Academic writing

Academic writing, or scholarly writing is a prose style. Normally delivered in an impersonal and dispassionate tone, it is targeted at a critical and informed audience, based on closely investigated knowledge; and intended to reinforce or challenge concepts or arguments. It usually circulates within the academic world ('the academy').Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending on the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. Academic writing, or scholarly writing is a prose style. Normally delivered in an impersonal and dispassionate tone, it is targeted at a critical and informed audience, based on closely investigated knowledge; and intended to reinforce or challenge concepts or arguments. It usually circulates within the academic world ('the academy'). Despite large differences between subject areas, typically, scholarly writing has an objective stance, clearly states the significance of the topic, and is organized with adequate detail so that other scholars may try to replicate the results. A discourse community is essentially a group of people that shares mutual interests and beliefs. 'It establishes limits and regularities...who may speak, what may be spoken, and how it is to be said; in addition prescribe what is true and false, what is reasonable and what foolish, and what is meant and what not.'