My research question is, “How different is academic writing from other writing disciplines?” I want to know what makes academic writing distinctive from others forms of writing and whether there are different forms that each type of writing follows. If we look at academic vs nonacademic writing, is one more methodical than the other? Is one more time-consuming? What modes of thought go into writing academic texts? What are the writing processes like? Another question I have is whether one is easier than the other? Most of these answers will likely be subjective, depending on the individual and what they’re good at, but I want to see if there is a general consensus: do people prefer one over the other? And one last question that surrounds my research is, is one more beneficial to society than the other?

I’m interested in this subject because I love writing. Over the years, I started from loving fiction writing to poetry, finally landing on academic writing. There is always the question of whether fiction writing has the ability to morph into academic writing. And although I know that the two are very different in their own rights, I do think that we can incorporate the discipline, rules, and guidelines of nonacademic writing into academic writing. Right now, I have a lot of questions that I want to integrate in this research and see if I can bring all of them under one goal: to see how flexible the form of academic writing is and whether it is adaptable at all.

This is a question that I would like to work on because there is a very overt divide between academic and nonacademic writing. I almost see a elitist personality in those that state that academic writing is the only form of writing that is credible and compelling. When did these two disciplines become so fraught with disagreement? Each have their own values and merits so why all the contention?

I will research this question by looking at scholarly articles as well as articles from nonacademic sites to see both sides of the story. Mostly, I will be surveying the literature that is already out there instead of conducting my own research. My search will include examining people’s experiences working with academic vs. nonacademic texts, writing academic vs. nonacademic papers and just the differences in writing within these two disciplines. So far, most of the sources I found are related to the forms of academic writing. As I search for more literature, I will look more upon the forms and methods of nonacademic writing.

Gregory, Judy. “Writing for the Web Versus Writing for Print: Are They Really So Different?” Technical Communication, Volume 51, Number 2. May 2004, pp. 276-285(10).  

Gregory states that much of the literature for nonacademic writing actually adopted the guidelines of writing for print. “For example, key web writing guidelines such as “write for scannability,” “write for restless readers,” and “write in coherent chunks” can be found in the literature about print,” states Gregory. She writes that writing for the web are “extensions of the guidelines for print writing, rather than new ideas.” She suggests using genre to compare writing instead of the medium.

Herndl, Carl G. “Teaching Discourse and Reproducing Culture: A Critique of Research and Pedagogy in Professional and Non-Academic Writing.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 44, no. 3, 1993, p. 349., doi:10.2307/358988.

This research looks at the “theoretical position that supports research in professional and academic writing.” Herndl states that “the studies of scientific and professional writing that emerge from this epistemic tradition are dominated by a research strategy that is descriptive and explanatory, rarely critical.” It looks at the pedagogical relationship between written discourse and the professional, organizational, or disciplinary communities established by discourse, which in turn give that discourse meaning and legitimacy.” One factor is how meaning is made from these discourses. It states that one similarity between professional and nonacademic writing is that both of those texts tend to rely on the “dominant discourse” and stray from discourse that vouches for the other side. While ignoring what doesn’t fall into agreement with their theory, writers only accept one side of the argument to establish themselves and their distinct discourses.

“How Is Academic Writing Different?” News | The University of Sydney, sydney.edu.au/stuserv/learning_centre/help/styleStructure/st_academicWriting.shtml.

Turning to the basics, this article states all the ways that make a text academic. Academic writing avoids “conversational language,” contractions, and usually takes years to publish. This discipline is an amalgam of three skill sets: just being a good writer is not enough. One has to write technically, use appropriate jargon, and follow the right structure as well as develop a style that is fitting in the context in which it is written. Academic writing deals with a lot of specialized topics, getting into the depths of the research subject at hand. This discipline is rigid with its rules and regulations. There are varying expectations for different fields i.e. some of the “Arts and Humanities disciplines expect longer paragraphs, which include topic sentences to show how [an] argument is structured.” This article will help me with setting up a starting point for my research. I know where to start researching–this article will serve as a foundation from which to start my research.

“Metadiscourse in Academic Writing: A Reappraisal.” The Essential Hyland : Studies in Applied Linguistics, doi:10.5040/9781350037939.0016.

In this article, the researcher looks at metadiscourse and the relationships writers have with the texts they’re writing. It is a study “based on a view of writing as social engagement and in academic contexts reveals the ways that writers project themselves into their discourse to signal their attitude towards both the propositional content and the audience of the text.” The article looks at the conceptions of what metadiscourse is and explains that it “focuses our attention on the ways writers project themselves into their discourse to signal their attitude towards both the content and the audience of the text.” Metadiscourse compactly offers methods and tools that writers use to “organize their texts, engage readers, and signal their attitudes to both their material and their audience.” I wonder if nonacademic writing goes through the same processes of creating prose as academic writing does. Is metadiscourse a part of nonacademic writing as well? How are conversations started in each discipline and how are they kept going? And how do they build a relationship with the reader?

Thompson, Geoff, and Puleng Thetela. “The Sound of One Hand Clapping: The Management of Interaction in Written Discourse.” Text – Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, vol. 15, no. 1, 1995, doi:10.1515/text.1.1995.15.1.103.

Thompson and Thetela explore the interactive nature of written discourse as opposed to spoken discourse. Interactive aspects of written text have two approaches: “one is information-oriented. It concentrates on the ways in which writers take the (imagined) readers’ expectations, knowledge and interests into account in constructing their text and in signalling the relationships between parts of the text.” Writers can manipulate the flow of information which can range from “selecting what information to include or exclude.” From this article, I want to know how reader-friendly academic texts are and whether different types of writing are either more or less reader-friendly. The researchers focus on the idea that “writing can only be properly understood if we recognize the ways in which the text has adapted to the needs of the reader.” This article doesn’t speak to the relationship between academic and nonacademic texts, but it will help my research in grounding some of the information that serves as a foundation to what my research will address.