The Self and Individualism: An Analysis on the Current Regulations of Academic Writing

Individualism, the focus or emphasis on the self, is a highly discussed and debated topic in writing. This is mostly regarding how the self should be addressed and utilized in writing. Although it there is also debate about what the self truly is, and how one can represent it in their work, veering into more abstract thought and theorizing. The amount of individualism, or the “self” that one is able to, or should imprint onto one’s writing varies widely across numerous genres of academic writing, or even writing in general. For example, in much of scientific writing there’s a broad disapproval of the usage of the self: First-person pronouns are preferred to be left out, and writing in active tense is frowned upon. This is often argued to be for the sake of having an appearance of objectivity in work, which science should supposedly always be. Yet in other, more social sciences such as sociology or political science, there is an increased usage of this individualism. Usages of “I” and active tense can be observed. It can be argued that this is natural of these subjects as they are discussing both the self and culture, which is evidently much more difficult, if not impossible to separate from the one conducting the study. Regardless, this is but a small example of the variance of the usage of the self in writing. Throughout this paper I will analyze the concept of the self in writing, as well as the validity of the current regulations of individualism in academic writing. As well as the benefits of more varied regulations regarding the subject matter.