Aphorisms on the Elements of Academic Argument

There are millions of academic books and articles out there. No one could possibly read them all. There are, however, only about 15 or so kinds of information that appear in an academic book or article. That is, the content of academic argumentation is infinite, but the form of academic argumentation is relatively routine and comprehensible. Study the kinds of academic information below, and you’ll be able to understand what happens in pretty much any book or article you read.

Study these categories of academic information so that you can recognize them as you’re reading articles and books, sure, but also so that you can implement them as you’re writing your own papers.

Text: The thing being interpreted. The text is the work, object, event, or topic being discussed, even if that work, object, event, or topic is not a book.

Author: Information a paper tells its readers about the biography of the person who wrote it; this information may help explain why this person is making the argument that he or she is making.

Question/Problem: The author’s motive for writing a paper, often framed as a difficult question that demands interpretation or an unresolved or incorrectly resolved question. In short, why a paper needs to be written.

Method: The interpretive strategy used by the author to interpret his or her text. Often where terminology is defined.

Thesis: The basic proposition of an interpretation. A snapshot of the argument.

Stakes: The larger conversations an argument is contributing to. The pay-off. The bigger picture. Actionable knowledge. A snapshot of the Implications.

Terminology: A word or phrase, often crucial to the author’s argument, that he or she takes special care to define or discuss. 

Assertion: A claim that has not yet been substantiated with evidence. The collection of an author’s assertions should logically produce his or her argument.

Evidence: The information—facts, examples, quotations, details, experiments, data, statistics—presented in support of an assertion. There are three kinds of evidence: textual, historical, and citational. Evidence always receives analysis.

Textual Evidence: Facts, examples, details, quotes, etc. drawn from the text, often followed by analysis.

Historical Evidence: Quotations and examples drawn from things that occurred prior to or roughly contemporaneously with the composition of the text. Like textual evidence, historical evidence is often followed by analysis.

Citational Evidence: The writers referred to by the author of an interpretation in order to aid his or her argument. There are three kinds of citational evidence: critical, historical, and theoretical.

Critical Citation: A reference to another writer who has interpreted the same text as the author; such writers will often be marshaled to support an analysis or argument or used as a counter that the author responds to.

Historical Citation: A reference to a writer who has interpreted the historical evidence relevant to the composition of a text. This group is often raised to demonstrate how a text is either paradigmatic or anomalous for its time.

Theoretical Citation: A reference to a writer whose ideas (often abstract or philosophical) are relevant to the interpretation of a text, even though that writer doesn’t directly discuss this particular text or its historical context.

Analysis: The interpretation of evidence, whether it’s textual, historical, or citational.

Counter/Response: Alternate evidenceanalysis, or argument (real or imagined) that an author must account for.

Argument: The main idea in an interpretation; its central claim about the text. The argument unpacks the thinking behind the thesis; it is also the logical conclusion of all the assertions. Sometimes an author will recap or summarize his or her argument (either the full argument or the argument up to that point) in brief.

Implications: Portable knowledge. The author’s statements of how his or her argument is useful or helpful for concerns beyond the narrowly defined text.

The text is the centerpiece of these categories of academic information. All other categories function in relation to what is defined as the text. Until you know what someone’s text is, you cannot know what his or her argument is, since the argument is about the text. Likewise, until you know what the text is, you cannot know whether a certain piece of evidence is “inside” or “outside” the text – e.g., is “textual evidence” or “historical evidence.”

In fact, depending on how broadly a text is defined, one person’s textual evidence could be another person’s historical evidence. These categories of academic information are not absolutes; they are a heuristic.

At the end of the day, therefore, it is probably not important whether a certain piece of information is, say, textual or historical evidence. What is important is that, in your reading and writing, you are conscious of the various kinds of academic information that can and should be indicated in a given piece of writing, and that you deliberately attend to the methods of persuasive argumentation.