Academic Discourse

Academic Discourse

Academic discourse: A general term for the written language used by college and university faculty members. Some academics hold that the term should be plural, reflecting the range and variety of linguistic conventions that separate, for example, writing in psychology from that in art history. But despite wide differences in vocabulary and style, there are some agreed-upon features common to most academic prose, notably professional terminology (see JARGON) and rather strict criteria in determining the proof of an argument. In other words, academic discourse traditionally tends to subordinate rhetoric to logic, maintaining the appeal to reason as the highest standard of discursive language use.

Occasionally that standard is questioned or challenged by the scholars themselves. One example concerns the Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt, an exemplary practitioner of academic discourse in the books and articles he has written in connection with NEW HISTORICISM. In 2004, Greenblatt published a popular
biography of Shakespeare (Will in the World), in which he speculates about his subject, not only rather loosely by academic standards, but substantially contradicting the thrust of his earlier works on Shakespeare’s plays, producing a generally negative reaction among his academic peers. On the other hand, nonacademic reviewers and general readers have responded very positively to the biography, applauding the author for having “liberated Shakespeare from the professors and returning him to the people.” The controversy illustrates the differences generated by different discourses, and the perils of attempting a crossover from one to the other.

In COMPOSITION STUDIES, academic discourse serves as a reminder of the gap between the expectations of the traditional college teacher and the student. The latter, particularly in a BASIC WRITING course, frequently feels overwhelmed by the attempt to mimic or imitate academic discourse in a writing assignment. The effort to sound “academic” usually results in a greater failure than had the student used his/her own “voice.” One consequence has been a growing pedagogical interest in the WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM movement in an attempt to introduce beginning writers to the forms and conventions of the major academic disciplines.

(Source: A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition  by Edward Quinn)