1. Style: is it something you are born with?

Before you read on, think about the following question:

Are we born with our unique writing style and typically cannot change it throughout our lives or is our writing style something that could be possibly learned and acquired?

Judith Butler, Preface to Gender Trouble, 1999:

„Both critics and friends of Gender Trouble have drawn attention to the difficulty of its style. It is no doubt strange, and maddening to some, to find a book that is not easily consumed to be „popular“ according to academic standards. I think that style is a complicated terrain and not one that we unilaterally choose or control with the purposes we consciously intend. .[..] Certainly, one can practice styles, but the styles that become available to you are not entirely a matter of choice. Moreover, neither grammar nor style are politically neutral. Learning the rules that govern intelligible speech is an inculcation into normalized language, where the price of not conforming is the loss of intelligibility itself.“

Exercise 1: Having read the quotation, please write down 3 assumptions, conclusions or inferences you can make about writing styles and grammar.