Social science prose

(cross-posted from The Real World)

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice essay about academic prose, written by Gail Hornstein, professor of psychology at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, US.

Though she writes from her experience in a different discipline, much of what she writes should be familiar to students of political science and international relations. Clarity and simplicity should have greater value in the social sciences than it has today. I do feel that IR is (very) slightly better than most other social sciences, primarily because of its policy orientation. That forces IR folks (especially those on the policy end of the spectrum; the theorists, I think, are no better than the other social scientists) to both stay rooted in worldly concrens and write in a way that makes them somewhat more readable. Almost two decades back, the editors of International Security also pleaded for greater clarity in a guide to contributors, despite the fact that IS is among the more readable IR journals. Clearly, we are all still struggling.