Learn to Write Badly - Billig, Michael

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Résumé :
A humorous, clearly written scholarly analysis of what is going wrong with the way that social scientists write.

Sommaire:
Modern academia is increasingly competitive yet the writing style of social scientists is routinely poor and continues to deteriorate. Are social science postgraduates being taught to write poorly? What conditions adversely affect the way they write? And which linguistic features contribute towards this bad writing? Michael Billig's witty and entertaining book analyses these questions in a quest to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong with the way social scientists write. Using examples from diverse fields such as linguistics, sociology and experimental social psychology, Billig shows how technical terminology is regularly less precise than simpler language. He demonstrates that there are linguistic problems with the noun-based terminology that social scientists habitually use - 'reification' or 'nominalization' rather than the corresponding verbs 'reify' or 'nominalize'. According to Billig, social scientists not only use their terminology to exaggerate and to conceal, but also to promote themselves and their work....

'Michael Billig makes important and novel arguments about the state of writing - and therefore the state of thinking - in the social sciences. This book presents detailed critiques of writings by a wide range of social scientists. Billig uses vivid examples to demonstrate the conditions in which bad writing is nurtured and to show its wider significance for academia and beyond. This is a highly entertaining read which had me laughing out loud at times.' Christine Griffin, University of Bath 'A wonderful look at the academic world and the kind of writing it encourages. I especially enjoyed the chapters on mass publication, sociology, and experimental social psychology.' Tom Scheff, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara 'If you are put off by the highly specialized, closed and boring technical prose that increasingly characterizes a good deal of contemporary social science, then Michael Billig shares your annoyance! A wise, informed and well-written account, showing just why so many social scientists write badly.' John Van Maanen, Erwin H. Schell Professor of Organization Studies, MIT Sloan School of Management 'Once again, Michael Billig has succeeded in challenging one of the characteristics of scholars' writing in the social sciences which is usually taken for granted: the use of too much abstract jargon which mystifies and obfuscates the interpretation, reflection and explanation of our findings. In his brilliant, typically humorous but also cynical and accurate analysis of scholars' narcissism, the author points to alternative ways of combining complex research with fundamental and necessary scholarly standards - while simultaneously making our work accessible to a broader public, in the spirit of true critical science.' Ruth Wodak, Distinguished Professor and Chair in Discourse Studies, Lancaster University