Nearly all scholarly writing makes an argument. That’s because its purpose is to create and share new knowledge so it can be debated in order to confirm, dis-confirm, or improve it. That arguing takes place mostly in journals and scholarly books and at conferences. It’s called the scholarly conversation, and it’s that conversation that moves forward what we humans know.

You may be familiar with arguments from talks shows, debates, news programs, and even dialogue between two (usually angry) actors in a movie.  These arguments are usually concise because of time limits, and usually one side noticeably wins.

In their book, Writing Analytically,” David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen offer this list of characteristics of academic arguments:

• has more than two sides
• moves  from much more carefully defined and smaller (less global) claims
• seeks out common ground between competing points of view rather than solely emphasizing difference
• uses potentially contradictory evidence to test and qualify claims rather than ignoring such evidence
• adopts a civil and non-adversarial way of using language and relationship with the audience
• avoids stating positions as though they were obviously and self-evidently true
• avoids misrepresenting or trivializing another’s position
• includes much more evidence and careful analysis of supporting evidence

 

Your scholarly writing for classes should do the same—make an argument—just like your professors’ journal article, scholarly book, and conference presentation writing does. (You may not have realized that the writing you’re required to do mirrors what scholars all over the university, country, and world must do to create new knowledge and debate it. Of course, you may be a beginner at constructing arguments in writing, while most professors have been at it for some time. And your audience (for now) also may be more limited than your professor’s. But the process is much the same. As you complete your research assignments, you, too, are entering the scholarly conversation.)

Making an argument means trying to convince others that you are correct as you describe a thing, situation, relationships or phenomenon and/or persuade them to take a particular action. Important not just in college, that skill will be necessary for nearly every professional job you hold after college. So learning how to make an argument is good job preparation, even if you do not choose a scholarly career.

Realizing that your final product for your research project is to make an argument gives you a big head start because right off you know the sources you’re going to need are those that will let you write the components of an argument for your reader.

Happily (and not coincidentally), most of those components coincide with the information needs we’ve been talking about. Meeting an information need by using sources will enable you to write the corresponding argument component in your final product.