Citation in student writing what do they do

Citation in student writing what do they do, and why do they do it?

Why are we having a conference on citation? • It’s unique to academic writing

Why are we having a conference on citation? • It’s unique to academic writing • It’s difficult • The ‘mechanics’ • The underlying concepts – when do and when don’t we need to acknowledge sources?

Why are we having a conference on citation? • It’s unique to academic writing • It’s difficult • The ‘mechanics’ • The underlying concepts – when do and when don’t we need to acknowledge sources? • It’s complex • • There’s you There’s the source There’s the reader And maybe there’s the ‘real world’ Somehow you have to position all these types of participant

• This talk: • A quick overview of some current understandings of citation • A brief overview of some findings from the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus)

The mechanics • Using an appropriate citation system, e. g. Harvard, Vancouver, MLA • Ordering sources • Punctuating references Advice about mechanics provided by subject librarians, style guides

But not always easy to put into practice: • • • unfamiliar first and family names integral vs. non-integral citation quotation vs. paraphrase integration of quotations into sentences “grey literature” (working papers, agency reports, promotional literature, Wikipedia entries etc. )

The underlying concepts How do you signal that these are your own thoughts and not those of others? How do you know which sources to cite, and which not? e. g. what about lectures / lecturers as a source of information? How do you know what information is established, and what needs support from sources? e. g “Jakarta, as a metropolitan city as well as the capital of the Republic of Indonesia (Suswandari, 2017), has been experiencing ……”

Advice about underlying concepts (sometimes) provided by academic writing textbooks and tutors Although they don’t all give the same answers!

Help from theories and frameworks • Philosophy, and the notion of intertextuality, dialogic interaction • Systemic Functional Linguistics, and Appraisal Theory • Discourse and genre analysis

“our speech … is filled with others' words” with “varying degrees of otherness or varying degrees of ‘our-own-ness’” (Bakhtin, 1981) Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. University of Texas Press

“Language …. . is populated — overpopulated — with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing it to submit to one's own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process” Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. University of Texas Press

The appraisal framework, influenced by Bakhtinian notions… “interprets … meanings as orienting the speaker/writer either to what has been said previously on the same subject (or is presented as likely e. g. ‘appreciate’ to have been said) or to what is likely to be said in response to the current proposition” e. g. “strongly agree” Attitude: the writer’s positive/negative assessment of the proposition Graduation: the writer’s way of strengthening/mitigating/intensifying the proposition Engagement: the writer’s stance regarding the propositions being advanced e. g. hedging to indicate less commitment Peter White (2015) Appraisal Theory. Tracy, K. , Ilie, C, & Sandel, T. (Eds) The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. John Wiley & Sons.

Hyland’s work on reporting verbs Classified according to their meaning and evaluative roles: • What kind of verbal process? • Was the original author arguing with someone else, or agreeing with them? • Does the writer accept or reject the proposition in the source? Hyland, K. (1999) Academic attribution: citation and the construction of disciplinary knowledge. Applied Linguistics 20 (3) 341 -367

Hyland’s view of the denotation of reporting verbs - a simplification of Thompson and Ye (1991) e. g. observe, discover, notice, show e. g. analyse, calculate, explore e. g. believe, suspect, view e. g. discuss, hypothesize, state

Hyland’s view of the evaluative role of reporting verbs e. g. fail, overlook, exaggerate. ignore e. g. acknowledge, point out, establish e, g, advocate, argue, hold, see e. g. address, cite, comment, look at e. g. believe, hypothesize, suggest e. g. condemn, object, refute

Novice writers tend to accept the claim or stay neutral, with only moderate commitment.

Tense choice for reporting verbs Present tense when ideas or findings are closer to the writer’s own research, or to current knowledge. Past tense when ideas or findings are new Present for cognition and discourse acts. Past for research acts. Hawes, T & Thomas, S. (1997) Tense Choices in Citations. Research in the Teaching of English 31 (3)393 -414 Swales, J. M. and Feak, C. B. (2012) Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills. University of Michigan Press

Swales’ work on citation Prominence to the information via non-integral citation? e. g. • Types of hybrid electric vehicles vary according to driving force components (Leitman, 2009). Prominence to the author via integral citation? e. g. • Oliver (1980) referred to contentment as a state. Hyland (1999) also looked at position – as subject, nonsubject (passive) or adjunct agent (e. g. ‘according to’) Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge University Press.

And disciplinary variation More, and more varied reporting verbs in the Humanities (Hyland 1999) “A marked overall disposition towards non-integral and non-subject citation forms in the science and engineering papers” (Hyland 1999) More non-integral citation in scientific disciplines where “content counts for more than connections” (Cronin 2005) Cronin, B. (1984) The Citation Process: The Role and Significance of Citations In Scientific Communication. Cronin, B. (2005) ‘A hundred million acts of whimsy? ’ Current Science 89, 1505 -1509.

• Lots of advice from style guides, academic writing textbooks • Some interesting theories and frameworks • Lots of research into citation practice BUT not generally based on evidence from university assignment writing

And most EAP citation research is concerned with a) the way researchers cite (in research articles, theses, dissertations) or a) the way EAP learners write – e. g. in integrated writing essay tasks involving reading/ taking a stance/ organising ideas / integrating sources. The quantity and accuracy of citations is generally taken to be an indicator of proficiency

There are good reasons for this! • There are lots of interesting things to discover about the role of citation in argument development (stance / voice etc. ) • The frameworks work best for describing citation in this way (e. g. Appraisal Theory, taxonomies of reporting verbs) • It is particularly difficult to use citation for argument development • EAP assessment often includes an argumentative essay • A lot of novice writers need help with essays and research writing. Argumentative essays are the biggest category in the BAWE corpus

As in research article introductions, thesis lit reviews - “to convince the readers that … claims are justifiable and significant” (Bloch 2010: 222) In university assignments, writers cite • to indicate a research gap • to evaluate the contribution of sources to an argument But also: • to refer to real-world facts from the ‘grey literature’ (e. g company reports for business case studies) • to refer to objects of study (e. g. for literary or linguistic analyses) • to refer to methods or models (e. g. in lab reports) • to prove that they have read the source - student citation as a None of these purposes are ‘performance’ (Harwood and Petric 2011). much talked about

In the BAWE corpus Increasing citation does seem to be a marker of writing proficiency (The number of citations increases steadily across undergraduate levels of study. ) The number and variety of reporting verb types increases across levels too. More than 180 types: 1 st ‘found’ 2 nd ‘suggests’ 3 rd ‘argues’

But there are big differences across disciplines and genres Why so few? Non-integral Arts & Life Sciences /integral Humanities citations Physical Sciences Social Sciences Level 1 583 / 75 1, 999 / 245 93 / 29 1, 096 / 167 Level 2 502 / 194 2, 451 / 463 25 / 17 1, 288 / 295 Level 3 1, 289 / 287 3, 258 / 717 83 / 16 1, 750 / 526 (per million words) Why so many?

And there are some important types of student citation that have not been discussed much in the literature …. .

Footnotes in the soft disciplines

Author-page/verse/line number references Most common in English, Comparative American Studies , Classics and without dates Philosophy • Macondo is wiped off the face of the earth, 'by the wind and exiled from the memory of men. ' (422) • This is always in conjunction with opposing pernicious Christian teaching; whose standards of morality he claims are "out of harmony with the actual world" (85) and "unknown to the environment" (86). • 'Right opinion, whether evanescent or constant, is a good guide while it prevails; but its genesis is largely beyond human control. ' (71) • the problem arises when Descartes suggests that body and mind are distinct from each other because of the fact that he "can clearly and distinctly understand one thing apart from the another" (page 54) Very often with a direct quotation

Real-world references in applied disciplines Non-integral ‘Grey literature’ sources • food gathering was inadequate for feeding the increased population (Agropolis-Museum France, 2004) • phosphorus loss can occur through soil erosion (DEFRA, 2003) • one-third to half of all diabetics already have evidence of organ or tissue damage (UK Prospective Diabetes Study Group, 1991) • each individual bat can eat up to 3000 insects in one night (RSPB, 2007) • Breastfeeding is a health promotion issue that is being forced to evolve due to the introduction of new policies and guidelines (WHO, 1990, UNICEF, 2001) • The Adoption and Children Act 2002 (ACA 2002) now allows same-sex couples who are civil partners or cohabitants to adopt jointly. • Chinese and Italian foods are now the most popular foods with this age group (BBC Website, 2002) • Cowley Manor has recently been voted the 5 th best hotel spa in the country (Condé Nast Traveller, Oct 2005) • they both used to have a poor image due to the recession and the lack of investments (Greenwich Council, 2004) • Qantas purchased Impulse and began operating its routes under the Qantas. Link brand as a wholly-owned subsidiary (Qantas, 2004)

Cases, models and methods In applied sciences and social sciences • Referring to Caparo v Dickman (1990), House of Lords held that the defendant must reasonably have anticipated that the advice would be acted upon • According to Foundation of Engineering, Holtzapple Reece (2003) torque is a twisting force • the MRT Test based on a Vandenberg and Kruse (1978) type test • the results from the Rice and Woodsmall (1988) experiment showed that whilst five-year-old children were very efficient at learning the meaning of words • [the] Farrar and Selwyn (1967) model represents the after-tax income of an investor

Conclusions? Writing guide instructions may not give your students all the ‘mechanical’ help they need. The standard research emphasis on argument and stance ignores lots of other common citation purposes.

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