Title (required) Making the case for a critical realist theory of academic writing: does this matter for human emancipation? Abstract (required) Academic writing - writing that takes place in academic settings, from undergraduate essays to research monographs – matters because it is a method of knowledge enquiry. As such, and looking ahead, it should be of central concern to critical realism and its ontological project of ‘reclaiming reality’, especially as ‘artificially intelligent’ texts challenge the notion of a ‘human’ writer. Academic knowledge has a textual form, which, as Andrew Sayer highlights in his Appendix to Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach (1992), can influence how knowledge is re-presented. Moreover, since academic writing is also linguistic, my case for a critical realist theory of academic writing draws on Roy Bhaskar’s Enlightened Common Sense: The Philosophy of Critical Realism (2016), whereby an ontology of language pivots “on distinctions between the d

On re-imagining academic writing as an act of love Julia Molinari, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK Écrire est un acte d’amour. S’il ne l’est pas, il n’est qu’écriture. —Jean Cocteau In his existential book on the difficulty of being (La difficulté d’être), French writer, dramatist, poet, and film director Jean Cocteau refers to literary writing in ways that may help us re-imagine and humanise academic writing beyond performative and algorithmic tendencies. I have cited Cocteau (1957, p.151) in French in an act of what Suresh Canagarajah and other sociolinguists have referred to as “translanguaging”, the multilingual practice of communicating knowledge by drawing on one’s full linguistic repertoire to re-appropriate and democratise meanings by retaining their original voice, rhythm, and nuance. Translanguaging thus becomes a positive meaning-making practice that disrupts monolingual monopolies on meaning and replaces negative connotations of “linguistic interference” with gen

Sharing 2 talks I'll be giving in the coming months because they both excite & terrify me.

Informed critical & constructive reactions are much appreciated🙏🏼

#IACR2024
#METM24

warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/...

www.metmeetings.org/en/on-re-ima...

#CriticalRealism #AcWri #WhatMakesWritingAcademic #GAI