It's no secret that I have a grudge against poorly written academic texts ("poorly written" here meaning writing that makes my eyes glaze over and my brain cringe from jargon). I've written about it before, ranted publicly many a time, and I undoubtedly will again.
But however much I rail against an overabundance (in my opinion) of academese, I appreciate those moments when I get called out on exactly what I'm railing against.
It's true that a great deal of academic writing is overwrought. I'm guilty of this, myself (my MA thesis was an embarrassing collection of passive sentences and convoluted paragraphs filled with agonizing prose). It's an easy pitfall in a world where passive structures imply objectivity. Drowning in deadlines, publication requirements, and way too much caffeine, we have limits to what we can manage. If a piece is grammatically correct, understandable (if only barely), and a publisher is actually willing to take it....does it really matter if it's a bit heavy handed?
I'd say yes. My goal for my writing and my scholarship is communication. Clarity. Scholarship that is drowning in academese places a barrier between theory and reader, lessening the audience who can actually be impacted. If I want my research to make waves, I need it to be the kind of thing that people come back to willingly. Not the kind that graduate students reluctantly trudge through, thoughts of bonfires dancing in the back of their thoughts, before shoving it into a pile of other quickly-forgotten texts. I long to emulate scholars like James Paul Gee, Nancy Sommers, or Wendy Bishop; I want my research to be practical, applicable, and ultimately readable.
But my desire for clarity and engagement comes at a cost...one that Gary Olson and Kory Lawson Ching have expressed so, so well. In his essay, "Struggling Over Theory, Struggling Over Identity," Olson comments on the role of theory in composition. "I did not argue that everyone should engage in [theoretical] scholarship, or that we should abandon other types of scholarship (such as explorations of effective pedagogy), or that theoretical scholarship should be thought of as superior to alternative modes of investigation--only that as a field we need to widen, not narrow, our intellectual focus" (584). Ching, too, points out the great weakness hidden under all my railing--"to be constantly shooting for [practical] payoff is to privilege, in the parlance of composition, the product over the process" (456).
I know that my own practical knowledge of teaching and praxis has improved drastically since my return to grad school. I was a good teacher before, yes, but studying theory over the past three years (even the theory that left me writhing in mental anguish) has challenged me to question long-held beliefs, to find new ways to interact with my cohort and my students, and to grow...as an instructor and a student. Ching and Olson, in beautifully clear terms, remind me that abstract thought can often only be expressed in abstractions... and it has to start there (and be allowed to stay there) before any move toward practice can feasibly occur. It has to be valued in its gestation.
And, speaking in terms of pragmatics, there's the very real truth that the Academy (with all the ominous, anonymous authority the capital A ascribes) values theory and intellectual complexity. Ching references Sidney Dobrin when he says that without theory "composition scholarship will stagnate, and composition as a field will be defined within the narrow confines of a service orientation (emphasis mine)" (458). Teaching may be what brought me to this field, but the pedagogical imperative (if all-encompassing) becomes a constraint that can hinder our effectiveness as a field or even--equally--as teachers. "We risk invisibility and illegitimacy, and those attributes would have dire consequences for the field as a whole" (458).
My bias will probably always be towards practicality. I like personalized, witty, or practical scholarship. I like things I can hold in my hands and turn into something real. But what I want (however valuable) can't be the be all and end all of the discipline.
Anyone who has taught figures out very quickly that sharing ideas is the best way to plan. We pass lesson plans back and forth. We talk about strategies and approaches and we develop them into new, personalized things. It's a lesson that I am trying to get better about applying to my scholarly life as well. It's not enough to stick to the knowledge that I'm most comfortable with. I need theorists in my life. I need other view points. They make me a better teacher, a better scholar, and a better person... and that is valuable enough.
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