Academic Discourse

The main point of this article seems to be about how we change the way we communicate based on the environment or context we are placed in. David Bartholomae specifically looked at college entry essays from students who were still in high school and analyzed the way they responded to questions about creativity and what it means to them. Each of the 500+ essays Bartholomae had to analyze had a different approach to answering the question and it went beyond what the answer was specific to how they approached the answer.

Bartholomae discussed one of the essential points of writing for a writer is “building bridges” between their point of view and their readers (Bartholomae, 9). It’s essential because if a writer is to answer a question for someone, the reader must be able to understand what the writer is trying to say. It also helps develop authority for the writer by showing the reader that they know what they are talking about. It’s almost like developing a line of credit for the writer so that the reader doesn’t dismiss the idea all together.

Each bridge has different needs, however. The writers, in these cases, are writing for a broad audience (colleges) and so they have to be able to fit a lot of needs into their writing in order to impress said audience. Bartholomae, for example, wasn’t looking for the typical structure in writing to determine if these students were worthy of college acceptance, rather he “was looking to see what happened when a writer entered into a language to locate himself (a textual self) and his subject,” and he was “looking to see how, once entered, that language made or unmade a writer” (Bartholomae, 12). It’s difficult to know what your audience wants to see in your writing, so most writers have to take a broad stance and try to hit everything at once, which is kind of what these college students were doing in their essays.

After going through this reading, my understanding of academic discourse is that it is how we change our tone in writing to match the academic atmosphere we are in. For example, if I am writing for an English course, I will write my opinion in and discuss it where as a history paper would be strict facts without using the pronoun ‘I’ throughout the paper. My style and tone change based on the audience for which I am writing and think that is what Bartholomae finds in academic discourse.