Come talk to me*: Written text and dialogue

People normally equate dialogue to spoken interaction. In conversation, we reply instantly to what we are told, and our interlocutors expect us to respond in return. Turns bounce back and forth for as long as the conversatrion goes on. Cues are inserted here and there to let us know how well the chat progresses. Eventually, a few signposts will lead us to an end. The whole exchange occurs like a ping-pong ballet, live, in real time. Odd as it may seem, though, we seldom think of written interaction as another form of dialogue, one that is embodied in a different medium, more permanent than the immanently immediate spoken word.

In the realm of academic writing, the dialogic property of written texts is more significant than in most other genres. Think of your own research reports. Their foundations lie on grounds set by other scientists who came before you and who wrote about their findings. In many ways, your research comes as a response to what your scientific community has written along its history. When you publish your paper, you will take the floor to reply and, hopefully, to impel others to take their turn in the future. This sort of historical dialog is a seemingly never-ending chain of replies that permanently transforms knowledge within a given discipline.

Let’s now reduce the spectrum of our analysis. You are now preparing a text in which you expect to make your own claims about the state of affairs in your field. The text that you will soon publish will open a new line of discussion. You will not notice the impact of the message immediately, but after some time, your name and the title of your paper will be cited in someone else’s paper. Later, your research will be replicated by other scientists. Some years will go by and another researcher could easily expand on the work you already advanced, and so on. In a few years time, a fully-fledged dialogue will have taken place between you and your readers. Hopefully, you will also take turns in this conversation by commenting the texts other scholars produce in relation to your own, you will also cite them or maybe even collaborate with them in other pieces of writing.

The pertinence of our message, its relevance within its context, its structure and the questions it arises can make it more interactive. Dialogue, in the form of further research, is stimulated by the recommendations we formulate at the end of our research, for example. In fact, the composition of the text itself can lead to better and more enduring dialogues, but that is a complex notion that we may explore later on.

For the moment, remember that the signposts that you embed in the text indicate the direction of your argument (namely linking expressions, relative pronouns, and, in general, words that trace the topics being dealt with in the text) and thus help readers follow the path of your thoughts. The general organization of the text also contributes to guide your readers and enhance their understanding of the piece. If the readership can follow your message, it is more likely they acknowledge the need to provide adequate responses to it.

*Gabriel, P. (2003). Come talk to me. On Secret world live[DVD]. UK: Interscope Records.

Is there anybody out there?: On readership

Think of face-to-face oral communication: Do you address your friends, fellow researchers, relatives using the same words, the same register? Chances are you have just given a negative answer to this question. And the reasons are quite transparent: they represent different kinds of audiences, so you probably tune in your discourse to meet the expectations of your fellow speakers. You quite possibly believe that your audiences deserve to be presented with a message encoded in a way that allows them to understand, relate and respond to your utterances, basically so that a dialogue can be established. In much simpler words, you adapt your contributions to conversation so they rise to the expectations of your interlocutors.
It is frequently the case, when we engage in scientific writing, that we overlook the characteristics of our potential readers. In fact, it is likely that experienced academic authors have never thought of the people who might be actually be reading their texts. We usually assume that our papers will be read by fellow researchers because the scientific entourage is a tiny world after all.
Nonetheless, constructing the figure of an intended reader is one essential aspect in the writing process. Come to think of it, an academic piece of writing is likely to have several different audiences, each focusing on different aspects of the text, each approaching the text with different expectations.
Consider the path that a paper to be printed in an academic journal is set to follow. The first set of readers is the journal’s editorial team. They focus on form: bibliographical data, citations, footnoting, layout. Once this group of readers expresses their conformity, the paper reaches blind peer editors, whose focus will lie on content. When the paper is finally printed, its destination gets blurrier: it may be read by other scientists, students, lay people. The possibilities are not infinite, but they are, indeed, diverse. And you will need to make an impression on them if you wish your research to transcend the printed page.
Pleasing this wide variety of readers is a seemingly impossible task. However, it is fundamental that, before we start writing the text, we picture, as accurately as possible, who our intended audience is . Once the picture is clear, wording the paper is only a matter of meeting their expectations, of opening up paths for discussion and research threads that can be given some sort of continuity.
Ignoring this key element in scientific communication would be very much like rolling up a message into a bottle and letting it float adrift. If we get lucky, it will reach the shore. If we are even more fortunate, someone will find the bottle, pop it open and see the message. Pushing our luck, the message will be read, but it would take, virtually, a miracle for the message to be fully understood.
Get your searchlights ready, then, and start looking for these potential –and never ideal or idealized- readers. They are certainly out there.

Tools of the craft: Mind mapping (II)

Newly tested mind mapping tools:

1.    Creately. Fast, easy to use application that supports virtually any browser. Its interface is quite intuitive and allows you to create several different types of flowcharts, diagrams and mind maps. You can customize from one of their templates or create yours from scratch. Very few exporting options.
2.    Exploratree. A simple and visually appealing online application that provides dozens of templates to choose from. It allows for comfortable collaborative work. There are no exporting options explicitly available. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support most browsers and freezes over under Safari.

Tools of the craft: Outlining

Outlining applications and software has never seemed particularly interesting to me. In class, students normally use the utilities already included in word processing software intended for the purpose of preparing outlines. There are, though a few interesting online options that are worth commenting here. None of them is addressed to university students and/or scholars, but they may be helpful when authors are having difficulties unveiling the links between their ideas.

1.    Thesis builder. It’s a very simple application that conflates general, supporting and opposite arguments into an outline, illustrating the relationships between them. As a bonus, it constructs good thesis statements that can be used as headings in outlines.
2.    Essay map. Ideally, this tiny tool can guide you through the whole process of outlining a text. All you need to do is feed your propositions in the text window.

Structure & harmony: Outlining (II)

Once brainstorming processes are done with, we are left with scattered blocks of ideas that we need to structure and harmonize (take a look at this curious example). Before the text is shaped, it is advisable to plan the flow of ideas as they will be presented in the composition. It is at this stage that outlines come to play an essential role.
Outlines present the structure of the text we are to write, but, most importantly, they reflect the relations we have decided to establish among out thoughts. Thus, as mentioned above, outlines purport both structure and harmony. Be means of simple visual organizers, outlines rank the sets of ideas that will be conflated into paragraphs once we compose the text. It also allows us to visually identify which ideas will control discourse blocks ad how they relate to each other.
An efficient outline should be flexible and stable, organic. It should allow us to read it through and understand where the text is headed. It is a laborious and complex task; however, once it is done, it simplifies the passage to text.
Outlines must comply with certain rules to be efficient:
1.    They must be based and developed around a thesis statement that links, transversally, all the ideas that constitute them.
2.    They consist only of affirmative propositions whose structures must be, if possible, always parallel (i.e. nominal structures, verbal structures, etc.; find an explanation and examples here).
3.    A set of number-alphabetic markers is needed to rank ideas.
Basically, outlines are prototexts that only include the raw logical expression of our thoughts organized exactly as they will appear in the first drafts. Nonetheless, some authors include cue notes between ideas to indicate how they are related, thus articulating some sort of harmony among the propositions that may be useful when producing the final text. They look like powerful promises of what is to come.

Snakes and ladders: Outlining (I)

In this first post on outlining, we deal with this process as yet another brainstorming technique. Until quite recently, outlining was considered a fruitful method to produce ideas to feed a text in an orderly, precise way, still allowing for enough freedom to liberate authors’ thinking processes. However, as our knowledge about cognition widens, so decreases the popularity of outlines as suitable idea generators. There are two sound reasons that support this new stance. On the one hand, outlines are linear and, therefore, they force writers to think linearly, allowing for very little divergent thinking to occur. On the other hand, outlining demands simultaneous focus on content and structure. Due to the complexity of the task, chances are writers pay closer attention to the procedures than to the generation of ideas.

All this said, many people still find outlines useful as brainstorming strategies. In fact, once the process is mastered, it tends to flow in a way similar to mind mapping. As in most brainstorming methods, there are some suggested steps and requirements that are believed to enhance the process. Here are a few of them:

1.    Use a thesis statement as a heading.
2.    Start writing general ideas and then deploy all their subsidiary statements, details and examples underneath.
3.    Use only affirmative propositions to express your ideas.
4.    Use visual marks (usually number-alphabetic) to illustrate subordination.

If outlining works well for you as a brainstorming strategy, the only necessary step before getting started with drafting is to thoroughly check the consistency of the outline.

Perfect weather to fly*: Free writing

Perhaps the least elaborate of all prewriting strategies, free writing consists solely on writing. It is frequently called stream of consciousness writing, a self-explanatory term that illustrates how this technique is normally aimed at liberating thought constraints. Free writing is also believed to be of use to ease writer’s block.

Although commonly recommended as a basic step in creative writing, free writing can be helpful in the academic composition process by activating the authors’ knowledge of their subject matter.
There are no set rules for free writing; however, there are a few recommendations that are consistently believed to enhance the process:

1.    Have a central, controlling idea, use it as a heading if necessary, and stick to it.
2.    Set a time limit.
3.    Keep on writing even if you dry out. If that were the case, try writing about it.
4.    Don’t pay attention to form. Grammar, spelling and style are to be taken care of at later stages of the writing process.
5.    Don’t discriminate, categorize or attempt to organize your ideas.

The byproduct of free writing is usually chaotic. Nonetheless, worthy ideas can be sifted for later use, raw text can be corrected and recycled and, most importantly, defective and dubious aspects are likely to emerge from the product, thus allowing authors to further explore and clarify them.

*Garvey, Guy and Elbow (2008). Weather to fly. On The seldom seen kid [CD]. UK: Polydor.

Tools of the craft: Mind mapping (I)

Using paper and pencil to diagram your mind map is just fine if you don’t mind running out of space in the middle of the process. Online tools provide writers with simple, easy to use, free online tools that help create mind maps in virtually no time. Some of my favorites are listed below.

1.    MindMeister. It’s a powerful, user-friendly tool that includes quite interesting features. It allows you, for example, to export your mind maps as a Microsoft Word outline, as a .pdf document or as an image. It’s also compatible with other mind mapping commercial programs. You can also share your maps with other people, either to work with them in collaborative projects, or to provide mutual feedback on your progress. Maps are automatically saved to MindMeister’s server when you close your workspace.

2.    Mindomo. This tool lets you diagram up to seven maps for free. Its layout is complex, but easy to go about. One of the assets of this resource is that it allows users to upload images, video and text onto the map. It also provides a spell checker that can be very useful. However, one of its major flaws is that it does nor support exports, so the only way to transfer map contents to another file is by copying and pasting them as images.

3.    WiseMapping. Another good free option online. The interface is friendly and somehow tasteful. It has a fewe exporting options (.pdf and image files). You can also save your files to the server. Mac users will be disappointed to know it WiseMapping does not support Safari.

The whereabouts of your ideas: Mind mapping

Mind mapping is one of the most popular and powerful brainstorming tools. It consists on writing down words, ideas, thoughts or icons to later attempt to establish logical connections among them in a graphical way. At first the process tends to be led by intuition, but as you move forward, connections appear to be more transparent, enabling you to link them in more complex manners. What is interesting about mind mapping is the freedom it entails and also its iconic essence.

There are no rights and wrongs in mind mapping, although some authors may prove that wrong. However, there are a few basic strategies that seem to work quite well if you stick to them. Here they are:

1.    Set a time limit. Try to make the most out of the time slot that you devote to thinking about your piece of writing. Time constraints somehow force us to focus on the task and be more productive.

2.    Work around a central, controlling idea.

3.    Don’t discriminate ideas. Pen all your ideas and later try to see the connections among them. If you make wrong choices, you can always change them when you revise the diagram. Drawings, notes, maps, references can also be included at ease.

4.    Think outside the box. It’s your paper, not someone else’s; trust your own thoughts and don’t be afraid to propose different, divergent ideas.

These are only basic steps. You will gain some insights on the process as you go along and by then you’ll be ready to bend the strategy to your liking.

Once you finish, you’ll probably end up with a complex diagram that connects your thoughts. It’s a good idea to let it rest for some time and go back to it with a fresher approach. Be critical: delete anything that leads you nowhere and supplement your map with additional supporting ideas for the ideas that get your message across.

Struck by lightning: Brainstorming

You are probably quite familiarized with what brainstorming entails in the corporate world. It is a powerful collaborative tool frequently used to generate out-of-the-box ideas that, in turn, can be launched as fully-fledged projects. 

In the realm of academic writing, brainstorming is conceived as an essential stage of text creation. The task can be developed collectively, usually within research groups and in classroom environments, or on an individual basis. 

There are no secrets to brainstorming. It is bare thinking, random at first, that will eventually lead to the production of ideas worth exploring, extending or developing. Brainstorming takes time, but requires very few material resources: paper and pencil or a computer will do. Just find an adequate setting and jot down anything that comes to mind. The goal, as mentioned above, is to obtain a set of well grounded, interesting, worthy ideas to write about. Stick to your field of interest; don't lose sight of your research interests and allow your previous knowledge to play a role in the generation of thoughts. This last point is especially relevant since brainstorming in the academic world is aimed at producing relevant pieces of work that stand that provide insight into aspects that haven't been studied before, or that have been dealt with through different methodologies or from other viewpoints. Therefore, brainstorming in scholarly writing needs to be more informed than, for instance, in the corporate world of advertising and/or marketing.

Once ideas have been poured onto paper or screen, outcomes must be pondered. Some ideas will need to be sifted through; many will be discarded. Ideally, the result of a good brainstorming process should be a set of sensible thoughts that can bring to life an adequate academic text.