Academic Discourse Summary

What's the BIG IDEA?
A Student's Guide to How “Academic Writing” becomes “Academic Discourse”
By Dee Broughton
You may think that the purpose of college is the education of students, and certainly, to some degree, that’s true. But your professors are not just teachers. They are academics who research and study in their chosen fields in order to contribute to the body of knowledge in that field.
In short, your major field, such as ELT or chemistry or food science, exists in the university because there are still unsolved problems in the field that your professors and other researchers are working to solve.
In order to do this, the people working in the fields form academic communities to share ideas and information. These communities of
scholars, researchers, and scientists share information in writing so that others in the community can analyze and evaluate it. In this way, members of the community can respond and put forth new ideas.
This sharing of ideas and responding to ideas is academic discourse.
It is the job of students training in these fields to prepare themselves to enter into the academic discourse community. Students do this by learning to research the ideas of others and respond to them in writing with ideas of their own.
So, what is “academic discourse”?
A basic meaning of “discourse” is conversation. You can think of academic discourse as a conversation, a conversation that is already taking place when you first enter. Whenever you encounter a conversation that is already going on, what do you do before saying something? You listen. As with any ongoing conversation, before entering the academic discourse, a new person will first listen to find out what the other people are talking about.
Research in the published literature of the field is the way academics “listen” to the academic conversation that is already taking place in their field.
The conversation of most fields is very long and complex, but, because it is published, it is always available to the members of the community. You read in your field to research, not only important background information, but also to learn the important questions and problems in your field, to find out what issues others are working
on.
After researching the conversation, an academic who has new information or ideas to contribute will write a new paper to share these new thoughts.
How is it done?
When students are assigned academic writing, they are often confused by the terms professors use. It may not be clear what a professor wants, for instance, when she asks for an "analysis" or an "argument." These terms refer to academic genres. Genres are certain forms or styles of writing that are designed to accomplish certain purposes.
The most common academic genres that students need to master are summary, synthesis, analysis, and evaluation and all of these are used to build valid academic arguments.
Summary and synthesis are often used to report the ideas of others. When a writer begins a new paper, the first task is to tell readers what part of the long, complex academic conversation this new paper will respond to.
The writer uses summary and synthesis, often including quotation and paraphrase with correct citation, to report the relevant parts of what others have said.
Summary is a brief description of the main idea of a source and synthesis is a brief explanation of a certain topic using a variety of sources. Quotation, paraphrase, and citation are important because the academic discourse community has decided that it's very important to draw a distinction in the new paper between the ideas that are already known or published and the new ideas that this particular paper will present. It is important to show what's known and what's new, but it's also important to give credit to others for their words and ideas. To accomplish these things, each community has agreed on certain conventions for referring to and citing the ideas and words of others.
Using the forms and styles of citation that their community has agreed on is one way that writers gain the respect of the community.
If a writer only wanted to report published ideas that are already known, summary and synthesis might be all that was needed, but writers often want to show the strengths and weaknesses of others’ ideas in order to compare them to their own. When they wish to respond to the ideas of others in these ways, they use analysis and evaluation. Analysis looks carefully at the parts of an idea and looks for relationships between the parts to learn about the whole. Evaluation compares the idea to some standard or criteria and makes a judgment about whether it meets those criteria.
After reporting and responding to the ideas of others, when writers are ready to present their own original ideas, they know that others will be analyzing and evaluating them as well, so they must explain their ideas very clearly. They often begin by using summary and synthesis to explain the precise meanings of concepts and terms through definition and explanation. However, the community has decided that just explaining new ideas is not enough.
In order for ideas to be seriously considered by the community, the ideas must be presented according to the principles of rational academic
argument.
In other words, the ideas must be supported with evidence, and the writer must draw logical connections between the evidence and the ideas. Evidence is also often summarized, synthesized, analyzed, and evaluated.
All of these genres, whether used to report and respond to the work of others, or to explain and support original ideas, make up the structures and conventions of academic writing. Students learn these techniques to become respected, contributing members of the academic community in the field of their choice.