An author’s major motives – 69
4
An author’s major motives
An academic author has to have some overriding reason for writing
and publishing his or her work. Some of these reasons will be personal, but they need not concern us. More importantly, the author
hopes to make a contribution to an ongoing debate in his or her
discipline, and so the work produced must be seen as part of that
debate. The major aims of the work will usually be defined in terms
of what is already known and thought about the subject and what
the writer wishes to add to the work of others. If you look at the
foreword or preface to your books, you will sometimes find a writer
apologising for producing yet another book on the subject, but this
apology will quickly be followed by a justification for ‘yet another
book’.
This justification will usually be worked out in more detail
in the first chapter (or, if the work is a journal article, in the opening
paragraphs). For this reason, your first task on opening a book is to
study the preface and the opening chapter. Only then should you
make use of the index and the table of contents to hunt down those
parts of the work that might be especially relevant to your essay.
The author’s major aims provide the context which enables you to
make sense of the detail in the body of the book, and provide the
first clues as to how you will begin to interpret the substance of
what is said. Such discussions, it is true, are often very general,
abstract and theoretical. You might therefore find them difficult to
follow. But some slow, careful reading here will produce enormous
dividends in the speed and success with which you will be able to
read and interpret other parts of the book. And by the same token,
your reading of the detail will help you understand more clearly those
general and abstract points over which you initially puzzled. (If this
sounds circular, it is. But it is not a vicious circle: the general and
the abstract help you see the significance of the particular and the
concrete, and vice versa.) All academic work demands attention to
both.
The most common motives which govern academic writing
are these:
4
An author’s major motives
An academic author has to have some overriding reason for writing
and publishing his or her work. Some of these reasons will be personal, but they need not concern us. More importantly, the author
hopes to make a contribution to an ongoing debate in his or her
discipline, and so the work produced must be seen as part of that
debate. The major aims of the work will usually be defined in terms
of what is already known and thought about the subject and what
the writer wishes to add to the work of others. If you look at the
foreword or preface to your books, you will sometimes find a writer
apologising for producing yet another book on the subject, but this
apology will quickly be followed by a justification for ‘yet another
book’.
This justification will usually be worked out in more detail
in the first chapter (or, if the work is a journal article, in the opening
paragraphs). For this reason, your first task on opening a book is to
study the preface and the opening chapter. Only then should you
make use of the index and the table of contents to hunt down those
parts of the work that might be especially relevant to your essay.
The author’s major aims provide the context which enables you to
make sense of the detail in the body of the book, and provide the
first clues as to how you will begin to interpret the substance of
what is said. Such discussions, it is true, are often very general,
abstract and theoretical. You might therefore find them difficult to
follow. But some slow, careful reading here will produce enormous
dividends in the speed and success with which you will be able to
read and interpret other parts of the book. And by the same token,
your reading of the detail will help you understand more clearly those
general and abstract points over which you initially puzzled. (If this
sounds circular, it is. But it is not a vicious circle: the general and
the abstract help you see the significance of the particular and the
concrete, and vice versa.) All academic work demands attention to
both.
The most common motives which govern academic writing
are these: