Skip to page navigation Skip to site menu

The Role of Sources in Academic Discourse Communities

  

Common among various academic discourse communities are the following principles adapted from Methods of Discovery – Online Writing Guide:

  • The purpose of academic writing is to generate and communicate new knowledge and new ideas.
  • Academic writers write "from sources." This means that new ideas, conclusions, and theories are created on the basis of existing ideas and existing research.
  • Academic writers examine their sources carefully for their credibility and appropriateness for the writer's goals and objectives.
  • Academic writers carefully acknowledge all their research sources using source citation and documentation systems accepted in their disciplines.

To use sources in order to make knowledge in your college writing, you will conduct primary and secondary source research. The following passages adapted from Methods of Discovery – Online Writing Guide discuss types of sources in more detail.

Primary Sources

A primary research source is one that allows you to learn about your subject “first-hand.” Primary sources provide direct evidence about the topic under investigation. They offer us “direct access” to the events or phenomena we are studying. For example, if you are researching the history of World War II and decide to study soldiers’ letters home or maps of battlefields, you are working with primary sources. Similarly, if you are studying the history of your hometown in a local archive that contains documents pertaining to that history, you are engaging in primary research. Among other primary sources and methods are interviews, surveys, polls, observations, and other similar “first-hand” investigative techniques.

The fact that primary sources allow us “direct access” to the topic does not mean that they offer an objective and unbiased view of it. It is therefore important to consider primary sources critically and, if possible, gather multiple perspectives on the same event, time period, or questions, from multiple primary sources.

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources describe, discuss, and analyze research obtained from primary sources or from other secondary sources. Using the previous example about World War II, if you read other historians’ accounts, government documents, maps and other written documents, you are engaging in secondary research. Some types of secondary sources with which you are likely to work include books, academic journals, popular magazines and newspapers, websites and other electronic sources.

The same source can be both primary and secondary, depending on the nature and purpose of the project. For example, if you study a culture or group of people by examining texts they produce, you are engaging in primary research. On the other hand, if that same group published a text analyzing some external event, person, or issue and if your focus is not on the text’s authors but on their analysis, you would be doing secondary research.

Secondary sources often contain descriptions and analyses of primary sources. Therefore, accounts, descriptions, and interpretations of research subjects found in secondary sources are at least one step further removed from what can be found in primary sources about the same subject. And while primary sources do not give us a completely objective view of reality, secondary sources, inevitably add an extra layer of opinion and interpretation to the views and ideas found in primary sources. Remember that all texts are rhetorical creations, and writers make choices about what to include and what to omit. As researchers, we need to understand that and not to rely on either primary or secondary sources blindly.