Revised Writing Construct Proposal

Heather Kaley

 

            From a student’s first day of high school English, and often through college and the working world, she is taught that objectivity is a hallmark of good writing, and, therefore, essential. Though objectivity (or the attempt to achieve it) can bring a great deal of value and credibility to a text, this construct is not always the most effective tool in writing. The humanities have somewhat opened up to the idea of allowing scholars to utilize the first person as a rhetorical tool, not so with the sciences and social sciences. Christine Webb, a professor of nursing at the University of Manchester, cites the fact that some nursing journals reject academic articles based on their use of the first person. Though composition and rhetoric scholars like Peter Elbow claim that the embargo on the first person in academic articles is warranted in the sciences, other scholars, like Dennis Altman of Latrobe University, claim the opposite, that valuable information can be withheld when an author attempts to write herself out of the text. Some college level science teachers, like Joe R. Clopton, use scientific narratives as a means of educating young scholars about science in a different manner, one that is certainly more engaging and might give clearer insight into the scientist’s relationship with his experiments and findings. Clearly further research must be done to determine whether epistemic disciplines like the sciences should be allowed to us the first person in academic articles.