Academic Titles: Supplement to a Previous Blog

As you know, I am asking for your titles so I can formulate a program for our upcoming presentations and introduce you and your papers to the class properly. Among the emails I received with your titles, one presented a particularly interesting case in terms of title structure, and it brings up an issue I may not have communicated in our academic title lesson. I would like to remedy that here.

Consider the following title: "Pope Defuses Tension on Visit to Turkey"

For an academic context, this title would need a little revision. As you might have noticed, this actually reads a lot more like a headline for a newspaper article, deriving its journalistic feel from its bare subject + predicate + direct object (+ prepositional phrase) skeletal structure. Academic titles are almost always nouns or noun phrases and do not have predicates.

Something more like "Defusing Tensions: Pope Benedict's Visit to Turkey" would be much more like an academic title. Notice it's all nouns or noun phrases.

How titles are structured, then, depends on situation and discourse community. For journalistic settings, the way to construct titles (there called "headlines") differs from the way to construct academic titles. So, when you're looking at your title, do a little discourse analysis and parse the title. Does it follow the structure of a journalistic title? A novel title? An academic title? Again, a command of the discourse will be evident on all levels, from the title to the works cited, from larger paragraphs to single words.

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.

Persona: A Matter of Presentation and Discourse Acquisition

Closely related to the concept of discourse community is the concept of persona. In Latin, the word means "mask," a term from the theatrical days in ancient Rome when actors would wear large masks to show which role they had assumed. Scholars of discourse have applied the term to the "role" or "character" a writer assumes when undertaking to write a piece of discourse. It is understood that when you write a piece of text, you are "acting" or "playing a part." The question is, "Do you understand what part you are to play?"

In this class and in publishing your material, creating a persona comes solely through the written discourse. With written discourse (text), it can come from no other place. So, as you write your paper, and as you adhere to the expectations of the academic discourse community, you will also be writing yourself into the role of the academic (the scholar, the expert, etc.). By this point in the semester, you should be well accustomed to writing in the style appropriate to an academic discourse community, so creating the stylistic "mask" of the academic persona should be comfortable for you. Among the many things I will be looking for in this last paper, persona will be among them. Although this falls under the relatively "minor" revision issue of style, it is still hugely important in research contexts. When scholars look to other scholars for information, they want not only information, but the whole scholarly package. Does this expert know how to present him- or herself as a confident expert on the subject? Has the person acquired the discourse? These questions will be answered in the persona.

The Research Ethos in Persona

At all levels of scholarly discourse, the research ethos (see previous blog, "Logos and Real Research") can be found. When writing for the context of real research, the persona will reflect the moods and motivations of the academic discourse community. Of the four personae shown in the link below, nos. 2 and 3 are acceptable for the research context. The following will explain the rationale for their acceptability.

The detached, unemotional persona. The detached persona is considered acceptable because a scholar is, above all else, a puzzle-solver and an assessor of problems. It is the job of the scholar to seek solutions for how to view given issues, how to contextualize one item for consideration in light of other, related items or items not hitherto understood together, and to uncover previously undetected/unconsidered relationships. To meet the demands of the scholar's task, it is understood that the scholar be, above all, cool-headed and able to survey the issue from a removed (albeit limited) vantage point. When adopting the detached persona, the scholar "looks on" while putting the pieces together, though he or she will not connote any personal investment in his or her written text. Rhetorically, this establishes distance from the subject and gives the illusion of objectivity. (As mentioned in the first blog, however, it is now believed that "objectivity" is really a fiction and not actually attainable in human discourse.)

The involved persona. The "it seems to me" of the involved persona allows the scholar to take a somewhat different rhetorical attitude toward his or her subject. Here, the scholar makes explicit acknowledgement of a couple of things: (1) his or her personal involvement in the academic undertaking (shown by the first-person pronoun "me") and (2) the tentative nature of scholarly conclusions (shown by "seems"). Embedded in this persona therefore is the proper humility that must attend logical discourse as a way of speaking predicated upon probable and provisional (i.e., what works for now) knowledge. To state that something "seems" so to you is to admit the possibility of other, valid viewpoints on a subject of controversy. When using this persona, the scholar is saying that he or she has given considerable effort to the issue at hand and is now prepared to offer the following, tentative conclusion. The "me" in the statement assumes the presence of others in the community, all of whom are potentially invested in the issue at hand and who can therefore speak with the proper research community ethos. In this simple phrase "it seems to me" is encoded the entire provisional understanding of scholarly knowledge and the continued need to re-examine issues which concern the community. Unlike the detached persona, this one openly acknowledges the limitations of the individual scholar's perspective, thus hinting that complete objectivity is not available to us.

Brief Lesson on Persona

For examples of how to create persona, please refer to the following link: http://www.tarleton.edu/~popken/2persona.htm

Logos and Real Research

You will remember when early in the semester we contrasted "real research" against mere reporting. As this is a research course designed to prepare you for writing for the academy, it is absolutely imperative that your research papers reflect the research ethos of the academic community, that is, that your contributions be original, offering new or fresh insight on the topic of your choice. While it will be anchored in previous research, it must above all depart from that research in "covering ground" not previously examined by the work of scholars before you. By way of review, the following blog will examine the research ethos of the academy and link it to the nature of logical discourse. I offer these remarks because, as your paper deadline draws to a close, you will want to be sure that your paper is a fair specimen of original, real research.

The Research Ethos

In past lectures, we have spoken of ethos as a persuasive mode in which the moral character of the speaker/writer comes to bear on the text (as differentiated from logos—the argument—and pathos—appeals to emotion). Here, I mean this a little bit differently. In this context, I mean "the the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution" (Merriam-Webster Online). Others have defined it as the "moods or motivation" of a person or group. For the academy (the community composed of the university and scholars within the university), knowledge is constantly in a state of flux; that is, knowledge is always changing. What we "know" at one point during the history of the academy may well differ significantly at another point. For example, it was "known" centuries ago that the earth was the center of the universe, and that all of the heavenly bodies revolved around our planet. However, with the research of Copernicus and Galileo, it was determined instead that the earth was merely one planet in a system of other planets, the center of which was the sun. In later years, models of the universe have undergone further modification due to further discovery made possible by new instruments and methods of calculation (Newton, Einstein, Hawking, the Hubble telescope, etc.). This knowledge was not arrived at through the work of a single person, but is viewed instead as a collaborative effort, the labor of an entire community over many years (even centuries!).

Even while knowledge-construction is viewed as a collaborative effort, some suggest that "collaborative" might paint things in too positive a light. Many believe that creating knowledge is not merely a matter of steady accumulation, not a slowly-but-surely-emerging picture of facts nicely assembled through the efforts of scholars and thinkers in a neat fashion. As Thomas Kuhn has famously argued, knowledge sometimes undergoes bitter "revolutions" in which the dominant views of one school of thought are overturned through debate or the death of the old school. In this way, knowledge-construction is not steady, but violent, and the dominant knowledge-construct (or "paradigm") changes like a political regime. This view is not by any means the final statement on the matter, but it has much to commend it in several contexts. (It was in science that Kuhn identified these paradigm shifts in knowledge.)

Whichever view you take of knowledge-construction, you must recognize that each scholar is limited through his or her own education, experience, and bias. As such, no single human being, no matter his or her list of impressive credentials, can be seen as the final voice on any given subject. Instead, those with expertise within their field (or even those outside it) can be looked to for information on how to interpret a given problem that has emerged for the scholastic community. Therefore, any scholar who wishes to undertake offering an insight would best approach this through recognizing (1) his or her own limitations and (2) those of other scholars. Ideally, scholarship should not be an ego-driven enterprise. Because perspectives are limited by time, place, and experience, it is almost certain that, even if a scholar is deemed to have "gotten it right" by the larger community, there will always be more to say on the subject as other scholars revisit the subject.

Because scholarly knowledge takes place within a community, knowledge takes place by consensus. Minority voices have the potential to win the majority, but it must be done according to the community standards. So long as a view is held in the minority, it will be marginalized and seen to be "out of fashion" or "incorrect." However, through persistence and continued research, marginal views can emerge as dominant and thus drive the community's thought on a given issue.

Ideally, knowledge-construction is driven by the desire for accuracy and "truest" representation of the facts. "Pictures" (or theoretical models) of the problem or issue are seen as human construction, and with the emerging of new information, it is possible for theoretical models to be modified or thrown out in exchange for those which seem to work "better." Of course, the question is never seen as finally answered, since it is always possible for more information and another perspective to emerge which gives us a different perspective on what "the whole picture" really looks like. For that reason, knowledge gained through research is seen as provisional—not what we "know" but what we "know right now."

Logos in Real Research

Limitation of knowledge is directly related to the kind of discourse used in real research. In research, again, the final word has not been said (and will never be said). As such, research is not seen as the academy's repository for absolute knowledge. Absolutist, once-for-all statements are seen as philosophically inimical to the community's enterprise of knowledge-construction. It is seen as arrogance and presumption to say "this is how it should be seen, once and for all," because, theoretically, new information could always come to the fore and send theoreticians and researchers "back to the drawing board." For this kind of situation, the discourse used is that of logos, which has been described for some of its characteristics in the first blog, "By Way of Review: Discourse Communities Lesson." For a more full explanation of logos, I turn now to Karen Armstrong, who describes it in this way:

"Logos [is] the rational, pragmatic, and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world. [...] Logos must relate exactly to facts and correspond to external realities if it is to be effective. It must work efficiently in the mundane world. We use this logical, discursive reasoning when we have to make things happen, get something done, or persuade other people to adopt a particular course of action. Logos is practical. Unlike myth, which looks back to the beginnings and to the foundations, logos forges ahead and tries to find something new: to elaborate on old insights, achieve a greater control over our environment, discover something fresh, and invent something novel" (xiv-xv).

In the academy, it is now considered a problematic statement that logos should "relate exactly to facts" since even "facts" now are considered, to some extent, to be human constructions and already interpreted. Therefore, it is now considered more proper to speak of logos relating to the facts as far as we can tell, while allowing that more information may possibly modify or overturn our current understanding. Given this view of knowledge, the research/knowledge-constructing task of the academy will carry on indefinitely, with no end in sight to the proliferation of ideas, insights, and new arguments. The ancient Hebrew philosopher Qoheleth's words "of the making of books there is no end" come to mind. Because of the limitations of logos, and because of the academy's insistence on its use to the exclusion of other discourses, the search for new insight or fresh takes on old research will continue.

How This Applies to You

The question of real, original research and its embeddedness in logical discourse then confronts you as you take on your research projects. For your papers, you must remember that the information you find for your papers must be itself anchored primarily in scholarly, logical discourse, since it is from this material that you will build your own arguments. Furthermore, your insights and arguments—in other words, what you conclude from your research—must not be found within previous scholarship. If what you offer is available someplace else, then you have not carried on the work of the scholar. I repeat: if what you offer is available someplace else, then you have not carried out the work of the scholar. While a "review of the literature" may be for some of you a very important component of your research projects, your papers must ultimately go beyond prior research and add to the scholarly community's understanding of the subject. In the realm of scholarship, no peer-reviewed journal would accept a submitted article whose topic had been covered and argued for in exactly the same way either in the same journal or in another journal. Due to the nature of the research project, information must be new and up-to-date—not seen before.

So, when you are writing your papers, ask yourself whether you are merely regurgitating previously stated information (reporting) or whether you are offering a new insight into a subject. As I see it, the difference between regurgitation and presenting an original argument lies at the bottom of the paper itself, in what we're calling the "research question," that is, what it is you are endeavoring to find out. If, when undertaking a research project, you are looking to find out "what's new" in a given area, that will involve, as stated previously, reading up on what experts have said about it. But, if you are going to say anything new about it and not merely report what has been said, you are going to have to step up to the plate as an expert yourself. While I realize you are undergraduate students still working on a degree, to be a scholar means to be both interested and involved in the discourse of a given subject—you know a thing or two about it. As such, you can offer your own assessments of the information.

Regurgitation amounts to little more than reporting what others have said without any judgment on what they have said or any original findings of your own. Again, your paper is going to have to be anchored in scholarly discourse, which means there will be the element of reporting what others have said (these skills we dealt with in the overview paper).

There are a few ways of going beyond regurgitation:

1. Evaluation of previous scholarship. Not only do you state what a person says, but you go beyond the surface, beyond face value. You examine whether the premises are valid. At this point, you are free to bring in information from other scholarship or bring your own arguments to bear. This is generating new knowledge.
2. Synthesizing previous scholarship. Somewhat related to evaluation, you take the valid premises—those that have passed your scrutiny—and bring them together to form a more complete picture. Yes, you are using others as a basis, but through your synthesis, you have created something that paints a more complete picture of the issue. In this way, new knowledge is also generated.
3. Original observation. This is where you venture off into completely new territory. When taking this approach, you may involve yourself in all kinds of observation and direct study. This could involve surveys, questionnaires, interviews, and other forms of direct observation. Sometimes, this may involve viewing different forms of media and writing your assessment of them. For this kind of project, the empirical paper works well (see previous blog, "The Empirical Paper"). Of course, not all original observation has to be fitted to the empirical paper format. Sometimes, your original observations will be better suited to the theoretical paper, where you will be driving your paper by theory rather than data (the province of the empirical paper).
   

A good way to determine whether a paper is substantially original or substantially unoriginal is to look at how much it makes use of scholarly sources. How much of the stuff is summary, paraphrase, and/or direct quotation? If the paper is merely a stringing together of secondary sources, then no new knowledge has been substantially generated. Some synthesis has occurred, but not enough to justify reading your paper over just reading the sources referenced themselves. If, on the other hand, a paper involves more discussion of previous findings than it does reporting them, then it's likely you have a paper that, in the discussion process, is generating new knowledge. Remember, as your paper enters the discourse, it too is supposed to rank among other sources. Therefore, your paper should contain sufficient discussion and/or other reported information that does not originate in other sources. So, in theory, other authors should be able to reference your source by saying, "As (Your name here) argues, '...'" (5). If all you did was present outside information and none of your own assessment, discussion, or original findings, there'd be no point in referencing you at all. And, if there's no point in referencing you for scholarly purposes, then there's no point in reading you for scholarly purposes, either.

So, when it's all said and done, could your paper be a source on the topic you are covering? Does it have an original point to make which is at the center of its purpose, thereby making it a legitimate specimen of scholarly discourse? If so, congratulations: you're doing real research. If not, then you need to go back and examine just what your research question is and then modify it until you seek to answer a question in a way that has not been previously answered.

Work Cited

Armstrong, Karen. The Battle for God. New York: Knopf, 2000.

The Empirical Paper

Some of you have been coming to me with topics which would accomodate further research but which seem in the literature you are uncovering to offer little that would lend itself to a paper based on real, original inquiry. In such instances, it may prove helpful to explore your topic through what is called an empirical paper, that is, a paper based on direct observation of a specific case. As such, your paper can also be termed a case study paper.

Kairos for an Empirical (Case Study) Paper

Shortly stated, the purpose of the empirical case study is to test a theory concerning a problem found in previous literature through direct observation of a specific case. The data you uncover will form the basis of your paper; the empirical paper is, therefore, a data-driven paper, one which thrives on information gathered through direct observation and which reports and then interprets that data.

The reason for hunting out this data in the first place is, as mentioned above, to test prior theories explaining certain phenomena. As often happens with theories, they can explain and/or predict many cases based on observation and generalization, but they are (as all human constructions are) limited in their scope, accuracy, and/or applicability. The job of the empirical paper is to assemble and organize data from the "nitty-gritty" of everyday life or from controlled experiments and subject it to comparison and analysis in light of a previous theory. Should the paper reveal that the theory does in fact hold up in this instance, then the scholarly community will be benefited knowing that the theory applies in situations not addressed by it. Should, however, the data call the theory into question, then the scholarly community will be benefited as well by having to go about the business of revising previous models for explaining phenomena in order to make those models more effective. If the paper finds that such revision is in order, it will state as much and point the scholarly community in that direction through a discussion of that data.

Structure of the Empirical Paper

The structure of the empirical paper is divided into four (4) main sections. First, of course, is the introduction, in which previous theoretical statements on the given topic are overviewed. Here, the limits of these statements will be shown, and the paper will legitimate its own place in the discourse through a statement of research questions not addressed by prior research. These questions will be answered as the paper moves along.

Secondly is the methodology section, in which the paper offers a glimpse into its own making. The empirical paper is a very "self-revealing" and transparent genre because the rhetorical situation (kairos) for which it is designed. Generally, the empirical paper finds itself in the context of the sciences—both "hard" sciences like biology and chemistry and "soft" sciences like sociology and psychology—in which researchers satisfy the demands of their research communities that they be forthcoming about how they reach their conclusions (e.g., what tests/experiments were conducted, how survey answers were gathered, etc.). For many papers, this section will be the shortest unless the research method involves a high level of complexity, calling for a high level of textual specificity.

Next comes the results section. Here is where the data gathered from the empirical observation (the "footwork" of the research project) is assembled and organized. The data will be so arranged as to answer the research questions named in the introduction. The data will also be described in scrupulous detail, but it will not be accompanied by commentary, which comes last.

The discussion section is the final portion of the paper. It is also the most important part of the paper since it is here that the findings of the results section are interpreted in light of previous literature. Whether the theory holds up or fails in new contexts will be gone into at some length. Here, the researcher is free to speculate and theorize about why the findings turned up as they did. As this section is the most important, it will also need to be the most developed.

Sample Paper

For a sample paper of this genre, click the following link:

http://www.tarleton.edu/~popken/13nursing.html

Organization and Rhetorical Moves

Organization of discourse occurs on many levels. Broadly speaking, we could say this happens on macro levels and micro levels, or what we've referred to earlier in this course as "global" and "local" areas of discourse. Organization belongs to that "rule" or canon of rhetoric known as arrangment, which means, as you might expect, where you put all the stuff you've come up with to make this discussion in the first place. Rhetorical scholars Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg define arrangement in this way: "the organization of the parts of a [discourse] to ensure that all the means of persuasion are present and properly disposed" (3, emphasis added). It's one thing to have all of your useful information before you; it is quite another to make sure that it is placed in such a way as to make its presentation rhetorically effective. Indeed, how one arranges and organizes one's content (the "stuff" your paper is about) can have great persuasive potential. If you are building an argument with many facets, for example, you would be making those presentations the clearest (and therefore more compelling) if you deal with each aspect in turn rather than in a hodgepodge fashion. Separating and classifying information in this way is one way in which material is organized for effective communication. Indeed, all organization might boil down to this question: when should information be dealt with separately, and when should it be handled together?

Rhetorical Moves

We would do well to speak of organization with reference to what we've called rhetorical moves; basically, rhetorical moves (or "maneuvers") are those ways in which we "move" through our discourse in order to achieve our rhetorical goal. It is what we "do" from place to place in our discourse, thought of in terms of strategic motion. So conceived, we have to think of discourse as having a point A and a point B, point A being raising the issue and point B being arriving at a conclusion. Of course, there is an entire range of possible "routes" we might take from those two points, but whatever way we choose, each "move" must serve the purpose of "taking us there."

Like organization, rhetorical moves takes place on many levels—macro and micro, global and local. Not to overstate the case, an entire paper can constitute one large rhetorical move, say, to argue for one position on a controversial issue. Breaking up a paper into larger sections, we could equate each section with a rhetorical move: to establish relevant background, to make and defend claims, to depart from the discussion with closing remarks (=introduction, discussion section, conclusion). Still more locally, we could speak of the rhetorical moves in a section, or even with paragraphs and sentences. Such localized rhetorical moves could be things like making a thesis statement, establishing credibility, refuting an opposing claim, providing examples, introducing an expert, citing a source, preparing a reader for upcoming content, defining a specialized term, etc., etc. What we have then are global and local rhetorical moves, and moves within moves within moves. All discourses can be examined along these lines (even this one).

Organization and rhetorical moves go hand in hand. How one organizes a paper is inextricably linked to the rhetorical moves one uses to reach the rhetorical goal. When you are considering how to organize your paper, ask yourself: "What is it that I want to do here? How do I need to proceed, and what rhetorical moves would best accomplish my goals?"

Organization at Different Levels of Localization

When considering organizing your paper, consider the following strategies for creating organization, beginning with the global levels and working down to the local levels.

[Global]

Discussion Sections. Consider using topical headings to separate sections. You may find that this gives your paper a more readily discernible structure and helps you compose your paper in manageable portions.

Paragraphs. Make use of topic sentences, or sentences in which the "basic idea" of a paragraph is contained. Then, as always, take the time to unfold sub-topics.

Sentences. Here is the place to begin establishing broader claims by making more specific claims. Again, the macro-micro nature of discourse is illustrated here.

Phrases. Phrases, of course, constitute sentences and are the locus for even more specific data and information.

Words. As a self-conscious communicator, every word should be precious to you. Every word is there because it serves the overall purpose of the paper. Sometimes, should you choose to quote an expert's word in isolation can have the effect of creating emphasis, and can jar a reader out of complacency or rekindle interest. Whether you choose another's words or your own, however, the rule remains the same: the smallest word is placed just so (i.e., is organized) to serve the rhetorical agenda. There are no "throw-away" words.

[Local]

As mentioned in two previous blogs ("On Metadiscourse" and "More Metadiscourse"), using various kinds of metadiscursive cues are effective ways of organizing discourse. Metadiscursive cues are versatile in that they can help control rhetorical moves at virtually any level, macro or micro. They can help to introduce larger sections, or they can help to establish sentence-to-sentence or phrase-to-phrase connections. As such, they are invaluable tools for organization. Sometimes, they make the rhetorical moves explicit rather than implied (e.g., "To state this another way," "It is first important to examine," etc.)

Other Places to Look

As you know, any sample research paper in either The Tarleton Writer, Research Writing Simplified, or those scholarly papers you are using as sources may also serve as potential models for organization. Note how the authors use the various possible techniques and rhetorical moves mentioned above. Note how their organizational strategies are effective. Why did they structure their respective arguments as they did? Would other ways have been as effective? As an unfamiliar academic reader yourself, did you feel the organization was a help rather than a hindrance to your information-gathering?

Academic Titles

One seemingly minor but actually quite telling indicator of a writer's grasp of academic discourse is how the writer creates a title. For many first-year students of writing, the purpose of the title of an academic paper is not well understood. Often, students will entitle their papers with clever phrases that do not reflect the specific content of the paper, or they will simply write "Assignment 1" or "Essay" at the top of their papers. While these titles may suffice for mere classroom exercises, they do not take on the quality of a title meant for the context of real research. For real research, titles must, as hinted above, reflect the specific content of the paper. As with all other elements of your papers, your title must serve the larger purpose of research. When scholars go on the hunt for material they can use for their own projects (whether through databases, tables of contents, or other means), they expect to find titles at a glance which clearly and effectively alert them to the specific focus of that work. Because research is often a demanding undertaking, efficiency is key in directing readers toward desirable material. Through an aptly worded, well-constructed title, you do your reader a service in that process of sifting through mountains of academic discourse.

Academic titles have one essential element: signification of specific content. This cannot be overemphasized. Whether the title is two words or ten, the sine qua non is always this. What this rules out then is any title which goes for cleverness at the expense of clarity. As with all elements of academic discourse, the title must therefore shun ambiguity in favor of directness. Academic audiences aren't looking for "catchy" titles, usually; as you are dealing with scholars, the fact that the paper's title clearly signifies content which will prove useful for their research will be "catchy" enough.

This is not to say that academic titles cannot be clever or have elements of the provocative; indeed, they can, and many do. However, signifying specific content is always primary; provocativeness or cleverness is always secondary. Often, these two elements are separated by a colon (:) whose purpose is to effectively create a title-and-subtitle structure, generally with the latter half of the title explaining the former. As is often the case, the clever or provocative element in the title will precede the signification of specific content, the latter of which is written in a more dull prose than the former (giving it that characteristically "dry" quality inherent in most academic prose). Here then is a diagram for a common structure of academic titles:

clever/provocative phrase: signification of specific paper content in prosaic language

This is not the only possible structure for academic titles, but it is, again, a common one. Other structures are predicated on what we could call a noun or noun phrase A as noun or noun phrase B structure. This also quite common construction is most often used in papers which advance seeing an old, familiar concept in terms of a concept in which it has not been hitherto conceived. The title "Fossil Bones as Medicine" follows this structure. Somewhat differently, the title "Augustine as Client and as Theorist" uses this construction, but here there is a noun C as well as a noun B.

Some more examples

Here are a series of titles from various disciplines.

Agriculture

"Guardians of the Horse: Past, Present, and Future"

History

"Catalysing Events, Think Tanks, and American Foreign Policy Shifts: A Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Pearl Harbor 1941 and 11 September 2001."

"Pearl Harbor: Who Deceived Whom?"

Literature

"Puzzling Out the Graced Ocassions: An Interview with Ron Hansen"

"'O let my books be ... dumb presagers': Poetry and Theater in Shakespeare's Sonnets"

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Agenda: How Shakespeare and the Renaissance are Taking the Rage out of Feminism"

Nursing

"A Pluralistic Approach to Resident Centered Care"

"Applications of Principles of Evidence-Based Medicine to Occlusal Treatment for Temporomandibular Disorders: Are There Lessons to be Learned?"

Other remarks

By no means do these examples or explanations cover all possible ways to create academic titles. However, these do offer a fair sampling of the kinds of titles you will be expected to construct for your own papers in this research course. The thing to remember is that, above all, the title must signify specific content and be writtten in an academic register.