Your Argument's Pay-Off: It is not enough just to have an argument. A paper must have an argument, sure, but it must also articulate the implications of that argument. Don't allow your argument to be free-floating intelligence. Your argument must have a pay-off. Ask yourself, “So what? Who cares? Why does it matter? What does this change?”

Thesis : Argument :: Stakes : Implications: Just as your introduction has a short thesis statement that serves as a snapshot of your argument, your introduction should have a short statement of what’s at stake that serves as a snapshot of your implications. This statement of what’s at stake should identify the academic field to which your argument is making a contribution. You shouldn’t state the pay-off of your argument explicitly in the introduction, but you should establish that there will be a pay-off and identify the area of inquiry in which that pay-off will occur.

Against Moralistic Implications: Traditionally, the introduction of a paper is where a writer identifies the topic to be discussed and its need for interpretation, the body where he or she presents that interpretation, and the conclusion where he or she considers the implications and importance of the argument that has been presented. Sometimes, as soon as students hear that they should discuss the implications and importance of their argument, they feel as though they must transform themselves into the insufferable little moralistic cretins we all know and despise.

Against Hourglass Organization: “And if you'd just listen to me, you, and the rest of humanity, might actually have a chance” is the idea – not the exact words, but the sentiment – often found at the end of student papers. Many students seem to believe that it is their duty to save the world with each paper they write. Thus they conclude their papers as they began them, in the most general, abstract, and moralistic way possible, marking the completion of the “hourglass organization” of a paper. In “hourglass organization,” a paper begins in its introduction as abstractly as possible (e.g., “Since the beginning of time, humanity has struggled with crime”), then focuses in on the specific issue at hand for the body of the paper, and then concludes by returning to the abstract.

Make Implications Academic and Specific: When articulating your implications, be aware of certain traps that are off-putting to most readers. Don’t make any sort of claim to have made the world a better place or to have made your reader a better person. Instead, explain how your ideas are useful to a specific audience whose professional goals are to understand fully and completely a certain field, issue, and/or text.

Don't Over-Exagerate: The most common error student writers make in their conclusions is to over-exaggerate the importance of their arguments. They do so by feeling as though their ideas must have “real world consequences” or “major policy implications.” Practical consequences and policy implications are not, as a rule, bad things, but when the turn to public consequentiality occurs, a writer is no longer being academic; he or she is being polemical. In other words, the distinct privilege and duty of academic inquiry is a detached examination of the information that usually flies at us so rapidly that we – in our need to make a decision, cast a vote, go on with our lives – do not see the world as it truly is, only as we experience it from our hopelessly situated positions in life.

Pursuing Truth in Implications: The purpose of academic inquiry is not to make the world a better place. If the world is improved by our academic investigations, that is wonderful, but when this happens it happens because an academic investigation has unearthed some element of truth. As they say, “the truth will set you free.” No one says, “Gathering just enough evidence to assemble a shaky argument and then concluding by overstating the implications and importance of your argument will set you free.”

Academic Implications: In other words, your conclusion is the place to address the implications and importance of your argument, yes, but your conclusion should be addressed not too human beings per se but to academics who are working in a distinct scholarly field. The importance and implications of your argument are not its importance and implications for the world but its importance and implications for the specific field of academic knowledge to which it makes a contribution.

Specific Implications: Identify to whom your argument is relevant and valuable, not by saying something awkward like, “My argument is relevant and valuable to psychologists because …,” but by describing the specific concerns and approaches within a field to which your argument makes some sort of contribution and then ruminating or speculating on what the future directions of these concerns and approaches might or should be.

Implications as Aides for Professional Goals: At the end of your papers, ask yourself how your argument contributes to the professional goals of, for example, a literary critic or a criminologist or a historian of the Maori culture in New Zealand. Those professional goals are always the same no matter what discipline an academic works in: a complete and accurate understanding of the field. Explain how the field to which you are writing might look different after your argument, or how the practitioners of an academic discipline might think about their field differently if they accept your claims. Your conclusion should address what your argument changes, not for the entire world, but for the relatively small number of people who have devoted their professional lives to understanding and explaining a narrowly defined set of phenomena.

First Figure Out the Field of Implications: To figure out your original contribution to an academic conversation, first figure out the academic conversation to which you have a contribution to make. For example, if you write a paper about Such Tweet Sorrow, the Twitter adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, you might be making a contribution to “Shakespeare studies” (in which case the genius and importance of Shakespeare’s original play takes center stage in your argument) ,”performance studies” (in which case the innovations of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the authors of Such Tweet Sorrow, take center stage), or “digital studies” (in which case the emergent platform of Twitter takes center stage). First figure out the field to which your argument has the greatest contribution to make; then discuss the importance and implications of your argument in the context of the concerns and commitments of that specific field.

Implications as Areas for Future Research: A surefire way to articulate the implications of your argument is to identify the areas in which future research will be needed. Your argument hopefully clarified certain questions pertaining to a problem, but, even after this clarity has come, certain questions will remain. What are those questions? You cannot just say that “further research is needed on this important topic”; you need to specify the certainties we now have thanks to your argument and the uncertainties that remain.

Implications as Another Turn of the Screw: Another good technique for a conclusion is to provide “another turn of the screw.” That is, just when your reader thought you’d taken your argument to its fullest extent, you show how there is some twist in the text or how your argument has some surprising consequences and implications for how we understand the text(s) you’re dealing with and/or the field you’re working in.

Theorization in Implications: One way to articulate your implications is to theorize your argument, to produce an abstract concept that has the potential to explain additional texts even beyond those that you’ve explicitly addressed. For example, let’s say you advance an argument that both Arthur Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet and William Shakepseare’s Romeo and Juliet are tragedies, but Brooke’s poem emphasizes the moral faults of the lovers, while Shakespeare’s play emphasizes the inescapably hostile feud between the families; your conclusion might theorize two models of tragedy – namely, the tragedy of error, and the tragedy of fate – which could be used as an analytic to consider additional tragedies beyond the Romeo and Juliet myth.

Stay Specific with Implications: Just as I prefer to begin papers not with the hyper-general but with the hyper-specific, I prefer to end papers not with the hyper-general but with the hyper-specific. That is, just as you can use an exemplar to get your reader straight into the issue at hand in the introduction of your paper, you can use an exemplar to send your reader on his or her way in your conclusion. In fact, I will sometimes return in my conclusion to the statistic or story I offered in my opening exemplar to ask how that information is changed – how it might have happened differently, or how it appears in a different light – based on the argument I have offered in the paper now ending.

Close Reading and Theorization: If you're doing a single-source analysis, your implications are likely to take one of two forms - a close reading or a theorization.

A Close Reading: A close reading unpacks some small aspect of your text in an effort to enhance our understanding of the totality of the document or phenomenon to which it belongs. 

A Theorization: A Theorization unpacks something about your text in an effort to comment on some idea or issue outside of the document or phenomenon to which it belongs.

Close Reading vs. Theorization: Let's imagine you're arguing this thesis: "Honor is tragic in Hamlet. For Hamlet and Laertes, the quest to preserve the respect for their names results in catastrophe for themselves, their families, and the nation." A close reading could conclude: "The catastrophe in Hamlet does not come about due to some individual flaw or mistake, as happens in most classical tragedy. By making the culture of honor the cause of catastrophe in Hamlet, Shakespeare shifted the site of the tragic flaw from the individual to the culture." In contrast, a theorization could conclude: "Taken in the context of the Honor Code at Harvard, Shakespeare’s treatment of honor as tragic in Hamlet allows us to theorize the difference between two different kinds of honor: heroic honor and tragic honor."

Brainstorming Implications: Does your argument suggest something about: 

• Larger themes/questions in your text?
• The way the author worked?
• What the author seems to have thought?
• How the text should be viewed today?
• Life today (which is very different than offering “life lessons”)?
• The best way to understand some modern idea or current event?    

Strategies for Implications: Some strategies for conclusions (don’t try to do all or even more than one; pick a single approach and develop it in depth).:

• What are the policy implications that follow—i.e., how some institution should enact rules?
• Are there common misconceptions that your argument challenges?
• What are the lingering questions that need further thought or research?
• Are you able to theorize outward? To create a model for evidence you haven’t analyzed in depth?
• Can you offer a concluding example that “brings it home” in a concrete way?
• Is there another turn of the screw in your argument that might surprise readers?
• Does your argument allow you to predict the future?

Structuring Implications: What follows is a model for a four-paragraph conclusion.

1. Argument Paragraph

• Counter-Argument
• Response
• Argument Statement

2. What’s at Stake Paragraph

• Method / Text for the Conclusion
• Question/Problem for the Conclusion

3. Literature Review for the Conclusion

4. Implications Paragraph 1: The Idea

• Implications

5. Implications Paragraph 2: The Examples

• Implications