My Language Barrier
[‘Prescript’, as most of you will not scroll to the post script.
Following a discussion with a few folks — please consider this argument as I have presented it from the point of view of an academic scientist/engineer — different fields, especially in Maths, Linguistics, and the Arts/Humanities, may have different culture issues regarding PhD student and advisor relations. I have expanded on this with a new post script, following on from a very helpful discussion with Bryn Hauk on twitter — which expands this based upon the idea of a “grammatical construction” which Bryn introduced me to.]
The words we use have meaning. The acts we do, also have meaning. The culture we co-create is framed about words and actions. To ignore these words, and their guilty associations, limits our ability to create a better culture.
On Thursday, I wrote a tweet about the use of “my” in describing PhD students. This kicked off a flurry of discussions.
The argument I attempted to present, outlined that in describing people as “my PhD student” there is a risk of association of possession, either of them as individuals, or the broader association with their ideas or the fact that anything they do could only be attributed with the fact that they were working with you during a formative period of their work.
There were a number of academics who dug in. Presenting numerous cases why we should continue in the “established wisdom” of referring to PhD students using the adjective ‘my’.
We can explore the dictionary based definition of this word, via Merriam-Webster:
Definition of my— adjective
1: of or relating to me or myself especially as possessor, agent, object of an action, or familiar person
In a formal sense, we could construe that “my PhD student” indicates a relationship between the supervisor/adviser and the student, and yet I find myself drawn to the ‘especially as possessor’ part of this definition. This possessive aspect is troubling.
Why is this a problem? PhD students (or perhaps more accurately named as many pointed out, PhD researchers) are independent and functioning human beings, with their own objectives in life.
For those of my colleagues who I know well and treat colleagues fairly, ‘My PhD student’ may be a harmless phrase. And yet, I have seen a significant number of people using the term ‘My PhD student’ in a pejorative manner.
You could imagine that someone may suggest that the only way another human being is where they are, is because they have graced the offices and labs of the very important adviser. Or perhaps, that their contributions can be simply written out of history, as yet another student would have found this out anyway.
‘I think at that time science was perceived as being done by men, senior men, maybe with a whole fleet of minions under them who did their bidding and who weren’t expected to think,’ Jocelyn said calmly. ‘I believe the Nobel Prize committee didn’t even know I existed.’
‘You don’t sound bitter about this,’ Jim said. The he played Jocelyn a clip of her supervisor Antony Hewish saying, ‘My analogy really is a little bit like when you plan a voyage of discovery, and somebody up the mast says, “Land ho.” That’s great, but who actually inspired it and conceived it and decided what to do? I mean there is a difference between skipper and crew.’
— extract of an interview between Professor Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Professor Jim Al-Khalili, from The Life Scientific: Explorers, By Anna Buckley
In the radio interview, Professor Bell Burnell graciously underplays these comments and the impact they have had on her career, which is remarkable.
PhD researchers are typically advised by one, or more, academics. In this relationship, the academic starts with more ‘power’ — both through their experience in the academic system, and the field in question, but also within legal frameworks and structures. However, as the researcher gains confidence and experience, this balance shifts and we tend to move to being direct collaborators and equals in the generation of new know-how, often culminating with the PhD researcher being more of an expert than the supervisor.
Within this journey, I am hoping that any PhD researcher who I advise will be able to benefit from the environment I have helped build (with them, and our peers). This hopefully enables them to do something with their time that is bigger and better than what I could have to offer, and ultimately as part of this land themselves with a PhD qualification.
In terms of language, some viewed my nagging thought as basic pedantry. Perhaps it is. Certainly when we consider that a significant fraction of academics are international and speak English as a foreign language there are considerations to be made. Though, frankly those colleagues have a far better grasp of the technicalities of English than I do. However, if an academic lead highlights the contribution of a PhD researcher who they advise as “my PhD student” then I’m concerned about the potential casual inference of “yes — because I advised them, they did this, ergo it is my idea and I am amazing, please bow at my feet”.
The visceral defence of “my” by many members of our community disappoints me. Clearly there is an asymmetry in our system, driven by the power structures (and legal frameworks) involved. As a supervisor (a formal title in my University) I have more power than a PhD student (again, using a formal title) — and this means there is more onus upon me to try to use better language. Most certainly, I do not want to reinforce any idea of an academic Ponzi scheme where PhD students are casually used in an intellectual sweat shop to further my career.
I suspect that my initial tweet influence @1cRebeca to conduct a poll.
As Rebeca explores in a thread, the jarring aspect of this poll is the difference in the response between students and those who have students [sic]. There is a clear imbalance in expectation here.
This imbalance is furthered through the casual nature in how we use language, and a lack of a forum to discuss them. I suspect that many academics and PhD researchers do not explore choices of language in their day-to-day interactions, and even then the supervisors have the power and thus the discussion may not be fair or well considered.
A lack of discussion about language, and the casual way in which many dismiss it is awkward. Language is one way in which we can create inclusive environments, as evidenced by the simple discussions around gendered language as well as the use of pronouns. For some people feel that these matters of language, and perceived intent, are “irrelevant” for the betterment of science. I strongly disagree. If we forget how we treat each other as human beings, and human beings do science, then we forget how to do science properly.
The power imbalance is critically important in all these discussions. As an academic not only do I have a permanent job, I also have significant influence and status (inferred, and within formal frameworks). PhD researchers, especially in the UK where they are classed as students (and not even employees) have a much more fragile existence. This means that a PhD student who I advise/supervise can refer to me pretty much however they like. I hope that they occasionally read what I write, and take on board how I am trying to do more than “talk the talk”, and I also know that they take cues from me on how our professional relationship can be described.
Perhaps most worryingly in the twitter discussion was a number of academics expressing ‘joy’ (I’m not sure that is the right word, but it’ll do) in using ‘my’, as they would use this in a familial sense, i.e. in the same way that they describe their children. Perhaps in a more ‘yikes’ moment — a few people pushed this analogy even further saying “Sorry, MY students are like my children”.
As a childless individual, this is a bit jarring and perhaps I don’t understand — which makes it ever more alienating. However, I find it difficult to say that the only way I can demonstrate that I care about the PhD researchers who I advise is to take possession of them or to adopt them into a quasi-familial relationship.
I like collaborating with PhD researchers most particularly because they will add something to our research, beyond my know-how and expertise. I will also provide an atmosphere where they will be trained, some of this will be by me, but frankly lots of this will happen due to their interactions with my colleagues (academic staff, post doctoral researchers, admin and support staff, and other PhD researchers).
Ultimately, in our journey to create a better academic culture, is it really that difficult to drop or reduce the possessive use of ‘my’ and empower the PhD researchers we work with? Frankly, they seem to want us to just use their names. Respectfully, I agree with them.
Post script
The original twitter thread prompted a substantive discussion, and a large outcry. Some of these messages were plain offensive, others were helpful…
On reflection of this episode, perhaps it would have been easier if I started with the idea: “there are some terrible supervisors who take their students for granted and abuse them for their career rises, what can we do about it?”
Would a change, or thinking about the language we use, be helpful? Next, how could we implement it and what could we measure, or expect to measure, from this change?
I urge some caution here — there are a host of trained, and learned, professionals who think about language — the linguists. They can be hawkish, though often friendly, about these issues. This shouldn’t stop scientists/engineers (and in fact everyone) from trying to be considerate and reasoned with how they express themselves, but from time to time, it is worth taking a step back and listening to the experts.
Brynn Hawk is one of these experts, and in two tweets (1,2) raised some very valid concerns:
Unlike other attempts to build a better society through conscious language choice (like using -person instead of -man in titles, using singular and non-binary “they”, or getting rid of ableist/sanist language), your suggestion targeted not a single word nor even a class of words but an entire grammatical construction. As you note in the blog, this would be tough for non-native speakers to adopt in their speech, but I believe linguistic research would suggest that this is not feasible for any speaker.
A private discussion followed highlighting that a major issue within linguistics is that changing from “my PhD student” vs “a PhD student who I supervise” is a grammatical construction. This technical aspect is important, as they are apparently much harder to implement, and measurement of change from this is also extremely difficult.
Other discussions also highlighted that in linguistics (much like many of the arts and humanities) the relationship between supervisor/adviser and student is very different. There is a substantive risk of erasure or inference about the nature of a relationship based upon this distancing which can be damaging. As an academic at a science/engineering focused uni, where we have no arts and humanities faculty, I often forget this (though of course I didn’t anticipate the initial tweet from blowing up how it did).
I’m still going to err towards trying to use the newer form of the grammatical construction, where I can, and I’ll also have a bit more of a think about how we can work towards alternative methods of improving our culture to reduce the risk of more senior folk taking advantage of less established folk.
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