Detox Your Writing: Strategies for doctoral researchers

227 Pages·2016·1.475 MB·English

by  Thomson Pat, Barbara Kamler

Detox Your Writing
There are a number of books which aim to help doctoral researchers write the PhD.
This book offers something different – the scholarly detox. This is not a faddish
alternative, it’s not extreme. It’s a moderate approach intended to gently interrupt
old ways of doing things and establish new habits and orientations to writing the
PhD.
The book addresses the problems that most doctoral researchers experience at
some time during their candidature – being unclear about their contribution,
feeling lost in the literature, feeling like an imposter, not knowing how to write
with authority, wanting to edit rather than revise. Each chapter addresses a problem,
suggests an alternative framing, and then offers strategies designed to address the
real issue.
Detox Your Writingis intended to be a companionable workbook – something
doctoral researchers can use throughout their doctorate to ask questions about
taken-for-granted ways of writing and reading, and to develop new and effective
approaches.
The authors’ distinctive approach to doctoral writing mobilises the rich
traditions of linguistic scholarship, as well as the literature on scholarly identity
formation. Building on years of expertise they place their emphasis both on tools
and techniques as well as the discursive practices of becoming a scholar.
The authors provide a wide repertoire of strategies that doctoral researchers can
select from. The book is a toolkit but a far from a prescriptive one. It shows that
there are many routes to developing a personal academic voice and identity and a
well-crafted text. With points for reflection alongside examples from a broad range
of disciplines, the book offers tools for thinking, writing and reading that are relevant
to all stages of doctoral research.
This practical text can be used in all university doctoral training and
composition and writing courses. However, it is not a dry how-to-do-it manual that
ignores debates or focuses solely on the mechanical at the expense of the lived
experience of doctoral research. It provides a practical, theorised, real-world guide
to postgraduate writing.
Pat Thomson is Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Advanced
Studies, at The University of Nottingham, a Visiting Professor at Deakin University,
the University of Iceland, and The University of the Free State, South Africa.
Barbara Kamler is Emeritus Professor at Deakin University.
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Detox Your Writing
Strategies for doctoral researchers
Pat Thomson and Barbara Kamler
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 P. Thomson & B. Kamler
The right of P. Thomson & B. Kamler to be identified as authors of this
work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Thomson, Pat, 1948– author. | Kamler, Barbara, author.
Title: Detox your writing : strategies for doctoral researchers/authored by
Pat Thomson and Barbara Kamler.
Description: 1st edition. | New York, NY : Routlege, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015031879| ISBN 9780415820837 (hardback :
alk. paper) | ISBN 9780415820844 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN
9781315642604 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Dissertations, Academic – Authorship. | Research –
Methodology – Study and teaching (Graduate)
Classification: LCC LB2369 .T466 2016 | DDC 808.02–dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015031879
ISBN: 978-0-415-82083-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-82084-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64260-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Giovanni
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
Contents
Acknowledgements and permissions vi
1 Introduction 1
2 Understanding the doctoral game 15
3 Beginning literature work 34
4 Finding your place 59
5 Learning to argue 83
6 Performing your research 107
7 Structuring the thesis 129
8 Writing the researcher into the text 149
9 Revising the first draft 169
10 Writing as the expert scholar 191
Coda 211
References 213
Index 217
Acknowledgements
and permissions
Some of this book originally appeared as posts in Pat’s blog, Patter (patthomson.
net). We have also drawn extensively on the work of other bloggers who generously
share their expertise and experiences with the scholarly community – Claire
Aitchison, Rebecca Coles, Adam Crymble, Sophie Coulombeau, Athene Donald,
Paul Cairney, Rachael Cayley, Cally Guerin, Nick Hopwood and Ian Robson.
We have used pictures that we first saw on Twitter, and we thank Simon Carter,
John Goodwin, and Dave McKenna for permission to reproduce them here.
As always, our publisher, Philip Mudd, has been a source of encouragement
and helpful suggestions. We always benefit from his extensive knowledge of the
interactions between the academy and the publishing industry. We appreciate the
ongoing support from our Routledge team and the promotion of our books at
conferences around the world.
Our partners, Greg and Randy, provide continuing TLC, meals and perspective.
Their tolerance of our intensive first draft writing retreats and bizarre early
morning/late night international skyping habits are legend. We really couldn’t have
done any of this without them.
And finally, we want to thank each other. This is our third book, the fourth if
you count a second edition, and it marks a 15-year collaboration. It is also our last
book together and we’ve signed it off with very mixed feelings. Writing together
has been an important part of our lives for a long time, and we’ll both miss it, and
each other. Love ya B. Love ya P.
1
C
H
A
P
T
E Introduction
R
You have begun your doctoral studies. You’re fired up about the area of study you
are pursuing. You know you have to hone your research skills and you know you
have to write a thesis. Exciting? Yes, but also terrifying at the same time.
Writing – this may be where the problem begins. The idea of writing. Everyone
brings to the doctorate a wide array of experiences as a writer; some positive, some
less so. From all your previous experience of writing essays, assignments or minor
theses you have developed what we might call a disposition to writing: strategies
for and habits of writing. You may have developed metaphors for how to think
about working with research data or with research literatures – some productive,
some not. These habits and metaphors are often developed unconsciously and you
may not be aware of how they influence your actual text production. But they do.
Most doctoral researchers worry about writing. When Pat and Barbara meet with
groups of doctoral or early career researchers we often ask, ‘Who feels confident
about writing?’ No hands go up. Perhaps one. ‘Who feels competent as a writer?’
A few more hands. ‘How many of you feel that you write adequately?’ Maybe half.
‘And poorly?’ The other half. Despite having reached the highest level of study in
the university, many doctoral researchers approach writing with some anxiety and
high emotion. Can I do it? Am I up to it? How do I ever get hold of all this new
stuff and make sense of it in writing? How can I write 250+ pages?
There is certainly a lot of advice about how to approach writing. Writing advice
is here, there and everywhere – it’s in books, on the web, in social media, at the
pub. How to tell what is good and bad advice? ‘Always do this. Never do that. You
must, you should, what works for me is . . .’ Making sense of all of the well-
intentioned advice can be tricky. There are lots of urban myths out there too; the
researcher who wrote for 2 hours a day and finished their thesis in record time, the
researcher who never wrote anything until the last minute and passed with flying
colours. Dealing with well-established textual habits, bad metaphors and writing
myths can be a problem for the researcher new to doctoral writing. Clearly these
need to be addressed.
2 INTRODUCTION
What is the way forward? Our answer is the detox. The detox, as you know, is
not about giving up all the things we like – but pausing to examine the over-
processed, mass-produced, genetically modified things we take into our bodies and
take for granted. The detox involves a period of healthy eating and drinking: crisp
carrots, crunchy celery, watermelon juice. It’s a time to try out some new strategies
for living. Once we take a break from our usual consumption patterns, we can decide
what to reintroduce and what to leave behind, what to eat sparingly and what new
habits we might establish.
This book offers a scholarly detox. It is written specifically for you, the doctoral
researcher and for those times when you’re likely to feel out of sorts, bloated and
out of shape.It asks you to stop doing things you usually do, just for a little while,
and reflect. It’s not that all your writing and reading is dysfunctional or incorrect.
Rather, now might be a good time to take a look at the textual habits you have
developed. You’ve probably been taught to approach reading and writing in
particular ways and have developed your own coping mechanisms and your own
strategies. But it’s likely that none of these have been for a task as sustained, intense
and demanding as the doctorate.
You might think the idea of a detox is a bit peculiar in an academic book. After
all, the detox gets a lot of bad press. It’s commonly associated with snake-oil
salespeople peddling the latest recipe for lifelong health and happiness. And a steady
diet of kale juice or spirulina wheatgrass cocktails followed by colonic irrigation
can leave you feeling hungry, irritable and uncomfortable. You might even
experience low energy, muscle aches, fatigue, dizziness and nausea. Feeling ravenous
and deprived makes most people rebellious and resentful. It’s no wonder so many
people start these culinary assault courses only to stop them in very quick time.
Fortunately there are many different kinds of detoxes and they don’t all offer the
extreme lean mean green diet.
The scholarly detox we propose is not a faddish alternative, it’s not extreme.
It’s a moderate approach intended to gently interrupt old ways of doing things. We
hope it will help you establish new habits and orientations. We intend this book
to be a companionable workbook – something you can use throughout the
doctorate when you feel the need to stop and examine what you’re doing. We want
you to ask questions about your taken-for-granted ways of writing and reading, about
your disposition to writing and its effects, about the ways you structure language
and the action it supports. We’ll offer a range of tools to think with and practical
strategies to try out. These are our detox essentials.
In Pat’s blog, Patter, she often reflects on the critical issues and obstacles
doctoral researchers face. Recently she discussed the dangers of self-diagnosing
writing habits. Not a bad thing to do, as we suggest. But the risk of getting it wrong
is ever present (see Commentary: Pat Thomson). The complex and sometimes
terrifying aspects of academic writing are too often mistaken as individual pathology
INTRODUCTION 3
COMMENTARY
Pat Thomson
The perils of self-diagnosis
I reckon it’s very good to know about your or as crippling as popular media headlines
own writing habits. It’s especially good for and online discussions might suggest.
people just starting out on an academic Let’s face it. Not all writing goes
career. There’s a bunch of pretty helpful smoothly. Some academic writing takes a
information out there about good writing long time and is hard. But the problem
habits and writing problems enabling might not be writer’s block. It might just
you to match what you see yourself doing/ be that you haven’t yet sorted out what you
not doing with helpful general writing want to say. It might be that you need to
strategies and insights. Reading about talk the writing over with someone, or do
academic writing, as well as reading about some more reading, or go back to the data
the nature of the difficulties that you might or the texts.
be having with your writing, can lead you Let’s be honest. Having a mountain of
to some very helpful advice, new resources data is really terrifying. There is no right
and productive #acwri avenues. answer to how you analyse data, even
But observation and reading about though there are often recommended
#acwri can also make you unnecessarily analytic procedures. It’s very normal at
anxious. And maybe you’ll leap to a pre - the start of dealing with a pantechnicon
mature diagnosis. Stuck on writing a of material to feel a considerable degree of
paper? It must be writer’s block. Having trepidation. We all do. It’s not unusual.
difficulty sorting through the mountain of It’s not because you’re dim-witted that it
data? It must be that you’re not capable. feels overwhelming.
Feeling really nervous about giving that The risk of self-diagnosis lies in the
paper? Must be a crippling case of im - tension between knowing yourself and
poster syndrome. Finding yourself pausing getting it wrong. It’s clearly good to
while writing? Must have a hyperactive understand your own writing habits, just
inner editor. as it’s good to watch out for changes in
Now, I don’t want to suggest that any your body. But a rush to self-diagnose
of these things – writer’s block, being in- an #acwri condition isn’t always helpful.
capable, imposter syndrome, hyper active You may well get your diagnosis wrong.
inner editors and so on – aren’t real. They You may think you have an unusual
are, very. I don’t want to suggest that these problem and feel dreadful, when in reality
things don’t debilitate and prevent some what’s going on is a widely shared
people from getting on with their PhD or experience.
with a writing project. They do. They really Academic writing is hard for most
do. But these things aren’t as widespread people. But, if you exercise your writing