Have you ever wanted to projectilly vomit up your last bowl of steaming spaghetti after reading an overly superfluous, obnoxiously obtuse and irritatingly descriptive piece of writing? I know that I have. As I was reading about how to teach students to write with more interesting voice and descriptives, I panicked at the thought of another generation overusing adjectives and adverbs. Beauty is simple. Sometimes the most powerful statements/ideas are only a few words long:
- "To be or not to be"
- "Jesus wept."
- I love you.
- Just do it.
- "Let it be"
- Mmmm...good
When Culham adressed on page 144 the dangers of students getting "word drunk" with their word choices, my heart skipped a beat. Alas! Someone who would put an end to this nails-on-a-chalkboard form of writing. Then, I realized the truth. Culham was essentially telling educators to let students do this through trial and error. Ugh. My hopes were shot down. As the chapter went on, my hopes dropped even further by Culham's suggestions. The examples offered in the text were classic cases of overdone description:
The cold is keeping my fingers from typing smoothly [...] The clock doesn't make any noise, but the second hand jerks its way through the minute. ~Culham p. 160
Really? Wouldn't it be more effective to say that your hands are cold and the clock is quiet? I think so. That passage actually goes on for seven lines, but I figured I would spare you.
Culham does offer some interesting good suggestions about teaching the concept of voice. It sounds very trendy to use music to introduce voice, but I think that would be more appropriate for teaching tone. In order to write with an interesting voice, students need learn how to use their language (i.e. word choice--note: these are two separate chapters). By listening to music, students will learn how different musical interpretations can lend different tones to the SAME WORDS in a song. How does this teach students how to use their language to create voice? Anyone? The same goes for using art. I like the idea of using these things in your class, but I do not feel that they are most appropriate for teaching voice.
Resource link: The Philosophy Department at the University of Miami sponsors a "Bad Writing Contest" each year. The nominees are from poorly written scholarly articles:
The Bad Writing Contest attempts to locate the ugliest, most stylistically
awful passage found in a scholarly book or article published in the last few
years. Ordinary journalism, fiction, etc. are not eligible, nor are parodies:
entries must be non-ironic, from actual serious academic journals or books. In a
field where unintended self-parody is so widespread, deliberate send-ups are
hardly necessary.
Passages found on this site could be used to show students that even Ph.D. professors--or especially Ph.D. professors???--can still write poorly. This also highlights the importance of readability and audience.
4 comments:
Lisa, good point about tone and voice. My interpretation is that Culham would lump tone and voice together as the elements that make a connection to the reader while word choice is about clarity and precision of words in conveying meaning. I grew up talking about diction and syntax more than word choice and sentence fluency, so my question is, would both diction and syntax fall under Culham's category of word choice?
Good question. I don't know.
How about "Jesus wrote a blank check?" Seriously, though, I really think students can get 'word drunk,' and if we don't restrict access to intoxicants (thesauruses/thesauri?), we're in for some serious brain cell loss. I also agree with you that PhD profs can write poorly, too. Rick Beech anyone? Anyhow, as usual, you have hit the nail on the head and I completely agree with you.
PS-- the wiki chapter is BEAUTIFUL!
Yeh, Culham's own writing doesn't exactly recommend her as a source of such priceless advice. But I still like the 6+1 traits as a way to compartmentalize skills for students learning the craft.
High-level academic writing is best enjoyed from a distance, as the authors seem to intend. TL from last semester is a product of the author's being remote from both the subject and the audience. And the question of audience is key in this context. The terrible enslavement of intellect that takes place to create a dissertation that will be read by no more than a dozen people must drain the wit and joy from those who undertake it. Yes, great works from Joyce, Faulkner, Angelou and Roy were also concieved in agony and birthed in grinding labor. But they are great to read.
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