I took a sample of the official style from an article that was published in 2016 in a Journal called Social Alternatives, which is an independent journal that deals with contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental issues through analysis, critiques, and reviews. Started in 1977, the journal is also oriented towards social justice, and their history page explains that their goal is to influence real change in the world. Editorial decisions are made by the Social Alternatives Editorial Collective, which consists of about 15 editors, most of who are professors at various universities. The journal is non-profit and partly supported by sponsors. The journal publishes four editions per year, and for a one year subscription, it costs $50. There is, however, one free article available on their website.
The above information comes from the journal’s website: http://www.socialalternatives.com/
The specific article that I chose is called, “Culture, Tradition and Globalisation: Some Philosophical Questions”, and it analyzes globalization and tradition as a method of understanding cultures. The author of this piece is Asha Mukherjee, who is currently is a professor in Philosophy specializing in Ethics and Logic at a university called Visva-Bharati. This particular article was published only in Social Alternatives, and according to google scholar, was cited by one other article called, “Facing Globalization From Below: A Theoretical Construct”, which argues for a specific approach to face globalization. Based on the article that cited this sample and the background of the journal it was published in, the sphere of human activities for which article was written is an academic setting. It would apply specifically to field of Philosophy, Foreign Language and Cultural Studies. It could also apply to interest groups for various social issues, because the article discusses how globalization affects local cultures and the unification of cultures.
Link to page with information about Mukherjee: http://www.visvabharati.ac.in/AshaMukherjeeDubey.html
Link to the article that cites my sample: http://jurnal.unmuhjember.ac.id/index.php/pslcf/article/view/885 )
The goal of the journal that this article is published in conflicts with the sphere of human activity the article itself was written in. This article was written in an academic setting, but the goals of the journal it was published in are to effect change in the real world. The strategies Mukherjee uses fit the official style and what her field of expertise expects from academic writing, but there is tension between that and who her audience would have to be to actually create change. To actually create change, the article would need to be able to appeal to people outside of academia. However, aspects of this text, including jargon heavy diction, nominalization, and long sentences, exclude those people. Overall, this article fits in within academia, but because of these elements of the official style, it would not be well received by an audience outside of academia, and would not fulfil the goals of the journal.
One element of the official style that is used a lot in this sample is jargon specific to the field Mukherjee is writing for. Mukherjee uses words and phrases like “spatial distance”, “modernization force”, “cultural imperialism”, “unification of culture”, “modernization theory”, and “homogenization”. In addition to being jargon, many of those same phrases are also nouns that end in -tion, or a nominalization that is common of the official style. These aspects of the text are relevant because they are major factors in the exclusion of people outside academia and outside of the Mukerjee’s field. Here, there is tension between the diction Mukerjee uses and what an audience outside of academia who could impact social issues can easily understand. The jargon and nominalizations decrease the readability of this text and ultimately detract from the impact it could have outside of strictly academic settings.
Another element of this text that reflects the official style is sentence length. There are many longer sentences which often start slowly and build up to the main point. Mukerjee writes these long sentences using strategies such as appositives and relative clauses. One example of the use of appositives comes from the sentence, “... globalisation is seen as an attempt to homogenise culture, the project of creating a common culture, as a process of unification of culture…”. Here, the phrase “the project of creating a common culture” restates the phrase “attempt to homogenise culture”, which is an appositive. Similarly, relative clauses are used in sentences like this one: “Given today’s world, which is globalised to a large extent, we cannot jump to the conclusion…”. The relative clause in this example uses the relative pronoun “which” to add information about the level of globalization in today’s world. Taken alone, these strategies would not necessarily create tension for audiences outside of academia. However, when they are used together to create long, complex sentences, they act as exclusionary elements, because the longer sentences make the whole message of the article much harder to follow and unnecessarily complicate the text. The tension from these complications ultimately separate the non-academic reader from the text and keep them from receiving the full impact text could have. In spite of this, one redeeming quality to this article is that short sentences which cut to point often follow the longer sentences. This feature of the text is relevant because it partly makes up for the exclusion caused by the longer sentences, but still does not help the text to completely include audiences outside of academia.
This piece fits the standards for writing in academic settings. However, it was published in a journal that has a goal of impacting social issues. The elements of the official style hinder this text from reaching that goal. Through jargon heavy diction, nominalization, and long sentences created by the use of appositives and relative clauses, there is tension between the sphere of human activity in which Mukherjee wrote the text, and the audience outside of academia she would need to reach in order to impact social issues. The strategies that cause that tension are relevant because they also serve to exclude audiences outside of academia, which is why the official style in this sample is ineffective.
Sample Text I used:
Thus in one sense, globalisation is seen as an attempt to homogenise culture, the project of creating a common culture, as a process of unification of culture and the need to ignore, refine, synthesise and blend local differences. Globalisation is taken in the sense that we are interdependent; that the flows of information, knowledge, money commodities, people and images have intensified to the extent that the sense of spatial distance which separated people earlier no longer accounts for humanity. We are all in each other’s backyard. There seems to be a hidden assumption that all particularities of local cultures would eventually give way under the modernisation force of some kind of cultural imperialism. This implies that all particularities were linked together in a symbolic hierarchy. But the unification of culture in the strict sense seems to be impossible. Modernisation theory set the model with the assumption that as each non-Western nation eventually became modernised it would move up the hierarchy and duplicate or absorb the dominant culture to the extent that ultimately every locality would display the cultural ideals, images and artifacts of the dominant way of life; Western or American; Europe at the centre in the nineteenth century and the United States at the centre in the twentieth century. The process of such globalisation and homogenisation is in no way presumed to be gentle and power politics would always play an important role in achieving this aim. The West is consequently granted the moral right and duty to guide and educate the others because of the necessity to ‘civilise’ the totality. The West understands itself as the guardian of the universal values on behalf of the non-Westernised world on the basis of its own image. One may always question the so-called ‘universality’ of such values due to global interdependence. In this sense, globalisation is a result of increased interconnection and interdependence of people of the world. This raises many questions and there is much discussion and debate within global ethics on what must be done in response to particular problems raised by interconnection and interdependence such as peace and war, aid, trade and development, cross-boundary issues, universal values and global norms regarding what must be done by whom and how (Hutchings 2010). Although, I will not discuss the issues relating to global ethics here, I would only point out that globalisation has proven to be a great help in addressing and resolving the wide range of problems including poverty, human rights, gender justice, business ethics, transnational child adoption, international trade, climate change, refugee rights, humanitarian interventions, terrorism, corruption, economic globalisation, migrant workers, global health and medical research (Journal of Global Ethics 2005: passim). All these problems are human problems and need to be addressed on humanitarian grounds irrespective of the differences and particularities.
Given today’s world, which is globalised to a large extent, we cannot jump to the conclusion that there is something called ‘global culture’ nor is there any ‘local culture’ as such. But we do use such categories. Presuming these categories, a local culture is conceived as being a particularity which is the opposite of global – the culture of a relatively small, bounded space in which the individual who lives engages in daily, face-to-face relationships. It is the habitual and repetitive nature of everyday culture of which the individual has a practical mastery. The common stock of knowledge of a group of people, inhabitants of a physical environment, space, building, and so on, is relatively fixed; that is, it has persisted over time and may incorporate rituals, symbols and ceremonies that link people to a place and a commonsense of the past. The sense of belonging, the common sedimented experiences and cultural forms that are associated with a place, are crucial to the concept of a local culture. Yet, the concept of local culture is a relational concept. The drawing of a boundary around a particular space as my/our own is a relational act that depends upon the figuration of significant other localities within which one seeks to situate itself.
-Maria Dresen
No comments:
Post a Comment