Hi all

been thinking on some style feedback from sup...

She says my writing has started giving agency to concepts (coming together, needing to be followed, needing to be rejected) while I am deleting the agency of thosse who do the intellectual tasks (of bringing these concepts together, revising and rejecting them) i.e. scholars, researchers including myself.

She says apparently I write very well but this is something which isnt quite right in my expression and it needs more voice from me to improve communicability. I do not merely think she is suggesting I use I and Me...

So I guess I have a sentence that goes "these thre concepts come together to produce a useful framework with which to...."

What would an alternative way be?

Any ideas?

Hi, this is something my sup addressed in my work a while ago. It's a grammaticall thing: concepts can't come together, they do not, as you sup suggests have agency, or, indeed, needs. I'm not ssure how I do it, but it's quite straight forward - just write something like 'in order for 'xyz' to take effect concept 'a' would have to be rejected'. I suggest you privelidge the human a bit more in your thoughts! I think it's a mind set thing. Clearly you were doing ok with this before so just look at what you used to do.

======= Date Modified 18 Jan 2010 11:26:12 =======
Thanks Eska, yes, I realise that's what she is saying...will address it :-)

This is where I wish I could write my thesis in my natural language which has these wonderful things 'free verbs' which is like saying that 'someone' brought things together (for example) without mentioning who the someone was or even having to use any word for them. It results in beautiful writing and clear expressions and is often used in formal writing like this. I'm not sure if this is useful to you, perhaps there's a way you could imply that somebody (probably you) instigated or conceptualised whatever you are describing.