Writing for a Constructed Audience: Academic Conventions

In a study of over 2000 college writing assignments from a variety of different disciplines, Daniel Melzer found that over 8 in 10 assignments had the instructor as primary audience (Melzer 28). As we’ve seen, this usually doesn’t mean that the paper is actually addressed to the professor (for instance, written in the second person “you” form), but rather that the instructor is reading it on behalf of a constructed academic audience.

Even though it’s certainly not a self-explanatory idea, many assignments assume an understanding of the concept of “academic audience.” Where they do state it outright, assignments usually say something like “your paper should be written in an academic voice” or “your paper should adhere to the conventions of academic style.”  So what are these conventions? In a sense, this whole course could be considered an  exploration of academic writing conventions. Let’s review a few of them (adapted from Thonney):

• Academic writers build on what other academic writers have already written.
  • Generally, the authority behind academic writing is other academic writing. Even in articles describing original experimental research, a literature review section situates the new experiments within existing knowledge.
• Academic writers cite all content or ideas that originated from another author.
  •  This is a major feature of academic writing. Unlike, for instance, writing on the internet, where content is often cut-and-pasted or reposted without attribution, academic writing is extremely careful to give credit (and responsibility) where it’s due.
• Academic writers build arguments with evidence.
  • Academic arguments are supported by external evidence. Some kinds of arguments will use data and statistics as evidence, others use experimental results, others rely on textual evidence. In all of these cases, evidence is a body of knowledge to which both the writer and the reader have access. Unlike, for instance, belief, faith, intuition, or opinion, which can’t be argued with, evidence is external to the argument, and can thus be interpreted differently by different observers.
• Academic writers write with authority, but also assume that others will disagree with their argument.
  • In conventional academic writing, authors avoid making highly subjective statements like “I think,” “in my experience,” or “in my opinion.” Instead, academic writers tend to adopt a tone of authority: “the evidence suggests that… “. However, academic writers also avoid making absolute truth claims. Instead, they use frequent qualifying words to incorporate the spirit of argument and disagreement at the sentence level. For instance, it’s not that the evidence “proves” one thing or another, but that it “suggests” a certain outcome. Similarly, academic writers use words like “appears,” “seems,” and “indicates.”  Rather than saying that something “never” happens, an academic argument will probably claim that it’s “rare,” “unlikely,” or “seldom” the case.
• Academic writers use discipline-specific phrasing and vocabulary.
  •  Academic jargon can be very frustrating to wade through. However, it’s there for a reason: many of these obscure or difficult words are shorthand for necessarily complicated ideas or phenomena. When a chemist uses a word like “adsorb” or “condosity,” they’re not trying to confuse the reader; they’re describing an effect that would take much longer to describe accurately in plain language. However, it’s important to remember that complicated language isn’t an academic convention in and of itself. Some academic writers lean too hard on jargon and unnecessarily complex phrasing; it’s usually best to use clear, straightforward language wherever possible, and turn to discipline-specific vocabulary only where it adds precision and accuracy.

Along with these general conventions of academic discourse, there are numerous discipline-specific conventions, such as the common structure of scientific reports or the particular way literary scholarship narrates plot. As you read within your discipline(s), keep an eye out for typical patterns and structures; learning these conventions will help you communicate effectively within your discipline and anticipate the expectations of your audience.