From Inquiry To Academic Writing Pdf Free

Academic writing or scholarly writing is nonfiction produced as part of academic work, including reports on empirical fieldwork or research in facilities for the natural sciences or social sciences, monographs in which scholars analyze culture, propose new theories, or develop interpretations from archives, as well as undergraduate versions of all of these. ^[1] ^[2]

Though the tone, style, content, and organization of academic writing vary across genres and across publication methods, nearly all academic writing shares a relatively formal prose register, frequent reference to other academic work, and the use of fairly stable rhetorical moves to define the scope of the project, situate it in the relevant research, and to advance a new contribution.^[3]

Academic style [edit]

Academic writing often features a prose register that is conventionally characterized by "evidence...that the writer(s) have been persistent, open-minded, and disciplined in study"; that prioritizes "reason over emotion or sensual perception"; and that imagines a reader who is "coolly rational, reading for information, and intending to formulate a reasoned response."^[4] The particular stylistic means of achieving these conventions can differ considerably by academic discipline. These differences help explain the distinctive sounds of, for example, writing in history versus engineering or physics versus philosophy.^[5] ^[6] One attempt to account for these differences in writing is known as the theory of "discourse communities".^[7]

Biber and Gray suggested that there are significant differences with regards to complexity in academic writing in humanities versus science, with humanities writing often focused on structural elaboration, and sciences, on structural compression.^[8] ^: 4

Criticism [edit]

Academic style, particularly in humanities, has been often criticized for being too full of jargon and hard to understand by the general public.^[9] ^[10] ^[11]

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A discourse community is essentially a group of people that shares mutual interests and beliefs. "It establishes limits and regularities...who may speak, what may be spoken, and how it is to be said; in addition [rules] prescribe what is true and false, what is reasonable and what foolish, and what is meant and what not."^[12]

The concept of a discourse community is vital to academic writers across nearly all disciplines, for the academic writer's purpose is to influence how their community understands its field of study: whether by maintaining, adding to, revising, or contesting what that community regards as "known" or "true." Academic writers have strong incentives to follow conventions established by their community in order for their attempts to influence this community to be legible.

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Constraints are the discourse community's written and unwritten conventions about what a writer can say and how he or she can say it. They define what is an acceptable argument. Each discourse community expects to see a writer construct his or her argument using their conventional style of language and vocabulary, and they expect a writer to use the established intertext within the discourse community as the building blocks for his or her argument.

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In order for a writer to become familiar with some of the constraints of the discourse community they are writing for. Across most discourses communities, writers will:

Identify the novelty of their position
Make a claim, or thesis
Acknowledge prior work and situate their claim in a disciplinary context
Offer warrants for one's view based on community-specific arguments and procedures

Each of theses above are constructed differently depending on the discourse community the writer is in. For example, the way a claim is made in a high school paper would look very different from the way a claim is made in a college composition class. It is important for the academic writer to familiarize himself or herself with the conventions of the discourse community by reading and analyzing other works, so that the writer is best able to communicate his or her ideas.

Novel argument [edit]

Within discourse communities, academic writers build on top of the ideas established by previous writers.

Good academic writers know the importance of researching previous work from within the discourse community and using this work to build their own claims. By taking these ideas and expanding upon them or applying them in a new way, a writer is able to make their novel argument.

Intertextuality [edit]

Intertextuality is the combining of past writings into original, new pieces of text. Usually attributed to Julia Kristeva, the concept of intertextuality is helpful for understanding that all texts are necessarily related to prior texts through a network of explicit or implicit links, allusions, repetitions, acknowledged or unacknowledged inspiration, and direct quotations.^[13] Writers (often unwittingly) make use of what has previously been written and thus some degree of borrowing is inevitable. One of the most salient features of academic writing irrespective of discipline is its unusually explicit conventions for marking intertextuality through citation and bibliography. Conventions for these markings (e.g., MLA, APA, IEEE, Chicago, etc.) vary by discourse community.

Summarizing and integrating other texts in academic writing is often metaphorically described as "entering the conversation," as described by Kenneth Burke:^[14]

"Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending on the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress."

Key elements [edit]

There are a number of areas of importance in all academic and scholarly writing. While some areas, such as the use of appropriate references and the avoidance of plagiarism, are not open to challenge, other elements, such as the appropriate style, are contested.^[5]

Style: Contrary to stereotype, published academic research is not particularly syntactically complex;^[15] it is instead a fairly low-involvement register characterized by the modification of nominal elements^[16] through hedging and refining elaborations, often presented as sequences of objects of prepositions.
Appropriate references: Generally speaking, the range and organization of references illustrate the author's awareness of the current state of knowledge in the field (including major current disagreements or controversies); typically the expectation is that these references will be formatted in the relevant disciplinary citation system.^[17]
Bibliography: Typically this lists those articles read as background, and will include the sources of individual citations.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism, the "wrongful appropriation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions", and the representation of them as one's own original work is considered academic dishonesty, and can lead to severe consequences.^[18]

Academic genres [edit]

Academic journals collect research articles and are often categorized as "Periodicals" in university libraries. Here, the periodical collection of the Foster Business Library at the University of Washington

Scholarly monograph, in many types and varieties
Chapter in an edited volume
Book Review
Conference paper
Dissertation; usually between 6,000 and 20,000 words in length
Essay; usually short, between 1,500 and 6,000 words in length
Explication; usually a short factual note explaining some part of a particular work; e.g. its terminology, dialect, allusions or coded references
Research Article
Review Essay; a thematic review of several relevant monographs or trends across numerous research articles
Technical report
Thesis; completed over a number of years, often in excess of 20,000 words in length
Translation

For students [edit]

Research Paper; longer essay involving library research, 3000 to 6000 words in length
Book report
Exam questions and Essay titles; the formulation of these
Instructional pamphlet, or hand-out, or reading list; usually meant for students
Presentations; usually short, often illustrated

Summaries of knowledge [edit]

Annotated bibliography
Annotated catalogue, often of an individual or group's papers and/or library
Creating a simplified graphical representation of knowledge; e.g. a map, or refining a display generated from a database. There will often be a 'key' or written work incorporated with the final work
Creating a timeline or chronological plan. There will often be a 'key' or written work incorporated with the final work
Devising a classification scheme; e.g. for animals, or newly arisen sub-cultures, or a radically new style of design
Encyclopedia entry
Journal article (e.g. History Today); usually presenting a digest of recent research
Literature review; a summary and careful comparison of previous academic work published on a specific topic
Site description and plan (e.g. in archeology)

Collating the work of others [edit]

Anthology; collection, collation, ordering and editing of the work of others
Catalogue raisonné; the definitive collection of the work of a single artist, in book form
Collected works; often referred to as the 'critical edition'. The definitive collection of the work of a single writer or poet, in book form, carefully purged of publishers errors and later forgeries, etc.
Monograph or exhibition catalog; usually containing exemplary works, and a scholarly essay. Sometime contains new work by a creative writer, responding to the work
Transcribing, selecting and ordering oral testimony (e.g. oral history recordings)

Research and planning [edit]

Experimental plan
Laboratory report
Raw data collection plan
Research proposal, including research questions
Structured notes

Disseminating knowledge outside the academy [edit]

Call for papers
Documentary film script or TV script or radio script
Obituary
Opinion; an academic may sometimes be asked to give an expert written opinion, for use in a legal case before a court of law
Newspaper opinion article
Public speech or lecture
Review of a book, film, exhibition, event, etc.
Think-tank pamphlet, position paper, or briefing paper

Technical or administrative forms [edit]

Brief; short summary, often instructions for a commissioned work
Peer review report
Proposal for research or for a book
White paper; detailed technical specifications and/or performance report

Personal forms [edit]

These are acceptable to some academic disciplines, e.g. Cultural studies, Fine art, Feminist studies, Queer theory, Literary studies.

Artist's book or Chapbook
Autobiography
Belles-lettres; stylish or aesthetic writing on serious subjects, often with reference to one's personal experience
Commonplace book
Diary or Weblog
Memoire; usually a short work, giving one's own memories of a famous person or event
Notebooks

Newer forms [edit]

Collaborative writing, especially using the internet
Hypertext, often incorporating new media and multimedia forms within the text
Performative writing (see also: belles-lettres)

Format [edit]

A commonly recognized format for presenting original research in the social and applied sciences is known as IMRD, an initialism that refers to the usual ordering of subsections:

Introduction (Overview of relevant research and objective of current study)
Method (Assumptions, questions, procedures described in replicable or at least reproducible detail)
Results (Presentation of findings; often includes visual displays of quantitative data charts, plots)

and

Discussion (Analysis, Implications, Suggested Next Steps)

Standalone methods sections are atypical in presenting research in the humanities; other common formats in the applied and social sciences are IMRAD (which offers an "Analysis" section separate from the implications presented in the "Discussion" section) and IRDM (found in some engineering subdisciplines, which features Methods at the end of the document).

Other common sections in academic documents are:

Abstract
Acknowledgments
Indices
Bibliography
List of references
Appendix/Addendum, any addition to a document

References [edit]

^ Hayot, Eric (2014). The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities. Columbia University Press. ISBN978-0-231-53741-4.
^ Samuels, Boba; Garbati, Jordana (2018). Mastering Academic Writing. SAGE. ISBN978-1-5264-5506-2.
^ Swales, John (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Applied Linguistics. ISBN978-0521338134.
^ Chris Thaiss and Terry Myers Zawacki (2006) Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life, Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, [5-7].
^ ^a ^b Stephen Catterall; Christopher Ireland (October 2010). "Developing Writing Skills for International Students: Adopting a critical pragmatic approach". ResearchGate.
^ Hyland, Ken (22 July 2004). Disciplinary Discourses, Michigan Classics Ed.: Social Interactions in Academic Writing. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-03024-8.
^ Swales, John. ''The Concept of Discourse Community." Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990.21-32. Print.
^ Biber, Douglas; Gray, Bethany (2016-05-26). Grammatical Complexity in Academic English: Linguistic Change in Writing. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-107-00926-4.
^ Biber, Douglas; Gray, Bethany (2016-05-26). Grammatical Complexity in Academic English: Linguistic Change in Writing. Cambridge University Press. p. 1. ISBN978-1-107-00926-4.
^ Pinker, Steven (26 September 2014). "Why Academics Stink at Writing". www.chronicle.com . Retrieved 2021-09-01 .
^ Blyth, Mark (2012-03-09). "Five minutes with Mark Blyth: "Turn it into things people can understand, let go of the academese, and people will engage"". Impact of Social Sciences . Retrieved 2021-09-01 .
^ Leitch, Vincent B. Deconstructive Criticism. New York: Cornell UP, 1983: 145.
^ Roozen, Kevin. (2015) "Texts Get Their Meaning from Other Texts." Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies, Adler-Kassner & Wardle, eds. Logan: Utah State UP, 44-47,
^ Burke, Kenneth (1941). The Philosophy of Literary Form. Berkeley: University of California Press, 110-111.
^ Biber, Douglas; Gray, Bethany (2010). "Challenging stereotypes about academic writing: Complexity, elaboration, explicitness". Journal of English for Academic Purposes. 9 (1): 2–20. doi:10.1016/j.jeap.2010.01.001.
^ Brown, David West; Aull, Laura L. (2017). "Elaborated Specificity versus Emphatic Generality: A Corpus-Based Comparison of Higher- and Lower-Scoring Advanced Placement Exams in English". Research in the Teaching of English. 51 (4): 394–417.
^ Giltrow, Janet and Michele Valiquette. (1994). Genres and knowledge: Students writing in the disciplines. In Freedman, Aviva; Peter Medway (Eds.), Learning and teaching genre. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook (pp. 47-62).
^ "Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices". Princeton University. 2012-07-27

Bibliography [edit]

Baldo, Shannon. "Elves and Extremism: the use of Fantasy in the Radical Environmentalist Movement." Young Scholars in Writing: Undergraduate Research in Writing and Rhetoric 7 (Spring 2010): 108-15. Print.
Greene, Stuart. "Argument as Conversation: The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument." n. page. Print.
Kantz, Margaret. "Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively." College English 52.1 (1990): 74-91. Print.
Porter, James. "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community."Rhetoric Review. 5.1 (1986): 34-47. Print.