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Quote by Howard S. Becker

“None of these classy locutions mean anything different from the simpler ones they replace. They work ceremonially, not semantically. Writing in a classy way to sound smart means writing to sound like, maybe even be, a certain kind of person. Sociologists, and other scholars, do that because they think (or hope) that being the right kind of person will persuade others to accept what they say as a persuasive social science argument.”

Book:Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article

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Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article

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Howard S. Becker

Howard S. Becker, born on April 18, 1928, is a renowned American sociologist. His research focuses on cultural sociology and music sociology, particularly known for his studies on blues music. Becker is recognized for his unique 'labeling theory', which explores the relationship between culture and social structure in depth. more

“One thinks about modern academics, especially philosophers and sociologists. Their language is often voiceless and without power because it is so utterly cut off from experience and things. There is no sense of words carrying experiences, only of reflecting relationships between other words or between "concepts." There is no sense of an actual self seeing a thing or having an experience... Sociology—by its very nature?—seems to be an enterprise whose practitioners cut themselves off from experience and things and deal entirely with categories about categories. As a result sociologists, more even than writers in other disciplines, often write language which has utterly died”

Academic Writing

Book:Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process

Source: Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process

“Writing in the first person helps to make clear the author's role in constructing rather than discovering the story/knowledge.”

Writing Knowledge First Person Academic Writing Constructing Knowledge

Book:Feminist Research in Theory and Practice

Source: Feminist Research in Theory and Practice

“Accessible knowledge is the best kind”

Writing Writing Process Writing Advice Academic Writing Black Women Writers

Author:Malebo Sephodi

“Ultimately, then, creativity and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms but in the imaginative use of them.”

Writing Writing Advice Academic Writing Motivational For Writers

Author:Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

“I do not care much about speaking in some jargon that perpetuates inaccessiblity”

Writing Life Academic Writing Accessible Writing Black Women Writing

Author:Malebo Sephodi

“It is not the quantity of publications, but their quality and the effects they have on the real world outside of academia’s ivory tower is what determines whether we shall live way after we exit this world, or perish while still at 30!”

Writing Writing Process Creative Writing Writing Advice Academia Academic Writing

Author:Louis Yako

“One surefire way to fail to overcome an objection is to dismiss it out of hand.”

Writing Debate Rhetoric Argumentation Academic Writing

Author:Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

“When teachers participate in a literary experience with a professionally presented children's play, they are offering their students a text quite different from anything that they will experience within their classrooms. Within this literary experience, teachers join as equals with their students, and each, as audience members within the darkened space of the performance, create their own poems to hold within themselves or share with others.”

Research Theater Children S Literature Pedagogy Academic Writing Education Knowledge

Book:Three Moons Till Tomorrow: An Examination of the Interactions, Transactions, and the Construction and Co-Construction of Meaning by Elementary School Students, Teachers, and Theatre Professionals with an Original Children's Musical Play

Source: Three Moons Till Tomorrow: An Examination of the Interactions, Transactions, and the Construction and Co-Construction of Meaning by Elementary School Students, Teachers, and Theatre Professionals with an Original Children's Musical Play

“U.S academia has long operated under the mediocre slogan of “publish or perish”, not taking into account that very often writers may perish the minute they publish, if they do not have something meaningful to say. As though adding to human knowledge can occur simply by killing some trees and publishing (mostly recycling) a couple of articles a year or one book every few years. Many academics that operate according to this slogan do not seem to remember Dostoyevsky’s words that the most difficult thing in life is to actually say something new, or George Orwell who once stated: “Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.”

Writing Creativity Publishing Creative Writing Academia Academic Writing Academic Research Academic Politics

Author:Louis Yako

Quote by Howard S. Becker

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