Constructing a narrative: Telling academic and professional stories

Gavin FairbairnProfessor of Ethics and Language

Leeds Metropolitan University

Human life is conducted through story.

Many of our social institutions are comprised almost entirely of opportunities for telling and re-telling stories, for sharing the narratives that constitute our lives.

How was the holiday?

How is the data collection going?

What kind of day have you had? How did your paper go at the conference?

We learn about and make sense of our lives by telling the stories that we live, and we come to know something about other people and their lives by listening to the stories they tell.

Communicating information through stories helps them to remember what they have heard, because stories are an ideal way of relating what is learned to what is already known and hence of integrating it with the body of knowledge that we already possess.

Academic writing as storytelling.

It is because story comes so naturally to us, and because it is so powerful as a way of communicating ideas, that I try to persuade my students and my colleagues always to view their academic and professional writing as an exercise in storytelling.

Teaching as a Subversive Activity, by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner (1969)

Crap detection: the transferable skill of discerning value, or perhaps more importantly its absence, in the barrage of information that impinges on us every day.Diamond detection: the transferable skill of discerning value, clarity and sparkle, of seeking out what engages and attracts attention, in the barrage of information that impinges on us every day.

Many academics (in some disciplines at least it seems most) write in a style that makes it difficult for any but the most gymnastic and generous of thinkers to work out what on earth they are talking about.Indeed many seem to take pride in making their work difficult to the point at which it is almost (and sometimes actually) devoid of meaning.

Even those who, in their everyday lives, manage to talk in quite ordinary ways - who, like the rest of us share stories every day about their research and the development of their ideas, seem actively to cultivate a new and less understandable way of speaking, and to adopt a new language when they are writing.

Writing in a dense and difficult style seems, indeed, to be part of the adopted identity of many academics.

It is almost as if they believe that the academic enterprise is about confusing, rather than illuminating - and aimed at obfuscation, rather than clarity.

Many academic journals are full to the brim of pseudo intellectual gibberish, and academics whose bread and butter depends upon publishing in such journals often end up embracing the myth that such writing is not only what is required, but that it is actually worthwhile.

Many academic authors choose their words carefully, using big words where small ones would do, and difficult words where possible, rather than where necessary.

Cultivating the habit of using as much citation as possible, rather than where necessary, helps to create the illusion that academic work is underpinned by serious scholarship, because it suggests familiarity, not only with work by others that has actually had an influence on their ideas, but with a wider range of sources.

Which of these is the real you?

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Academic writing as storytelling.

Thinking of their writing as a kind of storytelling is, I have found, useful for most academic writers in developing both their writing style and their approach to the creation of text. This is true, regardless of their level of experience or the research approaches they have adopted.

All academics have stories to tell.

Of course academic authors tell stories of different kinds, and have different ways of telling them, depending on their areas of interest, and it is important that they should adopt narrative forms that are appropriate to the material about which they are writing.

The stories researchers tell are thus told in different forms and in different languages, or in different dialects of the same language. However, all will be stories of a kind.

What makes academic storytelling successful?

A good narrative writer engages her audience and holds its attention by making her plot sufficiently interesting to seduce us into reading further, and by ensuring that the characters who inhabit the world she is creating motivate us to read on to find out what happens to them.Good academic storytellers do similar things, though the characters with whom they populate their texts are not people, but ideas, arguments, hypotheses, theories, methods, results, conclusions and so on

Conceiving of their writing in terms of story makes it easier for them to develop a sound structure, because it helps to focus attention on the people with whom they are attempting to communicate, and their needs.

At every stage in constructing her narrative, the writer needs to ask whether it is obvious what the relationship is between adjacent paragraphs and between adjacent sentences.

If they are to be successful in telling their tales academic storytellers need to weave the various elements together in coherent, interesting and easily understandable ways. We should not expect of readers that they will be willing to engage in intellectual gymnastics, contorting their minds and exerting themselves beyond comprehension, simply to work out what we are saying.

Like storytellers of other kinds, I think we should strive to tell our academic and professional stories as clearly and as carefully as we can, and to make them as accessible and engaging as possible.

How can we construct academic stories that communicate what we want as clearly as possible? Wh

Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to consider your article for the journal. I enjoyed it very much. It was well written and thought provoking and raised important issues in an interesting way. All three referees shared this view. Unfortunately they do not consider it suitable for the journal as it stands, because it is not really academic enough. They suggest that you should be invited to resubmit it after strengthening it by adding more scholarly references.….

Apes can be taught to use sign language, so they should be given the same rights as humans. (Williams, 1990) There is a great deal of disagreement about the best way of addressing the problems of bullying in the workplace. (Biggs, 1987; Cunningham, 1998).

We have no way of telling on which side of the fence Biggs and Cunningham sit, in the debate about workplace bullying; about whether, for example, they have carried out research on different approaches to the problem, or have perhaps simply commented on it.

People find it hard to agree about how best to address the problems of bullying in the workplace. For example, while Biggs (1987) argues that it is best to deal with complaints in a low key way, bringing the individuals together in an informal discussion, Cunningham (1998) is less convinced. Though he agrees that, in mild cases, Biggs’ approach will be helpful, Cunningham counsels caution where the person alleging the bullying shows signs of extreme distress.

Citation is most effective when it is obvious why each source is being cited. Often this will involve saying a little about, for example, what the cited author has done or has found; argues or suggests; draws attention to, or has demonstrated It is usually even better when the writer goes on to do something with the citation - for example, relating the ideas of the cited author to another or others, or using it as a springboard for his own ideas

The most successful academic stories manage to draw together diverse threads, including ideas drawn from and developed by interacting with material from cited sources, in a way that engages, informs and challenges.

Engage our audience, that is ‘hook’ them or grab their attention.

Inform them, that is tell them something they didn’t already know, or help them to reconstrue what they did already know. Challenge them, by which I mean that we should somehow shake or ‘shoogle’ them, to use a Scots word, so that we leave them with work to do.

So how can we develop as writers who engage, inform and challenge?

Though I have focused mainly on research storiesm much of what I have said is relevant for academic stories of all kinds, including those by which we seek to persuade students that they want to study our courses and those that are used in the attempt to persuade funding bodies to part with their money.

I find that entering into a kind of partnership with students and colleagues, in exploring and working a little on their texts, is the least threatening way to help them to become more careful writers.

In working one to one with students or colleagues on the development of their texts, the best way to do so is to work with text ‘live’ on screen rather than wasting time reading and marking it up like a copy editor, writing comments and suggestions in the margins.

I want to persuade participants of the value of working with others in the careful reading and interrogation of what is already written in order to develop and improve it.I aim to encourage them to play with possibilities on screen, until eventually after successive modifications, they come up with a version that satisfies them (or at any rate, that satisfies them for the moment).

Though ‘parasuicide’ began life as a label for a particular species of non-fatal suicidal action, some people now use it as a generic term for any occasion when a person apparently tries to kill himself but ends up alive.

The whole group views the text ‘live’ on screen, as I help the author to edit and shape it, in a way that is rather similar to the musical masterclass in which players are helped to develop their performances by a teacher, in front of an appreciative audience.

g.fairbairn@leedsmet.ac.uk07824 482 533

g.fairbairn@leedsmet.ac.uk07824 482 533