When a student paraphrases in a way that is close to the original, they are borrowing these discursive styles and are misrepresenting the extent and type of their knowledge; they are borrowing the clothes of the scholar. From these students’ perspectives, I think primarily they are trying to sound more knowledgeable and/or trying to reduce the amount of time it takes to write the paper. Perhaps they have English language concerns, etc. But at the reader's end such style-wearing is misleading. But ...
... but this is very tricky stuff! Scholars become scholars by learning to "walk the walk" and "talk the talk," like many other professions. And sounding smart is critical to being taken seriously. And we often are "forward leaning" — to put it nicely — in our ratio of "smart style: smart content." This is sort of at the heart of the matter isn't it? Because in our busy world style is sometimes all that it takes, and, further, not enough individuals (in my opinion) are willing to take the time to dig beyond bad style to find good content. Ouch. Why ouch? Because style does not solve world problems. Ideas do. Content. Yes, sometimes you can definitely increase a salary by managing style and not worrying all that much about content. And, while doing so, you can think or hope that others will do the work of fixing the world why you enjoy life. Or you can conclude that you are not strong enough to give energy to these things. You and I live in different universes ... but, alas, we all live in the same world—a world that, as I see it, is gradually getting to be less pleasant, more dangerous and probably unsustainable. That is what worries me, that not enough people yet see either the extent of the danger, or their role in perpetuating problems, or visualize themselves as able to do something about it. I'm not a very political person, but I do put value on acting responsibly, and, just objectively speaking, it is hard these days for me to conclude that our global problems are not serious enough to demand my attention. It isn't my first choice, but a someone trained in critically evaluating situations, I keep coming up with the same calculation: that our problems are deep, and serious, and, like it or not, require my attention.
|
