Harris (2006) suggests that there are four genre “moves” in
academic writing:
·
coming to
terms
·
forwarding
·
countering
·
taking an
approach
· the binding (transitions)
Coming
to terms
The
first move, coming
to terms ,refers to the process of reading,
getting to know content, concepts and issues. When you come to terms in writing, you restate the work of another writer. The mechanisms for achieving this are: summarizing,
paraphrasing, quoting, and writing descriptions. In annotatong a reading, you
would be looking for the writer’s purpose (what they intended to do in the
text), the writer’s main argument, the evidence provided for the claim and how
this relates to your own argument. One misunderstanding about academic readings
is that we all read and receive the same message when we can really all
interpret the same article quite differently. Academic writing is often about
explaining how you read a paper and what you interpret from it. Your annotations
need to explain what you understand from the source text, what your
interpretation is, and how it relates to your argument in your own writing
(Harris, 2006).
Harris (2006, p. 24) argues:
“academics seldom write in an all-or-nothing
mode, trying to convince readers to take one side or the other of an argument.
Instead their work assumes that any perspective on an issue (and there are
often more than two) will have moments of insight and blindness. A frame offers
a view but also brackets something out. A point of view highlights certain
aspects and obscures others. And so, in dealing with other writers, your aim
should be less to prove them right or wrong, correct or mistaken, than to
assess both the uses and limits of their work. That is to say, academic writing
rarely involves a simple taking of sides, an attack on or a defense of set
positions, but rather centers on a weighing of options, a sorting through of
possibilities.”
Forwarding
Once academic writers are familiar with the substance of
the topic at hand, they then move into a process of forwarding. Harris (2006) argues that asymmetrical
conversations happen in academic writing. Academics do not write to the people they are writing about, they write to
fellow readers. Forwarding is the process of recirculating, repurposing or re-contextualizing
meaning from texts. The mechanisms for this are:
·
Illustrating – using other texts as examples to explain
your point (anecdotes, data, scenarios).
·
Authorizing
– when you use an author to support your thinking, this is the “quick appeal to
another writer as a voice of authority” (Harris, 2006, p. 44).
·
Borrowing
– drawing on terms or ideas from other writers to explain your point. Here you
use other texts by borrowing a term or idea to relate to your own argument.
·
Extending
– when you put your own meaning on an idea drawn from another text to advance
your own argument. Extending a text can be difficult. You feel you may not feel
confident about extending on an authority’s ideas but this is what makes the
writing your own.
Countering
The
next move is countering or arguing against
a text or author. This is a critical part of academic writing. It’s not enough
to understand the topic and to extend on others’ ideas; academic writing always
includes counter arguments. Counter arguments,
however, are often not the opposite side of the debate, as Harris suggests:
“countering looks at other views and texts not as wrong but as partial – in the sense of being both interested
and incomplete” (emphasis in original). In other words, you will not need to
refute an author’s argument but rather add to the conversation or perhaps take
it in a new direction. The mechanisms for this are:
·
Arguing the other side – since all academic writing is centered on
argument, this would mean taking another side to the one the writer is putting
forward. It may even be a counter argument in this author’s own writing. This
would require a justification of why the other side of the argument is worthy.
·
Uncovering or explicitly surfacing values – all writers write from a point of view or
perspective which is value-laden. Some writers explicitly state their framework
or theoretical stance but others do not. What is “unmarked or unquestioned”
(Harris 2006) in the text? This is not
easy to do and sometimes can only be done by comparing one reading to another.
·
Dissenting with concepts, authors, texts or
issues. Harris (2006) explains that
dissenting often involves working out where there is agreement first: “There is a kind of template for many academic essays in which a
writer says something like this: Until now, writers on this subject have
disagreed on points a, b, and c. However, underlying this disagreement, there
is a consensus of views on point d. In this essay, I will show why point d is
wrong” (emphasis in original). In education and other professional
contexts, dissension can also come from experience in practice and it is
especially powerful if you can provide published evidence to back up your
experience. A further way of exploring
dissension is to use two authors from different perspectives to show the
differences between them and either align your own argument with one author or
take the conversation in a different direction (Harris 2006). Although Harris does not add this to his
list, you can also pose questions as a way of dissenting.
Taking
an approach
The
final genre move, according to Harris (2006), is when the writer takes an approach, which is fundamental to intellectual
writing. This can be done through adopting the approach of another author or
developing your own thinking in relation to another author. Taking an approach
means taking a stand on your argument.
What Harris means here is that you do not focus on ideas from an author but
rather on the author’s whole intellectual contribution. Harris (2006)
identifies the mechanisms as:
·
Acknowledging
influences – this is showing how an influential author(s) has affected your own
thinking and has led to your different approach.
·
Turning
an approach in on itself – using the questions an author asks to question
him/her yourself. This is an appreciative/skeptical way of viewing a source
text/author.
·
Reflexivity
– is the critical self-awareness of one’s own assumptions and an understanding
in relation to an author. Where the new approach you have taken is different
but where you have looked at all sides, weighed up options and evidence and
well as one’s own biases and then moved to a new approach or idea.
The
binding
Harris (2006) also mentions the glue that holds all these moves
together which is known as metatext. You might have also seen this mentioned as
signposts or transitions. These are the sentences that show your
reader what moves you are using and when in the paper. Phrases like: “In
the first section of the paper, I will discuss…”; “The purpose of this section
is to…;” “While the literature is broad and complex, I would like to focus on
three key authors/issues that are relevant to this discussion/my argument…”
“I’ve argued throughout this book that the goal of academic
writing is to form your own position on a subject in response to what others
have said about it” (Harris, 2006, p. 95).