Bartholomae Critical Summary

On some levels, this works for him. Taking on a stance that is pro academic and pro teaching academic writing when addressing a community of academics is very likely to connect to a great number of people. The ethos of his writing is addressed first thing, through an introduction describing his role in an important debate at a respected convention, that he then tells readers was intriguing enough to his audience at the time to have a demand for him to write down his stance and better clarify it. This is enough to set him apart in the eyes of his audience members, but not enough to necessarily win their trust, especially if they are not dedicated enough to the subject to understand the importance of such a convention or conversation, particularly when it occurred 26 years ago. Because the document is styled and arranged in a way meant to recount a spoken argument, thus losing much of its organization, it can come off as confusing or …show more content…
His voice frequently comes off as unyieldingly harsh in its opinions, despite his seeming unwillingness to commit to his opinions, to the point that it can become condescending. When referring in an example to a student he once had who wrote about her parent’s divorce, he described it as an essay “we’ve all read”, divorcing her of true ownership and concluding that the only benefit such an essay could produce is if he “[let] her believe it is hers”, all of which lends itself to a view of Bartholomae as both dismissive and condescending. It is a frequent emotional reaction to feel sympathy and compassion for a child with divorced parents, something that sets up Bartholomae’s dismissal of this as important in academic writing as apathetic and uninvolved in the culturally acceptable morals of his