Why Graduate Students Should Write Like Shite, Part 3

Sociologist Laurel Richardson thinks that writing itself is a form of inquiry.  For her, writing is not something you do only after you have figured out what you want to say.  Writing is how you think it.  In a chapter on writing as a form of inquiry (Richardson, 2000), Richardson writes that “by writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it. Form and content are inseparable” (923).   Qualitative research, she thinks, is boring.  As a result, research doesn’t get read and has no impact on the field, let alone the world.  Richardson’s tone seems hopeful when she writes that qualitative research “could be reaching wide and diverse audiences, not just devotees of individual topics or authors.  It seems foolish at best, and narcissistic and wholly self-absorbed at worst, to spend months or years doing research that ends up not being read and not making a difference to anything but the author’s career” (924).  Both Graff and Eagleton would nod their heads to this in agreement.

Richardson then goes on to describe how the wide gap between content and form came to be.  She points to the 17th century, where the “world of writing [was] divided into two separate kinds: literary and scientific” (925).  Literature became synonymous with falsehood, science with truth.  What’s more, literary writing became associated with flowery poetry while science was plain and to the point.  Despite changes in 20th century, the distinction still remains mostly intact.  This is certainly the case in education where any research done in the era of No Child Left Behind must be “science-based” (Lewis & Moorman, 2007).  Richardson concludes the chapter with a series of writing exercises and tips for graduate students and other qualitative researchers.

The Richardson you read above, however, was not always so innovative.  Her dissertation (Richardson [Walum], 1963), for examples, reads like the voiceless template writing Graff advocates. Richardson begins her dissertation, “The major concern of this thesis is the explication and testing of a theory in the sociology of knowledge. Empirically, it is a study of the relationship between production of pure mathematics and social sanctions” (1).  Her voice is frigid.  There is no “I” here.  And it doesn’t get better.  Her introductory paragraph ends with the liveliness of a funeral march: “The thesis concludes with a summary of the theoretical orientations, procedures, and findings.  The major contributions are assessed and suggestions for future research are presented” (3).  Presented?  By whom?  As we continue, in the third paragraph of Chapter II, there is some sign of life: she uses the word my.  All at once there is a sense of Laurel Richardson, that she’s wriggled loose of academe’s suffocating grip.  Before reading her small possessive adjective, you wondered if a human being wrote this at all.  That simple two-letter word invites you into her page.  That is, until she follows my with: “orientation is not to the construction of a master conceptual scheme wherein all sociological concepts are integrated into a systemic whole” (4).  Richardson of 2000 wouldn’t know Richardson of 1963 if she, well, looked in a mirror.

The point of the juxtaposition between early and late Richardson isn’t to suggest the researcher a hypocrite.  Rather, it’s to temper her recent ideas with a harsh academic reality: breaking the rules of academic writing is not as simple as it seems.  There are times in young scholars’ careers when playing by the rules is necessary for advancing.  When Richardson wrote for her three-person committee at University of Colorado, she pretended like she had never even heard of form, let alone style.  Importantly, Richardson has chronicled at length (Richardson, 1997) the struggles she has faced trying to get her work accepted by others in her field.  Her representations of research as poems and plays are gleefully received by some, but woefully read by others who see her work as nearer a wordy prank than scholarship.

It is with great caution that a young scholar bends the accepted forms of academic writing.  There are resources available and pockets of alternative-minded professors out there, but young careers are fragile things.  Both Graff and Richardson are well established in their careers; they can write however their scholarly hearts desire.  They can also encourage their advisees to break the rules, if they like.  But graduate students beware: you do so at you own risk.

Part 4 to come soon…

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