The teaching of academic writing is a very complicated task. It is a discipline that has garnered much conversation in order to illuminate its intricacies. David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University” is one of the most important essays on academic writing. In it, he argues that academic writing implies a modification in the positioning of the student with respect to a discourse. “Some students are able to enter into a discourse, but, by stylistic maneuvers, to take possession of it at the same time. They don't originate a discourse, but they locate themselves within it aggressively, self-consciously” (Bartholomae 15). The author indicates that it is important for the student to imagine themselves within the academic discourse in a purposeful way. “Writers who can successfully manipulate an audience (or, to use a less pointed language, writers who can accommodate their motives to their readers' expectations) are writers who can both imagine and write from a position of privilege” (Bartholomae 9). Taking a Foucaltian reading, the text believes that this modification with regards to the discourse is also a change in the power structure, in which they contort the language in such a way that they can display their authority with respect to the audience.
This is something that is obviously not easy to do. The author supports this thesis by providing evidence from two student-written texts. He purports them to be in different stages of development with respect to this new positioning with respect to the academic discourse. Bartholomae compares the construction of a sentence to a transcription, where the original voice is eliminated (Bartholomae 19). According to this author, the most important part of the appropriation of the specialized discourse is not only reproducing its language, but also establishing equilibrium between the personal and the academic (4-5). The author concludes that, in order to successfully achieve this type of writing, the student must imagine his or herself as forming a part of a certain discourse, contemplating a change in the political and social bonds that transform the distribution of power (Bartholomae 9).
Works Cited
Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” Journal of Basic Writing 5.1 (1986): 4-23. PDF. 13 Jan 2016. <http://wac.colostate.edu/jbw/v5n1/bartholomae.pdf>.
