WRIT1005 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: George Orwell, Michel De Montaigne
Lecture 1 – Introduction
Questions
- Why are we here?
- What is the academy?
- What is academic writing?
- Why is academic writing important in the academy?
- Why do we write essays?
- How did this state of affairs come about?
- What is the status of what is conveyed in an essay?
- What is knowledge and how does it differ in different disciplines?
To consider
- The scriptural economy of the university
- The invitation to become part of an academic discourse community
What is academic prose?
- A vehicle for constructing knowledge claims
- For wielding ideas
- Constructing categories and concepts
- Weighing competing abstractions
- Assessing the relations between claim and evidence
- Developing careful distinctions
- Taking up out of the ephemerality of individual instances
- So that we can learn something about our past and present
- While attempting to control or improve our present
George Orwell and the Politics of the English Language
- The English language becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish
- The slovenliness of the language makes it easier to have foolish thoughts
- The process is reversible
- Modern English is full of bad habits which spread by imitation but can be avoided if one
takes the necessary trouble
- If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly
- To think more clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration
- The fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional
writers
Me and My Writing
- We go hand in hand, and at the same pace, my book and I. In other cases, one may
commend or blame the work apart from the workman; not here, he who touches the one
touches the other
o Montaigne, Of Practice
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Document Summary
The invitation to become part of an academic discourse community. Assessing the relations between claim and evidence. While attempting to control or improve our present. Taking up out of the ephemerality of individual instances. So that we can learn something about our past and present. George orwell and the politics of the english language. The english language becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish. The slovenliness of the language makes it easier to have foolish thoughts. Modern english is full of bad habits which spread by imitation but can be avoided if one takes the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly. To think more clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration. The fight against bad english is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. We go hand in hand, and at the same pace, my book and i.
