Events

28 May 2008

Academic writing: A manifesto on style

Seminar

Pick up any guide to effective writing, and what will you find? Probably some version of same advice that Strunk and White dished out in the 1930s: engage your reader's attention through examples, illustrations and anecdotes; use clear, precise language to express complex ideas; avoid obfuscating jargon; vary your vocabulary, sentence length and frames of reference; favour active verbs and concrete nouns; write with conviction, passion and verve. Pick up any peer-reviewed journal in the field of psychology (or, indeed, in any other academic discipline), and what will you find? Impersonal, stodgy, jargon-laden prose that ignores or defies virtually every one of the tried-and-true principles listed above. Why this massive gap between what we know good writing is and what academics actually produce and publish? In this presentation I will report on my stylistic analysis of 100 articles from top-ranked psychology journals, and I will invite discussion of my current research project, a taxonomy of academic writing across the disciplines.

English Language and Literature

stylistics and discourse analysis

Organisation:

University of Auckland