How academic professionals get their ideas of what constitutes good academic writing is a two sided issue that is the focus of the article written by Dinitia Smith (1999). According to Smith (1999) “the argument over bad writing is more than a school yard spat. It is at the heart of the continuing ‘culture wars’, feeding conservative attacks on the abandonment of traditional standards and subjects at universities” (p.2). Both parties of the debate have lively advocates. Smith (1999) recounts Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, writing an attack on the feminist theorist Judith Butler for “ponderous and obscure” writing (p.2). Judith Butler is a Berkeley professor who won the journal Philosophy and Literature’s annual Bad Writing contest in 1999. According to the article, Ms. Nussbaum charged Ms. Butler’s writing of resorting to mystification in an effort to create “an aura of importance” (Smith, 1999, p.2). Joan Scott, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, offered a defense for Ms. Butler’s writing arguing “when a scholar uses difficult language, he or she is not ‘pretending to be a journalist’ or to be writing for the general public (Smith, 1999, p.2). She argues that “the attacks on academic writing is “a kind of anti-intellectualism that is everywhere in the culture, a demand for things they already agree with” (Smith, 1999, p.2). At first glance, the article by Smith (1999) makes one unclear as to where academic professionals get their picture of what constitutes good academic writing, but Ms. Nussbaum says scholars are sometimes encouraged to write in obscure language (p.3). “Graduate students in analytic philosophy often get the message that if you write in a way that is accessible to non-specialists it means you are going to hurt your career” (Smith, 1999, p.3). According to Smith (1999) Ralph Hexter, dean of humanities at the University of California at Berkeley exerts “if you define good writing as clarity and limpidity, most of this will be by definition bad writing”(p.3). Furthermore, Richard Kelly (1999) reports that Professor Michael Berube of the University of Illinois agrees that clear writing can spell trouble in academic circles (p.1). Therefore, one could argue that academic professionals get their picture of what constitutes good academic writing first, as students in their own program of study, and then, by reading and critically evaluating other scholarly writing within their field of expertise. According to the article written by Robert Rector (2010), the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is one source where academic writers get their picture of what constitutes good academic writing (p.1).
After reading the Smith (1999) article, one could argue that some common mistakes academic writers make are being both clear, and unclear. Scholars such as Ralph Hexter and Judith Butler assert through their writing that having scholarly writing that is too clear will discredit a scholars’ work among his or her academic peers, while contemporary scholars like Martha Nussbaum suggests that writing unclearly only obscures its meaning and causes reader confusion. Richard Kelly (1999) also highlights the trouble that clear academic writing can lead to. The Robert Rector (2010) article did not highlight any common mistakes academic writers make.
In conclusion, based on the assigned articles to analyze, one could argue that poor academic writing is writing either too lucidly, or writing too verbosely, it all depends on your academic circle, and the current body of scholarly writing already surrounding a writer’s field of expertise. However, based on the assigned articles, one could have the strong argument that to avoid being labeled a “poor academic writer”, you could always write very robust passages full of verbose, scholarly language that is inaccessible to non-specialists.
References
Kelly, R. (1999). Bad blood over bad writing: Critics say US academic language has become so convoluted that it is largely incomprehensible to the point where argument is becoming impossible. Richard Kelly reports: (City Edition).
Irish Times. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.ncu.edu/docview/310535955?accountid=28180Rector, R. (2010, April 3). Bad writing gets its just reward.
San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.ncu.edu/docview/379815984?accountid=28180Smith, D. (1999, February 27). When Ideas Get Lost in Bad Writing.
The New York Times. Retrieved from
http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/badwriting.htm