Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Written Communication
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by MacDONALD, S. P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Data-Driven and Conceptually Driven Academic Discourse

SUSAN PECK MacDONALD

University of California, San Diego

Writing in the humanities may, typically, be distinguished from writing in the social sciences in its treatments of abstractions. Writing about literature is here characterized as data-driven, in that it begins with a text and proceeds up the ladder of abstraction by interpretive classifications which are likely to diverge from one interpreter to another. Social science writing is described as conceptually driven, in that writers begin with communally defined abstractions which then drive the selection and discussion of data; the divergence between writers' abstractions characteristic of data-driven writing is less likely to occur in conceptually driven writing. This article describes how the difference shows up in professional academic writing, some of the confusion students experience in trying to shift from one kind of writing to another, the strengths and weaknesses of each kind of writing, and the benefits to be gained from alternating between the two kinds.

Written Communication, Vol. 6, No. 4, 411-435 (1989)
DOI: 10.1177/0741088389006004001
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Written CommunicationHome page
J. E. Warren
Literary Scholars Processing Poetry and Constructing Arguments
Written Communication, April 1, 2006; 23(2): 202 - 226.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Written CommunicationHome page
L. Wilder
"The Rhetoric of Literary Criticism" Revisited: Mistaken Critics, Complex Contexts, and Social Justice
Written Communication, January 1, 2005; 22(1): 76 - 119.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Written CommunicationHome page
L. Wilder
"Get Comfortable With Uncertainty": A Study of the Conventional Values of Literary Analysis in an Undergraduate Literature Course
Written Communication, January 1, 2002; 19(1): 175 - 221.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Written CommunicationHome page
C. BERKENKOTTER and T. N. HUCKIN
Rethinking Genre from a Sociocognitive Perspective
Written Communication, October 1, 1993; 10(4): 475 - 509.
[Abstract]

Home page
 Written CommunicationHome page
S. P. MacDONALD
A Method for Analyzing Sentence-Level Differences in Disciplinary Knowledge Making
Written Communication, October 1, 1992; 9(4): 533 - 569.
[Abstract]