Good Academic Writing, Bad Academic Writing, and My Preference
An Introduction
The debate about good academic writing and bad academic writing indicates that there is in existence of a standard, or conception, of what constitutes a good, and what constitutes a bad. And if we are to question what is the conceptions that define a good academic writing, we should understand that it must have something to do with the purpose or end goals of academic writing per se: it is a form of formal textual medium by means of which investigation, exploration and discussion of knowledge are putting into words for people to read, understand, and use, and will be used as the basis for further academic queries and development. In modern academic world, it is thus a most important arena whereupon the exchanges of ideas, thoughts, discoveries, evaluations of others works, etc, are undertaken. Academic works are thus almost solely to do with the advance of knowledge and exploration of truth. Only by virtue of such an understanding it would be easy for us to understand, what should be the appropriate style for such kind of writing; i.e it should be conducive to the purpose we have just mentioned: the advance of knowledge
In the light of such we may understand that
i) Good academic writing, is characterised by short and simple clauses and sentences, simple vocabulary, clear and straightforward logic, a well-organised structure and clearly stated arguments.
ii) Bad academic writing is characters by sophisticated grammatical structure; complicated vocabulary and extensive employment of terminology; unintelligible logical deduction, padding and prolixity, and an overall presentation marked by inaccessibbility in terms of style.
Good academic writing is of course easy to read, whereas bad academic writing is difficult to access to and understand. Our intuition is certainly that good academic writing is a preferable style (otherwise it will not be called ‘good’), and bad academic writing should be discouraged for good.
And let’s narrow our discussion to the field of philosophy. The good academic writing is normally thought to be associated with the English (and later, American) tradition; whereas the bad academic writing has been thought to be associated with the Continental tradition. That’s correct: Hobbes, Bentham, Hume etc employed drastically different style from Kant and Hegel. The English tradition has been advanced by many modern philosophers such as Russell, Ayer and prominently contemporary writers such as Nozick; whereas the Continental style has been appropriated by most theorists associated with most modern and post-modern theorists, from Heidegger onwards to notorious examples such-and-such as Baudrilard and Kriestva. But it is surely mistaken to say that the Continent has no good writers; for instance, Rousseau and Sartre are both top-rate writers who are capable of very good academic writings and express their ideas remarkably well.
Never the less, by the measure we have given above, it is tempting to say that the empiricist, pragmatist Anglo-American style is closer to ‘good’ academic writing, as Hazlitt has tried to define what amounts to a genuine, familiar or truly English style:
“[It] is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command or choice of words or who could discourse with ease, force and perspicuity setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.”
In comparison, the abstract, obscurantist and jargon-ridden Continental style, is closer to ‘bad’ academic writing.
Now I would like to give several examples of ‘bad’ academic writings, the first one is Guattari’s (a prominent French psychologist) text.
“We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between line are signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.”
Also from Kriestva, a French postmodernist philsopher
“The notion of constructibility, which implies the axiom of choice associated with all we have put together for the poetic language, explains the impossibility of establishing a contradiction in the space of the language of poetry.”
And one from Irigaray:
“The Other can exist only if it can draw on the well of sameness for its matter, for the texture of its horizons, the emergence of its beyond-world. If this were not so, that Other would be so other that we could in way conceive it.”
One from Professor Stephen Tyler, an American social scientist:
“It thus relativizes discourse not just to form–that familiar perversion of the modernist; nor to authorial intention–that conceit of the romantics; nor to a foundational world beyond discourse–that desperate grasping for a separate reality of the mystic and scientist alike; nor even to history and ideology–those refuges of the hermeneuticist; nor even less to language–that hypostasized abstraction of the linguist; nor, ultimately, even to discourse–that Nietzschean playground of world-lost signifiers of the structuralist and grammatologist, but to all or none of these, for it is anarchic, though not for the sake of anarchy but because it refuses to become a fetishized object among objects–to be dismantled, compared, classified, and neutered in that parody of scientific scrutiny known as criticism.”
The last one is from prominent American scholar Frederic Jameson:
If you find these sentences completely unreadable, it is not because you lack of any expertise at all about the subject-matters they are talking about, but simply because the texts themselves are so badly written that they are not readable at all. An impression, however, is that these texts were deliberately constructed as such to fit this obscurantist style.
Arguments for ‘Bad’ Academic Writing
None the less, the debate about which style—the clear or the obscurantist—is more preferable, endures. For the Anglo-American world, those academic fields closely associated with Continental thought (such as cultural studies, literary criticism etc), often adopt or accommodate Continental style, whereas the remainders are more likely to stick to the English traditions. Some institutions, such as Yale, are more penetrated by Continental thoughts and academic ethos, and some institution such as Harvard, is traditionally more Anglo-American, thus academics of each institution may be fond of different styles in accordance to the influence they have experienced.
Given the obvious benefits of good academic writing, one would wonder why there are proponents of those ‘bad’ academic writings. Several most frequently resorted arguments to support the cause: emerge, and we may examine each of them and make some queries.
i) The content in those writings thought to be ‘bad’, are inherently difficult. Translation: you do not understand them because they are difficult; alternatively, you can say ideas expressed by those texts are too sophisticated for the authors to put them into simple, accessible words.
But a cursory reading of the bad academic writing texts would tell otherwise. There is a strong impression that simple ideas and thoughts of these authors are deliberately expressed with a complicated language, to make the whole thing more difficult, thereupon renders their value more difficult to assess for the readers.
The contents of many writings are indeed difficult, but this exactly warrants the authors to write them as clear-cut and intelligible as possible, instead of further complicating them. One should avoid to use unnecessary ambiguous, difficult terms and abstract analogies, and clauses should be as tight and neat as possible. The authors at least should show some willingness to attempt to present their materials in a more approachable way in a more sincere attitude.
2) Nevert simplify for the sake of simplicity. Good point. What it means is that if the process of simplification cannot preserve all the important points and ideas in a text, then it should not be simplified at all; simplicity should not be treated as the ends prior to the writing of ideas. If prolixity in expressing an idea is unavoidable, we should concede, and let it be complicated.
But this begs further question. It is true that we should not simplify for the sake of simplicity, and we should not regard simplification as ends in itself, but simplicity is simply not the ends. The ends, if properly understood, is to advance our understandings of knowledge and truth. The best way to write a good academic writing is not necessarily shorten its length to make it more succinct (of course, that is commendable if can be achieved), but to make it more accessible and readable in format and presentation. That has to do with the kind of vocabulary, grammars and structure of sentences and arguments an author adopts. We should not unduly simplify a text if the act would lead to lose of values and point, but we should make an effort to convey our ideas in a most intelligible way, even this may actually increase the length of the text.
In reality, the impression we have is that unduly prolixity has been a central characteristics of bad academic writing: the authors make no endeavour to simplify their texts when such actions would clearly sacrifice no significant value of content, but rather, they try to make their writings as difficult as possible, and rationalise it on the grounds that ‘you should not simplify for the sake of simplicity’, as though the texts are genuinely non-simplifiable.
Some authors try to ‘translate’ complicated sentences made up by authors preferring a bad academic writing style. There was the memorable event in which C. W. Mills tried to re-write key sentences in Talcott Parsons’s text, who is a notorious prominent sociologist enjoyed complicated writing. And Mills did it well. But some are not satisfied and would point out: what if the translation missed the original text’s point? And I have two answers: firstly, the translation by another author may not be satisfactory, but this does not mean that the original text could not be translated into simple language. Secondly, misinterpretation in translation, if there had any, was precisely due to the inherent difficulties in the original text. If prominent academic such as C. W. Mills could not understand Parsons, it begs the question ‘who can’? And should Parsons endorse a more accessible style?
3) Aesthetic value: a matter of style and choice. Some of those adopting a bad academic writing style, justify their preferences by arguing this is a matter of personal style and choice. The converts the debate into a question of faith and sheer personal penchant, and reasonable query is thereupon no longer possible. I want to write such difficult sentences because I like it. Some people, in a more radical way, would simply assign aesthetic value to their difficult writings, as though such writings are in particular way more beautiful and enjoyable. As far as philosophy is concerned, the American philosophy departments are not particularly fond of the Continental stuff and less so style, whereas many Continental followers jeer at the American philosophical community’s incapacity to appreciate aesthetic, literary and poetic value of philosophical writings, which has been an European tradition, if you like. But if we treat philosophy as a special case, should such thinking be extended to other academic realms?
The central purpose of academic writing is not to create artistic works of high aesthetic values, but to advance knowledge and exchange it with other people. Aesthetic value should be cherished insofar as it does not constitute a problem for the central purpose and end goals of academic writing. If excessive aesthetic value renders us far more difficult to understand a text’s substantive knowledge content, it cannot be justified. Those who favour aesthetic writings can find other arena to employ their writing skills and penchant, but stick to a basic academic standard when they are writing academic texts. This is a position of ‘knowing what they are doing’.
Hence, the argument for aesthetic value could not justify bad academic writing. And importantly, for many texts of bad academic writings, we simply cannot see good aesthetic value and significance.
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.
