Conventions & Strategies in the Social Sciences
Rhetoric: is using language to skillfully articulate and to advocate your beliefs about something
you assume to be true by addressing an audience whom you want to persuade to consider your
beliefs, by choice and not coercion, and possibly to cooperate with you in achieving a shared
goal (Hansen 6).
The Social Sciences: are the fields of learning and research that concern themselves with
human behavior, human relationships, and the social, cultural, economic, and political
institutions human beings have created. Generally they include anthropology, economics,
history, political science, psychology, and sociology. They also include communications,
linguistics, education, family science, organizational behavior, demography, geography, internal
relations, psychiatry, counseling, social work, and criminology. Social sciences use empirical
methods to prove an abstract such as a trend, cultural practice, event in the past, behavior or
attitude.
Some Characteristics:

Knowledge making begins with questions that build on previous research

Evidence comes from observation

Uses methods and instruments to observe

Validity is achieved by adequate evidence and sound reasoning about the evidence
Common Genres:

Reports of original research (using research report format used in sciences). These may
be quantitative, qualitative, or a combination of methods

Literature reviews

Summaries of articles

Critiques (evaluations of articles). These may be “experienced-based critiques” or
“argument based critiques”

Case Studies

Proposals

Position Papers

Theoretical Debate Articles
Style:
Style is a result of all the many choices a writer makes from subject matter to vocabulary to the
construction of sentences, punctuation, and organizing the text. As a student, you will discover
that there are various academic styles related to disciplines. The social sciences share some
key similarities in style although there are differences. For example, an anthropologist may
write quite differently from an economist. However, many of the social sciences do adhere to
the conventions of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Features:

The detached persona: “This study investigates” rather than “In this study I will investigate”

Use of passive voice

Prevalent use of jargon: Jargon or specialized vocabulary is common. Sometimes writers
use long noun strings to name a new concept. For example rather than study how happy
people are with their family, they will study “Life satisfaction.” Another might be attention
deficit disorder.

Use of Acronyms and Initialisms: AIDS for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or
CODA for children of deaf parents. Initialisms are similar but unlike an acronym, they can’t
be pronounced as a word: e.g. personality disorder is shortened to BFD.

Unbiased and inclusive language: gender neutral references for example
Hansen, Kristen. A Rhetoric for the Social Sciences. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998
Conventions & Strategies in the Sciences
Rhetoric: is using language to skillfully articulate and to advocate your beliefs about something
you assume to be true by addressing an audience whom you want to persuade to consider your
beliefs, by choice and not coercion, and possibly to cooperate with you in achieving a shared
goal (Hansen 6).
The Sciences: are the fields of learning and research that concern themselves with the physical
and biological word and include physics, math, geology, biology, botany, zoology, nutrition and
so on.
Some Characteristics:

Knowledge making begins with questions that once answered, can be answered similarly
by future studies using the same methods

Hypotheses are based on outside sources

Hypotheses are tested following the scientific method

Evidence comes from observation that is repeatable

Validity is achieved by adequate repeatable evidence and sound reasoning about the
evidence
Common Genres:

Reports of original research (using sections such as abstract, introduction, experimental
materials and methods, results, discussion)

Summaries of articles

Proposals

Position Papers

Journal article critiques
Style:
Style is a result of all the many choices a writer makes from subject matter to vocabulary to the
construction of sentences, punctuation, and organizing the text. As a student, you will discover
that there are various academic styles related to disciplines. The style manual you use in the
sciences depends on which science you are studying. For example, biology uses CBE,
engineering IEEE and so on.
Features:

The detached persona: “This study investigates” rather than “In this study I will investigate”

Use of passive voice

Prevalent use of jargon: Jargon or specialized vocabulary is common. Sometimes writers
use long noun strings to name a new concept. For example rather than study how happy
people are with their family, they will study “Life satisfaction.” Another might be attention
deficit disorder.

Use of Acronyms: AIDS for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or CODA for children
of deaf parents.

Unbiased and inclusive language: gender neutral references for example
Hansen, Kristen. A Rhetoric for the Social Sciences. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998
Conventions & Strategies in the Humanities
Rhetoric: is using language to skillfully articulate and to advocate your beliefs about something
you assume to be true by addressing an audience whom you want to persuade to consider your
beliefs, by choice and not coercion, and possibly to cooperate with you in achieving a shared
goal (Hanson 6).
The Humanities: are the fields of learning and research that concern themselves with human
experiences and include English studies, the arts, philosophy, languages and so on.
Humanists, in their writing, tend to reflect in some way on the culture of society by examining
the texts that a culture produces. A text can be written, visual, or oral.
Some Characteristics:

Knowledge can come from the self and the work or from what others have written or said

Evidence for an assertion or thesis comes from the work or text

Validity or proof comes from the persuasive power of the examples or textual evidence.
Since many of the texts are written, humanist use quotations as evidence that supports
their claims.
Common Genres:

Interpretation of a work

Development of a new theory for interpretation

Application of a theory to a new work

Critical analysis of an article; evaluation of a work

Research Paper

Proposals

Position Paper
Style:
Style is a result of all the many choices a writer makes from subject matter to vocabulary to the
construction of sentences, punctuation, and organizing the text. As a student, you will discover
that there are various academic styles related to disciplines. The style manual you use in the
humanities is the Modern Language Association or MLA. Occasionally, humanists use APA
because a particular journal requires it.
Features:

Use of “I”

Use of active voice

Use of jargon or specialized language in academic work. This is particularly true of writing
that discusses or applies a critical theory to a work. For example, if we were giving a novel
a Marxist reading, we might use vocabulary from Marxist literary theory. We might talk
about the “class structures” and the “proletariat.”

Use of informal vocabulary if appropriate for rhetorical situation

Use of colorful vocabulary
Hansen, Kristen. A Rhetoric for the Social Sciences. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998