Understanding College Writing in English

Every kind of writing follows a general set of conventions and strategies based on its purpose and audience. For example, a technical manual explains how to perform tasks such as repairs, installations, construction, etc. To achieve his or her explanatory purpose, the technical manual writer must divide the information into categories and decide how to arrange the categories. He or she will explain processes and give directions. Some manuals are written for audiences who have little or no knowledge of the subject. Others, of course, are written for people who already have a great deal of expertise. The manual writer must know the audience so that the expert audience doesn't feel insulted and the novice audience doesn't get lost.

When producing college writing, students are asked to follow certain conventions and strategies that professors follow when they publish in their academic discipline. The entire process professors engage in is generally referred to as "scholarship" and the type of writing, academic writing. Your paper assignments, what we usually call "college writing," to varying degrees, ask you to think and write as your professors do. In this section, I will explain the conventions and strategies generally followed by professors in various disciplines. If you, as a student, understand how professors reach audiences and create arguments, the rules of writing in college may not appear to be so mysterious.

The Rhetorical Situation in Academic Writing
When professors write for publications that are read by other academics in their field, they assume that their readers share their general knowledge. The articles they write are usually published in academic journals (journals edited by other professors) and the books they write are usually published by university presses. Professors also write for other audiences, however. When they write textbooks, they are writing for students who are non-experts. Sometimes, professors also write books for larger, mixed audiences and publish with popular presses who sell their books to book stores like Barnes and Nobel. In this section, I will explain the rhetorical situation professors must consider when they write for other academics like themselves.

1. Purpose
Most professors work in a single discipline such as philosophy, chemistry, French, anthropology. "Discipline" is an appropriate term because professors cannot research or write about anything they want; their topics must pertain to their disciplines, each having its own content, ways of thinking and methods of researching and arguing. American universities have established three categories of academic disciplines: the physical sciences (biology, chemistry, astronomy, physics, etc.); the social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, etc.); and, the humanities (language, literature, rhetoric, history, philosophy, etc.). Many universities also have professional schools in which students are prepared to enter a particular profession such as engineering, teaching, nursing, information systems management, etc.).

Professors are expected to know the content of their disciplines, but they are also expected to add knowledge to their disciplines. They do this by researching, asking new questions, seeking new answers, and arguing a case for their conclusions. Before their work can be published, scholarly writing must be reviewed by other scholars in the discipline.

2. Audience
When professors write for publications that are read by other experts in their field, they assume that their readers have solid, background knowledge. In this case, their audience can be called "simple" because the author can easily determine what the audience already knows. The articles they write are usually published in academic journals (journals edited by other academics) and the books they write are usually published by university presses. Professors also write for student audiences. When they write textbooks, they are writing for students who are non-experts. Again this audience can be considered simple because the author can easily determine what the audience already knows. But professors also write books for multiple audiences and publish with popular presses who sell their publications to book stores.

Below are two pieces of writing by Lester Faigley, the author of the Penguin Handbook. One of the excerpts is from your handbook and the other is from his academic book, Fragments of Rationality, published by a university press. Can you identify which is written for an academic audience of professors and which is written for students?

Several recent versions of the spread of poststructuralism have focused on how poststructuralist theory altered as it crossed national boundaries rather than how it responded to structuralism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology within France. Anthony Easthope, for example, explains why British and North American poststructuralisms took on such different characters, with British poststructuralism initially proceeding from Althusser and Foucault, and North American postructuralism from Derrida.

With the development of mass media, people have increasingly been exposed to communication that involves more than one medium. In the nineteenth century magazines were illustrated with drawings; in the twentieth century they used photographs as well.

3. Ethos: Speaking in the voice of demonstration and reason, not emotion In order to gain the respect of his or her audience, the academic writer must demonstrate a thorough understanding of the scholarship that already exists. For this reason, in your college writing, you are also expected to do in-depth research on your topic. In this way, you demonstrate that you have also have gained some expertise on a particular subject and have something to say about it.

The academic writer demonstrates his or her knowledge of the body of work that exists on the topic by analyzing it to determine how various scholars' views compare and contrast. They must summarize and explain the work of other scholars, but more so, they must decide what terms and concepts relate to their own research, a process we refer to as synthesizing and reflecting. The academic writer must also decide when a term he or she is using requires a definition in order to be sure that the audience understands exactly what he or she means. Much of this kind of work in carried on in the introductory section, but the art of synthesizing generally continues throughout the entire article.

Academic audiences expect the author to deliberate on his or her research and present a balanced treatment of the material. They do not expect emotional responses to the material, nor do they expect the author to draw attention to him or herself. Because of this, many college professors expect students to refrain from using phrases such as "I think that" or "It seems to me that." These expectations emerge from the scientific tradition, particularly ideas we have inherited from Aristotle. For Aristotle, scientific knowledge comes from the thing we are observing, rather than the person observing it. While our understanding of the complex nature of knowledge-making has evolved since Aristotle, our academic writing style continues to conform to Aristotle's notion that things can, in some ways, speak for themselves. The scientific, demonstrative voice academics are expected to speak in, therefore, is a dispassionate voice. It assumes that the observer is merely demonstrating what he or she observes. Consequently, the academic writer often uses the passive voice, a voice that tends to deflect the reader's attention away from human beings who are examining the subject being studied.

Speaking in the voice of dispassionate demonstration sometimes makes it difficult for the non-expert, student reader to distinguish between the ideas of the author and the ideas of the other scholars to which he or she refers. Although citation systems solve some of the problems of the non-expert reader, students should pay close attention to the transition words or phrases that indicate when an author is summarizing, analyzing, synthesizing or evaluating the ideas of other academics and when the author is presenting his or her own argument.

When you write for your college courses, be aware that your assignment may ask you to mimic the kind of writing your professor does. You will probably be asked to write for an audience of your peers, demonstrate that you are well-read on a subject, speak in the demonstrative voice, and exhibit some original thinking on the subject.

4. Logos: the organization and elements of the argument
Academic articles can often, but not always, be divided into three large sections: the introductory section, which often contains many parts and sets up the argument, the expository section which lays out the argument in detail, and the closing section in which final conclusions are drawn. The following discussion and exercises focus on reading and analyzing the Introduction of academic articles. For more discussion and practice analyzing the expository (body) section of academic articles, visit the section of this site on The Elements of Academic Argument.

The Introductory Section of an Academic Article

Most scholarly papers published in academic journals, in any discipline, begin with an introductory section that performs the following functions:

• The General Introduction provides the context or backdrop of the scholarly work. This section helps the readers situate themselves in the general conditions that give rise to the research.
• The Literature Review summarizes, analyzes, and evaluates what has already been written about the subject. Often at the end of this section, scholars explain what the research lacks. Their purpose is to show that their own argument is saying something new.
• Outline of what the scholar will argue or how his or her argument is organized. Often in this section, scholars reiterate why their argument is different from what has already been said on a subject. They may also define key terms or concepts pertinent to their argument.
• Explanation of the method of analysis the scholar will follow. All disciplines have developed theories that become acceptable grounds for research. From these theories, scholars develop methods of analyzing the phenomena their disciplines comprise.