Since I'm a big fan of Elbow, I'll use two of his arguments here to start:
1. "It's important to realize that standard edited written English is no one's mother tongue." Enlisting Speaking and Spoken Languages for Writing.
In this sense, we're all learning another language when we write. White English may be closer to SEWE, but it's still a new language. Academic genre writing (research, scholarship, book reviews, rejoinders, stubs, articles, chapters, editorials, narratives) is another sub-language of the written language that we learn. No one speaks in written English.
2. "Indelible writing, ephemeral speech ... Speech is indelible, Writing [is] ephemeral" The Shifting Relationships between Speech and Writing.
When you write something down, it's permanently there, it's "in writing," like contracts and financial receipts, but it's also revisable, reviewable, and can be changed. Speech is permanent, once you say something, you can't take it back, but you can modify and fine-tune your point, so it can be changed.
We should be looking at the reading-writing-speaking connection, at the ear-eye-mouth connection, otherwise we're neglecting a major tool of communication. Seloni's participants read authors, wrote papers, and spoke with each other about it. The connections we make in formal and informal verbal communication are just as necessary to our understanding as reading or writing.
As for the discussions of Seloni's participants, they're right. Writing professionally means conforming to certain conventions when you start out until you're a "big name" at which point you can do whatever you want. But that's not any different from any other field. We all start as interns, as freshmen that get pushed around by the seniors. If you want to make an album, you do what the record executive says, then, later, when you've made them enough money, you do what you want.
The question is, do we become the "big name" because we followed the conventions of academic writing, or because we did something different?
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Both, John, but at different steps. In fact, unless you are a “supergenius”, otherwise you cannot compose a good piece of music ignoring scales and classic combinations of sounds. Need a proof? Listen to Beethoven’s and Mozart’s symphonies. Likewise in academic arena, scholars start by learning, imitating and then producing their own works. Think about the teacher-disciple chain of the three famous Greek philosophers: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In other words, you first gain your authority from learning and imitating and then you impose your authority. There is no authority without authority, indeed! Reilly can fight hard now to challenge composition theories but Dr Reilly (who knows ?) will come up with and be credited for new approaches to L1/L2 writing ……in future!
ReplyDeleteMozart might not be a good example, that guy was brilliant right out of the gate, like Shakespeare.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather show up as a big name from the beginning. I want to skip the whole Prince Hal thing and go straight to being Henry V.