RE. THE 'WINCOM' WRITING & STANDARDS DEBATE
You (Reese) say "What we observe is an academic system that demands 
and rewards obscurity and pomposity in writing.  I do not believe that this 
advances the production and distribution of knowledge, though it clearly 
benefits the careers of everyone in the system (ourselves included)."

I agree, & dedicate hours to screening out pomposities & other 
sub-cultural (academic) 'exclusion' markers in exam papers - especially 
those intended for candidates who are culturally & linguistically 
non-native.
However, there is a very serious point to be made here concerning the 
'genre' and indeed the genesis of present-day academic writing conventions.   
The point as I see it rests upon a paradox implicit in our perception of 
such writing as pompous and obscure and hence unhelpful in the "production 
and distribution of knowledge".
The paradox is that in making this accusation, we forget how 'fit for 
purpose' the developing conventions originally were - & perhaps still are. 
The trick is to remind ourselves of the purpose.    If we  remember for 
instance that the primary research objective was always and still is to 
achieve the widest possible dissemination of  knowledge, not only to an 
English-speaking but also a 'Latinate' language-based, and in recent decades 
a non-Latinate language-based, international readership.  
This is why I like to believe (on non-cynical days) that academic writers in 
English were so altruistic & all-disseminating that they chose Latinate terms 
rather than the Anglo Saxon (less 'pompous' sounding perhaps) equivalents   
('ignite' and not 'set alight';  'invert' and not 'turn upside down' &c) for very sound 
reasons of wider accessibility - and not just to exclude the riff-raff.  Anglo Saxon 
never did travel well!    The 'Latinate' terms were more internationally accessible.  
Look at dictionaries nowadays - bilingual, from other  languages to English.  
They have hardly any Anglo-Saxon phrasal verbs as translation equivalents.  

Other arguments can be mounted to defend other "pompous & obscure"
language conventions - the use of passive voice, for example, as in  "the 
relationship..........was tested"   rather than "we tested the relationship".  
In this case, the elimination of agent, "we",  has the fair purpose of making 
the experimental data speak for itself - stand alone as 'objective'.  
That's the basis of scientific writing (objectivity) after all.   Despite cultural shifts 
towards something called  "inter-subjectivity", the post-modernist, 
deconstructionist, non-prescriptivist view of "what science should be", 
there are still an awful lot of scientists who are simply too busy to notice all 
that....& haven't taken the time to update their views or voices.
(I am also unsure about 'objectivity' & always have been, but that 
doesn't mean to say that scientists & academics whose language 
reflects a loyalty to that goal should be demeaned for it.)
Also, in recognising pomposity in the language of academic writing, 
are we wishing to genuinely de-mystify, or rather to 'dumb down' for our 
'wider access' natives now in higher education?  And are we in that way 
guilty of excluding the wider international audience?  English as an international 
language is changing, but should we let 'street cred'  blur a 
necessary  distinction between clarity and  familiarity?  
My own background is in philosophy, linguistics, applied linguistics, 
language teaching, cultural anthropology &  psychology. These days I
am piloting a method for teaching academic writing with the help of e-mail, 
to international students in British higher education. Their 
motivation is means-end / instrumental & so my own aims are 
pragmatic:  to get them favourably assessed by their native-speaker assessors
 - many of whom have difficultiies with clarity in their own writing. 
 Sadly, this doesn't make them think twice before striking out a whole 
paragraph from a non-native writer just because of a single grammatical error 
(such as subject-verb agreement) and adding insult to injury by commenting 
"You seem to know the subject, but your English lets you 
down".  And this from a lecturer / assignment setter (?teacher) who couldn't 
identify a noun if it knocked him down but has been fortunate enough to be born into a native
English speaking society & has therefore no empathy at all with the 
problems of non-native speakers.
    Paradox upon paradox......
Ann Gavriel
Aberdeen, UK.  Tel:  01224 262135
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