Academic Writing Is Boring Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

W hy is academic writing so boring? i am impatient by nature, easily irritated, and afflicted with a short attention span. That i ended up in a job where i have to spend half the day blinking my way through artless, contorted prose is a cruel twist of fate. But the upside is that it gives me plenty of opportunity to reflect on why reading academic writing is so often a chore and so rarely a joy. I tell my students that one reads academic work not for the pleasure of the moment but for what one comes away with. But still, a few moments of pleasure from time to time doesn't seem a lot to ask.

As far as i know there has been little, if any, literary analysis of academic writing. But, by chance, i recently read a short piece of literary theory, and, to use one of the two metaphors academics allow themselves, the scales fell from my eyes. If you are wondering, the other metaphor is deftly deployed in the following: in this column i shall view academic writing through the prism of literary theory. The writer in question had been given the thankless task of ploughing through a dozen or so narratives of addiction and redemption. You know the sort of thing you can't imagine how low i had sunk until i found the love of a good woman and/or jesus, and now i am a model for you all. These works, so it was alleged, were unbearably tedious, largely because they had not understood the basic rule of decent writing.

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And, indeed, it appears there is a basic rule, but, because i am, after all, an academic too, i must introduce it to you by means of a distinction. We will get nowhere until we have mastered the distinction between the plot and the story. The secret, apparently, is that good writing captures its reader by means of creating a tension between the plot and the story. The reader is shown enough of the narrative sequence to get an impression of what is going on, and to whet their appetite for more, but much is hidden. But before resolution a skilful writer will have set up another tension to keep the dynamic moving forward and on we go. I probably wasn't paying attention, particularly if it was taught by means of a narrative sequence lasting more than about 15 minutes. Still, it makes perfect sense to me, and also explains why academic writing is generally so much easier to put down than it is to pick up again.

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At least in my subject, we teach students to go sub zero on the tension scale: to give the game away right from the start. A detective novel written by a good philosophy student would begin: in this novel i shall show that the butler did it. By contrast, good literature often relies on the unsaid, or the implied or hinted at, rather than the expressed thought. But as we tell our students: you will only get a mark for it if it is written down, however obvious, and however infantile it seems to spell it out. Such discipline applies all the way through as the pressures of writing for peer reviewed journals are much the same. Professional academic style, then, is formed early on, and reinforced thereafter. It is rather hard to escape the conclusion that academic writing is boring because academics wouldn't have it any other way.

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professor jonathan wolff is head of philosophy at university college london. His column appears monthly a few days ago in the guardian philosophy professor jonathan wolff decided to figure out why academic writing was boring. He laments, that i ended up in a job where i have to spend half the day blinking my way through artless, contorted prose is a cruel twist of fate. Wolff ventures an explanation for why literary criticism is such a chore to read: academic essays lack the suspense of narratives. A detective novel written by a good philosophy student would begin: 'in this novel i shall show that the butler did it.' he goes on to explain: academic writing needs to be ordered, precise, and to make every move explicit. As anyone who has published in an academic journal knows, the peer review process can suck the life out of any essay.

It should be noted that the primary audience for most academic essays isn't students or general readers. Instead, academics especially young ones trying to write themselves out of dead end jobs write for hiring and tenure committees. Wolff is hardly the first person to complain about the tediousness of contemporary academic literary criticism. A larger question that wolff doesn't consider is why anyone should care if literary criticism is so boring. No one seems to object to the dreadful prose produced in the physical and social sciences. Literary critics, to a greater extent than philosophers, have felt a responsibility toward a general readership.

Literary criticism has had a special role in the public sphere since the 18th century, when the role of the literary critic first appeared. At that time cultural products became objects that had to be interpreted and evaluated, rather than just simply consumed or enjoyed. At a time when emergent capitalism was forcing people to become narrower and more specialized, critics were central to the project of becoming a well rounded, educated person. Another key moment in the history of critical prose was the arrival of structuralism in the american academy during the 1950's and '60's.

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Structuralism offered a scientific means of interpreting texts, so that literary studies could lay claim to the same objectivity and rigorous methodology as the sciences. Literary criticism gained a powerful array of analytical tools, but at the cost of a language accessible to the general reader, who was abandoned to newspaper book reviewers, themselves now an endangered species. There isn't an english professor in the world who doesn't long to approach someone reading the five people you meet in heaven in an airport gate and slap them upside the head. Critics could regress back to belle lettrism, which basically means sending mash notes to great authors. But the alternative is becoming professor eat your peas, insisting that a subway reader pour over every line in paradise lost.

Some english professors like michael bérubé have ventured into the messy world of blogs, while myspace is developing into another forum for discussions about literature. Developing a criticism that's a pleasure to read, or at least tolerable, means going back to criticism's roots in the early public sphere of open, and un refereed, debate. Jonathan wolff ucl comments in this amusing column from the guardian an excerpt: g ood writing captures its reader by means of creating a tension between the plot and the story. Of course, there is also a rather important stylistic element to good writing, and it is striking that many of the most influential philosophers are good or at least memorable stylists of one kind or another: one thinks right away of quine, fodor, nagel, railton, among others.

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And there is even more badly written philosophy that is not significant but has to be read because it is current. Why is academic writing so bad? he suggests a few reasons but concludes that, for the most part, scholars write poorly on purpose. In his view, bad writing is a form of academic camouflage designed to shield the author from criticism. Is this really such a mystery, though? writing well is hard to do, and it depends in no small part on talent. Like all talents, the ability to write well is probably distributed normally across the population.

Scholars just happen to work in a profession where writing is the preferred form of communication. Map that normal distribution onto a profession that churns out a ton of writing, and youll get the result we see. Walts argument implies that most scholars could write well but choose not to.

I think the kind of dense, jargony writing walt sees as camouflage is actually easier for most people to produce than the concise writing he rightly prefers. Skill varies widely, and anyone whos ever written for an academic journal or press knows that peer reviewers and editors usually give you zero help with your prose. Whats more interesting, i think, is why academia doesnt select for writing skill, given how much writing scholars are expected to do. You dont see a lot of terrible writing in top newspapers and magazines because editors dont want to hire and retain journalists who make their jobs that much harder. Orchestras dont hire musicians who have great ideas about melody and harmony but cant play. Of course, its possible that academia would  reward excellent writing if it got the chance, but the best writers are simply choosing to take their skills elsewhere.

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