What is Berkeley's Writing Culture?

“The individual's whole experience is built upon the plan of his language.”

- Henri Delacroix

“The life history of the individual is first and foremost and accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community.”

- Ruth Benedict

          Running through every flourishing community is a common thread of traditions, standards, and principles that intertwines the individual members into a firmly-woven, ornate tapestry. This unifying thread is a community’s culture. The symbiosis between a culture and a community is remarkably strong, perhaps to the point that the practices endorsed and encouraged by a culture are indistinguishable from the community itself. These standards are preserved by the members of the community who adhere to them, discuss them, perhaps challenge them, and ultimately, optimistically, improve them. We are defined by our values, and our values are inevitably influenced and molded by outside norms; this mantra holds true for any community and institution, whether it be a school, a sports team, a theater, a band, a family. Therefore, it is fair to say that the “writing personality” of every student at Berkeley has undergone a considerable amount of influence from Berkeley’s “writing culture.”  

Tutors Bond in a Group Activity

          Cultures are usually formed unintentionally. Despite the objectives and yearnings of community leaders who harbor ambitious agendas detailing what sort of organization they’d like to espouse, habits accrue undetected and members of a community are prone to becoming unconscious participants in their communities. Therefore, it is healthy and even necessary to assess cultures externally and prevent the passivity that grasps most organizations that adapt and evolve unwittingly. The writing community of Berkeley should be held to no different standard. The most apropos origin of this self-assessment is the Upper Division, the pinnacle of Berkeley’s language program. The simplest course of action is not to dissect our culture English course by English course, student by student, but rather, to figuratively sledgehammer the task at hand with a single provocative question: what constitutes bad writing?

          In defense of this seemingly disparaging guiding prompt, isolating the characteristics that a community denounces and criticizes, in my opinion, is the most elucidating action one can take when investigating a culture. A. Stein, a student of both AP English Literature and AP English Language, responded to this question diplomatically: “To be fair, I don’t like to dwell on negatives, to be a ‘Negative Nelly,’ or something along those lines. I think bad writing is writing that’s not focused – but there’s merit in tangential writing, too – apathetic writing, writing that doesn’t take a position, writing that is robotic and doesn’t have a voice.” Upon further contemplation, he added, “Also, writing that doesn’t use transitions.” AP Literature teacher Patricia Lukacs’ answer was more succinct: “Bad writing is a lot of words and little to no substance.” English teacher Sandrine Guez offered, “A defining characteristic for me is word choice, specifically verb choice. Bad writing doesn’t use strong action verbs that truly do justice to what the writer is thinking and trying to express.”

          Although most cultural researchers would balk at the possibility of inserting themselves into their studies, I cannot resist the opportunity to introduce my own musings on this topic (this authorial insertion is further justified by the fact that I am a member of the Berkeley writing community). First, to add some parameters to the open-ended question at hand, I think that we often conflate bad writing with bad thinking, for, as Stein eloquently put it, “writing is the means by which the intangible quality of [one’s] own thoughts can be represented.” Stylistic criticisms fall into the camp of bad writing – lack of transitions, feeble verbs, run-on sentences, or in other words, grammatical and structural bungles that dilute the overall effect of the paper and do not “do justice” to its (arguably) sound ideas. However, the usage of “got” and “went” is sometimes a mere tactical blunder governed by a flawed stratagem, a symptom of a profounder malady – “no substance.” I believe that bad writing – thinking, rather – is idea devoid of nuance, a wall of words that can easily be summarized in a catchphrase or idiom, a monotonous regurgitation of dogma lacking a single particle of originality. The ailment is simple to detect and diagnose –the difficulty is in concocting a remedy. How does one elevate and improve the quality of another individual’s thought? Is there a systematic way to accomplish this end within the temporal confines of English class?

          On the flip side, assessing what qualities of writing the community praises is comparably illuminating. According to Stein, good writing is the sort that “makes [one] think.” Regarding the process of reading other students’ essays, he stated, “I want to expect things, but at the same time, I don’t want to expect them. It’s a little paradoxical.” Similarly, Lukacs stated, “Good writing makes me think; it makes me wish that I had written it.” Guez added the criterion of clarity: “Good writing takes a complex issue and explains it in-depth in a way that is simple to understand; it doesn’t dumb the subject matter down, but just describes it thoroughly and plainly.” She added, “Naturally, strong verbs are important, too.”

          On the whole, the responses elicited from these three valued members of Berkeley’s writing community suggest that our writing culture lauds high-quality thought and content above all else. I do not use the term “community” to suggest an arbitrary conglomeration of individuals; the true thread that unites us is not our collective veneration of higher thought and attention to diction, but rather the diffusion of ideas that occurs during an English class Harkness, Writing Center tutoring sessions, or simply conversing about an essay or book with a teacher or classmate. Drawing upon my personal experiences of discussing Vergil, Dickens, and Orwell with teachers and fellow students alike, energetically participating in a community of writers and thinkers is the most effective way to sharpen your mind, exercise your discursive faculties, and broaden your perception of both literature and your immediate environs. Stein summed it up impeccably: “The ideas produced in your paper are reflections of your own thinking, and ultimately, the best paper that you could produce comes from your own contemplations. Yet there’s still merit in having people suggesting ideas and places to expand [in your writing] because their conception of an idea, or even expression of the same idea, provides different and valuable vantage points to consider.”

- Yunhan