On academic writing and its mannerisms (series: notes to myself)

Academic writing is a linguistic genre. And each academic discipline has its own style of writing. Just browse any decent, peer-reviewed journal. You will notice that the structure, the syntax, the words, the phrases all belong to a canon. Graduate students pick it up as they write their essays, and chapters, and theses. By the time one is out of the last stage of education one thinks it is natural to write in that way, that it is the only way to write scientifically, that everybody in the scholarly or scientific business of producing some text writes that way. Of course, that is not true. Each discipline has its own sedimented ways of conveying its contents. 

Sometimes, a genius realises this and starts alerting the world that scientific articles are just texts like any other. It is just language, and not even that, it is someone's hegemonic language, whose intentions need to be deconstructed, psychoanalysed, socio-politically challenged. It is tyring to explain to the genius that so are books of recipes, for example, and yes, their language can tell you a lot about many things, but above all, they can help you cook a decent carbonara. Which, going back to the main point, still does not take anything away from the genre point and some bad habits linked to it. I have many in mind, but I shall stress only a few, those that grate on my nerves most. It's therapy, you see.

The useless adverbs. Philosophers, but not only them, love adverbs. If they can drop an "allegedly" here, an "arguably" there, or even an "ostensibly" anywhere, they will, and with gusto. Of course, adverbs hardly ever make any difference. Worst scenario, you often use them to cover your back. They give you the impression of being able to go away with murder, allegedly. Because, arguably, if you say something but qualify it with "certainly" you feel that the reader will be less reluctant to resist your point, even if the point is exactly the same. And almost anything and the opposite of anything can be said without the risk of being proved wrong if you start with a "plausibly". I recommend my students to write without adverbs, and see whether anything changes. Ostensibly, very little, or nothing at all.

To further understand. Nobody seems to be interested in understanding anymore, everybody wants to furtherunderstand everything (those less sophisticated merely betterunderstand). It's not just the split infinitive that is annoying. It's the fact that it has become a cliche, three words so cemented that defy any critical thinking. Whatever scientific or scholarly work you may do it is always to furtherunderstand this or that. Not to understand it in the first place (who admits not getting it yet?). Not to explain it. Not to analyse it. Not to interpret it. Not to make whatever first step is necessary. But always to make a further step, even if the first is missing.

Lens. I tried to check who was the first academic to introduce this annoying metaphor. I failed. But it reminds me of Spinoza, who is faultless, poor guy, but whose job, as an optical lens grinder (he collaborated on microscope and telescope lens designs with Constantijn and Christiaan Huygens) inevitably causes my mental association. I might have used the wrong lens (interface) in my search. But one thing is clear: social scientists love a lens. It is a pseudo-scientific metaphor that makes a simple acknowledgement - that you are going to adopt a specific perspective - a bit more grandiose. It smells of methodology, when in fact it is simply hiding common sense. You see, it's not just a mere point of view, it's a lens, a scholarly sophisticated tool to dissect, observe, analyse, interpret, read, and finally criticise. Because a lens is by default a critical lens or is not a lens at all. And then the game beings. Because a lens is never enough, you need more, for a plurality of points of view, and lenses are born, and then their intersections and layering and interplay. An economic lens may be combined with an ethnographic lens, to counterbalance a sociological lens that would otherwise entirely undermine an empirical lens... It becomes a game of lenses that makes one wonder whether we are talking about a microscope, a telescope, a hierarchy of lenses, parallel lenses... Jargon that hides relativism and generates opacity (the lenses do not seem to help), in a room full of mirrors lensing each other. And finally, the game is over, because the reader is supposed to speak "lens-glish". You lens, I lens, and on we go. 

[time to go and cook, more on annoying academic cliches soon, watch this space]