Both of these writing modes are essential skills for graduate students to master, but it’s hard to get them to even try the “teacher-development” mode, perhaps because it’s more difficult. (It’s especially important for continental philosophy students to master this, since they will very often be addressing non-CP experts when addressing professional colleagues.)
21 responses to “Two modes of graduate school writing”
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This is not clear.
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What isn’t clear about it?
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is this comment-thread a bit of neo-dadaist performance art?
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Sometimes, I suspect, it annoys the people who talk & write the first way when you re-state what they said, only in a normal way. It never seems as fancy & official when you say it normal.
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I am with John. This diagram is not clear.
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Since it’s evidently too much to ask 1 and 5 what they find unclear, I’ll try to guess what might be holding them back.
There are two modes of writing we should teach graduate students: 1) expert-to-expert communication and 2) expert-to-non expert communication.
1a) The teacher explains to the student. 1b) The student writes with the teacher as the implied reader. 1c) The student writing is done with the goal of rendering the complex even more complex (“it’s often assumed that X meant Y in article Z. I will show that this is too simple a reading and that reading X as saying Y-prime is more interesting.”) 1d) the teacher evaluates the writing on how well in fact the student has rendered the situation more complex than is usually assumed.
2a) The teacher explains to the student. 2b) The student writes with a non-expert as the implied reader. 2c) The student writing is done with the goal of rendering the complex more simple (“X says Y in article Z. In plain English, what X is after is the following …”). 2d) the teacher evaluates the writing on how well the student meets the needs of the non-expert reader.LikeLike
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Would it be correct to say that the contrast you’re referencing here isn’t necessarily tied to writing? That is, it’s not so much about word choice or syntax as it is about what aspects of a subject one chooses to bring up or to leave out? And how, when writing for non-experts, to “mislead” benignly rather than malignantly?
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Thank you for this beginning idea. It would be helpful, I think, for you to distinguish the two different types of writing first; in order subsequently to discuss the question of how each could be taught. I personally would also find it helpful to be pointed to some paradigmatic examples for each kind of writing, so that I know what you have in mind.
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Presumably the teacher has to know how to perform both modes, but it isn’t always clear they do.
It often feels to me when I’ve done my best is when I’ve integrated both modes together. You know, when you write for yourself, the simpleton, and the version you you hope to be when you’ve matured and mastered the discipline, the simpleston.
More seriously, I appreciate the graph approach to conveying an idea.LikeLike
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Y-prime is never what the person said, either. It’s so annoying.
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Hello AP, I think an example of a grad seminar assignment in the expert-to-expert mode would be to ask the students to write a conference paper or journal article. An example of the “teacher-development” mode (i.e., expert to non-expert) would be to ask them to prepare a lecture for an undergraduate class.
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Hello Skef, sure you could make the same distinction with regard to speaking. Yes, choice of topic is an aspect of what I’m after, though vocabulary is very important I think. My slogan for what we should be doing in the second mode is “judicious simplification.”
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I think both ways are needed to really understand a particular subject. Where the problem with the second route is that it might get too superficial, the problem of the first is that often people don’t really know what they are talking about (plainly). So even to become an expert it might be very useful to learn how to communicate your idea to a non-expert (Popper said if you can’t explain your thoughts as simple as possible you should go back to work). Conversely, it is often highly beneficial to also have expert knowledge on some topic, even if you teach that to (only) undergrads. I think after all that’s what made great philosophy teachers so great.
So I think you’re right when you say those are two different modes (call them complexifying and simplifying), but they are hardly exclusive.LikeLike
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Hello Robert, yes, I think that’s correct that there is interaction between them. But I don’t think I ever said or even implied they are mutually exclusive. I said they were both essential skills, but left open the question of whether mastering those skills required their interaction. Demonstrating those skills however is I think best done by separate writing (or speaking) assignments.
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Hi John, no you didn’t. I just think that some people who like to overemphasize an analytic/continental divide might suspect so; it reflects some of the prejudices one encounters (“those continentals are too superficial”/”analytic philosophy is lost in unnecessary details”).
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I’m with Popper. I think that the best expert-to-expert work, i.e., the kind that could even possibly be of interest even only 100 years out, is the kind that has the virtues of the expert-to-non-expert genre.
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Either that or you have to be Kant.
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Hi Ruth, I agree. I think the “render the complex even more complex” strategy in expert-to-expert communication leads to an arms race that no one wins! Unfortunately, I think it’s the dominant strategy today; suggestions on how to exit it are welcome.
It’s a difficult issue because I think there’s something of a institutionalized incentive problem. Those who adopt judicious simplification in expert-to-expert communication risk the charge of over-simplification, and the penalties for having that charge stick (or even just having it raised) seem to outweigh the rewards of earning a reputation of a judicious simplifier. So the incentives point toward complexification.LikeLike
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Let me nuance comment 11 above. Another exercise for expert-to-non-expert communication is to prepare a job talk for a generalist department!
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John, regarding the trade-offs of rewards and penalties for having the reputation of being a judicious simplifier, the incentives for the institution of the academic discipline point towards complexification, but what about the incentives for doing so outside the institution? I’d much rather my intro students, friends, and family understand in their own language what I’m doing with my work and what they’re capable of doing in their own language, and there’s a large incentive for me to continue working towards simplification. Maybe that just goes without saying.
Still, translation from one language to another is a skill one develops through practice, and it seems to me instituting translating into both of these dual tracks what the student had learned from the teaching, the studying, and the doing will help further establish the idea that pluralism in language domains is key to being a strong philosopher. Supposing, I guess, it is right that philosophy is about talking with people, any people.LikeLike
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Hi John,
I don’t have any suggestions other than not to do it oneself, and to call out one’s graduate students for doing it. Of course, if something really is more complicated than it appears, then the truth-seeking thing to do is to say so. The issue, then, is not a matter of encouraging simpletons to disregard nuance. 🙂
To my mind, the problem with what you are calling “complexification” is that it’s not actually truth-conducive. On the contrary, it tends to give rise to layers of increasingly illusory problem (heated debate over the nature of the stitching on the Emperor’s clothes), while at the same time leaving significant substantive matters unaddressed. An important thing to do within the academy, it seems to me, incentives notwithstanding, is to try to show why and how this is so, relative to given issues and debates. Plus, of course, to pursue the genuine problems that often have been side-stepped.
To be sure, though, the more that one is fluent in the vocabulary of the complexification genre, let’s call it, such that one can code-switch upon demand, if need be, the less of a hit one will take for eschewing it.
Nice discussion, as always.LikeLike
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