Consider Your Situation...

As writers, we are in a difficult position. We have to write from a position of authority. To gain authority, we can either talk down to the reader, often using "you." We talk to our audience as though he or she knows less than us. The problem, however, is that we will probably come off sounding patronizing. We will sound like a parent talking to a child. It's true that we will be writing from a position of authority, but turning readers into misguided children may not be the best approach.

We could also gain authority by taking on the voice of an expert, often using excessively formal, elevated syntax. Sure… we do use and should use specialized vocabulary in school, and this class in particular requires you to use discipline-specific terminology. That's part of what we should learn. David Bartholomae reminds us that "the student has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community." But what makes "academic prose" academic isn't necessarily the formality of the language or the complexity of the syntax. There is more to it than that. We want, then, to avoid these first methods.

We have to find a strategy that solves this problem. Scholars, in any field, either show how their contribution builds on another's work or respond to what somebody else thinks. That's our mantra: Respond to or build upon what someone else thinks.

You will use two introduction strategies when you write essays for me. These strategies are rather traditional. Pick up any scholarly book or essay, and odds are, you will find some version of these introductions. They are based on building a context that includes you, your audience, and a third reader who knows less than you (what I call a "naive reader" or "nay-sayer.")

Bartholomae maintains that "In general ... the more successful writers set themselves in their essays against what they defined as some more naive way of talking about their subject--against 'those who think that...'--or against earlier, more naive versions of themselves-- 'once I thought that...'" (153).

Put another way, you have to create a context for your contribution. You have to justify the existence of your paper. You have to imagine that you are part of an academic community that includes at least three people--you, your audience, and a third party who knows less than you--so that you can write "across" to fellow academics. In other words, you have to answer the question (before it's even posed), "Why are you telling me this? Why are you writing this paper?" If your answer is, "Because you told me to write it," your "voice" will sound artificial and shallow. You will sound like a student after a grade (although that may be the truth). The strategic response is, "I am answering an unresolved question, a persistent problem. I am responding to so and so who thinks that ..." Your voice then will sound like a scholar's, like someone who belongs to the academic community.