understand what they tried to say! I do agree with your assessment of the revision process. This can never be emphasized too much, as I also think the process relevant beyond writing. To be open to revising ones ideas, concepts of norms, habits...I digress. Finally, I absolutely think you are spot-on about tradition being a potential constriction, and that we are not quick to change these conventions. And then I think of my 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. Conover saying, "There is a time and a place for everything."
DeleteOops - deleted a sentence. I wanted to say that the middle school experience of learning about adjectives to "amp up" (term used by a peer) writing is also integral to the process. It has relevancy when used well.
DeleteThe phenomenon described amid the introductory provisions of Becker’s opuscule adumbrated the ominous sentiment which postulates academic writing as a lamination of amphigory and macaronics designed to offer up the novice litterateur as the adroit and accomplished curator of knowledge; ultimately receiving acceptance into the marble halls of academia, and thereby ceaselessly perpetuating elitist tendencies.
ReplyDelete(snickering)
I get it. We all suffer a desire to be accepted, and in writing our thoughts down and sharing outwardly, we hope that our intelligence remains unquestioned. I absolutely recognize that this desire pushes many of us to write beyond the clarity of our thoughts, hiding behind layers of language. The heavy handedness of this writing is ultimately self-serving. We learn to write for different audiences, and we learn to play the game. To be in the journal, you write to read by that audience; write to be edited by its stakeholders; write to get tenure. In all of that, somewhere what we are really saying gets lost in translation (sorry, Bill) because we are not writing to communicate meaning, but rather to make meaning appear more important.
We’re also revisiting the public intellectual again. The researcher who speaks plainly and directly in order to affect change and shift their findings to a broader audience. It would seem logical that we would be interested within educational research to emphasize clear, concise language that propels us forward rather than bogs us down in the interpretation of purple prose.
In returning these thoughts back to our class, I think it interesting to place Becker alongside the paper on discipline. We have had several questions about how to respond, myself included. Perhaps if Chapter One was read before we were made aware of the assignment, I know I would have probably taken a go at the paper to simply "get the ideas out." I appreciate that even a "bad" response will inform us and then our desire to clarify the idea will press us towards clarity of thought. That journey is invaluable - rather than the outcome - moving from the indeterminate to intelligent action.
I wonder if some of the “classier” writings in sociology are driven by the attempt to elevate descriptions of particular situations to generalized and theory-like statements through decontextualizing the situations by the use of language, and by mimicking the tone of writings in the fields of hard sciences. Perhaps the more abstract a statement sounds, the more important it may appear to its readers?
ReplyDeletePosted by Jacqueline
ReplyDeleteApparently, many of the professors that I have had as instructors have read this book. Reluctantly, I admit that I hover around the one and done range wishing I could still land in front of the computer at 8 p.m., work all night and be done. Because of this, I often find myself completely annoyed at the outline, rough draft, peer review, final draft process. These requirements nag the writing procrastinator in me. However, I recognize and acknowledge the benefits of such processes. For all the excruciating marathon, last minute writing sessions and all the favors owed to last minute proofreaders, I recognized that my days of one and done are long gone. Nonetheless, I find that I still write papers in my head as thoughts and directions for the paper muddle through all the other thoughts knocking around my brain. Once the thought enters, I must get it written out otherwise I can’t depend on the thought to be there or be retrievable weeks later. Through this process I am able to record guiding paragraphs for large sections of a paper, so I don’t agree with Becker that undergrad students who used this technique will experience debilitated writing at the graduate level. We simply adapt.
I do appreciate Becker’s advice regarding direct versus vague writing. My motto—
‘Say it loud and say it proud.’ If you are going to take the time to write it, own it. Be convincing. I have recently asked the question of a professor, Dr. Christenbury, regarding when we as PhD students are considered “experts.” Her reply was, “You are experts in your areas.” We still need corroborating witnesses, so to speak, in the form of references. With that in mind Becker’s advice to act as professionals in the field is well taken.
Becker’s advice, however, to state causation does give me pause. Maybe this is because it has been drilled into my being how difficult it is to “prove” causation. I feel it suffices to suggest correlation and provide the evidence for such. I don’t believe that writers who described correlations are always in “fear that others will catch us in obvious errors if we do anything else, and laugh at us” (p. 8). I think it is being a responsible social scientist. Very few studies investigate all the variables and scenarios that would be necessary to definitively declare causation. If causation is declared, how do we account for exceptions. As I am early in my career as an “expert” I will inoculate my afore statement with, “I could be wrong in my assessment.”
I really enjoyed how Becker in the first chapter highlighted some of the fears, insecurities and struggles that graduate and doctoral students go through when writing academic work. I also appreciated how he talked about some the rituals writers go before starting the process of writing. I had to laugh when reading “...sociologists who couldn’t handle the dangers of writing in a rational way used magical charms, that dispelled anxiety, though without really affecting the result.” (Becker, Kindle version, 2007, p. 4) The author talked about not expecting the first draft to be the only draft. As a doctoral student and writer, I can relate to the stressful expectation of trying to produce the perfect draft. As Becker points out, removing unnecessary words and phrases is part of the writing process. “We had replaced redundancies, ‘fancy writing,’ pompous phrases.” (Becker, Kindle version, 2007, p. 7).
ReplyDeleteIn chapter 2, I liked how the author talked about how sometimes students assume that the reason they don’t understand the text they are reading has to do with their intellectual ability to understand it, and many times, students don’t question the writer’s ability to write it clearly. The author give an example of this approach “...I’m not as smart. I don’t assume either that the emperor has no clothes or that the author is not clear because of their own confusion about what they have to say.” (Becker, Kindle version, 2007, p. 29). A lot of scholarly writing needs to read and flow better.
- Vivian