IS "WHY I WRITE BY GEORGE ORWELL" AN ACADEMIC TEXT? (Alan)

More than to try to answer the question “is ‘why I write’ by George Orwell an academic text?” I would like to show that it may be considered as an academic text, even if it is thought that it is a literary one.

I think to define “academic texts” is not an easy task as many types of texts can be included on it, since most of the times we think that academic texts must follow a rule or a style to be written and sometimes we forget about the content or how useful it can be or even the possibility of building knowledge that a text can involve. For example, most of the times we see academic texts as a synonym of Scientific Texts when we say that they must have a specific structure, some specific steps about the way the information is presented and a specialized vocabulary, but Literary Texts are also Academic ones: most of them have a specific structure, most of the author follow some specific steps to write them and also use a specialized vocabulary, besides that I want to ask this question for you to answer: can people who study literature not be considered as Academics even if we talk about (in Spanish) the “Real Academia de la Lengua Española” and it is evident that there we are not only going to talk about grammar and formal aspects about Spanish but Literature Texts too?

Even if I already said that literary texts have their own structure I would like to clarify that each text has its own structure but this is not a rigid rule that we have to follow, it can vary and we can also make use of the structure according to what we want to write or our own style.

In our debate we talked about arguments as something that is supported by very well-known people or studies, but in “Why I Write” we find that the one who speaks is a very well-known writer, so why not to believe him? Besides that, if we take the example of a tribunal we can find that an eye-witness is a believable prove to defend or condemn someone, so in that case personal testimony can be taken as a believable prove or argument.

Finally, we talked about subjectivity but in each text where you take a position (as essays), no matter how many arguments you present or how strong they are, you are using them just to defend your own perspective that is your subjectivity, how you see a problem or what you think about any subject. So, if we take into account what I say in this text I think we can make our own conclusions about if it is or not an academic text. Beyond this, I think it is about the use and the purpose you give to a text and the knowledge you can build through it.