Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [21]
Similarly, the usual advice that writers should avoid the “not-un” formation produces not just a change in style but a change in meaning. Saying “I am not unhappy” is not the same thing as saying “I am happy”—which is the kind of bolder, more decisive statement that Elements of Style recommends.
So, style guides are useful provided you recognize that style guidelines always carry with them an unstated preference for a certain kind of approach to the world— a certain kind of speaking persona, which may or may not be suited to what you wish to say. Richard Lanham’s very useful “paramedic method,” which we discuss in Chapter 18, puts a lot of emphasis on active verbs, the active voice, and on reducing “Latinate” diction. This emphasis produces a vigorous style but one that is not consistent, for example, with the stylistic conventions of science writing.
HOW TO THINK ABOUT WRITING IN THE DISCIPLINES
There will be days when you feel that each classroom you walk into is asking you to learn a different language. To some extent you’re right. To navigate your way across the curriculum successfully, you will need to recognize that matters of form are also matters of epistemology, which is to say that they are indicative of each discipline’s ways of knowing. Embedded in a discipline’s ways of writing—its key terms and stylistic conventions—are its primary assumptions about thinking, how it should be done and toward what end.
No single book or course can equip you with all that you will need to write like a scientist or a psychologist or an art historian. What this book can do is teach you how to think about discipline-specific writing practices and how to analyze them for their logic and rhetoric. Once you acquire these skills, you will find it easier to adapt to the different kinds of writing you will encounter in college. You will also learn to see the common ways of thinking that underlie stylistic differences. For now, let’s focus briefly on some interesting differences.
Here are three brief examples of significant stylistic differences. Think about what makes each difference more than simply superficial. Contemplate what these rules reveal about the particular discipline’s values. And how do these rules implicitly define the relationship of the writer to his or her subject matter and assumed audience?
A. In psychology and some other social and natural sciences, writers paraphrase and cite other writers but do not include the language being paraphrased. In English, religion, and other disciplines in the humanities, writers also paraphrase, but they quote the language being paraphrased.
B. It is still largely true that in the sciences, particularly the natural sciences, writers use the passive rather than the active voice. So, the scientist would write: “The air was pumped out of the chamber” (passive voice, which leaves out the person performing the action, leading with the action instead) rather than “We pumped the air out of the chamber” (active voice, which includes the person performing the action).
C. In the sciences, writers typically do not criticize other scientists’ work, although in the opening section of lab reports they survey other relevant studies and use these to explain the need for their current research. By contrast, writers in the humanities and some social sciences commonly build a piece of writing and research upon the discovery of a problem—that will be stated explicitly—in someone else’s writing and research.
At the end of the chapter, we suggest that you interview a professor (perhaps from your major) to collect brief examples of what he or she considers good writing in his or her academic discipline. Some disciplines accept a wider variety of suitable forms and styles than others. There are lots of