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Voices from Across the Curriculum

Different fields within political science—legal writing, political theory, political policy and behavior—prescribe diff erent forms of writing. Political policy and political behavior papers adhere to a version of the format used in science writing. This format has six parts: statement of the research question, literature review (context), statement of hypothesis, measurement of variables, description of tests, and analysis of findings. The literature review describes the conversation that is going on in the field on the paper’s topic. It explains what others know. The research question tells readers what the writer is trying to do. The hypothesis states a claim that is specific enough to test.

The research question sets up the hypothesis; it is the point from which everything flows. Consider the following two versions of a research question on capital punishment. 1) In this study I seek to examine the capital punishment laws used at the state level. 2) In this study I seek to explain why some states adopt capital punishment and others do not. The second version is clearly better. It gives much better direction.

The hypothesis needs to indicate some direction for the research. Although general in scope, it must be specific enough to test. Here again are two examples. Which do you think would make the better hypothesis? 1) The greater the percentage of college educated individuals in a state, the more likely that state will be to allow same sex marriage. 2) The more educated a society, the more liberal it will be.

—Chris Borick, Professor of Political Science

INTRODUCTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES

We have devoted considerable attention in this chapter and the previous one to the prescribed formats for writing lab reports, scientific articles, and empirical studies in the social sciences. As we have suggested throughout these chapters, the surface differences you will encounter as you move across the curriculum can too easily obscure the underlying structure that the disciplines share.

Nevertheless, there are some striking differences. In the sciences, for example, it is inappropriate to name and especially to criticize particular pieces of research or their authors. Writers in the humanities are much more likely to name names, to quote other studies, and to be explicit on where these studies seem to fall short. Relatively broad claims about consensus views on the writer’s topic are okay. In fact, papers in the humanities often begin that way. But these highly compressed generalizations are typically followed with more detail on who said what, why they may have said it, and what needs revising.

Because most writing in the humanities is grounded in textual analysis, humanities writers think it important to attend to the actual language of other people’s writing. Words and their meanings are data to humanities writers. For this reason, writers in the humanities quote and then paraphrase key statements, rather than summarizing and paraphrasing without the original language, as is the rule in psychology and other science and social science writing. It is a habit of mind in the humanities to share the evidence—the language being phrased and cited—with readers, rather than asking them to take the writer’s word for it.

As in the sciences, methods of analysis in the humanities are empirical— grounded in close observation of evidence. But, as we argued in Chapter 6, “Making Interpretations Plausible,” the authority of a writer’s interpretation of evidence relies on other scholars accepting it as plausible. This is true in the sciences as well, a fact somewhat hidden by the nature of scientific evidence and the very detailed character of the process of investigation.

Here is a typical set of guidelines for writing introductory paragraphs in a humanities paper—in this case, in English. Introductions are not the same across all disciplines in the humanities, but much in the following guidelines is representative.

An introduction