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hello welcome to the fourth vidcast in the purdue writing labs introduction to graduate writing series today we are going to talk about how writing is discipline specific sometimes when we think about writing we think about the things that seem the same no matter what we are writing grammatical sentences paragraph divisions etc it's true that many aspects of good writing transfer between different genres and audiences it's also true that different academic disciplines approach good writing in different ways today we are going to look briefly at the context of graduate writing and then focus on how you can go about identifying what some of those disciplinary differences are when we think of undergraduate writing assignments we often think of course papers or presentations or maybe lab reports however research has shown that for many students undergraduate writing assignments primarily involve short answer exams check out the citation for more information on this research in addition the audience for such assignments is usually the examiner the professor and the purpose of the assignment is for the student to prove acquisition of knowledge if you've already watched our first vidcast writing is a scholarly conversation you can probably see where i'm going with this in comparison to graduate writing undergraduate writing tends to be limited a limited number of assignments in limited genres of a limited length for a limited audience and a limited purpose written over a limited time in contrast graduate school involves almost continuous writing in a wide range of genres the table on the slide divides up some of the most common forms of graduate writing into four categories academic writing scholarly writing professional writing and job market writing the table is adapted from material presented by christine feek a writing scholar and is available in this format in the writing labs faculty guide for working with graduate writers you can see that as a graduate student you'll be doing quite a bit more writing than most undergraduates and you'll be writing in more genres the projects will be longer in length and often written over a longer time period the audience may include the general public as when you write a newsletter entry scholars generally as when you write a grant application and scholars within your particular field as when you write a dissertation in many cases the purpose will be to join the scholarly conversation of your field as we talked about in our first vidcast which means you won't just be proving mastery of the material you'll be contributing something new in order to be successful in joining the conversation and in writing all these varied documents you'll need an understanding of how writing works within your discipline specifically in order to understand how writing works within your discipline you'll also need to become aware of what your discipline values one of the reasons why different disciplines have different writing conventions is because what they value in research differs for instance stem fields tend to value recency consider for instance research on something like electric cars using outdated information would be unlikely to produce a safer or more efficient car valuing recency can often be seen in citation styles which tend to foreground dates contrast this with the citation styles favored by the humanities which tend to foreground author names instead another value might be authorship humanities tend to value authorship so single authorship of monographs is still quite common in the humanities stem and social sciences fields are more likely to prefer co-authorship and publishing in journals or conference proceedings rather than books as one example of how an emphasis on authorship plays out in writing consider the humanity's emphasis on the use of active rather than passive voice and the prevalence of first-person pronoun usage as a starting point to understanding disciplinary conventions for your field you'll want to learn what your field values if you don't already know that information pause to think about these questions what does your field value and how does it play out in writing if you can't immediately answer these questions identify who you might approach for a conversation about them what questions will you ask of that person pause the vidcast for 10 minutes to jot down your thoughts welcome back the rest of our vidcast will look at how you can become familiar with the disciplinary conventions of your field and we'll suggest what those might look like at the document paragraph and sentence level before we dive into methods for identifying disciplinary conventions i want to note one very important piece of information disciplinary conventions can change over time this is not a circumstance where you can just memorize a list of conventions and you'll be good to go for the length of your scholarly career the strategies suggested here today can be applied throughout your entire writing life as a way to keep tabs on shifts and conventions in your field the first place to start when thinking about disciplinary conventions is to focus on clear writing generally most disciplines value clear writing and the things that make writing clear tend to be similar across fields gopin and swans the science of scientific writing is an excellent place to start even if you are not writing in the sciences the article provides a crash course in things like reader expectation and the natural stress positions of english sentences and it offers a short list of structural principles that help with clarity if you want to go further this might be a topic to discuss with a writing center consultant or with someone in your institution's english department remember the social aspect of writing that we talked about in an earlier vidcast includes talking about writing as writing the second place to look for disciplinary conventions is the submission guidelines pages of journals that you are likely to submit your work to sometimes these pages will say something like use apa style but more often there will be some amount of journal specific information about the writing or formatting of the piece comparing these guidelines across journals within your field can be a good way to determine what the field currently values especially if you find that multiple journals are requesting the same things the third place to look for conventions is in style guides themselves most fields prefer a limited number of citation styles writers in the english department for instance probably never use the american chemical society style guide while chemists likely don't use mla format what you might not yet know is that these style guides often include more than just reference page format style guides include information about how to write in a particular style the apa guide for instance includes information about bias-free language and guidance on tone as well as information on using headings figures and tables the fourth place to look for conventions is in model texts locate some current published pieces in your field that are well written and use those as a model for your own work you may want to check with several disciplinary insiders to identify texts that combine both excellent scholarship and excellent writing unfortunately being published doesn't automatically mean a particular piece was also well written before we talk about how to make use of those model texts i want to repeat my initial point about identifying disciplinary conventions disciplinary conventions can change over time paying attention to genre conventions is something you'll do continually throughout your career as a scholar using model texts to identify disciplinary writing conventions is called genre analysis you might also think of it as a form of reverse engineering you take an existing sample of the genre in question a grant proposal for instance and you analyze it to see what features are necessary in order for a text to be considered that particular genre genre analysis can be a useful tool anytime you are tasked with writing an unfamiliar document but it can also be a good way to pay attention to shifts in disciplinary conventions even in the genres with which you are very familiar in a genre analysis you are looking at what the writer is doing as well as what the writer is saying saying is the content doing is how the content is communicated readers are familiar with looking at content when they read so you'll need to pay more attention to the doing to how that content is communicated when you conduct a genre analysis for instance in a certain paragraph is the author defining terms stating a gap setting a context a thorough genre analysis of a model text requires that you consider these aspects of doing and saying at the document level the paragraph level and the sentence level for instance at the document level you might investigate whether or not the model text uses headers or sub-headers at the paragraph level you might determine customary paragraph length or use of topic in transition sentences at the sentence level you might notice things like verb tense or use of passive voice as you go through a document you'll also want to be sure to pay attention to both rhetorical and sentence level aspects of the text for example at the rhetorical or global level how does the writer indicate purpose or identify the gap that will be addressed what evidence is used and how is it used at the sentence level are direct quotations used to what degree does the writer hedge claims about the results if you would like more information on a genre analysis generally you might check out the intensive writing experience for thesis and dissertation writers material on the purdue owl in addition the handout entitled quick tips for revising your writing provides revision questions that can also be used to conduct a partial genre analysis of the text and the handout entitled questions for conducting genre analysis provides a starting list of rhetorical and sentence level aspects of writing that you might focus on for the next few slides we'll discuss more information about disciplinary conventions at the document the paragraph and the sentence levels the information presented there will help you think about aspects of writing that you might pay attention to when conducting a genre analysis of a model text but note that this material is not meant to be a comprehensive list disciplinary conventions at the document level include such aspects of writing as amount of background material that needs to be included overall length of the document citation style and organization and format we've talked a bit about some of this already at this point you might be wishing i could just direct you to a list of the conventions for your particular field let me give you an example of why that is difficult one objection that is sometimes made about graduate writing is that the writer got stuck in storytelling mode using simple chronology as a way to explain the research first this then this then that scholarly writing requires that the writer shape the material writers need to organize it according to the expectations of those who are participating in the particular scholarly conversation for instance fields in stem and social sciences tend to use the imrad format for their research articles imrad stands for introduction methods results and discussion and you may remember having seen such headers if you've read articles in a stem or social sciences field despite the prevalence of this format however theoretical pieces in these fields may not possess all of these sections or even any of them and jin lee and son found that economics articles in particular often have six additional sections so while something like imrad might be a starting point for an organizational structure you'll want to conduct some genre analysis in your own field to find out just what exactly the expectations are in your field remember the examples provided are not meant to be a complete listing of document level conventions they are simply examples to help you understand the wide array of disciplinary conventions that might be possible because these are often unstated and untaught and as i've said before remember that conventions can change over time when you are looking for disciplinary conventions at the paragraph level you may find yourself investigating things like whether when or how to use definitions for organizing your material should you use transition sentences to connect paragraphs or will subheaders be sufficient signposts for readers and how many examples are necessary to make a point these are the types of writing conventions that might vary by discipline at the paragraph level let me give you an example of how this can work in actual practice you were probably taught somewhere along the way that a paragraph needs to have a topic sentence this seems like something that should apply pretty commonly across disciplines right but what if you are writing a literature review one of the most citation-dense sections of many papers can a sentence be a topic sentence if it has a citation in it or do you need a separate topic sentence that is your own idea before diving into all of the literature this question arose during a writing group that included both social science writers and humanities writers the humanities group thought the topic sentences should belong to the writer not the literature and as such should not be information that needed to be cited the social scientists were sure they had seen this use of citations in topic sentences in published articles in their fields again as i mentioned previously the list here is not meant to be a complete list of all paragraph level disciplinary conventions but it gives you an idea of the types of things that might vary by discipline at the paragraph level you'll want to use genre analysis and perhaps in conversations about writing as writing to identify conventions for your own field disciplinary conventions at the sentence level include parts of writing that we often think of addressing during a final proofreading such as vocabulary or grammar for instance does your field allow the use of first-person pronouns and if so should they be the singular i or the plural we is passive voice tolerated encouraged or reviled should literature from the field be referred to in the present or past tense you may also want to take a look at sentence structure to determine whether particular sentence types simple complex compound are tolerated or preferred or relegated to only certain portions of the document there may be a preference for sentences of a certain length or a tendency to avoid certain punctuation such as dashes at the sentence level you'll likely also want to consider more rhetorical aspects of writing such as hedging if you aren't familiar with hedging consider my last sentence you'll likely want to consider i didn't say you will want to or you should or you must that word likely is a hedge it softened the force of what i was saying and left room for me to not be 100 certain while still being mostly certain other hedges include words like may or tend or even often in contrast to writers do this writers often do this leaves an opening for not all writers to do it all the time when you look at how your discipline hedges you'll want to pay attention to which things need to be hedged and to how strongly that hedging needs to be hedging too strongly is just as problematic within a discipline as not hedging strongly enough i want to end the sentence level portion of our talk with a few words about the frequently vilified passive voice passive voice occurs when the object of a verb is made into its subject the boy through the ball active voice ball is the object the ball was thrown passive voice the ball is now the subject it is entirely possible to have an active voice sentence that does not have a human in the subject position test files fractured under the extreme heat also active voice despite no human being in sight you can identify passive voice by looking for the inclusion of a to be verb with the main verb in our ball throwing example the the active through becomes the passive was thrown you can also look for it by adding the phrase by the noun after the verb the ball was thrown by the boy you cannot say test vial is fractured by the boy as a complete sentence which is a clue that the sentence is not a grammatical passive there are good reasons to use passive voice such as if the action is more important than the actor or in keeping with our topic today if your discipline prefers its use note that overuse of passive voice can result in lack of clarity but it is not the only cause of unclear prose so if you receive feedback telling you that you have too much passive voice you may need to consider revising more than your verbs since the underlying problem might just be lack of clarity generally rather than prevalence of grammatical passive voice specifically before we move on to our final topic i want to clarify one important point some of what we've been talking about here are issues of style rather than correctness style preference can vary by country discipline and even individual professor if a particular point of style is someone's pet peeve they may very well tell you it is incorrect or poor writing paying attention to writing as writing is one way you can identify whether a potential problem is an issue of correctness or simply a stylistic difference how you choose to address the problem might vary depending on the answer one aspect of writing that is often overlooked when we focus on rhetorical and sentence level issues is the aspect of voice if you think of verbal conversations you've participated in or even just overheard you'll likely be aware of how voice plays out verbally the conversation might be loud or soft the tone of voice might indicate humor or scorn the words chosen might be formal or informal etc a conversation that takes place in writing also possesses voice although it can be much trickier to identify exactly what qualities we are referring to when we speak of a writer's voice we talked in the writing is a conversation vidcast about writing being a scholarly conversation in order to participate in the conversation in your field you'll be developing a scholarly voice of your own and will need to become aware of how voice operates within your field of study because it can be difficult to identify exactly what makes a writer sound respected within a particular scholarly conversation this can be a good place to have verbal conversations with others in your field about writing as writing as we suggested in the writing as a social endeavor vidcast you might talk with disciplinary insiders about what it is that a writer does it causes the reader to hear that writer as a legitimate part of that particular scholarly conversation one aspect of writing that contributes to a scholarly voice is the degree of confidence that a writer displays note that both overconfidence and lack of confidence can result in the writer being perceived as not being a disciplinary insider the use of strategies like self-reference or metadiscourse where you talk about what you are doing in the writing with phrases such as we will explain or as explained in the previous section can vary by discipline expected or unexpected uses of these strategies can signal insider or outsider status to readers within the field as can degree and appropriateness of engagement with the literature it is important to note that readers may or may not realize that for instance your apparent overconfidence is the problem they are having with your text it may just think your writing is not very good as you work with model texts and conduct genre analyses you'll want to look for indicators of voice as well as other rhetorical or sentence level features you may also need to ask specifically about this in your verbal conversations about writing as writing what is considered a scholarly voice in this field and what are the qualities that produce that voice finally it is also important to note that i am not suggesting that your goal should be to sound exactly like everyone else who is writing within your field voice also has an individual component to it and your writing should be your own just be aware that if you have not mastered the disciplinary conventions of your field including voice you may not be considered a disciplinary insider for the purposes of publication you'll want to work with your mentors and perhaps a writing center consultant to find the necessary balance between maintaining your own voice including dialect and accent and writing for your particular scholarly audience who have certain expectations about what good writing is i've given you a lot to think about today and you may be wondering exactly where to start the slide offers a to-do list for tackling this topic in your own life you'll want to locate and review the material that we've talked about today and also plan conversations with others in your field the first step however is to make a plan for how you will tackle this to-do list who will you talk to where will you find the necessary information when will you do this pause the vidcast for 10 minutes to create a plan for learning about disciplinary conventions within your field welcome back as you continue on in your academic career remember that writing can be discipline specific you'll want to continue to notice various rhetorical and sentence level conventions in the scholarship you read so that you can apply those in your own writing where relevant paying careful attention to these features of writing during your own writing process and discussing them with others as part of the social aspect of writing will contribute to your ability to participate fully in the written conversation of your discipline thank you for joining me today if you are interested in more information about graduate writing check out the other vidcasts in the introduction to graduate writing series if you are further along in your program you might find our intensive writing experience for thesis and dissertation writers of use all materials for that program are available on the purdue owl happy writing everyone