What do you think?
Rate this book
Detox Your Writing: Strategies for doctoral researchers
There are a number of books which aim to help doctoral researchers write the PhD. This book offers something different - the scholarly detox. This is not a faddish alternative, it's not extreme. It's a moderate approach intended to gently interrupt old ways of doing things and establish new habits and orientations to writing the PhD.
The book addresses the problems that most doctoral researchers experience at some time during their candidature - being unclear about their contribution, feeling lost in the literature, feeling like an imposter, not knowing how to write with authority, wanting to edit rather than revise. Each chapter addresses a problem, suggests an alternative framing, and then offers strategies designed to address the real issue.
Detox Your Writing is intended to be a companionable work book - something doctoral researchers can use throughout their doctorate to ask questions about taken-for-granted ways of writing and reading, and to develop new and effective approaches.
The authors' distinctive approach to doctoral writing mobilises the rich traditions of linguistic scholarship, as well as the literatures on scholarly identity formation. Building on years of expertise they place their emphasis both on tools and techniques as well as the discursive practices of becoming a scholar.
The authors provide a wide repertoire of strategies that doctoral researchers can select from, rather than a linear lock step progression through a set of exercises. The book is a toolkit but a far from prescriptive one. It shows that there are many routes to developing a personal academic voice and identity and a well-crafted text. With points for reflection alongside examples from a broad range of disciplines, the book offers thinking tools, writing tools, linguistic tools, and reading tools which are relevant to all stages of doctoral research.
This practical text can be used in all university doctoral training and composition and writing courses. However, it is not a dry how-to-do-it manual that ignores debates or focuses solely on the mechanical at the expense of the lived experience of doctoral research. It provides a practical, theorised, real-world, guide to postgraduate writing.
The book addresses the problems that most doctoral researchers experience at some time during their candidature - being unclear about their contribution, feeling lost in the literature, feeling like an imposter, not knowing how to write with authority, wanting to edit rather than revise. Each chapter addresses a problem, suggests an alternative framing, and then offers strategies designed to address the real issue.
Detox Your Writing is intended to be a companionable work book - something doctoral researchers can use throughout their doctorate to ask questions about taken-for-granted ways of writing and reading, and to develop new and effective approaches.
The authors' distinctive approach to doctoral writing mobilises the rich traditions of linguistic scholarship, as well as the literatures on scholarly identity formation. Building on years of expertise they place their emphasis both on tools and techniques as well as the discursive practices of becoming a scholar.
The authors provide a wide repertoire of strategies that doctoral researchers can select from, rather than a linear lock step progression through a set of exercises. The book is a toolkit but a far from prescriptive one. It shows that there are many routes to developing a personal academic voice and identity and a well-crafted text. With points for reflection alongside examples from a broad range of disciplines, the book offers thinking tools, writing tools, linguistic tools, and reading tools which are relevant to all stages of doctoral research.
This practical text can be used in all university doctoral training and composition and writing courses. However, it is not a dry how-to-do-it manual that ignores debates or focuses solely on the mechanical at the expense of the lived experience of doctoral research. It provides a practical, theorised, real-world, guide to postgraduate writing.
226 pages, Hardcover
First published February 10, 2016
12 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 28, 2018
A book that is rather worthless for someone who already read a lot or is having some experience in academic research. The book is containing way too many metaphors, way too many acronyms, way too much time is spent on how to cope with stress and anxiety and other internal feelings while writing, it is full of irrelevant examples - such Harry Potter, Sex and the City and other irrelevant fictional examples - and finally is a collection of blog posts - I do understand that one of the authors is a blogger, but...
A separate chapter is dedicated basically why it is better to write as an "I" instead of a classical third person approach, because and I am quoting here "feminist scholars ... argued that the use of the third person in academic writing is a masculinist strategy intended to create the impression of an objective view that does not exist".
It is containing some useful tips, but the rest of the book is quite obvious and I do not recommend it to experienced researchers. Maybe it can be useful for people thinking about going into academic writing or beginners in the field. As well I suppose it will be more useful for people specialised in social sciences.
A separate chapter is dedicated basically why it is better to write as an "I" instead of a classical third person approach, because and I am quoting here "feminist scholars ... argued that the use of the third person in academic writing is a masculinist strategy intended to create the impression of an objective view that does not exist".
It is containing some useful tips, but the rest of the book is quite obvious and I do not recommend it to experienced researchers. Maybe it can be useful for people thinking about going into academic writing or beginners in the field. As well I suppose it will be more useful for people specialised in social sciences.
August 14, 2018
Wide-ranging and to-the-point advice for doctoral researchers of all stages, from the beginning of the dissertation-writing process to the final proofread. The authors stress building one's identity as a scholar and how that process evolves over time along with the writing of the dissertation. A helpful read not only for PhD students, but also for the faculty and staff who support them.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews