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Like your paper title, in a humanities paper your abstract should reflect your summary skills, your ability to write for a discourse community, your authorial voice and your intention to make an original contribution; also, it needs to bring all these elements together in a brief text that indicates the structure of your paper.
Generally speaking, the IMRaD structure suited to natural science papers (introduction, methods, results and discussion) is less useful in the humanities, where the main objective is not to establish scientific facts but to ask and answer interpretive questions about how humans express meaning, and where the raw material for research is not populations or experiments but ‘texts’; (written documents, films, paintings, musical scores, etc.). Because humanities papers analyse the meaning of people’s thoughts, actions and creations, humanities writers’ first concern is their own representation of meaning: the way they write and use language and the way others will interpret this.
Therefore, the best structure for a humanities paper is one that keeps your representation of meaning on track for your reader; and generally speaking, the humanities reader is someone who wants to be persuaded by a claim or premise you assert about meaning – about the meaning of your particular text in your academic field – so the structure you choose needs to provide the space and opportunity to strengthen your claim by calling up and commenting on texts that support it.
This ‘text and claim’ structure, in miniature, is also what your abstract does. Sometimes it becomes clear to the reader that the claim or premise is a modest one that you should be able to support fairly easily if you maintain your analysis and demonstrate adequate knowledge of the subject area. In this type of paper, you might assert the claim at the end of the abstract.
Sometimes the claim can appear earlier in the abstract, even though the writer may not elaborate on it in any detail and may even hold back important detail intentionally. Again, like the example above, the reader will understand that a fair part of the paper will be given over to analysis but that your interplay between text and claim may start earlier and occupy more of the discussion section.
Sometimes the abstract starts with the claim, which is then extended and explained in more detail. The advantage of doing this is that you immediately make your intentions clear to the reader, who can then decide with greater certainty whether you successfully follow through. Here below is such an abstract, from a final project entitled Rauschenberg’s Bed as an Examination of Portraiture.
The danger with this last style is that your paper does not follow through with what you promised the reader; but then calculated risks are an important part of good academic writing in the humanities and taking these risks is a way of asserting your membership of the writing community.
Finally, alongside titles, abstracts are often the only sections of research papers that are freely available to readers on journal websites, search engines and abstracting databases. Because of this, make your abstract a stand-alone text that does not leave out any important aspect of the paper. You may only be writing for one reader, your tutor, but they will assess the merits of your abstract on these terms too.
Generally speaking, the IMRaD structure suited to natural science papers (introduction, methods, results and discussion) is less useful in the humanities, where the main objective is not to establish scientific facts but to ask and answer interpretive questions about how humans express meaning, and where the raw material for research is not populations or experiments but ‘texts’; (written documents, films, paintings, musical scores, etc.). Because humanities papers analyse the meaning of people’s thoughts, actions and creations, humanities writers’ first concern is their own representation of meaning: the way they write and use language and the way others will interpret this.
Therefore, the best structure for a humanities paper is one that keeps your representation of meaning on track for your reader; and generally speaking, the humanities reader is someone who wants to be persuaded by a claim or premise you assert about meaning – about the meaning of your particular text in your academic field – so the structure you choose needs to provide the space and opportunity to strengthen your claim by calling up and commenting on texts that support it.
This ‘text and claim’ structure, in miniature, is also what your abstract does. Sometimes it becomes clear to the reader that the claim or premise is a modest one that you should be able to support fairly easily if you maintain your analysis and demonstrate adequate knowledge of the subject area. In this type of paper, you might assert the claim at the end of the abstract.
 | This paper examines the role of North American journalists in the years before and after the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. It describes how the press came under pressure from the United States federal law called the Espionage Act, which sought to prevent interference with military operations or the support of US enemies during war time. As journalists came more under the control of the government, certain prestigious writers lost their legitimacy in the eyes of the general public. To explore the role of the newspapers in the political events of this period, the paper examines a sample of newspapers published in Washington and New York between 1915 and 1920. It proposes that, while at the beginning of this period certain editors and writers could lead initiatives to change the order of American society, by the end of the period these figures had all but disappeared. |
Sometimes the claim can appear earlier in the abstract, even though the writer may not elaborate on it in any detail and may even hold back important detail intentionally. Again, like the example above, the reader will understand that a fair part of the paper will be given over to analysis but that your interplay between text and claim may start earlier and occupy more of the discussion section.
| This paper examines the guidelines that young researchers are customarily given to write a research paper in the field of film studies and proposes that this advice is often inadequate in three areas. It describes how writers are told to organize the different sections of their paper and considers how well they normally do this. It also evaluates the aspects they are recommended to include in each section and the guidance they are given on developing the subject of the paper. Finally, a description of the conclusion section is offered, focusing on the difficulties writers have relating their own papers to the literature. The paper includes an overview of how to cite references, examining the two most frequently used citation styles, MLA and APA. Reference is also made to how writers should revise their papers before submitting them for publication and to the impact factor in the selection of a journal. |
Sometimes the abstract starts with the claim, which is then extended and explained in more detail. The advantage of doing this is that you immediately make your intentions clear to the reader, who can then decide with greater certainty whether you successfully follow through. Here below is such an abstract, from a final project entitled Rauschenberg’s Bed as an Examination of Portraiture.
| This paper argues that Robert Rauschenberg’s 1951 collage Bed can still contribute to young artists’ and exhibition-goers’ understanding of the possibilities of portraiture because the artist did something with the medium that few others ever have. It starts by contrasting the artist’s earliest experiments in assemblage with similar projects by other painters in order to identify the moment in Rauschenberg’s career when his use of found objects began to differ to his contemporaries’. It then explains this difference, which is essentially that Rauschenberg sees assemblage not just as something painters do but something viewers need to practise, both visually and cognitively, in order to experience an artwork. In this context, the paper ends by suggesting three ways in which Rauschenberg’s use of the inanimate may still go far beyond the works of other artists who employ similar materials and themes, like Anselm Kiefer, Rachel Whiteread or Tracey Emin. |
The danger with this last style is that your paper does not follow through with what you promised the reader; but then calculated risks are an important part of good academic writing in the humanities and taking these risks is a way of asserting your membership of the writing community.
Finally, alongside titles, abstracts are often the only sections of research papers that are freely available to readers on journal websites, search engines and abstracting databases. Because of this, make your abstract a stand-alone text that does not leave out any important aspect of the paper. You may only be writing for one reader, your tutor, but they will assess the merits of your abstract on these terms too.
Recommended citation:
«Abstract» [en línia]. A: Llibre d’estil de la Universitat de Barcelona. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona. Serveis Lingüístics. <https://www.ub.edu/llibre-estil/criteri.php?id=3467> [consulta: 18 abril 2024].