Critical pragmatics of doctoral writing: fluency, plagiarism, structuring, procrastination

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Doctoral writing, Emotion & writing, structuring argument, talking about writing, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter and Cecile Badenhorst

Years of participating in and hosting doctoral writing workshops has led me to believe that, when time and care are given to the pedantry of academic writing, the benefits are significant.  When grammar and syntax are impeccable, writers avoid annoying examiners. That factor is quite important. But I think that carefully edited writing improves more substantially than a surface level tidy-up.

So, some workshops focus on such mundanities as grammar, syntax and punctuation while facilitators hope that the talk in their workshops will take writers further, into the deeper level of how language conveys quite critical significance. Cecile Badenhorst has provided the answer to the dilemma of what to call such workshops: they are critical pragmatic writing workshops (Englander, K. & Corcoran, J. 2019).

“Critical pragmatics” encapsulates an approach that many of us like. The  word pragmatic shows awareness that students want to succeed within the status quo no matter how inequitable or taxing it may be. Then the word critical encourages students to assess their options rather than just being socialized into the discourse.

Helpful videos: Doctoral writing as thinking

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Doctoral writing, Precision, Researcher identity, writing skills development

By Susan Carter drawing on Cecile Badenhorst

Cecile Badenhorst MA (UBC), PhD (Queen’s) is a Professor in the Adult Education/Post-Secondary program in the Faculty of Education at Memorial University in Canada.  Her research interests are post-secondary and adult learning experiences particularly graduate research writing and academic literacies.  She has written three books in this area:  Research Writing (2007), Dissertation Writing (2008) and Productive Writing (2010). She has also co-edited with Cally Guerin, Research literacies and writing pedagogies for masters and doctoral writers (2016); and with Britt Amell & Jamie Burford Re-imagining doctoral writing (2021) which is available via open access: https://wac.colostate.edu/books/international/doctoral/

The value of videos

While I have long appreciated Cecile Badenhorst’s publications as her interests overlay my own, only recently have I found the rich trove of videos that she has given to the world. I am keen to share these gems with the DoctoralWriting community over the next few posts. There will be four posts in total: this one focusing on doctoral writing as thinking will be followed by one on some of the pragmatic factors of doctoral writing (for example, fluency, structuring, plagiarism avoidance), then one on different genres (article, conference abstract and presentation, different thesis chapters), and finally a post relating to literature review.

Why my excitement?

Doctoral Writing 10th Anniversary!

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Doctoral writing, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other, writing skills development

By Cally Guerin, Claire Aitchison and Susan Carter

We are delighted (and somewhat amazed) that we’ve arrived at the 10^th anniversary of the Doctoral Writing blog. The world seemed such a different place when we put up our first post in September 7^th 2012! 

Photo by Anna-Louise

The three of us were still relatively new as colleagues back then; however, we shared a vision for a platform to foreground our collective interest in doctoral writing.

Should the COVID-19 pandemic be addressed in doctoral writing? And if so, how?

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COVID-19 pandemic and research writing, describing research limitations, Doctoral writing

 

By Susan Carter

The DoctoralWriting SIG has had a few posts on what was so huge and different about 2020, churning over what has happened to us all, how we might best handle it, and how kindness to each other is one very positive response to something that is generally frightening, depressing and worrying: a global pandemic.  I’m sure that you will have your own experience of how COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns have affected the doctoral writers you know. We all know that we’ve lived through something extraordinary.

Best 8 of 8 years of thoughts about doctoral writing

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Doctoral writing, literature review, Researcher identity, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other, writing skills development

by Susan Carter, Cally Guerin and Claire Aitchison

It’s now the 8^th anniversary of the first DoctoralWriting SIG post. To celebrate this with a quietness that befits doctoral writing in the time of Covid 19, we’ve chosen what could be regarded as the eight top posts, with links to these posts so that you can view them if you haven’t already. That slyly evasive passive verb ‘could be regarded’ of the last sentence is deliberate: it was a tough job choosing 8 bests from 344 posts, and other options would be equally defensible. So, although we have numbered these to ensure there really are 8, the order has no significance whatsoever.

First criteria for our choice was most viewed. Views give an inkling of what people in the doctoral writing community are looking for. We think that this signals more than just how cunningly baited the click bait was, and points instead to topics that are troublesome or that matter to doctoral writers and those who support them. We began the best eight with the three most viewed posts. The most viewed by far and away (209, 377 views) was, surprisingly … [DRUMROLL]

World-wide kindness towards doctoral writing during Covid 19 lockdown: shared resources

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Doctoral writing, Writing motivation, writing skills development

This post comes from Lyn Lavery, director of Academic Consulting in Auckland New Zealand. Lyn established Academic Consulting in 1999 following a successful career in the tertiary sector. Her 20+ years background in education, combined with a PhD which examined self-regulated learning at a tertiary level, and her extensive consultancy practice have equipped her with fingers on the pulse. She shares some valuable resources.

These times of uncertainty and disruption bring significant challenges for all of us. In addition to the more obvious issues of adjusting to life in self-isolation, there are several unique challenges for researchers. Access to software, resources and equipment has become more difficult, regular support networks (such as thesis supervisors) may have limited availability, and there are many researchers whose data collection plans will require a considerable rethink.

Given these challenges, I’ve been increasingly impressed and heartened by the generosity of many businesses and individuals in responding to the needs of researchers and doctoral students at this time. Before sharing these resources with you, however, I do want to make a point – please don’t feel that you should be upskilling, rescheduling data collection plans, adjusting ethics approvals or engaging in any of the other (probably numerous) tasks that the present situation demands. Take the time you need to catch your breath, look after yourself and your family, and do what you need to adjust to the unexpected circumstances we all find ourselves in (you’ve probably read lots of resources on this theme already, but if not, my favourite is Why you should ignore all that coronavirus-inspired productivity pressure).

Having said that, if you’d like to use the next few months as a chance to upskill, there are plenty of opportunities for research-related training.