Writing, Patriarchy, and Imperialism

Trying to come up with a concrete plan of my final research project as a writing tutor, I flipped through samples of my friends’ college application essays and personal statements—most of them are overtly generalized, philosophical statements with a great deal of modifiers. The tone tends to me melodramatic without a stable set of arguments. In the margin, I put on remarks like “vague,” “be more concrete,” “lack coherent analysis,” etc. Their writing styles reminded me of something negative. That is, what the academy devalues.

Then, I found the essays I wrote for my Freshman Seminar in Composition class. I used to have a similar writing style and my instructor characterized that as “overly-sentimental, abstract,”, “the language tends toward hyperbolic, sensational descriptions.” She advised me to avoid prefacing words with “too many extreme modifiers,” “make [my] prose sparser, less wordy.” In other words, she put a negative connotation on the feminine writing style.
But honestly, who in the academy doesn’t?

The feminist writing, mainly identify by its melodramatic style and ornamented language, becomes a sign of poor writing style in the professional academic realm. To be recognized as successful writers, we have to conform to the “proper” style defined by the institution, namely the patriarchal discourse of white males. We learn to be direct, analytical, logical, and concise. The emotional and sensational aspect of writing is invalidated.

Somehow, I thought I have already internalized this formal construction of academic discourse and have recognized this as the unquestionable style that competent writers should adopt. Until I encountered a Chinese essay. That piece of prose is impeccably crafted, laden with poetic imageries, metaphors, and ornamented sentences. It is beautiful.
However, on second thought, I realized that this piece would only sound contrived or even packaged if it is translated into English. It now appears to me that Chinese writing is more inherently feminine than English. The masculine and patriarchal American academic discourse, however, dismisses this style as the Others.

True that it is tempting to have a uniform style in professional academic writing—to understand an essay, we only have to read through the first sentence of every paragraph and the conclusion; we do not have to go through the turmoil of reading through the whole essay because there is NO CHANCE that a piece of professional writing will have its thesis embedded amidst some decorative sentences. It makes both the writer and the reader’s life easier by imposing and recognizing only one style of academic writing. However, what are the implications of this textual form of imperialism? What will it bring to the reluctantly colonized writers in the academy?