Ouch now I feel really crap.  No-one has ever told me my writing is "clonky" before :-(

Taking the suggestions in turn:

"lead them from their ..." or "remove them from ..."? - not really appropriate as the point is that this change is a by-product of something else and so being lead or removed seems more deliberate than was the case.

"this exposure may allow them to step outside their cultural "comfort zone" i.e. the environment in which they feel familiar and secure" - they aren't stepping out but are being taken out; also I don't want to make references to their usual environment as the study was associated with travel and so it has other connotations (ie people could assume that it was the physical environment not the cultural one and further explanation seems really over worked for the abstract)

"...may challenge prefixed (or encrusted, embedded etc.) behaviour patterns" - that's the next stage to see if their behaviour changed - at the moment this about attitudes

"force/drive/push/pull/encourage them out of their 'comfort zone'" I think again this seems to be more deliberate than the results indicate - push might be Ok (as a push!) but that feels unacademic to me

"How about individuals/participants/people/visitors/museum attendors " - the reason it is "them" is because the previous sentences have referred to who the participants are etc and using a pronoun seems a more sophisticated style than repetition of the participants (and "attendors " is definitely wrong - they would be attendees). They are also not really visitors as these were people who were taken (ie they did not chose to go - they were made to go for other reasons) and their attitude change as a result of that.

My husband thought comfort zone was not academic and I had a slight concern that non-native speakers might not understand but on balance I think I will leave it as it is. And go and sink a bottle of sauv blanc as I feel really crap now.

I've edited it a bit to try to maintain anonymity but the sentence is something like

The findings from this small study indicate that exposure to xxxxxxxxx may take them out of their comfort zone, increase their cultural capital and change their xxxxx choices.

I'm tempted to stick with comfort zone (maybe in inverted commas) - I'm sure my head of dept who is goign to read it through beofre submission will pick it apart if he doens't like it (He was the one who told me I had something interesting in my research beyond what I thought I had) This is pre PhD research but he keeps telling me to write it up (probably because I got a trip to Turkey to present the results from the first cohort at a conference and I now have two more years of data and he is under pressure to make sure peopel who get funding for conferences actually write up for publication)

Can anyone help me. I am just doing the VERY last edits to a paper and my husband (who has proof read it for typos etc) doesn't think that one of the phrases in the abstract is academic enough. I tend to agree with him but I can't think of an alternative.

The phrase is "comfort zone" and I just can't think of an alternative (the paper is on musuem attendance and cultural capital etc).

Anyone help?

We could set up a journal where we all cite each other to up the impact factor. And I would pay students to download my articles so they become the most downloaded.

Another thing I would do is (anonymously) give the uni I work in some money to do some social research in something that the VC would think is really fatuous as it would wind him up (despite being a new university he has dilusions of grandeur and still thinks in terms of subjects that would be familiar to Plato and Aristotle!). I might endow a chair in something like Soap Opera Studies or Theme Parks - he wouldn't turn down the cash (I think) but he wouldn't be thrilled with the subjects I would chose.;-)

With £122m I could easily afford a few windups like that ;-) as the interest would be c£1m a year even if you don't touch the capital.

Oooh Dan I am jealous - I would love to have some time in Barcelona on my own (I go every year with undergrads and it would be so nice just once not to keep doing head counts or telling them to take their note books out). I was also in Madrid for a conference and had most of a day to look around - it's a lovely city (as is Barcelona) - great art collections.

If you want an itinerary for Barcelona then I can send you my fieldwork itinerary (and the notes I base my talks on) if you like - we focus on urban regeneration and urban tourism (so we go to the Olympic sites etc but also go to some of the less touristy areas) but there's lots on Catalan nationalism and its impact on the city, art, history and so on. Barcelona has some pretty avant garde art / cultural centres (as well as the Gaudi which is just gorgeous). If you like seafood you can get fab food and the weather will be pleasant (nnot too hot) at this tiem of year.

GO FOR IT!!!!

It doesn't take a genius to work out your approximate age from your qualifications dates or are you suggesting we don't put those on (but if I did that the fact that I have three degrees - cue a song - and two other post graduate qualifications - one of which is a minimum three years might be a clue that I am not in the first flush of youth)

I suppose I could just put some O levels (oh bugger that gives my age away), some A levels, some degrees, some post grad qualifications, cycling proficieny, 100m swimming, first aid

I bet the next posting will be "Look at this website (www.statingtheb****yobvious.com) for more ideas"

send me your e-mail and I'll send you some stuff I did (pretty vague but based on the guidance from my uni)

There is always the fourth option of pretending someone had take yo rphone and it wasn't you at all.

Chill - on the scheme of embarassing things done when you are drunk it is pretty mild

... if people don't have the ability to find somewhere to do a PhD how on earth they think they can do the damn thing?

Or am I a mean spirited old witch?

Try looking at journal articles and see who is working in the field you are interested in and then contact them.

Don't allow them to switch teh comuters on
Turn the chairs around so their backs are towards the screens (if possible)
Wander around and if the computer is on switch the screen off and glare.

As far as getting them to ask questiosn I play on their sense of group belonging and say that if they don't ask qestions I will and mine will be harder and if you don't ask people then they won't ask you and you will be left with my fiendish questions.

I had a class a few years ago where no-one said anything and I set an assessed session where they got marks for their contribution - eventually thy started to ask questisons.