Critical realism and academic writing: why theory matters for practice

Critical realism and academic writing: why theory matters for practice
In this talk, I explain why some approaches to academic English writing instruction stymie rather than advance knowledge. I will argue that for academic writing to have epistemic value, it is best understood as a social practice and as a method of enquiry rather than as a ‘linear’, ‘neutral’, or ‘objective’ transferable skill. For this conceptual shift to occur, academic writing should be re-configured as ontologically stratified. Conceptualising academic writing as stratified, as opposed to flat, would afford writers agency in making rational textual choices in the interests of knowledge rather than of linguistic display. To exemplify, I will showcase academic discourses that differ significantly from standardised ‘transparent’ academic prose - which, inter alia, has ideological and colonial roots. To argue all this, I mobilise the socio-scientific theory of critical realism, a theory that helps foreground academic writing’s educative and epistemic purpose.
Faisal Khan
106
2/2/2024
01:06:27
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