7.3 Summarizing The Scholarly Conversation

When it’s time to incorporate sources into your project, it’s helpful to explain where you fit into the discourse on your topic. So, just as you assessed each source for how it fits into the scholarly conversation, you need to take that information and position yourself in that discussion. When looking at your Argument sources, are you building on existing consensus? Providing new knowledge? Changing the direction of the field? (Sometimes, it’s a mix of all three.) How are you using your methods (and Method sources [Chapter 7.2]) to offer insights into your topic? Does your assessment of the Background of your topic provide a different lens for viewing your topic? Are you analyzing your Exhibit and Evidence sources differently from other researchers on this topic? Or collecting your own Exhibit and Evidence sources? By answering these questions, you will be able to blend your voice into the body of research on your topic.

Paraphrasing Sources

To effectively frame your place in the scholarly conversation on your topic, it’s important to paraphrase your sources. Paraphrasing is taking the ideas from a source and putting them in your own words. You won’t always be able or want to quote a source word for word, and paraphrasing is a way to relay the author’s ideas to your audience without relying on their actual language. Some disciplines only use quotations rarely—and some not at all. In most academic writing, you’ll use paraphrasing more than quoting, and frankly, if you quote, you usually need to include a paraphrase anyway.

First, you need to understand the passage. Of course, you need to understand the text as a whole, but to paraphrase well, you also have to make sure that you understand more precisely the ideas in the passage you want to reference. The second part is paraphrasing the passage in your own words, which is frequently the more difficult part. It is not enough to substitute a few synonyms—even really good ones—to paraphrase well. Instead, you have to both alter the vocabulary where possible and avoid using the same sentence structure.

Let’s unpack that a bit. You’ll need to:

• Alter the vocabulary. To alter the vocabulary, you need to use different words to describe the author’s point, except where the specific words are necessary. Specific words to hang onto would mostly be technical language: the word itself is the most appropriate word because it is the most accurate. (Usually, this applies to nouns, but it can also apply to verbs and, less frequently, to adjectives and adverbs.) If the technical terms are really long or uncommon phrases, sometimes it makes sense to quote those, just so your reader knows that the phrasing comes from the author. If the words aren’t technical, you should be looking for alternative language.
• Change the sentence structure. Ultimately, your sentence should not look like the original, even when you are using some of the technical language. If your reader were to read the two sentences side by side, they should be able to see the same idea, but not the same way of phrasing that idea.

To practice writing a strong paraphrase, follow these steps:

Key Points: Paraphrasing

• Good paraphrasing retains the author’s idea while modifying both the words used and the sentence structure.
• If you struggle with paraphrasing, you can get better by following a few steps: make sure you understand the passage, close the source, do something else for a little while, and then write your paraphrase without looking back at the source.
• Once you have written your paraphrase, check it against the original to make sure that you have captured the idea without relying too heavily on the language and sentence structure of the original.
• You can add short quotations to paraphrases, particularly of technical terms.
• Patchwriting, which involves attempts at paraphrasing that are too close to the original text, can be considered a form of plagiarism. Don’t look at the text when you write a paraphrase!

Situate Your Voice Among Your Sources

With your sources categorized and paraphrased, now it’s time to blend them into your paper alongside your own ideas. Using the concept of the conversation, we’ll follow the example developed by “Write Here, Right Now: An Interactive Introduction to Academic Writing and Research” [Website]. By looking at their analysis of an Occupy Wall Street Facebook page and its comment section, we can use their process as a model for how you can incorporate your sources into your paper.

When you think of the conversation with your sources, imagine it as an introduction of two people you know very well but who do not know each other. In this conversation, you will need to take a leading role, but you hope that the people you are introducing will hit it off and begin conversing with each other as well.

Remember to let these sources speak, but also remember that the purpose of this conversation is all yours. Secondary sources enable you to gain a richer, more informed, and nuanced perspective on your primary material. However, you must avoid relying on secondary sources to act as your “answers.” You are using secondary sources to elevate and complicate your reading of your primary material, not replace it. Use secondary sources to support your claim. Your interpretive claim is always driving your analysis. Your interpretive claim determines how secondary sources are applied to your representative example and what inferences you derive from that application.

Here’s an example of how we elevate our analysis of our primary evidence, a post on an Occupy Wall Street Facebook page and the comments attached to it, so that it becomes part of a larger scholarly discourse:

In this example, there is a fine balance between this author’s intent and the sources used. Neither overwhelms the other. The author keeps an eye on both purpose and context here, using but never altering the meaning of the primary and secondary sources, to support and complicate a deeper reading of the Occupy Wall Street Facebook page.

Consider Together: Balance Your Discourse

Watch the video below detailing how we move from being a domineering or a passive conversationalist to an informed contributor of a discourse we really want to join.

How did highlighting keywords in the secondary source help the author put the source into conversation with the Facebook post? How is the author letting both the primary and secondary sources “speak for themselves” in their sample paragraph?

Effectiveness of Your Sources

Using your sources to elevate and complicate your reading of the primary example is an ongoing process. You will have to evaluate whether your sources allow for the deep reading of your primary evidence that brings something new to the scholarly discussion of your larger topic. To do this, you will have to ask yourself some basic questions:

In short, you will need to consider the limitations and shortcomings of your research. Keep in mind that the purpose of doing so is not to discredit your sources and omit them in favour of other sources, but instead to further develop your reading. You may discover through this process that there are gaps in your sources. To address these gaps, refer to the “Gaps in Your Sources” section in the next chapter.

Let’s examine the example from the video, which includes secondary sources.

Reviewing this example may lead us to ask—and attempt to answer—additional questions raised by the source. So, in considering our use of McCosker and Johns’ essay, we might ask what the authors mean by “dialogical order”? Moreover, if online comments are mostly “dissociated, impassioned expressions” without a “dialogical order,” then what about offline forms of political discourse? Are they more logical and less impassioned forms of expression with “an inherently dialogical order”? What might be the value of impassioned and seemingly disassociated speech?

To begin, we can define dialogic[al] expressions as those in dialogue with other utterances or expressions. In other words, our communication is relational and contextual, as it depends on what was said before and what the speaker anticipates will be said in response. Linguist Mikhail Bakhtin theorizes that all language is by nature relational and dialogical. So, if all expressions have a dialogic order, might we conclude that all communication is successive and logical? We cannot, because language is relational and contextual; however, speakers also respond to their own particular, acknowledged or unacknowledged, personal or political contexts—not only to others’ communication—so misunderstandings and impassioned reactions are common enough in any discursive community.

Communication is not tidy by nature, and especially not in the “global village.” For McLuhan, tribal communication (and ritualized practices) suggests a multisensory, impassioned engagement but also a potentially chaotic and unruly one. This is also true of “global tribes” in the “global village.” So, if all communication is potentially disorderly, and especially communication in online communities, then are Facebook pages useful political tools after all? We might still conclude they are indeed viable political tools; however, all communication is potentially complicated, sometimes confusing, and certainly open to overheated exchanges. The internet is merely a reflection of the difficult and muddled reality that is human communication. However, the question still remains: Is the internet then a viable political tool?

Before we answer the above question, let’s take inventory of what we have accomplished so far:

• We have teased out details and meanings in our secondary source that were at first implicit, such as the meaning of language having a “dialogical order.”
• We concluded thoughtfully that while all language is dialogical, this does not prevent misunderstandings and seemingly unconnected responses in online communication.
• We complicated our understanding of the McCosker and Johns argument further, in its application to our thesis, when we noted that all communication is both inherently dialogical and non-dialogical, whether the communication happens online or offline, but that online communication is, as McLuhan suggested of tribal communication and by extension electronic communication, inherently susceptible to being incoherent and impassioned.

These are ideas we will need to include in our revised example. To answer our outstanding question, we might incorporate additional sources to help us determine whether online communities, such as Facebook pages, are effective political tools.

Starting a Conversation with Your Sources

Incorporating multiple sources and getting them into conversation is the practice of using your sources to lay down building blocks or a framework within which to read your topic, or an aspect of it, and eventually develop your own ideas about it. It is useful as a scaffold upon which to build your argument. While you may agree or disagree with one or the other source, the point here is to actively use them in dialogue with each other to draw out a point you want to make about your reading of the primary source. You might:

• Reference points of similarity between them and the significance of differences in their arguments, but always with the intention to draw some conclusion from this interaction about your reading and understanding of your topic.
• Consider how one source’s ideas respond to and qualify the ideas or claims of your other source. Your role then becomes to clarify their positions and moderate the conversation with the intention of eventually arriving at a new perspective or insight.

A word of caution: always be clear regarding what source you are using and whose ideas you are referencing. Also, be clear about what ideas belong to your sources and what ideas are your own.

Let’s look at an example. In the previous section, we engaged in a conversation with McCosker and Johns’ article. We will now use that source in conjunction with Rambukanna and get these two talking to each other.

Consider Together: Putting Sources into Conversation

Watch this video to review how to get sources into conversation with each other (by referencing differences or similarities and considering how each might respond to the other’s ideas) and offer a context in which to read our topic.

What common ground did they focus on to put these sources together? How could they have connected the sources if they weren’t in agreement?

Apply It

After watching the video above, take two of your secondary sources and ask the same questions to determine how to put them in conversation:

• How are the sources similar?
• How are they different?
• How does one source respond to or qualify the ideas or claims of the other?

Transitioning Between Ideas

Just as it is important to introduce and transition into a quote or paraphrase, it is equally important to use transitions to connect ideas from one sentence to another or from one paragraph to another. Ideas in an essay relate to and build upon each other. Ideas in one sentence or paragraph develop and elaborate on the ideas that precede them. It is essential to establish a logical progression of ideas and arguments for readers and to clearly explain how specific paragraphs relate to one another.

Transitional words or phrases link your ideas together and help you transition from one sentence to another or one paragraph to another, and subsequently move from one idea and argument to another smoothly and logically. There are various types of transitions that will signal to your reader the direction of your ideas and paper. For instance, additive transitional words like “and,” “also,” “moreover,” “furthermore,” or “in addition to” all suggest that you are continuing with the same argument. However, words such as “however,” “but,” “yet,” “nevertheless,” or “on the contrary” suggest a counterargument or shift in your thinking. To conclude on a point, you might try transitional words like “in conclusion,” “therefore,” “hence,” “consequently,” and so forth. To emphasize a point, words like “in fact,” “indeed,” “to highlight,” or “more importantly or significantly” work well. In short, there are several ways to transition from one point to another, and you’ll need to use effective transitions to build and develop your ideas and arguments smoothly, making them easy for your audience to follow.

Such transitional words appear in the above example when we put McCosker and Johns into conversation with Rambukanna. When showing commonality between their ideas, we used transitional expressions such as “like” or “they too,” and when we showed differences between their arguments and our own, we used words like “yet” or “in contrast”. To draw together their ideas and show how they applied to our argument, we used “in short.”

Consider Together: Using Transitional Words and Phrases

Watch the video below for a review of key transitional words and phrases that will help you transition and progress from one idea to another.

Which keywords or phrases do you find most useful for your project? Can you create some sample sentences using them?