Disciplinary Conventions

Conventions & Strategies in the Social Sciences

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
• Scholars formulate an hypothesis or series of hypotheses
• They conduct research to test their hypotheses
• Evidence to prove their hypotheses comes from observation
• Evidence may be qualitative or quantitative or researchers may use both and can include surveys and questionnaires, controlled experiments, controlled observations, interviews, and field work
• Validity is achieved by adequate evidence and sound reasoning about the evidence since unlike in the sciences, exact duplications of the experiment or research is not possible
• Researchers can affect their data so care is given to ensure this does not happen

• Reports of original research (using research report format used in sciences). These may use quantitative data, qualitative data, or a combination of methods.  They can include participant observation study reports and survey study reports
• Literature reviews
• Summaries of articles
• Case Studies
• Proposals
• Position Papers
• Critiques (evaluations of articles).  These may be “experienced-based critiques” or “argument based critiques”

• 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. For example, borderline personality disorder is shortened to BFD.
• Unbiased and inclusive language: gender neutral references for example

• Knowledge making begins with questions that once answered, can be anwered similarly by future studies using the same methods
• Hypotheses are based on the objective observation of things in the physical world and what other scholars have found
• Hypotheses are tested following the scientific method: observe objectively, hypothesize (this should happen), experiment to test if hypothesis is true, revise hypothesis if necessary, experiment again, discuss what results show and conclude what can be inferred from results
• Evidence comes from observation that is repeatable
• Validity is achieved by adequate repeatable evidence and sound reasoning about the evidence

• Reports of original research (using sections such as abstract, introduction, experimental materials and methods, results, discussion)
  • The Formal Observation Report and
  • The Experimental Study Report. 
  • Both follow a similar format: abstract, introduction, review of literature, methods, results, discussion
• Summaries
• Proposals
• Position Papers
• Journal article critiques

• 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
  
  

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Conventions & Strategies in the Humanities

The Humanities: are the fields of learning and research that concern themselves with human experiences and include English studies, the arts, philosophy, and 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 claims and then the examples or textual evidence that support the claims.
• Since many of the texts are written, humanist use quotations as evidence that supports their claims.Humanists work with both primary texts (works of art, novels, plays, poems, paintings and so on) and secondary texts (what others have said about the novel or play and so on)

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
• 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

Features:
Use of "I"
Use of active voice
Use of jargon or specialized language in academic work
Use of informal vocabulary if appropriate for rhetorical situation
Use of colorful vocabulary