The ability to adopt an 'academic' style of writing is a recognised requirement for any degree level research report and students soon discover that a good thesaurus is an invaluable tool for finding novel words, with which they can present their thoughts concisely but also precisely. Academic literature could be considered as one of the last remaining bastions protecting our languages from the phenomenon of 'dumbing down'. If a single specific word could replace a phrase or most of a sentence then it seems logical to utilise it. The problem with using relatively obscure terminology is that many people will never have encountered these words and find it necessary to refer to a dictionary to comprehend them. Their resulting perception of an author who uses technical or grandiose language, could generate a sense of frustration sufficient to discourage the reader from continuing any further, which would become counter-productive.
The importance of using appropriate language was considered in our tutorial on auto-ethnographic research on 30th November. In writing for other people, if the aim is to explain a complex concept in comprehensive detail, while avoiding unnecessary verbosity, this requirement for clarity but also brevity is potentially contradictory. Slight miscalculation of the perceived intellectual capacity of the intended audience may create a risk that the excessive use of what to some becomes incomprehensible jargon, will to them equate with elitism, designed to preclude their participation. In others, the contrary perception of apparently being talked down to, may generate an equally negative effect. My ambiguous personal views in this respect, derive from my experience as a clinician, guiding patients through complex medical dilemmas, where effective communication was essential. I discovered that it was important to vary the level at which the discussion was pitched to where the individual patient was comfortable but in general, the more complex the issues, the greater the need for less obscure language.While this should not be a dilemma in an academic setting, one consequence of my past experiences is a (possibly irrational) sense of trying to appear to be intellectually ostentatious resulting in a strong desire to avoid this. Resolution of this will entail finding a balance between my compulsive tendency to oversimplification in the form of over-elaborate description and my need to get back into the habit of using appropriately formal academic terminology. Fortunately, I feel that I am developing a better sense of realising this degree of equipoise in the visual language of my photography, hence the featured image chosen as the header for this post.
The first post
This is my first attempt to create a blog which will be used to record the research I will be undertaking in support of my studies for a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in Photography at Coleg Llandrillo in North Wales. As a complete novice, the first challenge has been to work out how a blog functions and how to then set one up so if you are reading this online, I have at least achieved that. The software packages available are relatively easy to navigate and I watched several 'youtube' videos before starting which varied significantly in quality and in how hard they try to convince you that their approach and to use the discount code they provide to give you a better deal with their preferred site hosting option (and thereby provide them with some income).
The most helpful of them explained the differences between using one of the packages provided by 'Wordpress.com' (with a domain name and hosting by them) or using 'Wordpress.org', the original creators of the software (having sourced a domain name and web hosting from one of the many independent providers e.g. 'Bluehost', 'HostGator' or 'Sitebuilder'). As it has taken me about two hours to get this far, any of the video tutorials which claim to get you up and running in ten minutes need to be taken with a large pinch of salt. I finally opted to use 'Wordpress.com' as although there are limitations with their 'free' package, everything needed is available on the one site. Most of the independent providers do however link directly to 'Wordpress.org' and seem to take you through the process one step at a time with very similar initial set-up costs to the cheapest 'Wordpress.com' package.Getting up and running was initially quite challenging due to the variety of options for customising the appearance of the blog and organising the content but learning to use the Wordpress interface is no different from learning any other software package - it simply requires experimentation and perseverance until a reasonable approximation of the desired appearance is achieved. As the main potential area of interest for my research project are likely to be around the interfaces between analogue and digital imaging technologies (hence the title for the blog), this has been a useful learning experience.