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我为何主张“好”的学术写作 (2)

(2005-01-08 20:37:28)
分类: 观点·Opinion

III) Other Incentives and Reasons for ‘Bad’ Academic Writings

It is said by many that John Stuart Mill has never achieved the prominence of Hegel because people found out what he meant. Therefore, to make your writings difficult to access, may have some expected positive consequences.

i) To Deliberately establish a barrier against access. Evidently, the use of complex writings would render your writings difficult to read, by virtue of which you can create an artificial status of superiority over your audiences. You can create a kind of ‘emperor’s new clothes’, as the audiences could not easily figure out what you mean and dare not to spell the truth out. It takes time for people to disclose your secret, and the secret may never be found out.. Hence, the intentional use of difficult writing can create an artificial barrier against other people who want to access your work. If people are too quick to discover what you mean, they may consider your idea superficial and trivial; but if the writing is obscurantist and impossible to understand fully, they may reserve their judgements.. Thus there is always a good incentive to set up such a barrier.

If a group of people tacitly accept/endorse such a writing style, it may serve to create an academic enclosure (or haven) safe from external challenges. This is to some extent true for the post-modernist circles of various disciplines across many countries.

ii) Abstract and Complex writings can be used as a device for defence. Other things being equal, your ideas and thoughts are more tenable if the writings to express them are impenetrable. If people criticise your arguments, you could claim that they misinterpret you. It is not easy for the readers to get precisely what you are saying in your work, particularly when the writings are difficult to read. If the readers do not read your texts well, they might refrain from criticising their content lest they make mistakes. Hence, an abstract, complicated and unintelligible writing style can have the function to put the author to a place relatively safe from critiques. *

iii) Difficult writings as an idiosyncratic style. Perhaps it is not true that every author use difficult language in their writings are trying to set up barriers or device for defence. It is fair to admit that some authors simply enjoy the style, for example, Kant has a great penchant for terminology, Parsons always prefers the sort of scientific and orthodox formal language, and Heidegger writes in that way perhaps because he believes it is the right way to do philosophy. They claim there are intrinsic values in their styles, and they believe idiosyncracy in academic writing matters because it marks out each author’s difference. This converts the question into one of opinions and views, and this draws us to the aesthetic argument mentioned earlier.

iv) It is simply not easy to use ‘good’ academic writing because few people have the capacity to express their ideas and thoughts in a reasonably clear, straightforward and succinct way. In other words, it is not because people do not desire to use good academic writing, but that they are not capable of doing it. When a professor criticises the assignment of a student he may not suspect his motives behind such writings, but believes that he just doesn’t know how to write. It indeed demands great skills to translate one’s thoughts in mind into words: the author must have great disposal over the language he is using; he must have very good sense of logic and a reasonably well-structured mind, and he must have a very clear idea about what he is talking about and how he is going to talk. We have to admit it is a great personal capacity and talent to elucidate abstract concepts and thoughts in a clear, neat and logical language. Many people simply lack such skills, hence a difference between great writers (such as Bertrand Russell), and mediocre ones (most of the average writers).

IV) Why I am in Favour of a Clear, Neat and ‘Good’ Academic Writing:

As I wrote the introduction and reviewed the arguments for writing styles other than the perceived ‘good’ one, and question the motives and reasons of authors employing such styles, my position became very clear: I am in favour of such a clear, neat, straightforward way of writing because I consider it as good. None the less, I will still try to list the reasons why I am for such a style.

i) Such writing style is easier for the readers to access to and assess your work. Now that you have written a clear and accessible text, whether the readers could grasp your ideas and thoughts depend solely upon their expertise and knowledge of the subject, and language ceases to exist as a barrier. Other things being equal, this maximises their chance to understand what you are saying and would encourage them to evaluate what you have just done. The author can no longer use language barrier to fend off or even suffocate criticisms.

ii) To express your idea in a most clear, straightforward and logical way possible will minimise divergent and/or false interpretations derived from your text (of course this does not mean to eliminate all misinterpretations, since that is impossible). Ambiguity in a text would always lead to different understandings and interpretations as different readers would have different impressions and thoughts over what they have read, and they ma stick to particular part of the text rather than its totality, to vindicate their understandings. To minimise such problem an author needs to try his best to employ a ‘good’ academic writing.

iii) Ceteris paribus, if the ‘good’ academic writing style becomes a general standard that most reasonable academics agree to and committed to defend, it would benefit the course of knowledge transmission, exchange, cumulation and progress. Ambiguous, abstract and complicated style, however idiosyncratic and stylistic, would thwart rather than promote the advance of this course.

Aesthetic and idiosyncratic styles and heterogeneity may be valued, but they should not be prior to the ends of the investigation and advance of knowledge and truth, and that end goal is precisely what academic writing is all about. There are other media and arena wherein authors could employ their own styles and give alternative views about what constitutes a ‘good’ text, but when doing academic or quasi-academic work, they should stick to the principle or doctrine which is most conducive to pursuit of knowledge.

iv) To use a clear and neat style is sincere, genuine and modest. It is sincere and genuine because by expressing your ideas and thoughts clearly and straightforwardly, you are telling the people that you want them to understand, and you think that they can understand. It is modest because a person who adopts a clear and neat style and committed to make his audiences understood, shows humility and willingness to be approached and queries by his readers. A person who uses difficult pattern of language is often being accused of arrogance and elitism, in that he seems to be not concerned about whether he can convey his ideas to the audiences, or arrogantly supposing that the readers have the same capacity and expertise in related fields so that they can understand what he is writing about. The role of a scholar is not only to pursue knowledge, but also to publish his findings and let other people understand them. An academic using an incomprehensible style to express his ideas, cannot be said to genuine and sincere in the later course.

v) A clear and accessible style is also emancipating. The discourse about emancipation has to do with giving people knowledge, enlightenment, and ultimately freedom. The cause of the advance of knowledge and pursuit of truth should be emancipating, precisely because it gives people knowledge, wisdom and enlightenment. But the academics, the kind of people who are responsible for such a grand project, should also let their findings accessible to laymen. Not all academic works can be understood by laymen, but some indeed could, especially those of social sciences and humanities. I do not mean that every piece of academic work should be written as simple as comprehensible to laymen, what I am arguing is that by endorsing the ‘good academic writing’ style t maximises laymen’s opportunity to access to those works if they are ready to put some efforts.

Some contemporary academics have a specific agenda of emancipation, the most prominent one being the Frankfurt School, headed by scholars such as Horkheimer, Adorno, Mercuser and later Habermas. Following a Marxist tradition, one central theme of the School’s project is to bring a better understanding of the capitalist society to the proletariat and working class, who are so repressed and are still the force to overturn the system. But the working class are unconscious about their status, and communist parties cannot exercise the role of leadership; it is the role of the scholars (i.e. those in the Frankfurt School) to disclose the nature of capitalism and eliminate false consciousness of the proletariat. Hence, the scholars have a duty to tell the proletariat the truth. But Frankfort School’s theories are tremendously difficult, even expressed in most simple language; the situation was worsened by the fact that the theorists made little or no attempt at all, to elucidate their ideas in a relatively accessible and intelligible way. Not only the proletariat could not understand what they were talking about, many intellectuals could not, too. The School’s cherished slogan of human emancipation was but empty. From the perspective of the ordinary people, these group of academics were but arrogant, indifferent, elitist bourgeoisie intellectuals who have no concern to reality.

A piece of good writing can be emancipating as it brings knowledge to the mass and maximise its influence and reach. We need more scholars, who are both well learned, and have the willingness to communicate with the lay people so as to make them more informed. The result of such efforts will surely be emancipating.

Apart from those we are very familiar with, such as Bertrand Russell, positive modern example will be Robert Nozick, one of the best political philosophers and a real genius of last century. Instead of adopting an arduous, stifling and elitist orthodox language, he takes a lively, accessible writing style which makes the readership of his works Anarchy, State and Utopia far beyond the academia, and influenced a generation of young readers. On this account, Nozick as noted in an article:

“It is as though that philosophers want is a way of saying something that will leave the person they’re talking to no escape. Well, why should they be bludgeoning people like that? It’s not a nice way to behave.”

The style of this Harvard professor is a best example of the empiricist and practical English tradition, and he has a good spirit in that he brings many philosophical issues to ordinary people in a modest and sincere manner

Conclusion

We have seen the purpose of academic writing, and what constitutes a good writing should be conducive to this end goal. We then examined justifications and/or arguments for what is considered a ‘bad’ academic writing, and some other motives and reasons behind this choice. I then attempt to argue for a clear, neat, straightforward writing style with various arguments and reasons. What we have done, may well illustrate the rationale underlying my preference to a ‘good’ academic writing’, and I believe this is the only ‘good’ way to write an article for the project of investigation of knowledge, pursuit of truth, and emancipation of human beings.

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