27 Research Introductions, or Creating a Research Space (CARS)

Affordances of Academic Writing

As a writer who understands majors and disciplines as discourse communities, you also may conceptualize writing as residing in these communities, not disembodied, but connected to several bodies, and in relation to others. So, as writers, it can be helpful to identify how they operate within the community and also how you can push up against and make them your own.

John Swales, a linguistics professor, studied academic writing to see how it operated—what did it do, how did it do it, and how did people use the texts. He created a large corpus (a collection) of texts to study the patterns he saw. From that work, he gave us a better understanding of how academic writing operates in a community. When we know how it operates, as writers, we can harness that understanding for many benefits, like getting our ideas into the discourse community to which we belong. And if we keep in mind those limitations, we can continue to challenge the norms, since genres, or types of texts, are not static, but always evolving with us because of those who push up against them.

The Research Introduction

Let’s look at the “research introduction” to see how it operates, according to Swales. He identified 3 parts of a research introduction. Here we excerpt heavily from his work:

Move 1: Establishing a Territory [the situation]

This is generally accomplished in two ways: 1. by demonstrating that a general area of research is important, critical, interesting, problematic, relevant, or otherwise worthy of investigation and 2. by introducing and reviewing key sources of prior research in that area to show where gaps exist or where prior research has been inadequate in addressing the research problem.

The steps taken to achieve this would be:

• Step 1 – Claiming importance of  [writing action = describing the research problem and providing evidence to support why the topic is important to study]
• Step 2 – Making topic generalizations  [writing action = providing statements about the current state of knowledge, consensus, practice, or description of phenomena]
• Step 3 – Reviewing items of previous research [writing action = synthesize prior research that further supports the need to study the research problem; this is not a literature review but more a reflection of key studies that have touched upon the topic]

Move 2: Establishing a Niche [the problem]

This action refers to making a clear and cogent argument that your particular piece of research is important and possesses value. This can be done by indicating a specific gap in previous research, by challenging a broadly accepted assumption, by raising a question, a hypothesis, or a need, or by extending previous knowledge in some way.

Choose one of the following approaches:

• Counter-claiming  [writing action = introduce an opposing viewpoint or perspective in prior research that you believe has weakened or undermined the prevailing argument]
  • Mendendez (2020) has shown that CTE is a problem among high school and professional athletes, making it clear that understanding how Division 1 athletes work to mitigate CTE concerns is crucial to study.

• Indicating a gap [writing action = develop the research problem around a gap or understudied area of the literature]
  • While studies have shown that CTE is a problem among professional athletes, not enough research has been done to understand how Division 1 athletes work to mitigate CTE concerns.

• Question-raising  [writing action = similar to gap identification, this involves presenting key questions about the consequences of gaps in prior research that will be addressed by your study]
  • Since studies have shown that CTE is a problem among professional athletes, we must ask how do CTE concerns manifest in Division 1 athletes?

• Continuing a tradition  [writing action = extend prior research to expand upon or clarify a research problem. This is often signaled with logical connecting terminology, such as, “hence,” “therefore,” “consequently,” “thus,” or language that indicates a need. For example, one could state, “Consequently, these factors need to be examined in more detail….” Evidence suggests an interesting correlation; therefore, it is desirable to survey different respondents….”]
  • Since CTE has been studied so extensively and shown to be so disastrous for athletes at all levels, the mitigation of CTE among Division I athletes is vital research.

Move 3: Occupying the Niche [the solution]

The final “move” is to announce the means by which your study will contribute new knowledge or new understanding in contrast to prior research on the topic. This is also where you describe the remaining organizational structure of the paper.

The steps taken to achieve this would be:

•  Announcing present research [writing action = describe the purpose of your study in terms of what the research is going to do or accomplish.] This research will…

What does this look like in action? Let’s look at the argument by Kimiya Shokri to understand how it would work.

Now let’s try to identify the three moves in the science article written by a team of female-identified undergraduate students at Saint Mary’s College and their female-identified science professor.