Welcome readers!
I am excited to begin this online journey about my engagement with the ASTU course at the University of British Columbia, and its connection with the wider world. In this first post I will share my initial impressions of the course with a focus towards academic culture, writing and genre.
In class we have discussed the components of academic writing as a genre. To provide some context, one of our class readings was an excerpt from the book “Academic Writing: An Introduction” which explored how Situation + Form = Genre (Giltrow, 5). The situation of academic writing would be in an academic institution such as a university. The form in academic writing refers to the procedural elements that are required for scholarly work, for instance citations. This combination of the situation and form creates a genre which can be identified and applied.
Before entering this course I considered myself to be familiar with the elements that comprised academic writing, however I found myself surprised during a lecture when professor Luger mentioned that using the first person is acceptable in academic writing. I had been convinced that in order to sound “professional” I had to refrain from directly addressing my own thoughts or opinions. An example of this is that if I wanted to say “I think the novel 1984 is a reflection of Soviet Russia” I would put in my essay “one might suggest that the novel 1984 is a reflection of Soviet Russia”.
What I have learned from this is that I had convinced myself that credibility and sophistication comes from removing oneself from academia- which ultimately is not the case. In fact, the opposite is true. Having a personal input in academic writing is what provides its foundation. For instance, in the Kate Douglas article that we are currently discussing in class, she clearly states her opinion on the topic of her article. This provides the foundation of her article which she can then prove or disprove through research from academic sources.
This led me to think that if having a personal input does not delegitimize the sophistication of scholarly writing, what does? The answer lies in the situation and form, since these components establish the genre. If these components are inappropriate demonstrations of the content, the genre will be delegitimized. Relating back to the Douglas article, in class we touched upon how Douglas defines “Selfie” in literary terms and how it seems redundant to the class since we are all very aware of that term. However, when looking at the situation of this article, the audience is likely to be made up of scholars which mostly represents an older generation who might not be as familiar with the term. Therefore, the literal definition is necessary for the piece to be academic. Hypothetically, if I needed to provide a definition of selfie in an article directed at my generation, I would turn to a source like Urban Dictionary because the concept is already well-known so I do not need to provide a literal definition in order to give the article legitimacy. Even though Urban Dictionary can be seen as a legitimate source for my situation, it would be inappropriate if Douglas used an Urban Dictionary definition for Selfie in her article, and therefore it would delegitimize her academic writing.
To conclude, I have discovered that my idea of academic writing does not reflect how multi-faceted it can be. From this I have realized and appreciated that academic writing as a genre is dependent on its situation and therefore the form can have slight differences while still being legitimate.
Also, in case you were wondering, the top definition of “Selfie” on Urban Dictionary is “The beginning of the end of intelligent civilization. Future sociologists use the selfie as an artifact for the end of times.”
