Published: Mon 28 December 2020
By Joseph Reagle
In praxis .
tags: praxis writing
I’ve published three books with an academic press, and with each I
strove to be accessible to general readers. The last, Hacking Life <strong> ideas series where
accessibility was an explicit goal – one for which I think I had some success .
For others wishing to reach a wider audience and transcend common
academic conventions and weaknesses, I have three recommendations of
increasing importance. I learned about the importance of balancing
metadiscourse, pruning names, and sharpening theses by way of
experience, purposeful study, useful resources and good
advice – especially from David
Weinberger .
Metadiscourse
is the term used to describe the author’s gestures about what they are
doing: the author’s structuring of the content and their relationship to
the reader. For example, academic press books, by convention, have a
“plan of the book” at the end of the introduction. This can be useful to
the scholarly reader, who has no intention of reading the whole book,
and it saves the author from having to ensure that the book (a) works as
a coherent whole and (b) the reader is guided along that path by way of
a unifying trope (e.g., a narrative or metaphor). Also, metadiscourse
often appears at the start of each chapter, at the expense of an
inviting provocation and strong thesis. And instead of a set of notable
motifs, authors sometimes lean too heavily on forward and backward
references to other chapters. In my last my book, I was advised to
expunge all allusions to other chapters, though I managed to retain a
few. Metadiscourse is useful, but it needs to be used with care and not
to compensate for other weaknesses.
When a writer mentions a proper noun, they are placing a burden on
readers. They ask if this a recurring character, such as an interviewee
or historical subject? Or perhaps it is another voice, such as that of a
fellow scholar or journalist? The readers ask if they have encountered
this name before? Should they keep it in mind for the future? Academic
writers tend to mention many names, without recurrence or context. I’ve
learned, instead, to elide a name unless it recurs, and to always
provide context. I also try to limit novel names to around one per
paragraph and not to exceed three. Consequently, this means that instead
of writing, “Tatanka Gwyn believed this was the beginning of the end,”
and never mentioning Gwyn again, it’s better to write, “A journalist
writing in the 1950s believed that this was the beginning of the end.”
The interested reader can check the note if they want.
Finally, most importantly, academics handicap the strength of their
contribution and writing with weak
theses and verbs . Sometimes, the work lacks an overall thesis, and
each chapter is an independent piece on what could only be described as
a theme. Sometimes, writers arrive at a compelling conclusion at the end
of a chapter or book and leave it there. I’m guilty of the latter and
received good advice to backport theses earlier on in works and then
support them as I progress – rather than hoping readers will persist on
my (confusing) path in the hopes of finding clarity and insight at the
end. The telltale sign of weak theses are weak verbs, including
consider, explore, examine, elaborate, draw, and look .
Instead, argue a novel point or explain a mystery.
(And be wary of a weakness back door: “I argue we should consider…”)
When a book has a novel and compelling thesis, which is developed and
supported by a similarly strong thesis in each chapter, unnecessary
metadiscourse can fall away. And limiting the appearance of unnecessary
names can help the reader appreciate this clarity all the more.
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