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- Herausgeber: UTB
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Serie: Studieren, aber richtig
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
This book provides a wealth of help for anyone involved in research writing. The clear, lively text is supported by authentic examples, language ‘Makeovers’, ‘Toolboxes’ with language tips and ‘In brief’ mini-summaries. Each chapter ends with key ‘Takeaways’, and the book with a phrase bank.
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Gerlinde Mautner / Christopher J. Ross
English Academic Writing
A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences
UVK Verlag · München
Gerlinde Mautner is a Full Professor of English Business Communication at WU, the Vienna University of Economics and Business. She has many years of experience in teaching advanced linguistic skills and English academic writing both to faculty and to students from the undergraduate to the doctoral level. The focus of her research is on the relationship between language and society, as well as on questions of methodology. She has published widely in high-impact outlets and acts as a reviewer for several international journals.
Christopher J. Ross is an experienced writer, translator, and text editor specialising in research articles and books. He was a Senior Lecturer at WU for nearly 20 years, having previously held the same post at the Department of Interpreting and Translating, Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh).
Studieren, aber richtig
Herausgegeben von Michael Huter, Huter & Roth, Wien
Die Bände behandeln jeweils ein Bündel von Fähigkeiten und Fertigkeiten. Das gesamte Paket versetzt Studierende in die Lage, die wesentlichen Aufgaben im Studium zu erfüllen. Die Themen orientieren sich an den wichtigsten Situationen und Formen des Wissenserwerbs. Dabei werden auch das scheinbar Selbstverständliche behandelt und die Zusammenhänge erklärt.
Weitere Bände:
Otto Kruse: Lesen und Schreiben (utb 3355)
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Gerlinde Mautner: Wissenschaftliches Englisch (utb 3444)
Jasmin Bastian, Lena Groß: Lernen und Wissen (utb 3779)
Melanie Moll, Winfried Thielmann: Wissenschaftliches Deutsch (utb 4650)
Otto Kruse: Kritisches Denken und Argumentieren (utb 4767)
Sabine Dengscherz, Michèle Cooke: Transkulturelle Kommunikation (utb 5319)
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.36198/9783838560281
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Contents
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our sincere thanks to the following:
Daniel Green, for his support in preparing the final manuscript;
Christina Drimmel, for once again being on hand whenever MS Word displayed its temperamental side, or our own lack of IT competence was exposed.
Explanatory notes for readers
Welcome to English Academic Writing. The following notes sum up a number of editorial decisions we took in writing this book.
As its subtitle suggests, our book is aimed primarily at researchers in the humanities and social sciences, where our own backgrounds lie. However, we are confident that academics from the life sciences and natural sciences will also find much here that is useful to them.
While our approach is largely descriptive of existing good practice, illustrated by numerous authentic examples, we do not shy away from being prescriptive when it seems appropriate. What we have sought hard to avoid, however, are unwarranted generalisations and finger-wagging instructions.
All chapters include a brief introduction, including a What’s coming up box indicating the division into sections and subsections.
They conclude with a bulleted summary of the main ‘takeaways’. These lists are intended only as brief reminders. They will make little sense if you have not previously read the relevant part of the chapter in question.
Within the chapters, you will find two types of summary box:
Toolboxes, which contain linguistic tips of various kinds
In Brief boxes with compact summaries of a particular issue
You will also find some Makeovers. These illustrate a particular point by showing how flaws in an (invented) short text – the Before version – can be corrected by using the techniques described in the section concerned to create an improved After version.
You can, if you wish, use the Makeovers as exercises; this would mean writing your own After version before you look at the one provided. Please note that there is absolutely no suggestion that our revised version is the only ‘right answer’; it merely provides an illustration of how the problems in the Before section might be addressed.
The extracts are all authentic examples drawn from articles or books published by reputable outlets. We have made no changes to the extracts apart from those mentioned in the next point. Italicisation is as in the original texts and, in order to preserve the academic character of these, we have also left all footnote numbers in.
We have made some minor changes to the extracts, always with the utmost care to avoid any possible distortion of the original. Specifically, we have:
emboldened particular words and longer stretches of language to highlight the linguistic point being illustrated
indicated explicitly any emboldening already present in the original of an extract
omitted passages essential neither to the original message nor to the linguistic point being illustrated (such omissions are indicated by […])
added short explanations where the lack of context makes them necessary (e.g., she [Julie Smith])
However, in Chapter 6 (Citations) we have not emboldened entire citations within extracts, as this could have been misleading for readers. Purely linguistic points (e.g., verb tenses, examples of reporting verbs) are emboldened as elsewhere.
Contrary to normal citation practice, source references for the extracts are given above the text, immediately following the extract number and in square brackets (e.g., [Hofmann 2020: 56]). We have done this to avoid possible confusion in cases where the extract itself ends with a source reference.
Examples in the running text, whether authentic or invented, are italicised.
Examples showing bad practice or including grammatical errors have an asterisk (*) placed in front of them.
If you wish to read more about the topic of English academic writing, you may find the following titles useful: Booth et al. (2016), Macgilchrist (2014), Pollock (2021), Siepmann et al. (2022), Swales & Feak (2012), Sword (2012) and Turabian (2018). Full details can be found in our Listofreferences. Some readers may be surprised not to see Strunk & White ([1918] 1999) among our recommended sources. The omission is deliberate, for the reasons set out in Pullum (2009, 2010).
Introduction: Seven pillars of academic writing
Wisdom has built her house,She has hewn out her seven pillars.(Proverbs 9:1)
The American writer Kurt Vonnegut is famous above all for his novels; less well known are his observations on how to write. One of his key messages is “pity the readers” (Vonnegut 1981: 67; Vonnegut & McConnell 2019). Although Vonnegut does not deal specifically with academic writing, his appeal will resonate with everyone who has on occasion found research publications a challenge to read. Too often that challenge arises not because the content is complex, but because it is expressed in unnecessarily complicated language. If, on the other hand, a writer chooses language so as to support readers, then his or her ideas and arguments are more likely to make the desired impression. Importantly, these choices affect language on all levels, ranging from words and sentence structures to the organisation of whole texts.
It is this link between linguistic choices and concern for the reader that forms the basis of the approach pursued here. Our book is inspired by “a view of writing as a social and communicative engagement between writer and reader” (Hyland & Tse 2004: 156). For the two sides to engage successfully, English research writing must display certain features which are widely regarded as essential.
We have picked seven of these features, which we have dubbed seven pillars of academic writing, and we will discuss them in the seven chapters of this book. They are as follows:
Well-planned, clearly structured texts with a strong narrative feel
Well-designed paragraphs each of which introduces, develops and rounds off a single main idea
Well-constructed sentences that flow naturally and focus on their final element
Pro-active punctuation that shows readers where best to pause for breath
Helpful cohesion that verbalises the connections between the elements of paragraphs and of the whole text
Appropriate citations which underpin the writer’s arguments with the words and ideas of other authors
Guidance and persuasion that nudge the reader towards accepting the writer’s case
Taken together, the seven pillars enable academic writing to be made effective, reader-friendly and appealing, without accepting any compromises on substance, rigour and precision. The quality of the underlying research and the quality of the writing go hand in hand. If the latter doesn’t sparkle, then neither will the former. Conversely, no amount of stylistic brilliance can rescue a flawed research design. Yet, even if we will occasionally touch upon such notions as research paradigms, epistemology and methodology, these cannot be our concern here. Instead, our book aims to provide academics in the humanities and social sciences with guidance about putting their ideas down ‘on paper’ clearly, succinctly, convincingly, and in a way that will appeal to their readers. In short, this book will not teach you about doing research, but about writing it up.
In organising your work flow, however, it can be counterproductive to treat the two activities as completely separate processes to be carried out one after another. Instead of saying ‘I’ve done all the research and all I need to do now is write it up’, you may find it helpful to start writing as soon as you possibly can, about whichever parts of the research you have already (semi-)completed. Certainly that means there will editing and re-writing to do later, but that would have been the case anyway. The key point is that writing your ideas down forces you to formulate them clearly, enabling you to spot weaknesses in your argument and areas where you need to do some more targeted reading and thinking. And it is a lot better to discover such things early on, well before the deadline for submission is looming.
Before we move on to the body of the book, a brief but important disclaimer about the status of English as an international language of research. Its significance is beyond doubt, and if you didn’t agree, you wouldn’t have bought or borrowed this book. Does it follow that the dominance of English is universal, or that this development is unequivocally positive? No, to both questions. In some disciplines, knowledge of languages other than English remains essential, especially when it comes to reading and interpreting source texts from a variety of cultures. And it cannot be denied that the seemingly inexorable spread of English has led to many national languages effectively losing their capacity and status as languages of research. However, neither us writing this book nor you reading it should be construed as signalling approval of this state of affairs: acquiescence perhaps, even if it is only along the lines of ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’.
Needless to say, we very much hope it is not merely out of a sense of resignation that you have picked up this book. The measure of our success as writers will be whether we manage to impress upon you our own enthusiasm for academic writing; for the exciting challenge of sharing one’s research with others; and for the power of the English language to tell a good story.
1Creativity and constraints: Planning research texts
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”LEWIS CARROLL (1832 – 1898),Alice in Wonderland
The first of the pillars on which a good research publication rests is a well-planned structure. As a writer, you have considerable freedom to devise your own. However, you must do so within certain constraints (as in the concept of ‘freedom under the rule of law’). To quote Pollock (2021: 3), in every form of writing “the creativity comes from successfully conveying what you want within the bounds of the form”.
By ‘form’, Pollock is referring to what linguists call genre. A genregenre is a type of text (spoken or written) for which society, or a part of it, has developed generally accepted conventions, relating among other things to text structure. Having been created by group consensus, genres can only be changed consensually, not single-handedly by individuals. They are therefore restrictive, but they are also liberating in that they take some responsibility off the academic writer’s shoulders. You can be certain that, if you comply with your discipline’s genre conventions, your writing will be accepted as a valid contribution to the field. People may still disagree with it, of course, but within the boundaries of the genre they will at least know how to engage with you.
Following the constraints imposed by the relevant genres thus helps you write texts that your peers accept as legitimate. But that is hardly an ambitious goal. Nor will achieving it be sufficient to make your texts stand out from the crowd. If you aim to do that, you may find it helpful to conceive of your research text as a narrative, as a ‘research storyresearch story’. Indeed, Pollock’s (2021: 1) advice – “Think like a storyteller” – reflects a widespread strand of thinking. The metaphor is so powerful because it appeals to our sense of narrative as an ancient, deeply ingrained social practice. It imposes certain structural constraints, true, but these are of a fairly general nature: for example, the need for an identifiable beginning and ending, and for some form of narrative development. A sense of progress needs to be created by moving from some form of problem to its eventual resolution. Framed like this, research texts move up that significant notch from interesting to fascinating, and the act of research writing emerges as both rule-bound and creative.
Nonetheless, research ‘story-telling’ is not about rhetorical grandstanding, or style without substance. It is simply about ensuring that the text appeals to its audience, so that readers become fully engaged and ready to share the writer’s enthusiasm for the topic. Exactly how that works is difficult to pin down because text appeal derives from a whole range of features. Some are situated specifically on the paragraph and sentence levels, and we will discuss them in Sections 2.3 and 3.4, respectively. More generally, text appeal depends on a myriad of specific, micro-level linguistic choices that will keep us busy for the rest of the book. In this chapter, though, our focus will be firmly on the macro level of textual structure.
1.1
Research genres
1.1.1
Genres, structures and hierarchies
1.1.2
Hierarchical organisation in research texts
1.2
The research ‘story’ and its parts
1.2.1
The abstract
1.2.2
The beginning: Setting the scene
1.2.3
The middle: Developing the plot
1.2.4
The ending: Rounding it all off
1.3
Text appeal
1.1Research genresgenre
Academic writing is frequently discussed in terms of ‘genre’ (Swales 1990, 2004). Genresgenre share certain communicative purposes and formal characteristics that readers have come to expect. Meeting their expectations enables writers to take part in the key conversations in their field and to gain access to the relevant research community.
In the context of research writing, the most common genres are journal articles, edited volumes and monographs (i.e., books on a single subject). Each of them has its own conventions, which in some cases also differ between disciplines. These ‘rules’ place restrictions on writers’ freedom to decide on text structure: for example, through the widespread practices of including an abstractabstract or of bookending an argument with an introduction and a conclusion. Other structural conventions (e.g., including a section on theory) may be less universal, but still relevant across many different disciplines and different text types. In this section, we will look more closely at how and why genres matter so much, before going into more detail about both the restrictions they impose and the creative opportunities they can open up.
1.1.1Genres, structures and hierarchies
Genresgenre matter to writers above all because they matter to readers. In fact, observing such genre conventions is the first act of the ‘pity’ towards the reader that we declared in the Introduction to be the basis of all (research) writing. The importance of a genre label for readers is that it acts like a set of instructions for navigating and interpreting the text. It triggers certain expectations in the reader’s mind: expectations about the nature of the content, structure, layout and style.
Conversely, genres also raise expectations about what will not appear in a text. In particular, readers of a research text will not expect to encounter digressions from the main line of argument (known in German as ExkurseExkurs). Significantly, English does not even have a name for what in other writing cultures is quite a popular subgenre (in English, the word excursus exists but is rarely if ever used). As Clyne (1987: 213-214) explains: “The Exkurs has neither a conceptual equivalent nor a translation equivalent in English.” That may change, of course, as and when English becomes established as ‘the’ language of research across even more cultures and disciplines. For the moment, however, academic writing in English presents you with a stark choice. If a point is central enough to be made at all, it needs to be properly integrated into the body of the text; if it is only peripheral, it will be considered an unwelcome distraction which should not be there at all.
Having been raised, expectations must be met. If the reader is an expert called upon to evaluate the text – in their capacity as a supervisor, editor or reviewer – the genregenre label acts as a frame of reference that defines the standard of assessment. Which brings us full circle back to the writer. For by choosing a particular genre label for their text they have it in their power to influence the judgement of the expert reader. This is why it is important, for example, to submit journal articles in the right category, be it ‘review article’, ‘theoretical’ or ‘empirical’.
A second reason why genres matter to the aspiring academic is that they mediate access and participation at various points along the way. In the early stages, bachelor’s and master’s theses mark the passage from undergraduate to graduate and from the latter to a first salaried position. Further on, the doctoral thesis acts as the gatekeeper to promotion (or, to the cynically inclined, as an initiation rite). The thesis quality-stamps not only the fledgling researcher’s grasp of key concepts and methods, but also their ability to share findings in a manner that is widely recognised and respected. That said, it would make little sense for us to generalise about genres linked to academic degrees, since the rules governing them are partly laid down and enforced by the degree-awarding institution. Instead, we will focus on the genres policed by the academic community at large.
Once the researcher has successfully embarked on an academic career, they will begin to use a multitude of such genres, ranging from the very brief and informal (e.g., e-mails about a collaborative grant application) to highly formal and elaborate examples such as monographs and edited collections. Increasingly relevant across disciplines are genres that reach out to the wider community such as blogs, TV interviews and contributions to public panel discussions. Moreover, as researchers are now expected to bid for competitive funding, the genre of the grant proposal has also acquired general importance (see Appendix 2). Apart from that, the genres that are most common and prestigious vary between disciplines. Whereas in the life sciences original research is published almost exclusively in journals, many humanities disciplines continue to treasure the monograph and chapters in edited volumes.
During their formative years, researchers pick up their discipline’s various genre conventions through implicit socialisation and explicit training. Such rules relate not only to generating new knowledge, but also to communicating that knowledge in various settings. For example, new researchers learn what a journal article must look like to be accepted as a legitimate contribution.
Sometimes the genregenre rules can be very specific, an example being the so-called AIMRaDAIMRaD structure. The acronym consists of the initials for Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. The actual titles of the sections may vary, of course, and writers are free to include subsections. Developed originally in the natural sciences, AIMRaD has now also become a standard pattern for empirical research papers in most of the social sciences and some of the humanities. Still, it is clearly not de rigueur in all disciplines. If you browse humanities journals, you will find any number of papers that do not adhere to the AIMRaD template. (To find out whether the pattern applies to your own research, it’s best to have a look at a range of papers from your field’s top journals.)
What is universally accepted is that written-up research must be organised systematically, in a structure that is familiar to the relevant community, laid down by the genre conventions and generally hierarchical in nature. There is such a variety of structures that it would have been hopelessly overambitious – and ultimately not very helpful for the reader – to try and provide detailed, discipline-specific instructions for all genres. We have therefore gone for a two-step approach that transcends both discipline and genre. First, in the next subsection, we will explain how a hierarchyhierarchy can be a very helpful way of organising research texts. Then, in Section 1.2, we will turn to the perspective that views research writing as a form of ‘story’.
Genregenre conventions constrain text structure in the interests of both readers and writers.
Respecting genre conventions assists researchers in having their voices heard within their disciplinary community.
Genre conventions may vary widely from one discipline to another.
In general, research genres require texts to have a hierarchical structure of some sort.
1.1.2Hierarchical organisation in research texts
What do we mean by organising research texts as hierarchies? We mean that the various elements into which a text is divided are arranged on a series of different levels, and that the elements on one level are subordinate to those on the level above. The hierarchyhierarchy can be made apparent to readers in a range of different ways. At the ‘strict’ end of the spectrum, section headings are numbered (1, 2, 3, …), as are their subsections (1.1, 1.2, …; 2.1, …) and possibly also the subdivisions of these (1.1.1, 1.1.2, …; 1.2.1, …). In addition, the headings may be distinguished by the use of different fonts. At the ‘loose’ end, these latter will be the only indication of hierarchy. In fact, few hierarchically organised articles seem to include more than two levels, while in the case of a book, chapters will form an additional tier right at the top.
Making your thoughts fit this general mould is undoubtedly a constraint, but doing so is very beneficial for your readers. It enables them to find their way easily through the text, it means they do not have to guess what belongs where, and it allows them to concentrate on content without being distracted by structural flaws. And, as ever, anything that helps your readers will help to get your message across.
Headingsheadings – how they are worded, that is – play a crucial role in making hierarchyhierarchy transparent. Ideally, the headingsheadings of units at one level should ‘nest’ into their hierarchical superior (in the case of the highest-level units, into the titletitles of the article or book); that is, every heading should indicate that the unit’s content constitutes a subset of the superior unit’s content. In that sense, the whole structure would be like a set of Russian matryoshka dolls. On the other hand, headings on the same level ought to have parallel grammatical structures, yet indicate clearly distinctive content. Regularly checking your table of contents (e.g., by using the ‘Headline’ function in MS Word) will help to ensure that you adhere to these principles.
A particularly scrupulous example is to be found in Sofaer et al. (2021), an article from the field of heritage studies. We have set out the main features of the hierarchical arrangement it uses in the following table.
Level
Title/headingheadings
Article
Heritage site, value and wellbeing: learning from the COVID-19 pandemic in England
Section
Places of joy: heritage after lockdown
Visits to heritage sites and wellbeing values
Translating heritage site visitor values to wellbeing outcomes
Subsection
Heritage visits and …
notions of capability
social connections
ontological security
trust
Hedonic
wellbeing
Eudaimonic
wellbeing
Table 1.1. Title nesting and parallelism
Source: Sofaer et al. (2021)1
In this case, nesting is achieved at the section level through repetition of four key termshierarchy appearing in the titletitles (heritage, site(s), wellbeing and values) as well as the indirect reference to pandemic by means of lockdown. In the second section, heritage visits is repeated at the start of all the subsection titlestitles, which then continue with an example of wellbeing values. In the third section, the wellbeing in its title is repeated in both headings at the lower level. Meanwhile, parallelism is ensured by the use of noun phrases throughout all levels, with the sole exception of the third section title, where the noun phrase begins with an -ing form (technically, a gerund). At first glance, this change in grammatical pattern might seem to slightly reduce the powerful structuring effect. But it actually serves an important narrative purpose by signalling a move away from describing empirical findings to discussing them.
1.2The research storyresearch story and its parts
We turn now to a completely different way of thinking about research texts: seeing them as ‘research storiesresearch story’. When we think of stories, it is unlikely that research publications spring immediately to mind. Instead, we will probably think of the tales in 1001 Nights or novels such as The Name of the Rose or TheLord of the Rings: fictional narratives that are the products of the writer’s imagination and appeal to that of the reader. Research, by contrast, is all about constructing an argument on the basis of evidence.
Thus, clearly, research storyresearch story is merely a metaphor and cannot possibly reflect all aspects of research texts. Later on, we will have occasion to remark on points at which the metaphor breaks down (as metaphors tend to do if you stretch them too far): points, that is, where such texts are not at all like stories in the usual sense. Yet, even so, the image highlights important qualities of academic writing, such as the need to capture and hold readers’ attention, to guide them through the text, and to maintain a sense of progress in moving towards a conclusion – in other words, to give them a good read, an idea we will return to in Section 1.3.
At the most basic level, the story metaphor indicates that research texts need to have three identifiable parts: a beginning, a middle and an end. In the following subsections, we will examine these parts of the research storyresearch story in turn. Given the diversity of the humanities and social sciences, with their plethora of theories, methods and genres, not to mention the different types of journal articles (theoretical and empirical, quantitative and qualitative), it would be impossible to stipulate exactly what will come in each part. Specifying precise section names across the board is out of the question. What we are confident we can do is to outline the function carried out by each of the story’s three parts, as well as what is needed to fulfil that function. First, though, we must make a brief detour to discuss a part of journal papers which stands at the beginning yet outside the story itself: the abstractabstract.
1.2.1The abstractabstract
An abstract is a compact and self-contained text – hence our decision to deal with it separately – yet it is obviously twinned with the research storyresearch story to be developed properly in the paper itself. In fact, it is a miniature version of that story. As a publisher’s website explains: “An abstract is a succinct summary of a larger piece of work that aims to persuade readers to read the full document – essentially, it acts as a shop window, enticing people to step inside.”1
Abstracts are a typical, though not universal feature of journal articles (and of submissions to academic conferences). They may not be the most exciting texts to write. Yet Belcher’s (2019: 92-93) list of their key functions – “connecting with editors”, “connecting with peer reviewers”, “getting found”, “getting read” and “getting cited” – indicates clearly why it is worthwhile spending a fair amount of time and effort on getting your abstractabstract right. For the stakes are high. A compelling abstract may sway a journal editor into sending your paper out to review rather than desk-rejecting it, and a researcherresearch story into agreeing to do the review rather than declining. It may also be the abstract that attracts the attention of someone searching the web and encourages them to read the full article. Over and above that, writing an abstract can assist writers as “a diagnostic tool” highlighting problems in their main text. “If you can’t write a brief abstract of your article”, Belcher remarks, “then your article may lack focus” (p. 92). In that case, it will not be the abstract that needs revising but the paper.
Now for some technical details relating to abstracts. First, in journal articles they are placed between the paper’s title and the start of the introduction, so technically in a space that lies outside the paper proper. This special status is significant because, as we will see later, it justifies a different approach to citation. It also means that some repetition is tolerated between the abstract and the body of the paper. Second, abstracts vary in length, depending on the discipline and the publication outlet; in the humanities and social sciences, they typically range from about 150 to 300 words. These limits are set by publishers, editors and conference organisers, so authors usually have no say in the matter. Basically, you do as you’re told. Third, most journals also require you to supply a set of keywords which are typically printed right underneath the abstract or alongside it. Apart from facilitating online searches, keywords also help editors to identify reviewers whose expertise matches the paper’s topic, theory and method. As that fit is essential, authors should choose their keywords wisely.
Given that the function of abstracts is to ‘entice readers to step inside’, it is hardly surprising that the first sentence plays a special role. There are two basic approaches to writing it. One is to resort to what later in this book will be introduced as a metacomment (see 7.1), using phrases such as This paper discusses. The following are typical examples.
Extract 1.1 [Jones, H. 2019: 187]
This paper is concerned with how law organises and controls space.
Extract 1.2 [Coffey & Leung 2019: 607]
In this paper we investigate the ways in which creativity is understood and enacted by language teachers.
Extract 1.3 [Levy 2020: 1]
This survey synthesizes and examines existing scholarship on women’s practices and positions within eighteenth century British book culture.
The second, and arguably more elegant approach is to formulate a statement that introduces the topic in fairly broad, even non-technical terms, giving a diverse readership a general idea of what the paper is about. Importantly, such an opening sentence usually avoids tackling controversial points head-on. Instead, it is more likely to be “a general, relatively uncontentious statement” (Murray & Moore 2006: 59). Extracts 1.4 to 1.6 – all of them from highly specialised scholarly journals – provide fairly typical examples.
Extract 1.4 [Taylor 2020: 171]
Social categories play a central role in inquiry.
Extract 1.5 [Fleming 2021: 1]
Incumbent prime ministers who win re-election often reshuffle their cabinet ministers.
Extract 1.6 [Howlett 2022: 387]
For many social science scholars, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to re-think our approaches to research.research story
A very general first sentence is particularly useful if you cannot be entirely sure who your readers will be. Given the nature of research papers, there is generally little doubt that your audience will primarily consist of other researchers, and often very senior ones, but this does not necessarily mean that they will be specialists in your precise area. And, should they not be, keeping the jargon less than ‘full on’ at the outset will make it easier to entice them in.
As regards structure and content, Swales (1990: 179) puts it in a nutshell. “The essence of the genre”, he explains, “is one of distillation”. The ‘distilling’ results in what is effectively “a fully self-contained, capsule description of the paper” (Koopman 1997), with the latter’s main sections represented in the abstractabstract. This is well illustrated in Extract 1.7, which is drawn from a paper structured strictly on AIMRaDAIMRaDreflected in abstract lines (with its constituent sections numbered 1 to 4 and headed Introduction, Materials andMethods, Findings and Discussion). As is readily apparent from the abstract, these are reflected almost exactly in the sequence of its sentences (in Extracts 1.7 and 1.8, sentence numbers have been added as a basis for Table 1.2 and our discussion of it).
Extract 1.7 [Thomas 2021: 693]
1While disability has historically been depicted in problematic ways in television, film, and print media, more balanced and progressive cultural representations are arguably emerging. 2However, few studies address how disabled people and their families (e.g., parents) encounter, and make sense of, media configurations ostensibly designed to promote a more positive and visible image of living with disability. 3Drawing upon interviews with parents of children with Down’s syndrome in the United Kingdom, I sketch out how they feel about depictions that, arguably, depart from hurtful historical narratives of disability as tragic and pitiable. 4Parents praise, and mostly embrace, recent portrayals of people with Down’s syndrome in media outputs. 5At the same time, they raise concerns around tokenism, stereotyping, focusing upon “exceptional” people, and fueling sanitized accounts which deny, or at least obscure, the harsh lived realities for many parents of disabled children. 6I conclude by arguing that while parents largely applaud and welcome positive public narratives, they also fear that such representations threaten to gloss over the pervasive mistreatment, disregard, and disenfranchisement of disabled people and their families.
Even if a paperresearch story does not follow a template as rigid as AIMRaDAIMRaD, the headingsheadings of its various sections and subsections – provided they have been well-chosen – can form an excellent basis for its abstractabstract. In Extract 1.8, for example, virtually the entire abstract text is made up of such components.
Extract 1.8 [Moore et al. 2017: 1]
1The rhetoric of “excellence” is pervasive across the academy. 2It is used to refer to researchresearch story outputs as well as researchers, theory and education, individuals and organizations, from art history to zoology. 3But does “excellence” actually mean anything? 4Does this pervasive narrative of “excellence” do any good? 5Drawing on a range of sources we interrogate “excellence” as a concept and find that it has no intrinsic meaning in academia. 6Rather it functions as a linguistic interchange mechanism. 7To investigate whether this linguistic function is useful we examine how the rhetoric of excellence combines with narratives of scarcity and competition to show that the hyper-competition that arises from the performance of “excellence” is completely at odds with the qualities of good research. 8We trace the roots of issues in reproducibility, fraud, and homophily to this rhetoric. 9But we also show that this rhetoric is an internal, and not primarily an external, imposition. 10We conclude by proposing an alternative rhetoric based on soundness and capacity-building. 11In the final analysis, it turns out that that “excellence” is not excellent. 12Used in its current unqualified form it is a pernicious and dangerous rhetoric that undermines the very foundations of good research and scholarship. 13This article is published as part of a collection on the future of research assessment.
Naturally, not all abstracts can be constructed in this way. But whether they are or not, they should always contain certain key elements.headings To ensure they are all there, Koopman (1997) recommends using the following checklist:
Motivation: Why do we care about the problem and the results?
Problem statement: What problem are you trying to solve?
Approach: How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem?
Results: What’s the answer?
Conclusions: What are the implications of your answer?
He suggests that each of these points is generally reflected in a single sentence of the abstractabstract, but also points out that “the parts may be merged or spread among a set of sentences”. In Table 1.2, we indicate where each of them is located in the examples above.
Extract 1.7
Extract 1.8
Motivation
Sentences 1 & 2
Sentences 1, 2 & 13
Problem statement
Sentence 2
Sentences 3 & 4
Approach
Sentence 3
Sentences 5 & 7
Results
Sentences 4 & 5
Sentences 5, 6, 8 & 9
Conclusion
Sentence 6
Sentences 10, 11 & 12
Table 1.2. Koopman’s (1997) checklist applied to Extracts 1.7 and 1.8
What about the language of abstracts? Regardless of the abstract’s opening sentence, from the second sentence onward the terminology of your topic area will certainly be prominently represented (out of necessity, but also to confirm your credentials as a subject expert). This is again well illustrated in our two examples. In Extract 1.7, disability/disabled, Down’s syndrome and media all feature at least twice, while the term mediaconfigurations is echoed in representations, depictions and portrayals. In Extract 1.8, the key terms are “excellence”, with quote marks as shown (seven appearances and one echo in excellent), rhetoric (six appearances) and researchresearch story, which appears three times but is also echoed in researchers, scholarship, the academy and academia.
Also notable are the considerable efforts made by both authors to observe the general principles of paragraph design (see Chapter 2) and cohesion (Chapter 5). In spite of the strict word limit, there are a number of linking expressionslinkerin abstracts (e.g., rather; as we also show; in doing so; in relation to the former), and there is variation in sentence structures, including their beginnings. Thus, although abstracts may not be the place to display great creativity, there is no question that well-written specimens observe exactly the same principles as the longer genres they are related to.
There is one exception, however. Unlike other research genres, abstracts need not – some say must not – contain source references. Word-for-word citations in particular are extremely rare; if they are used, then quotation marks and source references must of course be included so as not to inadvertently commit plagiarism. But generally, the understanding is that the absence of sources in the abstractabstract does not amount to a claim on the part of the author that the ideas expressed are all original. It simply means that readers will have to wait for source references until they get to the actual paper.
The examples we have seen so far, both of which were written as single paragraphs, are what one might call standard abstracts. That is because there is an alternative format that some publishers and funding organisations have made compulsory. It is known as a structuredabstract (rather a misnomer, given that a good standard abstract is also ‘structured’).
A structured abstract in the narrower sense is one split up into sections with headlines that are set down by the publisher or funder and cannot be changed by the author. The precise wording of the headlines may differ from journal to journal, but the overall structure will be very similar. If you want to submit a paper to any of the journals published by Emerald, for example, you’ll have to fill in the following four obligatory fields: purpose; design/methodology/approach; findings and originality/value. Another three are optional, though they may be required by some Emerald journals: research storyresearch limitations/implications; practical implications; social implications.2 Here is an example, from a paper entitled Drivers of growth expectations in Latin American rural contexts.
Extract 1.9 [Mahn et al. 2022: n. pag.; original emboldening]3
Purpose – Given the importance of growth-oriented entrepreneurship in the context of economic development and the need to understand how rural communities can be developed, the purpose of this research paper is to determine how the drivers of growth expectations differ between urban and rural settings.
Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is threefold: firstly, a descriptive analysis with nonparametric testing is conducted; then [a] pooled regression model is used to analyse the predictors of growth expectations in both contexts, and finally, coarsened exact matching is used to identify possible self-selection bias.
Findings – In contrast to mainstream entrepreneurship theory, it is found that entrepreneurs’ intrinsic knowledge, skills and abilities are not significant in the rural-specific model. The only exception is entrepreneurs’ educational level, the importance of which is emphasised as a pivotal factor in increasing high-growth ventures in rural communities. Additionally, when self-selection is eliminated, rurality worsens growth intentions.
Practical implications – There is evidence that some growth-oriented entrepreneurs self-select into rural communities. Because the high-growth entrepreneurial dynamics in rural areas are unique, public policies should target purpose-driven entrepreneurial education. This includes encouraging “lifestyle entrepreneurship” (e.g. retirees returning to rural areas to become entrepreneurs), preventing entrepreneurial brain drain in rural areas and attracting highly educated urban entrepreneurs to exploit opportunities in rural areas.
Originality/value – This researchresearch story attempts to contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the factors that drive high-growth entrepreneurs in rural areas by analysing rural entrepreneurs in the high-growth context of a developing economy. The focus is on Chile – a country that is rarely investigated compared to the USA or Europe – to extend the literature on high-growth ventures and entrepreneurial ecosystems.
The fixed headlines in structured abstractsabstractstructured may feel like a straitjacket at first; but, on the other hand, the rigid structure ensures that no essential element is left out. Another plus is that one has to worry less about cohesion and flow; nonetheless, it is notable that the authors of our example have included a number of cohesive devices (given the importance of; threefold, firstly, then, and finally; in contrast to; additionally; because; this includes). From the reader’s perspective, structured abstractsabstract are unequivocally good news: not only because they are faster to read, but also because the reader can make a beeline for precisely the information they are looking for, such as the methods used.
An abstract is a key element of a researchresearch story article since it draws readers in and provides ‘visibility’.
It constitutes a ‘pocket version’ of the article as whole.
The first sentence is crucial.
The abstract should include the article’s main points and the key terms it uses.
It may take the form of a so-called structured abstractabstract with fixed headings.
1.2.2The beginning: Setting the scene
Returning to the story proper, we will follow the advice in the quote at the head of this chapter and begin at the beginning: that is, the part of the story in which the scene is set for the main action to follow. As already mentioned, this is done by delineating a problem or puzzle – AristotleAristotle called this ‘tying a knot’ – that will be addressed and resolved (‘untied’) in the remaining two parts. Although the most common place to do this is in an introduction, the beginning in our sense can involve more than that. In fact it will do so, since the scene-setting starts even before the story itself does – with the title you choose to give it.
Giving a story an effective title is central to its chances of success – and a great opportunity for some creative thinking. For titlestitles
