Blog 14

 I wanted to make my last post about Lancaster's "Do Academics Really Write This Way? A Corpus Investigation of Moves and Templates in "They Say// Say" article because I was curious about its implications. First of all, it was kind of hilarious to see that they had me figured out. I saw so many of the phrases I used, some that I found clever and some that I found redundant. But I was like, wow, here I was thinking I was creating my own academic voice, and I sound like everyone else, just probably not as good. SO am I a cookie-cutter? Are all academics trapped in the kitchen utensil drawer with the cookie sheet? I am just honestly surprised at how many common academic phrases there are. So my question is if they are so common, are they cliches? My other question is, if we try so hard to sound academic, are we really having our own ideas or someone else's? Where did I even get these phrases from? Because I don't remember learning them in school past the lessons about transition words. Did I just start writing that way because I was imitating more academics and trying to sound like what my teachers implied was the right way to write. So anyway, she finishes off by saying that she is not arguing that these academic linguistic modalities are wrong or right but are ever-present. So shall I continue using them, or should I be more original? Even though I already thought I was original for fear of plagiarism, I guess I wasn't? Then I started to think about how a lot of my insecurities and the insecurities of my future students will come from the pressures of having to fit into this mold of academic style Dominant American English. We try so hard to sound like other academics so that we can feel worthy, but to what extent do we give up our voice and become a part of this huge lifeless machine? I did not know we could use first person or that we could refute sources, or that we should converse with sources, not rely on them, till my first semester in grad-school with Dr. Huth because I asked her why some of the essays we read spoke in the first person. I then became obsessed with saying "I argue" because I thought it was right. I then began to feel like I had to disagree to not rely on the sources and converse with it. I thought these were the requirements of having "my own authentic academic voice," as she called it. Is it authentic though, if it's academic? Is it my voice if it's academic? That was a system set up way before me, so how can I have autonomy and creativity over it? IDK just some random thoughts. Maybe I am overthinking it.

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