A groom must expect matrimonial pandemonium / When his spouse finds he’s given her cubic zirconium.
—Justice J. Michael Eakin, Porreco v. Porreco
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Judge, Michael Eakin, was known to write his opinions in rhyme and so came to be called “the rhyming judge.” His playfulness was controversial and earned him rebuke from other justices who felt that the law was a serious domain with serious consequences, not some literary playground. Judge Eakin’s response was that judges have an obligation to be “fair but not dull.”
I recalled Justice Eakin’s words when I came upon this grad student guide to publishing, which stirred up some controversy on #philosophytwitter. I found the advice to be value neutral with respect to how to write papers of good quality but sound, practical advice with respect to how to churn out published content. (The extent to which academic jobs are determined by how much one has published in academic journals is, generally, a travesty).
The grad student’s advice does not tell us how to write well (why should it), but only how to write tactically with the aim of getting a paper accepted by a journal.
There is so much content published in academic journals which is dull to read. Some obvious reasons are:
Academics are, on average, rewarded for quantity, not quality.
When they are rewarded for quality, the ideas are what get assessed, not the style in which they are expressed. A good idea expressed dully is better than an OK idea expressed entertainingly.
Academic culture is biased against that which is entertaining, seeing stylistic verve as a form of populism or intofaintment that dilutes the ideas. More cynically, academics may be threatened by entertaining writing as it undermines their power (“We’re the experts.”)
There is another reason, though, that aligns with the negative responses Justice Eakin received for writing legal opinions in verse:
Serious ideas have serious consequences and expressing them with levity betrays a lack of decorum. Either the author doesn’t take his/her task seriously or thinks we shouldn’t.
I think academia and academic publishing are broken for 100 reasons, but the fact that academic writing tends to be dull raises questions that are worthy of consideration beyond the purview of academia.
For instance, we probably would find the same issues in medicine and business. My guess is that the more specialized the knowledge—and the more the authorities seek a monopoly on expertise—the more jargon and dulness will prevail.
Is this right? Where do you fall on the spectrum between “the rhyming judge” and the serious (if dull) expert?
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Let me count the ways! (I will note that there are of course many shining exceptions to the rule). But on the whole People who go to grad school don’t go because they are gifted writers, and grad school does nothing to cure that. They are socialized from undergrad into a specific form of argument that lays out secondary literature ad nauseum, something “curiously unappreciated” or “oddly missed” or a “third way not yet considered” and then lays out an argument that is impossibly narrow and therefore almost surely boring. Because many academics don’t really, deeply care about their subject matter and so there is a lack of passion and verve in writing because they write in order to be employed. The writing is abstract because there is no real imperative to be clear and concise. And it’s hard to crack a joke when you’re writing for the review of metaphysics. Etc etc