I’ve got a soft spot for academic writing jokes. Here’s one.
How many academics does it take to change a lightbulb?
The hedger: “This paper tentatively suggests that, within the limits of a small-scale study, one academic may possibly contribute to what might be understood as a change in the lightbulb, although further research is needed.”
The overclaimer: “One. I’ve changed it. Everyone who changed lightbulbs before me was doing it wrong, and this has implications for lighting globally.”
The doctoral researcher: “One, but I’m not sure I can say the light is on until my supervisor has read it.”
Reviewer 2: “The author asserts that the room is now lit. This is overstated. The author has not engaged with the extensive literature on darkness.”
The old hand: “One. The light is on in this room. I haven’t tried the others yet.”
Ah… Not a joke at all then.
What’s going on here? Every one of the five answers is about the balance between saying something and acknowledging that what we say is provisional. Only the last one gets somewhere close to an acceptable level of certainty.
Of course, we’ve all written the hedger’s sentence. Doctoral researchers are told, quite rightly, to be careful about their claims. But care can turn into a pile of qualifiers, may and might and possibly and tentatively and sometimes and perhaps under these circumstances. These tentative modifiers are stacked on top of each other until the claim is buried deep underneath them. The reader finishes the sentence with absolutely no idea what the writer actually thinks.
These kinds of hedges breed in drafts, usually in the paragraphs where we are least sure of what we want to say. Part of the refining process is to find these unhelpful words and excise them.
The overclaimer is the opposite of the hedger. The overclaimer tends to turn up in abstracts and conclusions, where we want our contribution to count. A study of one university becomes a statement about all universities everywhere at all times. The pull to overclaim is understandable. But overclaiming hands a critical reader an easy way to reject what we are saying. And it’s usually the first thing Reviewer 2 goes for.
The doctoral researcher in the joke isn’t exactly hedging. They know the light is on. They just don’t feel they can say so yet. This isn’t a writing problem so much as a question of whether they think they can speak with authority All the same what they write ends up as hedged text.
And then there’s Reviewer 2, who is probably the reason for most of the hedging in the first place. If we start writing with an imagined Reviewer 2 at our shoulder, we start qualifying everything in advance to head off every possible objection. Which is how we end up back with the hedger. It’s good to keep an imaginary Reviewer 2 on hand when revising, but not let them have the final say. And definitely don’t let them loose when we are drafting.
So what does the old hand do differently? They make a plain claim: the light is on in this room. Then, in a separate sentence, they say where the claim stops: I haven’t tried the others. The claim isn’t softened at all. But there’s a boundary: the particular claim is marked out. The old hand keeps the two things – the claim and its reach – apart.
In a research text this might look like the difference between “This study suggests that lecturers might possibly value working alongside artists” and “The lecturers in this study valued working alongside artists. This was in one faculty over one year, and it is not clear whether lecturers elsewhere would say the same.” The first version is a mealy-mouthed claim about all lecturers everywhere. The second version tells the reader about your study and your results. It also tells them how far they can take them. You’ve said something, and you’ve been frank about what their implications.
If you want to try the lightbulb test in your own writing, go through a draft and look at each qualifier. Ask whether it’s about the claim itself or about how far the claim travels or about both at once. If it’s about both, try taking the reach out of the sentence and putting it into its own sentence. Focus that sentence on scope, setting, participants or time. What’s left behind in the original sentence is likely a clearer claim. Sort this out and acompany it with your clearer statement of reach – what you can and can’t say.
Try this out the next time you’re revising a conclusion. The lightbulb test. Ask which of the five people wrote it. If it wasn’t the old hand, have another go at changing it.
Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash
