We've been talking about writing an academic paper with the intent of convincing the audience that our point of view on a particular argument is correct. In these papers we don't have to motivate action or change the world, we just have to make sure that we give enough valid information, in a form that makes our opinion clear and encourages the reader to share that opinion. Our teacher mentioned that our audience, which includes pretty much all of the University of Michigan population, has a majority of academics. Also that academics are generally a non-hostile audience. This means that if there is doubt cast on your paper, they will give you the benefit of it, or at least read it with an open mind.
I think that's an interesting idea, that because of their academic nature, our audience is considered non-hostile. From what I've found, many of the academic-types I've encountered are more than willing to get a little hostile. Meeting with teachers and instructors both in high school and college, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of "I'm smarter than you, your ideas are wrong and here's why" attitude. Granted, some of the time I definitely was wrong, but it was the way that these teachers/instructors pointed it out to me, like I was wasting their time by being ignorant.
Maybe it's because I spend most of my time around a faculty of artists, who, I feel, are usually pretty open-minded, but from what I see of a great deal of academic-types is that the more intelligent a person becomes the less patient they are with people who aren't as knowledgeable as they are. I'm certain that Brett will be an absolutely non-hostile audience member, as well as my peers who will read my paper. It was just a little odd for me to think of academics as being a generally non-hostile audience.
Which probably just means I've been hanging out with the wrong academics.
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Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI like some of the questions/ideas you've expressed in your post. It is unfortunate that you have this impression of academics acting "superior" and perhaps "hostile" toward others' ideas, because I do not think this is usually the case. Academic readers may provide an audience more inclined to ask questions about or comment on arguments they hear because of their background knowledge and intellectual curiosity. Non-academics, on the other hand, may be more inclined to simply pass unresponsively by an argument that they do not understand. This may seem as if academic audiences are more hostile, but in fact such questioning-and-commenting audiences are more helpful to the development of an argument than those that do not respond at all. In addition, academics are probably less likely to react to an argument with strong, unsupported disagreement because of their academic training than non-academics influenced by the hot-headedness often seen in the media.
Julie