Aphorisms on Structure for Theoretical Papers in the Social Sciences
The system of organization for theoretical papers in the social sciences that is outlined below includes four major sections: an introduction that identifies the topic of your paper and offers an argument about it, a body section that offers evidence and analysis to support your argument, a discussion section that considers the importance and implications of your argument, and a conclusion that summarizes the ideas presented in the paper.
Note that, because empirical and theoretical papers are significantly different in purpose and execution, they are also different in organization. That is, the organization that appears in empirical papers – Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion – does not apply to theoretical papers because empirical papers are about the presentation of new information, whereas theoretical papers are (usually) about the reinterpretation of already known information. For this reason, theoretical social science papers are somewhat similar to the kind of writing done in the humanities, but instead of, say, a literary text, the writer is interpreting a social event, trend, structure, or institution. There is no industry-standard organization for theoretical papers in the way that there is for empirical papers, but the sequence of Introduction, Body, Discussion, Conclusion covers most of the major conventions.
The organization outlined below can work for both short (e.g. five-page) and long (e.g. thirty-page) papers. In a short paper, you may have to move very quickly through the kinds of information I’ve outlined here, and you may not be able to include in your paper all of the points included in this outline.
No one will (I hope) ever hold up your paper next to this document and grade your organization against mine. Ultimately, you know your paper best, and you know how best to organize the material you need to present. At the same time, there are certain conventions that have emerged for theoretical papers in the social sciences that you would be wise to follow, and it is to those conventions that we now turn.
Title: Don’t try to be cute or funny in titles. Don’t ask questions in titles. Instead, your titles should identify your text (the idea, topic, situation, event, phenomenon, etc. under consideration), any key pieces of textual evidence (particular documents, aspects, cases, examples, data, or the like that you emphasize), and your argument (your central claim about your text).
Abstract: In about 150 words, give an overview of your paper, focusing on your text (what you’re interpreting), your occasion (why it needs interpretation), and your argument (the interpretation itself). Your abstract is not a part of your actual paper, so it is fine to copy language from the paper into the abstract.
Introduction: In advanced academic writing, it is not enough simply to have a good argument. In academic papers, that argument must be framed as it relates to the published scholarship on an issue, and this framing ought to occur in your introduction. At the very least, your introduction must articulate what you’re interpreting (your text), why it needs interpretation (your occasion), how you’re going to be interpreting it (your method), and what your interpretation is (your thesis). In the outline I’m offering here, there are three main components to an introduction: an opening, a literature review, and an argument.
Opening: Don’t start with any version of the statement, “Humankind has always ... ,” or, “Since ancient times … ”. Don’t begin with some random quote from a Socrates or a Machiavelli. And don’t start with a definition from Webster’s Dictionary. Instead, your opening should get straight into the problem at hand, either by identifying in your first sentence exactly what your text is or by leading into this statement with a quick analysis, what I call an exemplar. As such, there are potentially three elements to the opening of a theoretical paper in the social sciences: an exemplar, the statement of your text, and your problem statement (what I call occasion1). (Alternately, sometimes it is best – especially in shorter papers – to have your opening simply consist of quick statements of your text and thesis, and then to work through the framing material required for an introduction.)
Exemplar: Instead of some banal generalization, some random quote, or some dictionary definition, consider opening your papers with an exemplar, which is a quick and clean analysis of a small yet representative bit of evidence (maybe a shocking statistic or an evocative example) that, if your analysis is extrapolated, can quickly communicate the core of the argument you’re advancing in your paper. Not every introduction needs an exemplar, and sometimes it just doesn’t work, but it is often a good idea to provide your reader with some concrete information and analysis before hitting him or her with your argument.
Text: After your exemplar, or just at the very start of your paper, clearly state your text, which is the thing you’re interpreting in your paper, whether that “thing” is a book, idea, situation, action, event, trend, or some other social phenomenon. Your text is a promise to your reader that must be fulfilled by your argument. Your text must be what your argument is about, and your argument must be an interpretation of your text.
Occasion1: Every paper must state its occasion, the reason it needs to exist, or the reason the text in question needs to be interpreted. It is important to justify the reason your text needs interpretation early in your paper, and you will probably include multiple statements of your occasion peppered throughout your paper. Your first statement of your occasion, what I call occasion1, should be a problem statement about the text you’ve just identified. What is the problem with that text, and why is that problem a problem?
Literature Review: After identifying your text and occasion, review the scholarship devoted to that text (that is, the previous attempts to interpret the text, especially as the scholarship pertains to the specific problem in the text that you’ve identified in your occasion1).
Critical Community: Your critical community is the scholars who have interpreted the same text that you’re interpreting. Through citation, quotation, paraphrase, and summary, review and analyze these previous interpretations, narrating the various camps or perspectives that exist in this academic conversation, identifying any classic or landmark scholars or works, and explaining which interpretations are the least satisfactory and which are the most illuminating.
Occasion2: If your occasion1 is a statement about a problem that exists in your text, your occasion2 is a statement about a problem that exists in the critical response to that text (that is, in the critical community you’ve just mapped out). Justify the need for your paper to exist for a second time by identifying any gaps in the scholarship, any unresolved issues regarding your text, and/or any issues that are wrongfully thought to be resolved.
Argument: After you’ve introduced your text in your opening and discussed the critical community surrounding that text in your literature review, clearly and concisely state your argument about that text (that is, your central claim and original contribution to the scholarship). Remember that your argument must be responsive to your text; you must actually be interpreting what you said you were going to interpret. Your argument should also be responsive to your statements of occasion; how does your argument resolve or explain the problems that you’ve identified in your text and your critical community? Usually your argument should come at the end of your introduction, though it is important to remember that, given the rather sophisticated introduction outlined here, the end of your introduction will not necessarily be the end of your first paragraph. In theoretical papers, there are two important elements to your argument: your method and your thesis.
Method: If your text is the thing you’re interpreting, your method is the way in which you’re going about your interpretation. Your statement of your method should discuss your theoretical community and define any terms that may play a major role in your argument.
Theoretical Community: If your critical community is the scholars who have already addressed the issue you’re addressing, your theoretical community is the theorists and philosophers who have provided you with abstract ideas and conceptual schemes that have aided you in your interpretation of your text (or, alternately, ideas and schemes that are contributing to your articulation of your argument, even if they did not play a major role in your actual interpretive process).
Terms: Your statement of your method is also the place to identify and define any key terms that may play a role in your argument. Don't assume your reader knows your analytical vocabulary, or shares your understanding of key concepts. The idea behind defining terms is that you can explain in detail what you mean by a given term, then you can use that term whenever you need to (especially in your thesis) without having to explain yourself every time. Often these terms will be the abstract ideas and conceptual schemes that you’ve drawn out from your theoretical community, and you can use the writings of those theorists and philosophers to help you define your terms.
Thesis: Having introduced your text in your opening, discussed your critical community in your literature review, and paused to explain your method of interpretation, now clearly and concisely state your thesis, or your central claim about your text. You may want to consider including two parts to your thesis statement: a single sentence that offers a truth-claim, and a short paragraph that offers a logic-claim.
Truth-Claim: In your thesis statement, your truth-claim is a clear and concise statement of what you want your reader to understand about your text.
Logic-Claim: Your logic-claim is a brief summary of the reasoning that underwrites your truth-claim, reasoning that will be addressed in deeper detail and supported with evidence in the body of your paper.
Body: Having introduced your text, outlined your occasion, reflected on your method, and stated your thesis, you’re ready to move into the body of your paper, which gives evidence and analysis to support your argument. Whether you are writing a section or paragraph, and whether it is one of situation, demonstration, or explanation, the basic organization is the same. You make an assertion; you provide the evidence that supports your assertion; you offer some analysis that describes how that evidence supports your assertion; and you offer some analysis that describes how that assertion supports your main argument. As such, you can think of every body section/paragraph as a miniature essay, and every paper as a gigantic section/paragraph: they follow the same structure, only on a different scale. In a paper you make an argument in your introduction, then you give the evidence for that argument in your body paragraphs, and you explain why your argument matters in your discussion. In a section/paragraph you make an assertion, then you give the evidence for that assertion, and you analyze how that evidence supports your assertion and how that assertion supports your argument.
Assertion: Most body sections/paragraphs should begin with an assertion, or a claim about a particular piece or set of evidence. Don’t write topic sentences; write assertions. Topic sentences tell your reader the topic to be addressed in a section/paragraph; assertions make interpretive claims about the material being addressed. It might be helpful to think of an assertion as the thesis statement of a section/paragraph. Like a thesis statement, an assertion is a claim that hasn’t yet been supported with evidence, and just as your thesis is followed by body paragraphs that support it, your assertions should always be followed by evidence.
Evidence: In the system for writing papers that I’m presenting here, there are three kinds of evidence: textual evidence, historical evidence, and citational evidence.
Textual Evidence: As the most important kind of evidence, textual evidence consists of the specific aspects of your text (e.g. data, examples, cases, etc.) that you focus on for detailed analysis. In terms of the kinds of sections/paragraphs outlined above, textual evidence is what you bring in for passages of demonstration.
Historical Evidence: Historical evidence is information that, strictly speaking, does not fall within the narrowly defined realm of your text, but information that is nonetheless relevant to your interpretation of that text (e.g. cultural histories, biographies, laws, legislations, circumstances, analogies, precedents, etc.). In terms of the above kinds of sections/paragraphs, historical evidence is what you bring in for moments of situation.
Citational Evidence: Citational evidence is the scholarship that you draw upon to help you present and interpret your other kinds of evidence (e.g. a critic who has addressed one of your examples or a historian who has surveyed a cultural history that is relevant to your topic). In terms of the kinds of sections/paragraphs, citational evidence can be brought in at any point, but it is especially helpful for moments of explanation.
Analysis: Don’t assume your reader will connect the dots for you if you provide the evidence that supports your argument. You’re the analyst here, so do your job. After each piece of evidence you present – or, sometimes, after presenting chunks of evidence – you must analyze the meaning of that evidence.
Analysis1: After presenting evidence – whether textual, historical, or citational – you should offer some analysis that describes how the evidence you’ve offered supports the assertion it is supposed to support.
Analysis2: After you analyze how your evidence supports your assertion, you should offer some further analysis that connects that assertion back to the overall argument you’re making in the paper.
Counters and Responses: Be sure to account for the counter-arguments to your claims, either by citing them as they exist in your critical community, or by imagining what those alternate opinions might be. You should include counters and responses at both the paragraph-level and the paper-level; that is, address the counter-claims to your argument as well as the counter-claims to your assertions and analyses.
Counters: Don’t think about counters by asking, “What are the opinions I know to be wrong that I can easily knock down,” which is called a straw-man argument (i.e., one easily knocked down). Think about counters by asking, “How could someone who is just as intelligent as me, or more intelligent, come to a different conclusion when looking at the same evidence?” Sometimes it’s not a matter of being right or wrong; it’s just a matter of difference.
Responses: In your response to a counter, you must explain not only why your position is a more satisfying position but also where the thinking of your interlocutors went off-course. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you must bat down violently and absolutely any position that is different from your own, of thinking that it is a weakness to qualify your argument. It is actually a sign of intellectual strength to be aware of the limits of your claims, and to acknowledge honestly any loose ends that remain. Use your discussion of counters to qualify your argument.
Discussion: Having stated your argument in your introduction, and offered evidence and analysis to support it in the body of your paper, you should use your discussion section to return to the critical community you mapped out in your literature review and address how your argument fits into that conversation. As such, your discussion is the place to deal with any major counter-arguments and to discuss the utility of your ideas.
Counters and Responses: Consider beginning your discussion section by identifying any major counters to your central thesis, whether those counters are actual or hypothetical, and responding to them.
Utility: One of the last things to do in a paper is to explain why any of this matters: this is the inevitable, “So what?” Your utility is the usefulness of your argument, its implications and importance, but be aware of certain traps when articulating your utility. Don’t try to save the world. Don’t try to make your reader a better person. Instead, provide specific thoughts on how the academic field in which you’re working might be required to change its ways in response to your argument; provide specific questions that still remain; provide specific directions for future research; and/or provide specific policy implications.
Conclusion: Your conclusion should summarize your argument in a statement that, were you to detach it from the rest of your paper, could stand on its own as a snapshot of your main ideas. In other words, restate in one short and cohesive paragraph your text, occasion, method, thesis, evidence, and utility (consider spending just one sentence on each of these bits of academic information). Don’t introduce any new information or claims in your conclusion: it should be pure summary.