Michael Billig, Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences

Abstract

Modern academia is increasingly competitive yet the writing style of social scientists is routinely poor and continues to deteriorate. Are social science postgraduates being taught to write poorly? What conditions adversely affect the way they write? And which linguistic features contribute towards this bad writing? Michael Billig's witty and entertaining book analyses these questions in a quest to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong with the way social scientists write. Using examples from diverse fields such as linguistics, sociology and experimental social psychology, Billig shows how technical terminology is regularly less precise than simpler language. He demonstrates that there are linguistic problems with the noun-based terminology that social scientists habitually use - 'reification' or 'nominalization' rather than the corresponding verbs 'reify' or 'nominalize'. According to Billig, social scientists not only use their terminology to exaggerate and to conceal, but also to promote themselves and their work. Written in a clear, humorous and entertaining style, avoiding the sort of heavy yet imprecise technical terminology that disfigures so much social scientific writing Identifies the linguistic features of poor social scientific writing - such as the use of technical nouns over verbs and writing unpopulated texts - and shows how social scientists can write in clearer and more populated ways Examines how the current competitive 'capitalist' culture is affecting the way that social scientists write and encourages young academics to resist the 'promotional' culture that is so widespread