Official Style: Confusing or Credible?

        "Gay and lesbian literature disrupting the heteronormative space of the English classroom" is an article written by Kirsten Helmer that uses aspects of The Official Style in order to establish credibility with her targeted audience. Kirsten Helmer is affiliated with the Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies: Language/Literacy/Culture through the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts. In addition to this position, Helmer is also the Director of Programming for Diversity, Inclusion, & Equity and Lecturer. Her dissertation was a similar topic to the article I used in my research; if interested, her dissertation is titled “Reading Queerly in the High School Classroom: Exploring Gay and Lesbian Literature Course.” Fortunately, I had free access to the article I used in my research because the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse holds access to it in their various online databases. Helmer’s audience range is narrowed down if the reader does not have free access because then they have one of two options available through Taylor & Francis Online: rent the article for 24 hours ($42.50) or rent the article for a 30-day period ($135.00).

Academic Journal

As I stated above, Helmer’s audience is narrowed because they need to be willing and able to make the conscious choice of paying the rental amount for the potential research purposes. The rental website had 566 views and the article itself was cited six different times in other scholarly articles according to Google. Recently, there has been an increase in publication of articles concerning gay and lesbian literature/curriculum and the appropriate usage in high school classrooms. Helmer’s article was published in the academic journal Sex Education; this journal is concerned with the practice of sex education and with the thinking that underpins it.

            The different sections of this article are labeled with clear and concise headings which allow readers to navigate the paper quickly in order to find what they are looking for. Example headings include but are not limited to: Abstract/Introduction, Methodology, Research Site and Participants, The Gay and Lesbian Literature Course, Engaging students in experiential learning activities, Discussion, etc. Helmer’s article is eleven pages in length, but also has fifty-one different cited sources. While there are many prose style strategies that can be used to establish credibility, one of the more common ones used in this article was coordination and longer sentences in general. For example, the first sentence in the last paragraph that was annotated combined two dependent clauses and one independent clauses to create a sentence that totaled fifty-one words: "Within the high school educational context that is still overwhelmingly characterized by silence or marginalization related to positive representations of diverse sexualities and genders, a course like Gay and Lesbian Literature can perform important disruptive work, creating itself a counter-narrative to those who construct such work as impossible within public classrooms."When sentences like this one are strung together back-to-back, it can be difficult for readers to digest/completely understand what they are reading.

            In addition to coordination and longer sentences, Kirsten Helmer also uses a passive voice in her research paper to help readers gain access into her mentality and intentions behind the research. Examples include but are not limited to: In this paper, I explore; …it is my intention to; I propose that; This paper has illustrated. These are just a few of the examples where Helmer begins to explain her reasoning as to why she did things the way she did. Helmer also frequently uses euphemistic/jargonistic tendencies to lengthen her sentences and add a knowledgeable tone.

            Kirsten Helmer uses prose style strategies and aspects of the Official Style such as coordination, longer sentences, passive voice, and euphemistic/jargonistic tendencies in order to establish credibility with her readers. This credibility is important because it allows her the theoretical platform to persuade educators to engage in social justice conversations that fight for the right to use gay and lesbian literature in a high school classroom, and to not be afraid to talk and work through this with students. In general, the goal of this publication is to build readers knowledge about the subject and persuade them to engage with it. While the goal of this scholarly article seems pure in intention, there are implications that come along with writing in the Official Style. One of the major implications is that the article may seem credible/trustworthy, but the readers may not fully understand it. This can cause the meaning behind the writing to be lost in its translation. The second implication of using Official Style strategies in writing is that there is a potential of excluding certain readers. This exclusion comes from the author trying to include certain groups of people. So how do researchers and authors present their findings in a credible way that doesn’t exclude a majority of people? That is the million-dollar question.

- Lindsey M.