Deepening Awareness and Making Transparent: Culturally Specific Conventions of Academic Writing

When assigning and responding to writing, it is always important to be mindful of assumptions we might be making and intentional about our goals and priorities. Educational systems often normalize certain ways of thinking and communicating, which can make these conventions invisible to those of us who learned these norms, and confuse those who received different training. The genres and styles of writing, which we may have learned, and now teach, in the United States, are culturally specific, not universal. At a global university such as Tufts, becoming more aware of cultural and linguistic differences benefits all students by reminding us to be more transparent and intentional in our teaching.

Here are a few ways that various cultural values are embedded in American writing genres may be at odds with/are reflected in common American academic writing conventions:

• Thesis/hypothesis: Advancing your own argument/analysis/thesis, as distinct from, but also in conversation with, academic sources can be challenging for many students, but it poses a particular challenge for those coming from different educational systems or cultures in which this is not the norm. In many cultures, it can be considered impolite, disrespectful, or irrelevant to include one’s own opinion in a paper as an undergraduate, since the point of education is more focused on taking in information and learning the traditions of scholarly thought.
• Citation: Citing sources is a cultural practice at least partly based in the Western (not universal) values of intellectual property and individualism.
• Organization: Organizing papers by leading with arguments–for example, placing a thesis statement near the beginning of the essay and topic sentences at the beginning of paragraphs–is also a Western norm. In some cultures, for example, it is customary to lead up to the main argument, which appears at the end of the essay after developing the contributing points.
• Directness and concision: Directness and conciseness are American values that for some students can feel rude, abrupt, or inelegant. Students from some cultures might be accustomed to establishing a relationship with the reader that American readers may interpret as long-winded or unnecessary. 
• American academic writing is reader-centered, with the idea that it’s the writer’s responsibility to clearly state the argument and points. For some cultures, writing is writer-centered, and it’s seen as the responsibility of the reader to understand the argument.   

The fact that a writing norm is culturally specific doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach it. Reader-focused clarity, for example, can be seen as consistent with accessibility, allowing as many readers as possible to understand, while citing sources allows for readers to trace the lineage of a writer’s thought and access information directly. 

Being aware of these norms as culturally specific, however, allows us to be more transparent and intentional about our expectations, which can benefit all students. It also allows us to consider whether or not there are actually some areas where the norms could be challenged or where different approaches could open up new ways of thinking about writing. 

Keep in mind that the writing conventions also vary by discipline, so that a student majoring in a different discipline may come in with a different understanding of expectations around writing. 

Examine your assignments, and identify places where you could call attention to and explain the conventions of writing in your field, or whether there are different ways to approach the assignment. You might invite students to share what they have learned about writing norms, to uncover the diversity of possible approaches. Whatever you decide, be as specific and transparent as possible, signaling your rationale in your syllabus and discussions, as well as the assignments themselves. 

For a guide to naming and explaining common conventions of Western academic writing, see Graff and Birkenstein’s “They Say, I Say”: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing

To understand how deepening your awareness of the cultural specificity of common academic writing conventions supports anti-racist pedagogy, see Kristina Aikens’ Reconsidering Academic Writing from a Culturally Informed Perspective

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