What Makes a Text an Academic Paper?

There is a specific "way of writing" that defines an academic paper. Academic papers are not written in a vacuum. There is a network of institutions that produce and disseminate knowledge in each field, and rules and standards, implicit and explicit, develop within this system. These rules and standards determine whether a text is a paper, whether it is a paper that fits within a certain field, and whether it is a valuable paper. So we have a specific "way of writing," a "genre," following Mikhail Bakhtin. We have a specific audience – those involved in the various scientific fields. And we have a set of standards that determine whether that academic paper is "good." This is not all, though, unfortunately. There is yet another set of rules that transcend the scientific world and affect the writing community in general; every writer must comply with stylistic standards.

Rules and standards create a set of expectations. Reviewers and editors will approach our text with an array of preconceptions of what it should look like and read like; how it should be organized and argued; what each of its sections should address. If we want to write a publishable paper, we need to be aware of these expectations. In the next posts we'll talk about them in detail.

Charles Olson, from "Human Universe" / CO, de su ensayo "Universo humano"

What makes most acts - of living and of writing - unsatisfactory, is that the person and/or the writer satisfy themselves that they can only make a form (what they say or do, or a story, a poem, whatever) by selecting from the full content some face of it, or plane, some part. [...] It comes out a demonstration, a separating out, an act of classification, and so, a stopping, and all that I know is, it is not there, it has turned false. For any of us, at any instant, are juxtaposed to any experience, even an overwhelming single one, on several more planes than the arbitrary and discursive which we inherit can declare.
It is not the Greeks I blame. What it comes to is ourselves, that we do not find ways to hew to experience as it is, in our definition and expression of it, in other words, find ways to stay in the human universe, and not be led to partition reality at any point, in any way. For this is just what we do do, this is the real issue of what has been, and the process, as it now asserts itself, can be exposed. It is the function, comparison, or, its bigger name, symbology. These are the false faces, too much seen, which hide and keep from use the active intellectual states, metaphor and performance. All that comparison ever does is set up a series of reference points: to compare is to take one thing and try to understand it by marking its similarities to or differences from another thing. Right here is the trouble, that each thing is not so much like or different from another thing [...] but that such an analysis only accomplishes a description, does not come to grips with what really matters: that a thing, any thing, impinges on us by a more important fact, its self-existence, without reference to any other thing, in short, the very character of it which calls our attention to it, which wants us to know more about it, its particularity. This is what we are confronted by, not the thing's "class," any hierarchy, of quality or quantity, but the thing itself, and its relevance to ourselves who are the experience of it [...]

Published originally in Human Universe. Grove Press. Also published in Selected Writings, edited and with an introduction by Robert Creeley.


Lo que hace que la mayoría de los actos - de vida y de escritura - sean insatisfactorios es que las personas y/o los escritores está convencidos de que solo pueden producir una forma (lo que hacen o dicen, o un cuento, un poema, lo que sea) mediante la selección de una cara o un plano: de alguna parte del contenido total. [...] Lo que resulta de ello es una demostración, un acto de separación, de clasificación y, por lo tanto, un freno, y todo lo que sé es que el contenido no está allí, que se ha vuelto falso. Puesto que todos nosotros, en cualquier instante, estamos yuxtapuestos a toda experiencia - incluso a una abrumadoramente única - en varios planos más de aquel que lo arbitrario y discursivo que heredamos puede declarar.
No culpo a los griegos por ello. Nosotros somos los responsables, ya que no encontramos la manera de ajustarnos a la experiencia tal cual es cuando la expresamos o definimos o, por decirlo de otro modo, no hallamos la manera de permanecer en el universo humano sin ser llevados a dividir la realidad en algún momento, de alguna manera. Porque esto es justamente lo que hacemos; esto es realmente lo que ha pasado, y el proceso puede ser revelado tal como se impone actualmente. Se trata de la función, la comparación o, según su nombre más amplio, la simbología. Estos son los falsos rostros, vistos demasiado a menudo, que ocultan los estados intelectuales - la metáfora y la interpretación (performance) - y nos impiden utilizarlos activamente. Todo lo que la comparación es capaz de hacer es establecer una serie de puntos de referencia; comparar es tomar una cosa y tratar de entenderla marcando lo que la asemeja o diferencia de otra cosa. Aquí es donde yace el problema: no es tanto que cada cosa es similar a otra cosa o diferente de ella [...] sino que lo que dicho análisis logra es una descripción, no capta lo que realmente importa: que una cosa, cualquier cosa, nos afecta debido a un hecho más importante, su existencia en sí sin referencia a ninguna otra cosa, en resumen, su propio carácter, que llama nuestra atención, que quiere que sepamos más acerca de ella, su particularidad. Esto es lo que nos confronta; no la "clase" de la cosa - una jerarquía de calidad o cantidad - sino la cosa misma, y su relevancia para nosotros que somos la experiencia de esa cosa [...]

Existe traducción al español: el ensayo está incluido en la edición de las Cartas Mayas, correspondencia entre Olson y Robert Creeley (RC incluyó algunas de esas cartas en Selected Writings, mencionado más arriba), de Mangos de Hacha.

John Berger, on narrative / Acerca del relato

We are both storytellers. Lying on our backs, we look up at the night sky. This is where stories began, under the aegis of that multitude of stars which at night filch certitudes and sometimes return them as faith. Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity. The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.

From And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, Vintage International.

Ambos somos narradores. Acostados boca arriba, miramos el cielo nocturno. Aquí es donde empezaron las historias, bajo la tutela de esa multitud de estrellas que en la noche escamotean certezas y, a veces, las devuelven como fe. Aquellos que primero inventaron y luego nombraron las constelaciones eran narradores. Al trazar una línea imaginaria entre un manojo de estrellas les brindaron imagen e identidad. Las estrellas enhebradas en esa línea fueron acontecimientos enhebrados en un relato. Imaginar las constelaciones, por cierto, no cambió las estrellas, ni el vacío negro que las rodea; lo que cambió fue cómo leemos el cielo nocturno.

De Y nuestros rostros, mi vida, breves como fotos. Hermann Blume. Pueden encontrar una traducción del libro en este blog.

Two poems by Irene Gruss (Argentina, 1950), my translation / Dos poemas de IG

The Rite


Pick up your things

your firm thighs, the basket loaded

to the brim, everything that keeps

the water cool and the milk hot,

everything put away already out of place;

wrap your kids from the cold and the

twilight, pick up

the chairs, the details, and

let the sea talk with me.

The varicose veins of old women,

either sufferers or fighters or satisfied with

what they have done in the end with their lives,

collect them,

just as men collect odds and ends from their

hoop nets,

those who fish with nets, and the

indomitable who carry their lines far, far away;

pick up, dark men of

such blond body hair, the tents,

tie the ropes with a lament that sounds like

I haven't set sail, today either, and let the

sea talk with me.

Children deafened by your sound routine,

pick up your games, look once again toward the beach,
go back,
go back home,
to monotony, to details.
Silent couples, get up and walk

for the moon to corrupt the mouth of

each, the breast of every one,

make the waters finally open

just like that,

pick up and run

pleasantly, carefully

from the twilight,

from the barren foam remaining on the shore,

and let the sea chat with me.


From La mitad de la verdad, bajo la luna editorial, 2008.

Amiable Music at Last

Because the leaves on that small tree still shine

I envision, there, far away, the enchanted summer forest.

I'd even rush the night

for little critters to bathe everything in amiable music, at last,

songs laughing at the graveness of the sea, there, nearby,

as the poor laugh,

as cicadas and crickets and the

frogs laugh at the sea, there, far away,

when it is summer still.

From Música amable al fin, mágicas naranjas ediciones, 2012

You can find a translation of Irene Gruss's poem "El té" in Jorge Aulicino's blog, Otra iglesia es imposible.

El rito

Levanten sus cosas,
sus muslos firmes, el canasto cargado
hasta el tope, todo para mantener
el agua fresca y caliente la leche,
todo guardado fuera de lugar ya;
cubran a sus niños del frío
y del ocaso,
levanten las reposeras, los detalles,
y dejen hablar al mar conmigo.
Las várices de las viejas
sufrientes o luchadoras o satisfechas
por lo que han hecho al cabo con sus vidas,
recójanlas
así como los hombres recogen menudencias
de su mediomundo,
esos que pescan con red,
y los bravíos que llevan el sedal lejos, lejos;
levanten,
hombres morenos de vellos tan rubios, las carpas,
aten las sogas con un lamento parecido a
hoy  no me he hecho a la mar, tampoco hoy, y dejen hablar
al mar conmigo.
Chicos aturdidos por su rutina sonora,
levanten sus juegos, miren una vez más hacia la playa,
vuelvan,
vuelvan al hogar,
a la montonía, a los detalles.
Parejas silenciosas, levántense a caminar,
a que la luna corrompa
la boca de cada cual,
el pecho de cada uno,
hagan que las aguas por fin se abran,
como si nada,
levanten y huyan
amable, cuidadosamente
del ocaso,
de la espuma estéril que queda en la orilla,
y dejen conversar al mar conmigo.



Música amable al fin

Porque las hojas de ese arbolito brillan todavía,
imagino, allá lejos, el bosque encantado de verano.
Hasta apuraría la noche, a que el bicherío inunde todo de música amable, al fin,
canto que se ríe de lo grave del mar, allá, a pocos pasos,
como el pobre se ríe,
como las chicharras y los grillos
y los sapos se ríen del mar, allá, lejos,
cuando es verano todavía. 

Pueden encontrar poemas de Irene Gruss en su blog Casta diva.

Flannery O'Connor, from "Writing Short Stories / Flannery O'Connor, de su ensayo "Escribir cuentos"

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning, but experienced meaning, and the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience that meaning more fully.

The essay may be found in Mystery and Manners.

Si se puede enunciar el tema de un cuento, si puede separarse del cuento mismo, entonces es seguro que el cuento no es muy bueno. El significado de un cuento debe estar encarnado en él, debe ser plasmado en él. Un cuento es una manera de decir algo que no puede ser dicho de ninguna otra manera, y hacen falta todas las palabras del cuento para decir qué quiere decir. Contamos un cuento porque una afirmación sería insuficiente. Cuando alguien pregunta de qué se trata un cuento, la única respuesta apropiada es decirle que lo lea. El significado de la ficción no es abstracto sino vivenciado, y el propósito de hacer afirmaciones acerca de él no es más que ayudarnos a vivenciar ese significado más plenamente.

Pueden encontrar una versión en español del ensayo en este blog.

Subject/Verb Agreement

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I would like to devote one last post to this topic in order to discuss a few more sentences that may pose a challenge: sentences where the subject is a collective noun or a word that indicates a portion; where two subjects are connected by "either... or" or "neither... nor"; or where there is a predicative expression that includes a noun.  

Collective nouns

Collective nouns are used to refer to a group of living beings or things. Depending on the sentence, they may take a singular or plural verb. If the members of the group are considered as a whole, the verb should be singular; if they are considered as individuals, the verb should be plural.

The jury has made a unanimous decision.

The cast are having trouble remembering their lines.

Words that indicate portions

To determine whether fractions and words such as percent, majority, all, none, and some must be followed by a singular or plural verb, look at the noun in the prepositional phrase that follows them. If the noun in the prepositional phrase (the object of the preposition) is singular, the verb should be singular. If the noun is plural, the verb should be plural.

Three quarters of the cake is gone.

Three quarters of the residents have voted.

"Either... or" and "Neither... nor"

When two singular subjects are connected by "either... or" or "neither... nor," the verb is singular.

Neither Jane nor I likes strawberries.

Yet when one of the subjects is plural, the number will depend on which subject is closest to the verb. If the nearest subject is singular, the verb will be singular. If the nearest subject is plural, the verb will be plural.

Either Robert or his siblings have to straighten that room today.

Neither his friends nor he knows how to get there.

Predicate nominals

A predicate nominal (noun) is part of a predicative expression. Predicative expressions describe or identify the subject and usually follow verbs such as "to be," "to seem," or "to appear." The problem arises when the subject is singular and the predicate noun is plural. In this case the verb must agree with the subject, not with the predicate noun, even if the sentence sounds a bit awkward. It is always possible to rewrite the sentence to get rid of the awkwardness.

What this essay needs is shorter paragraphs.

A poem by Cristián Cruz (Chile, 1973), my translation / Un poema de Cristián Cruz

Flapping Wings

These words I say to you

carry the dying faith of hospices

the sacred light that cracked the evening.

Don’t believe anything I say

I disturbed things slightly so that

you’d enter confused into these pages.

May the violent makeup of suicide not hurt us

Nothing is relinquished on the first try

Not even these mongrel words flapping their wings.

 

Batiendo alas

Estas palabras que te digo / llevan la fe moribunda de los hospicios / la sagrada luz que ha quebrado la tarde. / No me creas nada / yo he desordenado un poco las cosas / para que tú entres confundido en estas páginas. / Que no nos duela el maquillaje violento del suicidio / Nada se entrega a la primera / Ni siquiera estas palabras chuscas batiendo alas.

He has published, among others, Fervor del regreso (2002) and La fábula y el tedio (2003).

Publicó, entre otros, Fervor del regreso (2002) y La fábula y el tedio (2003). Pueden encontrar algunos de sus poemas aquí.