A Word on Sources: Primary and Secondary

Throughout this semester, I have been making the distinction between scholarly (academic) and non-scholary (non-academic) sources. To review, scholarly sources are those produced by the academy, by scholars whose work appears in journals (or online journal databases) and books. All of these sources are the product of the research ethos mentioned in a previous blog, "Logos and Real Research," and are all examples of academic discourse.

Another important to make is the distinction between primary and secondary sources. The following definitions of each come from the UC Berkeley Library website:

• Primary sources. Primary sources enable the researcher to get as close as possible to what actually happened during an historical event or time period. Primary sources were either created during the time period being studied, or were created at a later date by a participant in the events being studied (as in the case of memoirs) and they reflect the individual viewpoint of a participant or observer.

• Secondary sources. A secondary source is a work that interprets or analyzes an historical event or phenomenon. It is generally at least one step removed from the event. Examples include scholarly or popular books and articles, reference books, and textbooks.

Some of your research may take you to primary sources, that is, original records of certain events or issues. When you are dealing with these sources, they are not generally written in an academic register but they may represent some other genre or discourse (e.g., a personal letter, a government document, a historical record, etc.). Your job then, as the scholar and controller of the discourse of your paper is to "bring over," as it were, or translate the material from the primary source into the academic discourse. This occurs in a few ways:

1. Quotation. Whatever falls inside quotation marks will be an exact representation of the material in the original source. As such, it will be in the discourse of the original genre from which it was taken. Whatever falls outside the quotation marks, on the other hand, will always be academic discourse.
2. Summary. Summarizing the material from original sources will be done in academic discourse.
   
3. Paraphrase. Paraphrasing will also be done in academic discourse.
4. Discussion. This goes beyond mere conveying of the ideas represented in the source and gets into matters of scholarly interpretation, analysis, commentary, etc. This is where you will, as the scholar, become the final arbiter of the meaning of your sources within the bounds of your paper.

Secondary sources, on the other hand, will be different in that they will most likely be scholarly sources and therefore already written in academic discourse. In that case, your task will not be so much to translate one non-academic discourse into academic discourse—that will be done already—but to be sure you are careful to represent your words and your secondary source's words accurately and with proper documentation. The strategies for doing so are the same as the four listed above, except that, again, your secondary source is likely already a specimen of academic discourse.

Secondary Sources: Academic Anchoring

As I have stated before, all academic writing has some basis in other academic writing. For that reason, secondary sources will need to be in your papers as a way to anchor your specimen of academic writing to other academic writing. Or, to use another analogy, having other academic writing in your academic text will help to create a "link in the chain" of academic statements on different issues.

Note: Not all secondary sources, however, are academic sources. Some of your secondary sources may be taken from, as the definition states above, popular books or even websites not created by academia. In that case, it will be your job to verify the information found in those sources as accurate and also to translate the material into academic discourse. But, no matter what your issue, your paper will always have some basis in academic writing. If your paper has no academic source at all, then you need to locate those sources. Academic sources are considered, by the academy, the most reliable and dependable sources for scholarly purposes.

Primary Sources: Translated Discourse

Primary sources, again, are those sources which are closest to the original event or issue being discussed. They may not be written in an academic register or written by scholars in the academy, but they nonetheless contain valuable information which can be brought to the table. For that reason, they are useful for coming to a scholarly consensus on an issue. Because the primary sources are being interpreted, analyzed, classified, and otherwise discussed by scholars, they will be spoken about in academic discourse. The point is that scholars discuss everything in scholarly discourse, so whatever source comes from outside the academy will have to be translated through the four methods mentioned above.