Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Using “I think” in academic writing
I posted this last month at KnightVision, but I thought I’d share it with our larger audience—especially now that we have comments. What are your thoughts and experiences relating to “I think”, “we can see,” “readers can conclude,” and so forth?
Should English 101 students never use “I think” or “I agree” in a paper? Should they use the editorial “we” as an alternative?
In my professional opinion, there is no suitable universal answer to this question: it will always depend on a writer’s topic, purpose and audience. What students need is not a hard and fast rule (e.g., “always use the editorial ‘we’ and never refer to yourself”) but the ability to discern the needs of the rhetorical situations in which they’re writing.
Let’s say they’re writing to have a pub put on campus. If they’re writing for Chimes, trying to rouse student support, a personable style might be appropriate. Some self-reference, sentence fragments. They’ll want to show themselves as real people. If they’re writing on the same topic to the college President, or to the Board of Trustees, they’d better be writing Standard English. They’ll need to show that they’re not just thirsty slackers looking for an easy beer; they’re professionals who have a mature opinion on the issue.
Students should consider the rhetorical consequences of using “I think” too many times—and also the consequences of using none of that kind of language. They should try writing with the editorial “we,” and evaluate when it’s effective and ineffective.
The problem with “I think” and “it seems to me” is not that they’re wrong or informal—there are times, after all, when informality is advantageous—but that they subvert an author’s ethos. An audience will assume that there is no objective support (either facts or logic) for an author’s claims if she offers only subjective statements. She’ll sound uncertain, unwilling to advance anything on which she might be proven wrong.
On the other hand, there is a real danger in intensified statements. “It is clear that the Harry Potter books harm children who read them.” That’s a strong statement, and an author will be hard pressed to support it fully. He or she would have to show actual harm and clearly link it to the Harry Potter books. In other words, formal statements can -also- subvert ethos by setting up claims too high to be supported. Formal language can greatly increase the author’s burden of proof.
If too many uses of “I think” make writers sound mealy-mouthed, too few uses of that kind of language can make them sound hyperbolic and bombastic. This is especially true when they are college freshmen who have done little research on a big topic. They’re going to try to write language that sounds certain because they want to compensate for their genuine uncertainty. It’s best, I think, if the style is more expressive of their actual authority on the topic. (Sincerity is one of the most important qualities of Christian writing.)
In other words, it’s not -just- about appealing to an audience; it’s a matter of being honest to themselves, too. “This above all,” said Polonious to Hamlet, “to think own self be true. And it must follow, as the day the night, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
My basic composition philosophy—which underlies all of the above—is this. There is no wrong way to write. There are rhetorically foolish ways to write, but they’re not, technically speaking, wrong. The process of good writing is not a matter of learning rules but of making choices. Now, only in rare circumstances is a spelling error rhetorically appropriate. Good grammar is almost always in style. For this reason, it’s worth knowing the rules. But written rhetoric is not merely executing pre-established rules; it is engaging with a live human audience. Even when students follow the rules, they should do so for rhetorical reasons.
Professor Chad Engbers