essay about humanities and social sciences

Humanities vs. Social Sciences

What's the difference.

Humanities and social sciences are two distinct but interconnected fields of study. Humanities focus on the exploration and understanding of human culture, history, literature, philosophy, and arts. It delves into the complexities of human experiences, emotions, and values, aiming to provide insights into the human condition. On the other hand, social sciences examine human society and its various aspects, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, and political science. Social sciences employ scientific methods to study human behavior, social structures, institutions, and their impact on individuals and communities. While humanities emphasize subjective interpretation and critical thinking, social sciences aim to uncover patterns, trends, and explanations through empirical research. Both fields contribute to our understanding of human society and enrich our knowledge of the world we live in.

Further Detail

Introduction.

Humanities and social sciences are two broad academic disciplines that explore different aspects of human society, culture, and behavior. While they share some similarities, they also have distinct characteristics that set them apart. In this article, we will delve into the attributes of humanities and social sciences, highlighting their unique approaches, methodologies, and subject matters.

Subject Matter

One of the primary differences between humanities and social sciences lies in their subject matter. Humanities encompass disciplines such as literature, philosophy, history, art, and languages. These fields focus on the study of human culture, creativity, and expression throughout history. On the other hand, social sciences encompass disciplines like sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, and economics. These fields examine human behavior, social structures, institutions, and the interplay between individuals and society.

Methodology

When it comes to methodology, humanities and social sciences also diverge. Humanities often rely on qualitative research methods, emphasizing interpretation, analysis, and critical thinking. Scholars in humanities disciplines may analyze texts, artworks, or historical events to uncover deeper meanings and understand human experiences. In contrast, social sciences employ a range of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Social scientists collect and analyze data, conduct experiments, and use statistical tools to study social phenomena, human behavior, and societal trends.

Approach to Knowledge

Humanities and social sciences also differ in their approach to knowledge. Humanities disciplines often emphasize subjective interpretations and individual perspectives. They explore the complexities of human experiences, emotions, and cultural expressions. Humanities scholars aim to understand the human condition and the diverse ways in which people make meaning in their lives. On the other hand, social sciences strive for objectivity and generalizability. They seek to uncover patterns, laws, and theories that can explain social phenomena and predict human behavior across different contexts.

Interdisciplinary Nature

Both humanities and social sciences have interdisciplinary aspects, but they manifest in different ways. Humanities disciplines often intersect with each other, allowing scholars to draw from multiple fields to gain a comprehensive understanding of a particular topic. For example, a study on the impact of literature on society may involve insights from literature, history, philosophy, and sociology. In contrast, social sciences often integrate various methodologies and theories from different disciplines within the field itself. For instance, sociologists may draw on psychological theories to understand individual behavior within social structures.

Impact on Society

Humanities and social sciences have distinct impacts on society. Humanities contribute to our understanding of cultural heritage, identity, and the human experience. They foster critical thinking, empathy, and creativity, helping individuals develop a broader perspective and engage with diverse perspectives. Humanities also play a crucial role in preserving and interpreting historical events, literature, and artistic expressions, enriching our collective knowledge and cultural heritage. On the other hand, social sciences provide insights into social issues, policy-making, and human behavior. They inform public policy, contribute to the development of effective interventions, and help address societal challenges such as inequality, poverty, and discrimination.

Skills and Career Paths

Studying humanities and social sciences equips individuals with different sets of skills and opens up diverse career paths. Humanities cultivate critical thinking, analytical skills, effective communication, and cultural literacy. Graduates in humanities often pursue careers in fields such as education, journalism, publishing, arts and culture, and non-profit organizations. They may become writers, researchers, teachers, curators, or advocates for social change. On the other hand, social sciences develop skills in data analysis, research design, problem-solving, and understanding human behavior. Graduates in social sciences can pursue careers in fields such as social work, market research, policy analysis, human resources, or academia.

While humanities and social sciences share a common focus on understanding human society and behavior, they differ in their subject matter, methodology, approach to knowledge, interdisciplinary nature, impact on society, and the skills they cultivate. Both disciplines contribute to our understanding of the world and play vital roles in shaping our societies. Whether one chooses to explore the depths of human creativity and expression or unravel the complexities of social structures and behavior, both humanities and social sciences offer rich and rewarding academic paths.

Comparisons may contain inaccurate information about people, places, or facts. Please report any issues.

A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences

(8 reviews)

Dan Allosso, Bemidji State University

Salvatore F. Allosso

Publisher: Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Aaron Lefkovitz, Professor, City Colleges of Chicago on 5/4/22

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

This writing manual the author wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis is very comprehensive. It reviews multiple aspects of how to get started with writing, such as analyzing texts and taking notes, discovering a topic, preparing for discussion, creating a thesis, ordering evidence, building an argument, coherent paragraphs, effective sentences, appropriate words, revising, and a revision checklist. Also, it has a valuable appendix and even references to such philosophers as Aristotle, so it is comprehensive in both a practical and theoretical sense.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The content of A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences is accurate, error-free, and unbiased. This can be read in the “Analyzing Texts, Taking Notes” section, where the author begins with unbiased, clear questions, such as “what is a text?” The author then goes on to quote from such sources as author W.H. Auden (1907-1973), English-born poet and man of letters who achieved early fame in the 1930s as a hero of the left during the Great Depression.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences does represent relevance and longevity, in the sense that its chapters can be carried down from one generation to another without much variation, for example read in the “Discovering a Topic, Preparing for Discussion” chapter. Here, the author mentions that texts students work with at the college level of their education are mostly givens, as far as English classics, History primary and secondary sources that are important to understand a particular event and period, as well as the ways texts were chosen out of multiple texts in that they fit together and lead to a particular place.

Clarity rating: 5

There is a great deal of clarity in A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences, as this text makes difficult subjects easier to understand for most students, simplifying such potentially daunting topics as “creating a thesis”. In this chapter, the author asks a variety of questions, including what interpretation is the author trying to persuade the reader is valid, what are the reasons for this interpretation, how is the interpretation different from other interpretations, and what part of the text will be examined and emphasized, as well as what are the author’s assumptions and potential objections. These clear questions provide a sense of clarity for the reader and add to the text’s strengths.

Consistency rating: 5

This text is very consistent. Each chapter starts with an interesting quote that frames the chapter narrative in a compelling way. Then, the chapters start with very first-hand/direct testimony given to readers who can read the paragraphs in a way that is meant to speak to them rather than use jargon and difficult to understand sentences. Chapters follow similar structures in terms of longer paragraphs followed by definitions and clear statements that function to provide additional information with regards to the content and theme of the chapter discussed.

Modularity rating: 5

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences does have easily and readily divisible sections that are useful to the reader in that they break up the narrative and provide all sorts of additional information in an aesthetically pleasing way that can be assigned at different points within the course. There are not enormous blocks of text without subheadings and the text does not seem to be overly self-referential. Instead, there are all sorts of references and data from disparate sources that provide for an interesting and informative read.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

This text is full of effective, concise, and clear sentences, and is organized well in terms of the ways chapters are structured, starting with a quote that has a particular relevance to the chapter theme, including boxed reminders that set themselves apart from the general narrative, and including various bullet points and examples from literature.

Interface rating: 5

Everything that I have read in this textbook signals that it is indeed free of any kind of significant interface issues, including navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Additionally, the text seems to be free of grammatical errors even as it does seem to contain some spacing issues but that could be on my computer only.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

As far as the text’s cultural relevance, it does seem to rely quite heavily on dead White European philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, to add to and accentuate a point, however it is not offensive in the sense that it does not go out of its way to denigrate a particular race, ethnicity, or other cultural background.

This text does a fine job of introducing students to basic essay writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences, its brevity functioning as a strength in that it keeps things fairly simple while adding philosophical and historical contexts to stay academic as well as relevant and consistent.

Reviewed by Megan Anderson, Assistant Professor, Limestone University on 12/7/21

With only 9 chapters, this text does not cover every essay writing skill students need, but it does include focus on the higher order elements of writing. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

With only 9 chapters, this text does not cover every essay writing skill students need, but it does include focus on the higher order elements of writing.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

As the title suggests, the content is sparse, but it appears accurate.

While there are various theories on the teaching of writing in terms of pedagogy, writing skills do not really change in the sense of timeliness. The examples used are relatively common references from history and literature.

Clarity rating: 4

Again the content is minimal, but the material is written in a clear, easy-to-understand manner that would work for even first-year students.

The text is consistent in terms of terminology and framework, and even tone.

Modularity rating: 3

Each chapter is very short so they are easily assignable. And while there are headers, each chapter appears as one long page. Splitting up the content into just a few pages and spacing out the material a little more would be preferential.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 2

While I believe that the text covers many of the essential elements of writing, the chapters appear out of order to me. I would have the chapter on "Effective Sentences" before the one on "Coherent Paragraphs". It is also problematic to me to have a chapter on "Ordering Evidence, Building an Argument" listed before the chapters on basic writing components.

Interface rating: 3

The interface could be easier to navigate. There is no next button to move to easily move from chapter to chapter and to access the nine chapters, you have to click on a plus sign linked to what is called "I. Main Body". It is not very difficult to figure out, but it is just not as thought out as it could be. Like having a Roman Numeral I without a Roman Numeral II is a little odd. It also cannot be saved as a printable PDF.

I do not see any grammatical issues.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

While I do not see any references that are culturally insensitive, there is also no real attempt at diversity or inclusion. Examples are really all from canonical texts, meaning white male authors, like Shakespeare, Hemingway, and Melville.

Reviewed by Anthony Accardi Jr, Adjunct Professor, Middlesex Community College on 5/30/21

In the text "A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences" by Salvatore and Dan Allosso the authors present a simple, easy to follow guide for students to use when organizing, planning, researching, and writing an essay. In addition to essay structure, the authors also provide help with the “basics of effective writing”, including paragraph writing, sentence writing and avoiding common grammatical errors.

The concise format of the text requires that the author’s stay “right on point” which they do effectively and accurately.

By following each step outlined in this text, a student would undoubtedly improve his/her essay writing skills. Each topic the authors address is relevant to the development of a good essay. The strong emphasis put on the steps for writing an essay make this text a guide students will surely refer to again and again throughout their academic careers.

The conversational style used by the authors makes this text easy to read and understand. Most students find writing a nerve-racking ordeal. The authors deal with this by using straightforward language to explain concepts and reinforce the explanations with simple, easy to understand examples.

The authors have designed a textbook consistent from chapter to chapter and "as a whole". In general, each chapter begins with a quote from a famous author about writing, followed by an explanation of the chapter’s topic, followed by a working example. The authors' down to earth writing style is consistent in every chapter of the text.

The short length of the chapters makes them ideal to be read as individual assignments and their compartmentalized structure is suited well for associated writing assignments.

The structure of this text is one of its strongest points. The authors have organized the chapters in a logical order that students should follow when writing an essay.

The text interface is easy to navigate with no issues noticed.

The text is free of grammatical and syntactic errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

The authors have created a text that shows an awareness of the need for cultural sensitivity and is inoffensive and completely class appropriate. . The Chapter titled “Appropriate Words” touches on avoiding the use of “Sexist Language”, which indicates concern for gender respect. Improvement could be made by using a more diverse group of authors for the opening chapter quotes.

I think this text is an excellent source for helping students understand the basic steps needed to write a good essay.

Reviewed by Aerie Bernard, Adjunct Faculty, Humanities, College of DuPage on 4/20/21

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This short text provides an approachable primer for novice essayists and reminder of standard practices of academic writing for more experienced writers. Rather than go into great depth, the chapters briefly outline the process of writing academic essays at the high school or undergraduate level. The text is comprehensive in that it is organized linearly to guide the writer from taking notes and developing a thesis through writing drafts and revisions. There is no index or glossary provided; however, the table of contents and short chapters ensure that the text is easy to navigate.

The content is accurate and error-free. The text is written by educators who attempt to address what they identify as common errors in student writing. As such, the bias present reflects a preference for standard English and traditional structure in academic writing.

Because the text focuses on standard practices in academic writing such as writing strong topic sentences, creating arguable theses, and avoiding passive voice, I doubt the text could become obsolete anytime soon. The text speaks to current trends in academic writing by including tips such as how to use gender neutral language and gears itself towards the high school and undergraduate level by modeling and promoting the use of a conversational tone in academic writing. Short, well-organized, worksheet-like chapters allow plenty of room for one to add to, update, or adapt this text.

The authors advise student essayists to use language and style that illustrates “genuine human conversation.” The text successfully models a balance of accuracy of language with a conversational tone. It is a pleasant read.

The text is consistent in its use of terminology, framework, and voice.

Short chapters with limited scope provide introductions and jumping off points for further discussions and activities related to academic writing in the humanities and social sciences.

The chapters are arranged to illustrate a start to finish approach to writing essays. Each chapter focuses on an element of essay writing. The organization is clear and logical.

Interface rating: 4

I had no difficulty accessing or reading the text online with my laptop and my phone. I was not as successful viewing the EPUB as a download to my phone. The text was too small in Bluefire reader and the app would not allow viewing at a larger font size. I do not know if the limitation was due to the EPUB or the reader app.

I did not notice any grammatical errors.

The text addresses the importance of avoiding problematic language in academic writing in the chapter “Appropriate Words” and cautions that writers avoid repetition and wordiness, cliches, jargon, pop culture references, empty words, words with contested meanings, code words, and overextended/mixed/misapplied metaphors. I notice the absence of resources, strategies, and discussions about words relating to race, ethnicity, background, or identity. Also, examples throughout the text are primarily Western, male, and white. Steps towards inclusiveness are present, such as strategies for gender neutral writing, but there is room for improvement.

Reviewed by Sarah Fischer, Assistant Professor, Marymount University on 2/1/21

The book is *short* and useful. It gives excellent advice for how students can and should select strong evidence, how to write effective openings and closings, and discusses many common grammatical errors. However, the book does not spend enough... read more

This book is well-researched and contains no errors (in terms of subject matter, usage, or grammar).

Very relevant, especially because so many books on writing are long, and the longer they are the less likely students are to read them. This book does very impactful work in a very limited number of pages.

Clarity rating: 3

The book is very clear and accessible for professors and advanced students. Many of the examples from English and History papers utilized in the book would be quite difficult for many first-year students to follow, however.

Formatting is quite consistent; terminology is consistently and appropriately used.

Sections of this book are small, easy to understand, and not overwhelming for any level of student to read.

This book's organization flows in a logical way.

I did not notice any interface issues.

I did not notice any grammatical errors in the text.

The authors took care to be culturally sensitive.

A few short exercises at the end of each section, which instructors could create for their classes, would help students practice the book's lessons as sort of intermediary step between reading about possible pitfalls and working on their own to eliminate issues from their writing.

Reviewed by Deirdre Sullivan, Adjunct Faculty, English Department, Berkshire Community College on 6/27/20

A Short Handbook for Writing Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences by Salvatore Allosso and Dan Allosso is a comprehensive and concise work on how to write good essays on the humanities and the social sciences by clearly defining the definitions of those disciplines. I have not seen many indexes and/or glossaries with these online books, so I don't think it is really necessary for the comprehension of the text.

The content was accurate, without error, and unbiased in its content, syntax, and point of view.

I think the light tone, conversational style, and relevance to all who practice the art of writing is both timely and long-lasting. There is a universal appeal to this approach, and while language is always changing, the rules for written work have more longevity.

The book is written in such a way as to engage even the most reluctant reader into a kind of conspiratorial allegiance on how to approach the art of reading well and writing with lucid accuracy, technical prowess, and enlightened awareness.

The text incorporates terminology into the structure and framework of its chapters with clarity and consistency.

The text is proportionate to reasonable reading and writing assignments. In each chapter, there is a clear way of recognizing and analyzing concepts on writing for use toward student outcomes in a writing course.

This text is logically organized to support and sustain its thesis and the thorough exploration of its guiding elements.

There are no significant interface issues, problems with navigation, or distractions to confuse potential readers.

There are no grammatical errors to my reckoning.

The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. The book embraced multi-culturalism with quotes, questions, and persuasive argument as to how a writer must be objective, open-minded, and thoroughly engaged in standing by their work.

I really loved the conversational style between authors and readers. This father-son duo has clearly taken delight in sharing their love of the world through the art of writing. I really liked the quotes they chose to support their ideas. Perhaps one day, I will use their book in my composition classes. A truly remarkable discovery!

Reviewed by Dayle Turner, Professor, Leeward Community College on 6/27/20

The text covers fairly well the important considerations of writing essays for humanities and social sciences courses. The authors assert their intention of taking students “step-by-step through the process of writing essays for an upper-level high school class or a college course.” The steps of which they speak include analyzing texts, note-taking, formulating essay topics, creating theses, ordering evidence, building arguments, writing coherent paragraphs, composing effective sentences, using appropriate diction, and revising. The text lacks an index and glossary and the inclusion thereof would certainly strengthen the comprehensiveness of the work.

The content of this text is accurate and the steps covered are mostly applicable for first-year college students and high school juniors and seniors.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The content appears up-to-date. Text is devoid of visual imagery, making it potentially less appealing to contemporary/millennial students, but its structure invites relatively easy updating, and all links were accurate.

The text is mostly clear and provides adequate examples to explain the application of material discussed in each chapter.

Consistency rating: 4

The text's consistency would be excellent if an index and glossary were included.

Modularity rating: 4

This text is organized in such a manner that students can be assigned short readings without having to jump hither and yon between chapters or different parts of the book.

There are nine chapters in the text. They are presented in a logical and purposeful order. Critical reading and note-taking comes first while a revision checklist is available at the end. This makes sense as it is important to provide students with suggestions for information-gathering and revision.

The interface is free of any distracting issues. The text is mostly easy to navigate.

I noticed no grammatical errors.

The text successfully represents a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Examples are sensitive and free of stereotypes.

This book would have been beneficial to me as an undergraduate. Most of what it covers are things I had to learn by experience, and the quality of my earliest scholarship would have been much improved with the benefit of these lessons. The text has value as a supplementary or recommended material, particularly for students whose plans include graduate school or writing-intensive professions. Students who are most prepared will get the most out of it, but the text also offers good examples

Reviewed by Matilda (Tillie) Yoder, Librarian, Goshen College on 7/10/19

The scope of this text is very clearly outlined in its title - it aims to guide students through the process of writing essays for humanities and social sciences courses. The Allossos succeed in creating a work that does just that, discussing techniques and strategies for writing well but assuming that readers will have a reasonable familiarity with English grammar. Contents included how to develop ideas, how to formulate effective arguments, how to identify weak points in writing, and how to revise effectively. It is worth noting that the authors are not concerned with formatting, emphasizing the writing process and not the finicky details of citation structure, title page layout, or font size.These issues are easily addressed on a great many websites and reference works; more concerning is that there is no real discussion of plagiarism or how to manage citations and references, which is an important part of any humanities or social sciences essay that requires research and not a single text.

There is no glossary or index for this work, though the table of contents lays out chapter topics very clearly. An index would be quite useful for instructors and students wanting to use the book in its entirety. Similarly, a reference list with links to related works and websites might also be of use for those who would like more in-depth information on particular techniques not elaborated on in this short work.

The content of this guidebook is accurate, although its narrow focus does mean that is not comprehensive (and it does not intend to be). The strategies outlined in it are standard practice and are conveyed succinctly. Quoted authors are all referenced by name but not in any further detail; simple citations for these quotes would model best practices for the students reading the material.

The content of this guidebook is general enough in nature to remain relevant for some time. The examples given throughout the book reference works of classic Western literature or established understandings of history that American schools are likely to continue to teach - Shakespeare’s plays, the history of slave uprisings in the Americas, the Civil War, and Hemingway all feature. Notably, references are only discussed in the context of example passages, and so no knowledge of the events or plots is necessary to understand what the authors are saying.

The Alessos practice what they preach in this instance, writing directly and clearly. Jargon is almost non-existent, and where it does exist it is always defined and explained. Concepts are clearly illustrated with multiple examples and outlined step by step. The overall vocabulary and level of writing is appropriate for students in grade 11 or above.

Key terms are used continually throughout this work; in particular, the authors emphasize the importance of unity, coherence, and emphasis in effective writing. Vocabulary terms are introduced and used consistently, although alternative terms are listed to ensure understanding.

This guide could be easily divided into distinct sections useful for a wide variety of classes throughout the humanities and social sciences. History and English classes would find it particularly relevant, but introductory writing teachers, writing tutors, and academic support offices would also find much that is useful here. The sections on how to construct a thesis and the revision checklist are particularly applicable to me in my work as a writing tutor. I can see myself having students read specific sections of this book depending on what their particular roadblocks to writing are.

The organization of this text is logical, beginning with the process of note-taking and brainstorming, and moving on to persuasive argument building, thesis construction, essay structure, writing, and revision. The revision checklist at the end of the textbook is also organized in such a way that it leads students to look for major issues in their writing before the minor ones.

Overall, the guidebook displayed well and is easy to navigate. There are no images included, and although images are not strictly necessary for this sort of topic, I believe that the text would benefit from some formatting changes. Some of the lists could use better visual clues in their subdivision, and example paragraphs would benefit from being presented in a diagram format where specific portions could be highlighted and remarked on more directly. Unfortunately, this title is not available in PDF format, which would be useful for anyone wanting access to the book without an internet connection. Epub format would be useful as well.

I noticed no grammatical errors or typos in this text.

All references to culture in this text appear in example writing passages. Because of this, no deep understanding of the referenced work or work is needed, because it is the writing and not the content of the passage that is the focus. However, almost all of the references included are focused on classic works concerning Western literature and history (Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Beowulf, etc.). A broadening of examples would be welcome, but as it stands the text is inoffensive and reflects what is taught in many English classes in American schools.

Getting Started Writing
Chapter 1: Analyzing Texts, Taking Notes
Chapter 2: Discovering a Topic, Preparing for Discussion
Chapter 3: Creating a Thesis
Chapter 4: Ordering Evidence, Building an Argument
Chapter 5: Coherent Paragraphs
Chapter 6: Effective Sentences
Chapter 7: Appropriate Words
Chapter 8: Revising
Chapter 9: Revision Checklist

Ancillary Material

About the book.

A retired master teacher of English and Comparative Literature teams up with his son, a History professor, on a new version of the writing manual he wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis.

About the Contributors

Dan Allosso , Bemidji State University

Contribute to this Page

Writing, Reading, and Research at Monroe Community College

All write: writing in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

In college, you will read complex texts, analyze these texts and their contexts, and then construct arguments that focus your analyses. The larger goal is for you to gain exposure to real-world conversations, as well as the critical reading and thinking skills necessary for participating in these conversations.

The thesis-driven essay dominates writing in the humanities. So, for example, in a literature class you might study a particular text and then be asked to construct and defend individual arguments about that text. You generally write for an audience of other college-level students who have studied the same text, sometimes synthesizing scholarly arguments with your own to foster a broader dialogue about the text’s aesthetic, cultural, and/or metaphysical value. You are expected to read accurately, think independently, bring multiple sources together, and defend your insights with logic and evidence. Again, the larger goal is for you to recognize and enter real-world conversations, encouraging consideration of the different ways texts and their contexts matter.

Maria Brandt, English Faculty

Social Sciences

All disciplines use critical thinking and a process of inquiry and reasoning to attempt to understand the world around us. In the social sciences, such as the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, history, political science, economics, psychology, and geography, students use content-specific knowledge and the scientific method to examine the human or social world. Through writing, you are encouraged to ask “big” questions, think deeper, analyze and synthesize empirical data, and formulate relevant solutions to real world issues. Students engage in meaningful research at micro- and/or macro-levels, and may choose a variety of methodological approaches. Whether you are engaged in formal writing (perhaps writing a research paper) or informal writing (perhaps writing in a journal or recording observations), you are engaged in the process of ordering your experience and communicating knowledge in a systematic way.

Nayda Pares-Kane, Sociology Faculty

Natural Sciences

In the natural science and engineering disciplines, students are typically expected to conduct hands-on research and then present their findings in a laboratory report. Reports are frequently very structured, and most include sections that provide background information gleaned from primary sources, a description of the research methods and results, and an explanation of the researcher’s analysis and conclusions regarding the validity and reach of the experiment. Another common writing expectation for students in the natural science and engineering fields is the production of a laboratory or field journal detailing observational and experimental data. The goal of these types of writing assignments is to convey accurate, factual information to other researchers so that they could replicate your experiments to validate your conclusions.

MaryJo Witz, Biology Faculty

Writing Resources

Essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences

These essays are usually some type of analysis or interpretation which require that you develop a thesis and then prove that thesis in the body of the paper. These are the types of papers (in contrast to lab reports or marketing proposals) closest to the style you have written in high school and UNIV 190. However, avoid doing some of the things that are common in high school papers: 1) data dumping, 2) spending too much space on summary 3) using a strict five-paragraph structure or 4) using an unintegrated comparison or counterargument.

Thesis driven

Because these papers are thesis driven, you must spend time and attention on your thesis. Here are some of the most common problems:

Ensuring that the thesis addresses the prompt
Ensuring that the thesis is analytical or interpretive so that it is not simply a fact, but is a unique position that you’re staking out and will need to defend.
Ensuring you are using the right style for your class. Some professors and fields prefer very bald styles: e.g. “In this paper, I argue…” They may also ask for an outline of the paper with the thesis. E.g. “I will first define the term, then demonstrate….” While other professors and fields require that you NEVER use words like “In this paper I argue…” nor give an outline. In the humanities, that is considered extremely bad style.

Analyzing a topic requires that you consider all of the following and then focus only on those which are the most appropriate:

Comparison – consider what you main idea/thesis can be compared to. It is useful to compare to something completely different and to something quite similar. If a large portion of your paper requires comparison, be sure to use an integrated comparison. Don’t just talk about one item in one paragraph and the other item in another. Compare both according to some point in EACH paragraph.
Classification–this is an extension of comparison. You classify when there are many similar items to compare. It is also a sort of vertical comparison. What broader or more general category does your idea/topic belong to?
Cause/Effect, Reason/Result — Look for relationships
Problem/Solution — This can be related to cause/effect or to comparison. What caused the problem? What effect will the solution have? Compare the alternative solutions to decide which is best.
Ethos/Pathos/Logos/Kairos — Have you analyzed your topic from all perspectives? Ethos = Credibility including your analysis of the counterarguments, Pathos = Values, Logos =Reason, Kairos=Timeliness/Current Relevance
try to use three different pieces of evidence to support each major point
use examples of specific actions, people or places
use quotes–be sure to integrate these by adding a sentence before or after to explain how you are using the quote as evidence. Many students make the mistake of paraphrasing or rephrasing the quote. That is not useful and doesn’t count as explanation. In fact, if you can paraphrase it, then there’s no point in quoting it. You use a quote because the words that author used are exactly the right words; i.e. there’s no better way to say it. In fact, you may use some space to explain why those words are so great.
use numbers or facts

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Key concepts in humanities and social sciences

A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Salvatore allosso and dan allosso.

A Short Handbook for writing essays in the Humanities and Social Sciences by Salvatore F. Allosso and Dan Allosso is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Getting Started Writing

Analyzing texts, taking notes, discovering a topic, preparing for discussion, creating a thesis, ordering evidence, building an argument, coherent paragraphs, effective sentences, appropriate words, revision checklist.

Anxiety is the writer’s first obstacle. We often wonder, “what can I write that hasn’t already been written by someone else, and probably much better?” As you can see, we (the two authors of this handbook) are already on the way to overcoming this anxiety simply by writing a section heading and two sentences (now three). However, we’re still anxious about doing a good job and making this a useful tool that you’ll benefit from reading.

Our first paragraph above makes assertions and asks for development. This is what first paragraphs are often for. We’ll get to paragraphs soon enough. For now, we’ll expand on those assertions by making some observations that will move us forward.

Writing about anything – a text, a source, an exam question – is at least a three-way dialogue: between us, the writers; you, the reader; and the material. Therefore, it should serve at least three purposes: to explore the material; to describe our reactions to it; and to communicate with you.
Waiting until you know exactly what and how you want to write is unproductive. You learn both by writing .
Writing is a craft for most of us, not an art. That means we are not seeking perfection, and we learn by practicing .

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Then why state the obvious? Because new writers often forget, and because some writing manuals assume you know things that you don’t, since their authors have known them for so long. This handbook will take you step-by-step through the process of writing essays for an upper-level high school class or a college course. We have English and History classes in mind, because one of us is a History teacher and the other taught English. The advice we’re offering is intended to be relatively basic and direct, because most of your college writing should be basic and direct.

Remember, this is utilitarian writing, not poetry or the great American novel. You’re probably reading this because you have to. Either it’s been assigned or you’ve realized you need some help developing these skills (good for you!). Even so, if we want to hold your interest, we (your authors) need to get to the point. Nothing turns away readers as quickly as feeling that their time is being wasted. Therefore, just like you, we need to decide how best to use the time and space we’re given for this task. What words to use? What tone to set? How to organize the writing so that it makes sense and gets the job done; and so the reader feels the least possible amount of pain – or maybe even has some fun? These are all questions we’re asking ourselves as we outline, draft, and revise this handbook. These are the questions the handbook will help you ask and answer about your own writing.

First of all, what is a text? For our purposes, a text is any statement you run into in this class. Anything you read, of course. But a lecture is also often a text. Even a discussion can be, if people have prepared their arguments. You should be thinking about texts, analyzing them all the time. Don’t passively accept what you’re told or what you read. Ask questions, compare what you’re reading or hearing with things you’ve heard before, things you’ve read, things you believe. And write your thoughts down – because they will be the foundations of your essays.

Analyzing a text is the same as analyzing anything else: you take it apart so you can see what it’s supposed to do and how it does its job. Author W.H. Auden demystified both literature and criticism when he said, “Here is a verbal contraption. How does it work?”

By now you’ve probably learned in an English class how authors use plot, imagery, symbolism, and allusion to express ideas and values in literature. We often forget that authors of nonfiction do this too, using pretty much the same set of language tools. This is how reporters write the news. Historians tell stories. Even physicists, when they leave equations behind and try to describe their discoveries to the rest of us in plain English, find themselves using analogies, metaphors, and the other language tools we all use. We’re really doing two related things in this handbook: showing you how to analyze someone else’s writing and showing you how to write yourself. Writing an interpretive essay uses a subset of these language tools, so as you’re learning to recognize how authors do it, remember that you’re going to be doing it too.

When you take lecture notes, you’re beginning the writing process. Yes, you’re recording information that might be on the exam. But you are also hearing an argument – the lecturer isn’t just reciting some random set of facts. Most lectures are built around a central question or idea. If the lecturer doesn’t come right out and tell you what that is (clue: does the syllabus have lecture titles? Are they in the form of questions?), try to figure it out. If it doesn’t come to you in class, review your notes later and try to boil the lecture’s theme down to a sentence or two. If you’re really stumped, ask.

You’ll want to take notes when you read, too. We are going to show you how writers work: how they generally organize arguments, how they generally use setting and point of view to create atmosphere and mood; how they generally present narrators and characters to engage problems, etc. These are valuable clues to help you determine what a text might “mean” – in general . Your task is to analyze them in the specific context of the text you are reading and interpret how they make that contraption work. You might find once you get used to it, that such active reading doesn’t diminish, but actually increases the pleasure of reading.

Your reading notes should explore both the “facts” in the text (who did what, when, where, how, and, if indicated, why?) and what they might suggest. But don’t be too surprised if “facts” and “interpretations” are sometimes hard to distinguish. Discussions will go more smoothly and productively if you’ve already read the assignment and have begun a dialogue with the text before you come to class. If you’ve underlined interesting passages and written questions and comments in the margins of your book and if you’ve jotted down your thoughts about the reading, then you’ll be coming to class as an active member of an exploratory party and not as a passive fellow traveler. This will prevent the discussion leader from having to give you yet another lecture and will improve your understanding of the material and your participation grade. And there’s a reason why we discuss this material in groups, rather than each pondering it on our own. We’re all looking for the “truth” of our subject. As Franz Kafka noted in his diary, “one person cannot express the truth, but a host of perspectives might come close to this goal.”

So what should you write down, when you’re taking notes on a reading? Begin with anything at all that you’re not sure about, that you don’t understand, that you’d like explained. Start with basic questions that clarify facts, then move on to interpretations. Compare the reading with other readings you’ve done, or with lecture and discussion notes. Add questions that reflect your interests and concerns – they’re usually the issues that lead to good discussions and essays.

Here are some questions, divided between fiction and nonfiction. Use what fits:

For Fiction (mostly)

If it’s a narrative, who is telling the story? Is the narrator reliable? Unreliable? Biased? Recognizing the narrator’s point of view will help you evaluate the “facts” of the story.
What is the setting and tone? What are you allowed to see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and feel – both physically and emotionally? Is there a sense of comedy, tragedy, irony?
Who are the major and minor characters? What are their concerns? What motivates them? Who are you supposed to identify with?
What kind of language is being used? What level of diction? What might that indicate?
How is the plot structured ? How are the issues and problems organized? Are there challenges and responses? Is there a recognizable archetype (hero’s journey, classical tragedy, etc.)?
What images and motifs recur? What kinds of terms, images, patterns are repeated? Can you recognize metaphors? To what do they point?
How does it end? What is resolved? What is the significance of the ending? Why does it end where it does?

For Non-fiction (mostly)

Who is the author? What is the author’s background? Is the author qualified to be the authority on the material in the piece?
Who is the original audience for the text? How does the author feel about the audience? Are they allies? Opponents? Neutral readers the author is trying to convince of something?
What is the author’s intention? Is the piece explanatory? Polemical? Celebratory? Why was it written?
How is the argument structured? Does the author appeal to logic or emotion? What type of argument does the author use?

On Arguments

Humans have been writing and reading for thousands of years, so it shouldn’t surprise you that people have been trying to work out the details of these processes for a long time. The most famous writer on writing was Aristotle (384-322 BCE), who was a student of Plato in Athens and later a teacher of Alexander the Great in Macedon. Aristotle analyzed statements and identified some characteristics of argument that we still use today.

Aristotle found that logic was a main ingredient of many (but not all) arguments. You might recognize the logical sequence: All rabbits are mammals; Spots is a rabbit; therefore Spots is a mammal. Aristotle called this a syllogism and recognized it as the most powerful type of argument. You can see how it’s impossible to argue with the conclusion once you’ve accepted the premises. If you can organize an argument this way, moving from agreed-on premises to an irrefutable conclusion, you’re likely to convince a lot of people.

Of course, most of the time we don’t have the advantage of being able to argue from premises that are incontrovertible facts. Sometimes our job is to show our readers new facts in order to lead them to our conclusion. Other times, what we’re really arguing about is the truth of our premises. We live in a world of uncertainty, after all. So many of our arguments are based on premises that are tentative, leading to probable rather than absolute conclusions. Sometimes we go to great lengths to pretend our premises are sound and our conclusions irrefutable. More on that later.

This may all seem ridiculously abstract. We don’t spend much time these days, taking apart the way we think and looking at the parts. But stick with it – it’s important. When a political leader makes a claim such as “Markets should be unregulated,” or “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”, there’s usually a trail of argument behind it. If you want to understand (or challenge) the claim, the best place to look is at the premises that lead to the conclusion.

The form of argument we’ve been looking at above is called deduction. It builds from accepted facts to a specific conclusion. There are two other forms you should know. Induction goes more or less in the opposite direction. Induction starts with observations or evidence (like data in a scientific experiment) and ends with a general conclusion. Since in the real world we never have a chance to look at all the data, these conclusions are, strictly speaking, tentative. But in life we often take inductive ideas as facts. We know what’s going to happen when we throw a ball, not because we’ve studied physics and calculus, but because we’ve done it before and experienced the results. Even so, careful scientists still talk about the theory of evolution. They don’t do this because they aren’t convinced that evolution is correct, but because there’s always the possibility that new evidence will be found that will require them to adjust the theory. The point is, inductive reasoning is supposed to follow where the data leads it.

Aristotle identified a third form of argument that may surprise you: narrative. Historian Hayden White defined history as a verbal artifact that we use to “combine a certain amount of data, theoretical concepts for explaining these data, and a narrative structure for their presentation.” Stories and anecdotes persuade us because we identify with the people and situations of the story. A good story can even sometimes take the place of data (induction) or even agreed-on facts (deduction) in an argument. The most powerful stories can reach past the logical appeal to reason, bringing the emotions of the audience into play. Fear, pride, contentment, resentment, love, and moral outrage are all powerful elements of argument, so it’s important to be able to recognize whether a writer is appealing to reason or to emotion. And then to ask why.

The texts you’ll need to work with at this level of your education are probably givens. In English they are often the “classics,” books that informed readers consider the most significant of their time. In History we also have texts (primary and secondary) that are central to our understanding of an event or a period. The process of becoming a classic is interesting and involves both the innumerable readings the texts have undergone and the ongoing construction of our common culture. But that’s not really the point we’re exploring here. The particular texts you’re responsible for in a given class were chosen out of a universe of possible texts because they fit together and because, as a group, they lead somewhere. When you figure out how they fit together and where they lead, you’ll be well on your way to understanding the overall theme of the course – which, remember, is also a text!

Another thing about “classics.” Whether we respond positively or negatively to them, we can’t ignore their influence. When we off-handedly characterize something as being “Quixotic” or “Kafkaesque”; when our newspapers and popular magazines talk about “Progressives” or the “Frontier”; when political cartoons, rap music, and even Sunday comics depend on our familiarity with Beowulf and Odysseus and Malcolm X and Viet Nam in order to get their point, then we would be wise to become familiar with these concepts, characters, and events.

So we have our texts: a set of assigned readings, lectures and discussions. Let’s think of them as a challenge. How are we going to make these texts meaningful to ourselves? This is a basic question in life. Every day we deal with things not under our control. Poet Robert Frost once claimed that every one of his poems was “one of these adaptations that I’ve made. I’ve taken whatever you give me and made it what I want it to be.” You’ve already begun responding to this challenge by taking notes on what you’ve read and heard. Even if your discussion and essay assignment is very directed – “Discuss the relationship between Quixote and Sancho Panza in Don Quixote ” or “Compare John Muir’s attitude toward wilderness with Gifford Pinchot’s based on their writing about the Hetch Hetchy controversy” – there’s always a way to make an aspect of the topic your own.

If, on the other hand, you have to discover your own topic, you’re faced with a different challenge – but that’s still no reason for panic or “writer’s block,” since you’ve already begun the process. Your notes are writing, and they’re the source of what you’ll contribute to discussion. Some passages you marked in your text or notes you wrote in your notebook will hopefully be the main facts and ideas you were looking for, and other highlights and comments will represent your personal reactions to the text. That’s why everybody’s notes are a little different. When you think about and expand on these personal reactions, you’ll discover the beginnings of your individual interpretation of the texts.

Follow these clues one at a time. Some will go nowhere. They’ll turn out to be uninteresting or inappropriate for the assignment, or there won’t be enough material to support an argument. But some will be interesting, appropriate, and supportable. Bring them to discussion. Write about them. What your instructor wants – what all your readers will appreciate – is evidence of your thoughtful response to the text.

By now you should be beginning to see how these tasks – taking notes, preparing for discussions, formulating an essay topic – all build on one another. We, your authors, have been students ourselves. We know from experience there is rarely time to go back and redo things. But if you put some effort into these steps as you go through them, your notes will generate discussion ideas, discussions will help you focus on the most promising interpretations, and you’ll be on your way to a solid paper. The worst thing is to be facing a due-date with no idea how you’re going to fill five pages. If you work at each of these steps, that won’t be a problem. The essay topic, and probably a lot of the essay itself, will jump out of your notes at you.

So think of discussion as a more tentative, less formal way to try out ideas and interpretations that might lead to an essay. When you write notes for discussion, they’re for you. The ideas can be half formed: questions you don’t yet have answers to. Bouncing them off the group will help you develop your ideas, and will tell you which ones are most interesting to others.

Settling on a Manageable Topic

At some point you may be asked to turn in a tentative essay topic. Or to pick a topic from a set the instructor provides. In either case you should keep in mind that:

Your purpose is to explore some specific part of the text and its relationship to some general idea you’ve interpreted;
Your time (and your readers’ time) is limited, so choose a topic that allows you to get the paper in on time;
Your composition requirement is set – often four-to-five typed pages for a standard short paper;
Your readers have read the texts or are familiar with the material and don’t want a summary .

Remember: you are only going to be asked to write a short interpretive essay. Not to resolve for all time how James Joyce’s Ulysses changed the nature of the hero in modern novels or to trace all the influences of the French Revolution on the development of American nationalism. The scope of your project will naturally narrow, as you focus on what interests you – that’s a good thing.

An Example (from literature)

Suppose that when you were reading The Odyssey , you found you were interested in Homer’s portrayal of women. You marked some passages, wrote comments in the margins of your text, and brought them up in class. After clearing up the “facts” – who did what, when, how, and why? – maybe you still want to know: Why did I respond the way I did? What was Homer doing?

“Is there enough material to build an interpretation?” you ask yourself. More specifically: Who are the characters Kirke, Kalypso, Nausikaa, Penelope, Helen, Klytaimnestra, Eurykleia, Arete? Do they have anything in common? Differences? How does Odysseus seem to view them? How do they respond to him? How does this affect Odysseus? How does their interaction relate to the world depicted in the text? How do they function in relation to the larger theme? Does any pattern emerge?

Now that you’ve read, thought about, and discussed something that interests you, you’re ready to pursue a general and still unshaped topic that is appropriate and certainly has enough material to investigate more closely and develop: “Homer’s Portrayal of Women in The Odyssey .” This is probably not yet a manageable topic for a short paper, but it’s already better than a more general topic like “The Odyssey.” As you focus you might narrow your topic to a comparison of faithful wives to unfaithful wives, or of wives to mistresses, or of those women who provide security and continuity to those who offer adventure and experience. You might find that these categories are unsatisfactory to you. Good! Develop your own perceptions of how these characters function in the text.

Another Example (from history)

Suppose you were given an assignment : Compare Booker T. Washington’s approach to race relations in his 1895 “Atlanta Exposition Speech” with W.E.B. DuBois’s approach in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). You read the two texts and discover that DuBois is highly critical of Washington, and Souls is his counterargument to Washington’s position.

But as you read DuBois’s criticism of Washington and go back to the “Atlanta Exposition Speech” to see if that’s really what Washington said, you find yourself feeling one way or another about the debate. Maybe you feel DuBois misrepresented Washington’s position. Maybe you feel Washington was a realist and DuBois was an idealist. Maybe you agree with DuBois that Washington was an appeaser. Maybe (best case) you’re aware from your reading and discussion that people have reacted in all these ways to the texts. Now you’ve got the basis of an essay that can look at both texts, discuss the variety of reactions to them, and then – if you choose to – stake out your own. Even though your topic was assigned to you, with a little thought you can take it in a direction that interests you and that will allow you to build your own interpretation.

The important point in both examples is that once you’ve read the text carefully and taken good notes, you can begin the process of making it your text by bringing your experience and imagination to bear on a central idea – a topic – that especially interests you. Your notes will lead you back to the areas that caught your attention as you took them. Most of the time you’ll find your topic there. You can test out and refine that topic in discussion, and see how others respond to it. As you work with it, you may find that there’s something in particular you want to say about this topic. That something will be the basis of your thesis, which we’ll discuss next.

You’ve probably been told by writing teachers that if the topic is the main idea, then the thesis is the main idea statement. You develop your topic, which was a word or a phrase (your subject), into a sentence (your subject plus a predicate, or what you have to say about it). But that’s not enough if you want the satisfaction of creating a fine thing, or if you want to present your reader with an essay worth reading. You’re past the “But I have nothing to say” stage – you’ve already begun the writing process by taking notes, and you’ve reviewed those notes to discover your interests. You’ve explored possible topics in discussion and settled on a manageable topic. Now you must move from your open-ended first reading of your texts to a more deliberate rereading of particular passages. These closer readings of passages relevant to your topic will suggest interpretations that need to be developed . It’s important at the outset to dismiss anything as a possible thesis that is either factual or self-evident. Nothing obvious needs arguing, so a paper that argues the obvious has no purpose. You don’t want your reader to respond, “So what?” to an essay you’ve just gone to a lot of trouble to write. You can prevent this by anticipating your reader’s responses and asking yourself questions such as:

What interpretation am I trying to persuade my reader is valid?
What are my reasons for this interpretation?
How is my interpretation different from other, accepted interpretations?
What parts of the text am I going to examine? To emphasize?
What are my assumptions?
Who would disagree? What objections can I expect? (If none, then do I have a thesis worth developing at all?)

Remember: a focused thesis statement connects your more general main idea with your specific development of it – in which you’ll use concrete illustrations, observations, quotations, analysis, and interpretation. Thus, the topic sentences of your supporting paragraphs will be contained, explicitly or implicitly, in the all-important thesis sentence(s).

Settling on a Workable Thesis, you should keep in mind that:

You must have discovered your topic first – if your subject doesn’t interest you, you will merely write mechanically;
You should have more than enough material – notes, passages marked in your text, your ideas – to investigate;
You’re going to state it in your first paragraph, so make your thesis as terse and as explicit as possible.

The process of rereading your texts with your topic in mind and organizing your evidence helps you move from your initial, open-ended exploration to creating a thesis and ultimately supporting arguments. This stage is often called “brainstorming” or “freewriting” or “prewriting.” Like preparing notes to bring to discussion, it’s an informal, personal part of the writing process. Often you’ll be the only person to see these notes – they probably won’t be graded. Do them anyway . Like your initial note-taking, this is an important step. The work you do here will prevent you having to grope for ideas and evidence when you’re outlining and writing. And like taking notes, this is also writing . You improve at anything by practicing it – this is another chance to practice writing.

An Example (from history)

Let’s suppose one of your textbooks is James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me , for a course that deals with our changing ideas about history over time. In Chapter 6, which is titled “John Brown and Abraham Lincoln: the invisibility of antiracism in American history textbooks,” Loewen says that history has mostly portrayed violent white abolitionist John Brown as insane, “narrowly ignorant,” and “a religious fanatic.” In contrast, Loewen says, “Consider Nat Turner, who in 1831 led the most important slave revolt since the United States became a nation. John Brown and Nat Turner both killed whites in cold blood…but unlike Brown, Turner is portrayed as…something of a hero.”

You begin wondering, what is the difference between John Brown and Nat Turner? Loewen cites his sources, so you can look at them to see how the ways the two men are portrayed differs and how these portrayals have changed over time. You take your questions to discussion and your peers and instructor find them interesting. Your topic, “Why is Nat Turner a Hero and John Brown a Villain?” will probably be controversial, but after bringing your questions to discussion and finding that your peers and instructor are interested in the direction you’re taking this, you begin looking at some other texts that mention Brown or Turner (if you’re really lucky, you find some that compare them). Your closer reading reveals that many histories portray John Brown as ignorant, even though the record shows he was a highly educated man who had traveled in sophisticated social circles before Harpers Ferry. You read more and begin to form an interpretation: that maybe history can forgive Nat Turner for his killings because he was an escaped slave acting in a manner expected of his peer group, while John Brown was considered a traitor to his white, educated peer group. There are other possible interpretations, but you decide to test the thesis that “John Brown is vilified by history because Brown’s certainty that Christianity and slavery were incompatible was an intolerable challenge to the smug rationalizations of other whites in 19th century America.”

This will be a controversial thesis to explore – you’ve already run into many histories that implicitly or explicitly deny this interpretation. The upside is that you’ll have the full attention of your reader. As you continue your research, you may find there were other factors leading to history’s rejection of Brown, or that not all histories rejected him. You’ll have an opportunity to refine your thesis – it’s not carved in stone – but for now it’s a good source of direction for your project.

Another Example (from literature)

Suppose you decide to pursue “Homer’s Portrayal of Women in The Odyssey. ” Class discussion reflected on the emphasis on “family values” in recent news coverage of politicians looking for issues near election time. You were stimulated by what they had to say. Or maybe you were offended by the superficiality of the “soundbites” – after all, you’ve just read Odysseus telling Agamemnon in Book Eleven that “empty words are evil.” So you want to take a closer look at families in the text. You reread relevant passages, highlighting the relationships of Odysseus-Penelope-Telemakhos on one side, and Agamemnon-Klytaimnestra-Orestes on the other.

You plan to contrast the “functional” families in The Odyssey with the “dysfunctional” ones, focusing on the role that the wives play. You know you won’t use those terms in your final draft, as they’re both jargon and clichés, but they will get you started. It would be too obvious merely to point out that Penelope and Klytaimnestra represent “good guys” versus “bad guys.” That’s a “So what?” paper. As you reread, you notice that Penelope is not such a one-dimensional character; neither is Klytaimnestra. You sense that Odysseus’s wife’s “fidelity” is motivated by causes more complicated than conventional, and Agamemnon’s wife’s “infidelity” is grounded in his sacrifice of her daughter for his brother’s honor. Now you’re interpreting and you know someone will disagree, so you prepare an argument. Your (tentative) thesis statement is: “Although some have proposed that The Odyssey was presented as an educational model prescribing rules and roles for generations of Greeks, a close look at the characters of Penelope and Klytaimnestra suggests that Homer was as much a probing psychologist as a patronizing pedagogue.” Okay, the alliteration might be a bit too much – but you’ll worry about that in a later draft; this is a good start. This thesis is a bit too general: ultimately you’ll have to be more specific as to which psychological aspects of these characters Homer probes. But it will serve to focus your “brainstorming” and help you develop your argument.

When you’re given a writing assignment in an English or History class, you’re being called on to interpret, evaluate, appreciate, condemn, praise – but, above all, to think . An essay, in that sense, is just like being called on in class. You’re being asked to say something thoughtful about the topic at hand. So just as you would in a face-to-face conversation, you’ll want to stick to the point and offer your response in a way that is understandable and that puts your ideas in the best possible light. If you try to keep the same guidelines in mind for your writing that you use instinctively when you’re talking, then your paper will read like a genuine human discussion rather than like an empty political TV commercial. Your readers will appreciate this very much!

By now you’ve (hopefully!) taken notes, reviewed them to find what interests you, identified a topic, and developed it into a tentative thesis. You’ve begun rereading specific areas of your texts or researching other sources for ideas that relate to your thesis. So the time has come to start building these ideas into an argument.

You may recall in our brief look at the different types of arguments, that there are appeals to emotion and appeals to reason. The type of writing we’re talking about here may make an occasional reference to emotion (especially if you’re writing about a controversial issue), but the argument should be logical.

The two forms of logical arguments you’ll probably end up using, depending on the material and the assignment, will be deductive and inductive. A deductive argument might begin with evidence from texts or from previous interpretations, and lead to a specific conclusion in a format like this: “if A is true, and B is true, then C ought to be true.” In the real world A and B are almost never absolutes that no one is going to challenge, so your conclusion is always going to be tentative. An inductive argument would begin with specific data and try to generalize from them, to a conclusion about the broader world. Its conclusion would also be tentative, but that’s no reason not to argue your point strongly and with conviction.

As you read and research, your goal is to find the building blocks of your argument: factual data, prior interpretations you can comment on, etc. As you prepare to write, you’ll want to organize your argument into a series of points that develop your thesis and that build on each other to support your conclusion. Ernest Hemingway once said that good prose is architecture, not interior decorating. By that we guess he meant that it is constructed, composed on a solid foundation – it’s graceful, but not primarily designed to be pretty. Since we’re using an architectural metaphor, we might also want to remember architect Louis Sullivan’s advice: “form follows function.” The mechanical structure that supports your ideas does not necessarily have to be apparent to the reader. But it has to be there. Its purpose is to help shape your argument so that the reader can understand and follow it. Without it, your reader would quickly become lost, wandering through a random pile of “Oh, by the way” points that lead nowhere.

There are a lot of ways to organize your argument. People have used – and some still use – index cards very effectively, even on multi-volume book projects. Other people use the outlining capabilities of applications like Word, or the note card-like interfaces of tools such as Scrivener. Still others are completely satisfied with a pen and a yellow legal pad. However you choose to do it, the object of this part of the game is to arrange your points into an argument that fits them and supports your thesis.

It might help at this point to begin a rough outline. Your main points will become the topic sentences that will control your middle paragraphs. They’re contained in, or at least implied by, your thesis statement. They will give coherence to your argument by connecting with each other as well as with the thesis sentence in your first paragraph and with the concluding sentence in your last paragraph. So you could start by writing these controlling ideas down in a preliminary outline. Do this if it feels comfortable to you.

If you feel you just want to get on with the writing, another possibility might be to write your rough draft first, and then try to outline it. Either way an outline, no matter how sketchy, helps to ensure that your essay is going somewhere and not just bouncing around or spinning in circles. Remember you are still going to reread, reconsider, add, subtract, rearrange, revise. At this point everything is tentative. A logical outline could be just the control you need to turn a rough draft into an essay that’s a model of clarity and readability. This is expository, analytical writing; your reader is not looking for baroque flourishes (we return to the architecture metaphor once again!). Whether you develop your argument by defining, describing, exemplifying, classifying, comparing, or contrasting, your reader is looking for insights.

Even when you make a logical argument that appeals to your reader’s reason rather than to emotion, your essay’s success is often not simply a question of your argument being either “right” or “wrong.” Your argument will be more valid and persuasive if developed cogently and communicated effectively. Just as you look for author biases in texts, your reader naturally assumes that your interpretations cannot be completely impartial or “objective.” However, they can and should be interesting and plausible if expressed in a clear and readable manner. That’s what “good prose” is. But remember: this is the goal of your final draft, so don’t expect it to happen all at once. Work toward it.

Settling on a useful structure, you should keep in mind that

Your purpose is: first, to set up a writer-reader relationship; second, to make your argument understandable, interesting, persuasive.
Your organization will emphasize the material you think is important by controlling the sequence in which information is revealed.

The shape you give your “building” depends ultimately on you, the builder. But don’t forget that architects design structures for other people : your reader has to find a home in it as well. The basic model that has worked pretty well in high school and college classes looks like this:

General introduction: get your reader’s interest right away; briefly provide only necessary background ( Don’t summarize!). Make your topic clear; focus on a specific statement of thesis.
Organize supporting ideas into coherent paragraphs with clear topic sentences.
Create meaningful and smooth transitions between paragraphs. Try to vary your sentences so they are not monotonous.
Support every assertion you make with evidence from the text or data.
Connect ideas in conclusion. You might want to move from a specific statement back to a general discussion, reversing the order of your first paragraph, while adding a “so what” statement. This creates symmetry.

Abandoning the architecture metaphor for a moment, you could also think of this essay structure as a journey. You and your reader meet in the introduction, you go out together and have an adventure in the body paragraphs, and then you come back and reflect on what it meant in the conclusion.

Of course this is not the only way to structure an essay . Different goals lead to different journeys; to different buildings, if we return to architecture. If you’re building a different building and it’s working – that is, if your readers find your writing interesting and effective – then by all means stick to it and build on it, improving it all the time. Your readers and instructor will give you the necessary feedback. Whatever you’re building, it will ultimately need to communicate your thoughts to your audience. Organization helps, so your instructor will be looking for (judging, grading) criteria such as: logical sequence; theme keeps moving; good paragraph structure; smooth transitions; main ideas given proper emphasis; all generalizations supported; all paragraphs come out of the thesis and lead to the conclusion.

When you think about it, there’s no contradiction in the advice of these two American writers. You should respond with genuine feeling and without inhibition to what stimulates you – in our case, a set of texts. But feeling isn’t enough. When Gustave Flaubert asked “Has a drinking song ever been written by a drunken man?” he meant a coherent song. Between “getting it down” and “handing it in” good writers show respect for their readers by organizing their material into recognizable patterns. An important benefit of this is that by distancing yourself from your ideas and putting them in order for your reader, you are forced to shape your own nebulous feelings into clear thoughts.

This brings us to the well-known (but apparently not well enough known) paragraph: the basic unit of composition. The traditional and still useful rule that a paragraph must have unity, coherence, and emphasis only means that it must make sense, that the sentences should fit together smoothly, and that not all the sentences function in the same way.

When you see that its purpose is to support your thesis by developing and connecting your ideas meaningfully, then paragraph structure should appeal to your common sense. As a point of emphasis a topic sentence – whether you choose to put it at the beginning, middle, or end – allows you to control your writing and guide your reader by expressing the main idea of the paragraph. Remember, you’re not writing a mystery novel. There will be relatively few instances in this type of essay when you’ll want to surprise your reader.

Must every paragraph have a topic sentence? Not necessarily: if the main idea is obvious, then a topic sentence may be omitted. But even if it is only implied by your paragraph, you and your reader should be able to state easily the main idea . Whether explicit or implicit, the topic sentence of each of your paragraphs should come out of your thesis statement and lead to your conclusion. Like the paragraph, the whole essay should have unity, coherence, and emphasis. Try this: next time you read an essay, underline only the topic sentences of each paragraph; then reread only what you’ve underlined. In many cases you’ll see that the underlined sentences make up a coherent paragraph all by themselves (this is an easy way to write an abstract, incidentally). That’s because most topic sentences are more specific than the thesis statement that generates them, but still more general than the supporting sentences in the paragraphs that illustrate them. Thus they are transitions between the writer’s promise to the reader and the keeping of that promise.

Examples: Opening Paragraphs

From a student essay discussing Kafka’s The Metamorphosis :

When Nietzsche declared that “God is dead,” he did so with an air of optimism. No longer could man be led about on the tight leash of religion; a man liberated could strive for the status of Overman. But what happens if a man refuses to let go of his “dead” God and remains too fearful to evolve into an Overman? Rejecting the concept of the Christian God means renouncing the scapegoat for the sins of man and accepting responsibility for one’s own actions. In The Metamorphosis Gregor Samsa plays the god-like role of financial provider for his family. However, when his transformation renders him useless in this role, the rest of Samsa’s family undergoes a change of its own: Kafka uses the metamorphoses of both Gregor and his family to illustrate a modern crisis.

Some comments on the structure: Two provocative introductory sentences, then a transition question and a response that presents the central idea of the essay. Next, introduction of the text and characters under discussion. Finally, the topic sentence of the paragraph, which, as the thesis statement, promises an interpretation. A paragraph such as this engages the reader’s interest right away and makes the reader look forward to the rest of the essay.

From a student essay on the question, “What Do Historians of Childhood Do?”

In his 1982 book The Disappearance of Childhood , Neil Postman argues that the concept of childhood is a recent invention of literate society, enabled by the invention of moveable-type printing. Postman says as a result of television, literate adulthood and preliterate childhood are both vanishing. While Postman’s indictment of TV-culture is provocative, he ignores race, class, ideology, and economic circumstance as factors in the experience of both children and adults. Worse, he ignores history, making sweeping generalizations such as the claim that the pre-modern Greeks had no concept of children. These claims are contradicted by the appearance of children in classical Greek literature and in the Christian Gospels, written in Greek, which admonish their readers to “be as children.” A more useful and much more interesting observation might be that the idea of childhood and the experience of young people has changed significantly since ancient times, and continues to change.

Some comments on the structure: Like the previous example, this essay begins with a statement from a text (this time with a paraphrase rather than a quotation) and builds towards a thesis statement. In this case the build-up, where the writer disagrees with one of the class texts, is stronger than the thesis. The writer has not stated exactly what he will argue, aside from saying he finds at least some of the ideas of childhood advanced in the course materials unsatisfactory. Keeping the reader in suspense may add to the interest of the essay, but in a short paper it might also waste valuable time and leave the reader unsure whether the writer has really thought things through.

From an essay on Crime and Punishment :

“Freedom depends upon the real…It is as impossible to exercise freedom in an unreal world as it is to jump while you are falling” (Colin Wilson, The Outsider, p. 39). Even without God, modern man is still tempted to create unreal worlds. In Feodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment Raskolnikov conceives the fantastic theory of the “overman.” After committing murder in an attempt to satisfy his theory, Raskolnikov falls into a delirious, death-like state; then, Lazarus-like, he is raised from the “dead.” His “resurrection” is not, as some critics suggest, a consequence of his love for Sonya and Sonya’s God. Rather, his salvation results from the freedom he gains when he chooses to live without illusions.

Comments: Once more, a stimulating opening. Between the first and last sentences, which frame the paragraph (the last one, as well as being the thesis sentence, is the specific application of the general first sentence), the writer makes her transition to the central idea and introduces the text and character she wishes to discuss. The reader is given enough information to know what to expect. It promises to be an interesting essay.

Each of the writers above chooses to open with a quotation or reference that helps to focus the reader’s attention and reveal the point of view from which a specific interpretation will be made. Movement from the general to the specific is very common in introductory thesis paragraphs, but it is not obligatory. You can begin with your thesis statement as the first sentence; start with a question; or use the entire opening paragraph to set the scene and provide background, then present your thesis in the second paragraph. Make choices and even create new options, so long as your sentences move to create a dominant impression on the reader.

Examples: Middle Paragraphs

From a student essay comparing P’u Sung-ling’s (17th century) The Cricket Boy and Franz Kafka’s (20th century) The Metamorphosis , two stories that deal with a son’s relationship to his family. (The writer’s thesis: according to these authors, one must connect in meaningful ways with other human beings in order to achieve what Virginia Woolf calls “health,” “truth,” and “happiness.”)

The most obvious similarity between Kiti and Gregor is that they both take the forms of insects; however, their and their families’ reactions to the changes account for the essential difference between the characters. Whereas Kiti thinks a cricket represents “all that [is] good and strong and beautiful in the world ( Cricket Boy , p. 2), Gregor is repulsed by his insect body and “closes his eyes so as not to have to see his squirming legs” ( Metamorphosis , p, 3). Their situations also affect their families differently. Kiti’s experience serves as a catalyst that brings his family closer together: “For the first time, his father had become human, and he loved his father then” ( CB , p. 2). Gregor’s transformation, on the other hand, succeeds in further alienating him from his family: his parents “could not bring themselves to come in to him” ( M , p. 31). While Kiti and his parents develop a bond based on understanding and mutual respect, Gregor becomes not only emotionally estranged from his family, but also physically separated from them.

Some comments on the structure: The writer is clearly on her way, with specific examples from the texts, to supporting her argument concerning the need for self-respect and communication. Notice that she uses transitions such as “however,” “whereas,” “also,” “on the other hand,” while,” and “not only…, but also…” to connect her thoughts and make her sentences cohere. Transitional words and phrases are the “glue” both within and between paragraphs: they help writers stick to the point, and also allow readers to stay on the path the writer intends.

Transitions

Writers use transitional words and expressions as markers to guide readers on their exploratory journey. They can express relationships very explicitly , which is often exactly what is needed. However, experienced writers can also build more subtle bridges between ideas, hinting at relationships with implicit transitions. These relationships may change from vague impressions to a very concrete statement, as the argument develops, allowing the reader to “discover” the writer’s conclusion as the essay builds to its final paragraph.

Examples of explicit transitional expressions

Comparison: such as, like, similarly, likewise, in the same way, in comparison, correspondingly, analogous to
Contrast: but, however, in contrast, although, different from, opposing, another distinction, paradoxically
Cause-effect: because, as a result, consequently, for this reason, produced, generated, yielded
Sequence: initially, subsequently, at the onset, next, in turn, then, ultimately
Emphasis: above all, of major interest, unequivocally, significantly, of great concern, notably
Examples: for example, in this instance, specifically, such as, to illustrate, in particular
Adding points: as well as, furthermore, also, moreover, in addition, again, besides

If you find that you are overusing explicit connectors and your transitions are beginning to feel mechanical (How many times have you used “furthermore” or “however”? How many “other hands” do you have?), you can improve the flow of your writing either by changing up the transitional expressions, or by shifting toward more implicit transitions. One technique is, in the first sentence of the new paragraph, refer (either explicitly or implicitly) to material in the preceding paragraph. For example:

When Alcibiades does give his speech, we see that his example is Socrates himself.

While this interpretation still seems reasonable, I was surprised at the difficulty of uncovering useable data in the records of past societies.

This sometimes sickening detail that Dante uses to draw the reader emotionally into the Inferno also stimulates the reader to think about what he or she feels.

The Greek system is much more relaxed; obeisance and respect for the gods is not required, although in most cases it seems to make life easier.

Each of these implicit transition sentences builds on the previous paragraph and calls for support in the new paragraph. Even more subtle (that is, more difficult) would be to make the last sentence of the paragraph indicate the direction the next paragraph will take. If you try this, be careful you do not at the same time change the subject. You do not want to introduce a new idea at the end of a paragraph, and destroy its unity. Since it suggests a change in direction, we see this device used most commonly with thesis sentences at the end of introductory paragraphs, or in transitional paragraphs like the example above.

Other examples of hinges writers use to make connections include pronouns referring back to nouns in the previous paragraphs and synonyms to avoid repetition and overuse of pronouns. A good rule is not to overuse any device.

Concluding Paragraphs

From a student essay on Crime and Punishment :

Raskolnikov finally finds a new life:

Indeed he [is] not consciously reasoning at all; he [can] only feel . Life [has] taken the place of logic and something quite different must be worked out in his mind. (Epi. II, p. 464)

Thus he ends his suffering by abandoning intelligence and reasoning. Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that “above all the logic of the head is the feeling of the heart.” Ultimately, Raskolnikov transcends the “logic of the head” by discovering love and freedom.

Some comments on the structure: The paragraph works well as a conclusion because you can tell immediately that the writer has said all that she wants to say about the subject. She uses a quotation from another source, to “rub up against” Dostoevsky, expanding the dialogue between the text, the writer, and the reader by adding another voice. The answer to the “so what?” question is implied in the last sentence: love and freedom are values we all can share. Note that although this is a different conclusion from that of the earlier essay discussing Crime and Punishment , both interpretations are interesting and valid because both writers supported their arguments with careful readings of the text.

From a History essay analyzing the influence of Philippe Ariès’s book Centuries of Childhood on later historians:

In the end, Centuries of Childhood did not establish a conceptual framework for children’s history. Nor did the rival philosophies of history create a new paradigm for children’s history. Ariès identified a subject of study. He was a prospector who uncovered a rich vein of material. Subsequent miners should use whatever tools and techniques are best suited to getting the ore out of the ground. Historians should stop fighting over theories and get to work uncovering the lives of children and families. This will involve, as Jordanova suggested, self-awareness and sensitivity. But it should not be sidetracked by ideological debates. As Cunningham observed, the stakes for modern children and families are high. To make children’s history useful for the present, historians of children and families need to put aside their differences and get back to work.

Some comments on the structure: As in the previous example, the writer includes the perspectives of other commentators. This is especially common in essays on secondary sources in history, because “historiography” is often imagined as an ongoing conversation about primary and important secondary texts. The “so what” statement is more explicit this time, relating the study of children in the past to improving the lives of children and families today. The importance of connecting with the needs of today is problematic (many historians would criticize this as “presentism”); so the writer includes a supporting perspective from a sympathetic commentator.

From an essay in which the writer compares and contrasts the character she is examining with a character from another work:

Like Ophelia, Gretchen has moments of confusion and despair, but she decides to give in to her feelings and take responsibility for them. By having Gretchen freely stay behind to face her execution, Goethe casts aside any similarities that his character shares with Shakespeare’s Ophelia. Along with the empowering freedom of Gretchen’s striving comes the struggle to act rightly. But if no objective absolutes exist, according to Goethe’s God, on what basis can Gretchen make her decisions in order to be saved? She comes to the realization that the only absolutes exist within herself. Goethe’s God saves her, not for being a penitent Christian, but for staying true to these self-imposed absolutes.

Some comments on the structure: Another strong conclusion. The writer’s interpretation could be contested, but she has argued it well and convincingly throughout the essay and concluded strongly. Incidentally, note also that by specifying “Goethe’s God” in her interpretation she avoids any distracting discussion of religion and keeps her writing focused on literary analysis. We don’t argue the nature of “God” in an essay about literature; only the nature of the “God” in the text.

In these passages, a twentieth-century essayist/editor uses three sentences to express what a nineteenth-century novelist/critic says in one. Which is the “better” piece of writing? The question is meaningless – or rather, it’s badly formulated. The common-sense question to ask about writing is: How well does it work ? In order to answer that, we should first consider two other questions: What does it intend to do? To whom is it addressed? A writer’s purpose and audience quite naturally help to determine style, and we shouldn’t be surprised to find Stendahl’s writing often looking like the second example and White’s writing like the first – when appropriate. Given the purposes and audiences of each of these quotations, they both “work” equally well in their contexts.

If the rule for a paragraph is that it should have unity, coherence and emphasis , then the rule for a sentence is that it should make sense. Let’s look again at White’s middle sentence. It expresses a half dozen ideas: his respect for the reader; his gratitude for the reader’s “trouble”; his acknowledgement that he’s a “slow reader” himself; his assumption that “most people are”; his obligation to clarify his thoughts; and his confession that he might not be able to fully express himself anyway. White could have written all that in six separate, precise sentences – but he chose to use a more personal, colloquial manner in order to engage his reader; to show his reader that writing, as well as reading, is a careful, thoughtful process. If you understood that (or if you felt that while reading his sentence), then White succeeded in writing a truly effective sentence. Indeed, his sentence obeys the “rule” to be clear just as well as Stendahl’s short epigram. And as White suggests in his last sentence, that complicated middle one was probably rewritten “a good deal” before it appeared in its final form. Notice too, how White brackets the long sentence with two short, concise ones to vary the pace of his unfolding argument and avoid overwhelming his reader.

In light of these two very different examples of sentences that work, it might seem silly to try to identify the “ideal” sentence. But remember that we’re working on a particular type of writing project in these worksheets, so we can make some general assumptions about your audience and goals. We can say that generally, concrete nouns for your subject and active verbs introducing the predicate help your reader quickly grasp what you’re talking about and what you wish to say about your topic. These work better than abstract nouns and passive verbs. Generally , it’s more effective to modify your nouns and verbs with individual adjectives and adverbs rather than complicated phrases or clauses – simply because you don’t want unnecessary words to weaken good ideas.

Consider this first paragraph from a student essay:

What is a hero? Why do we admire certain people in our society? Since the beginning of time man has searched for someone to imitate and to use as a role model in his own life. In many ancient civilizations there is literature which centers on a hero of that time. But over time man has changed tremendously; or has he? No matter how advanced our civilization becomes, our heroes generally possess the same qualities and attributes. One of the oldest writings that modern man possesses, The Epic of Gilgamesh , is based on a hero and his adventures that he encounters during his lifetime. Although The Epic of Gilgamesh was written over 5,000 years ago, the hero Gilgamesh would still be a hero today. The reason why one may consider Gilgamesh a modern day hero is because he is strong, sensitive, confident (yet humble), unselfish, and successful.

Some Comments: This paragraph is not particularly effective. Yet there is nothing structurally, grammatically “wrong” with the sentences. The ideas it contains are not extremely complicated. So why is it so difficult to read? Is it just because irritatingly obvious unnecessary words and seemingly endless repetitions have weakened the ideas? Suppose we rewrite the paragraph without eliminating any of the necessary words and without changing any of the ideas the writer seems to have intended:

People have always searched for role models, and the literature of many ancient civilizations center on a hero. Do our “heroes” today possess the same general qualities? Written over 5,000 years ago, The Epic of Gilgamesh recounts the adventures of a man who would still be considered a hero because he is strong, sensitive, confident (yet humble), unselfish, and successful.

Okay, we’ve reduced it from nine sentences, 147 words to three sentences, 61 words by pruning deadwood – but honestly, that still hasn’t made us really excited to read the rest of the essay. To continue the “pruning” metaphor: writing a good essay is like developing a framework of branches (topic sentences) that will act as a skeleton on which foliage, flowers, and fruit (your thoughts, arguments, conclusions) can grow. A better shape can produce more fruit, and make that fruit easier to pick. But in the case above, will the effort be rewarded? Has the writer done enough of the groundwork to make this essay interesting and engaging?

So how do sentences help us express worthwhile ideas in ways that will make people want to listen? Consider the main definition of “sentence” in The American Heritage Dictionary :

A grammatical unit that is syntactically independent and has a subject that is expressed or…understood and a predicate that contains at least one finite verb.

Being mechanically correct is certainly important – but it isn’t enough. The kind of writing your readers are expecting in high school and college essays should also have a point and a human voice . Maybe we should revive the obsolete definition of “sentence” mentioned in the same dictionary:

An opinion, especially one given formally after deliberation. [Middle English, opinion, from Old French, from Latin… sentire , to feel]

In addition to conveying information and proving your familiarity with the texts, effective sentences should show your engagement with the material – how you feel about the issue at hand. This does not mean you don’t have to offer a reasonable, logical argument. It means the reader needs to sense that you care about what you’re saying.

For our purposes, style means no more than building your sentences by choosing and arranging your words so that they clearly present your ideas about your subject. In the next worksheet we’ll discuss the appropriateness of words themselves; for now let’s look at sentence structure . Your interesting ideas, honest feelings, and thoughtful responses need to be revealed and developed in an orderly way so as to hold your reader’s attention. Sentences that attract attention to themselves rather than your ideas because of their awkwardness distract and cause your reader to lose confidence in your argument.

Active vs. Passive Voice

Using passive verbs (verbs of being) rather than active verbs (verbs of doing ) is one of the most common mistakes made by writers at all levels. The sentence you just read is a passive sentence – no one does anything. Sometimes passive statements of fact are appropriate. But writers at all levels overuse “is,” and we all need to write carefully and avoid this pitfall.

Why is active voice so important? What if we had ended the previous paragraph passively? We could have said, “The verb ‘is’ tends to be overused by writers. Passive voice is a problem that should be avoided by careful writers.” If we had done this, the reader might be left with the impression that what we’re really interested is verbs. And that’s not the case: what we’re really interested in is writing .

Maybe history offers a better example. How often have you read passages in history textbooks like “The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776,” or “There were riots after the execution of the prisoners”? Do these sentences tell you the whole story? Did things just happen , or did somebody do something ? In history, this is not just a question of style: it’s a serious issue of interpretation. Overuse of the passive voice where things “just happen” denies people of agency and portrays a random world without cause and effect. It also insulates people from responsibility for their actions and short-circuits questions about motivation and differing points of view.

Yes, the passive voice does sound more “authoritative” (or maybe pedantic) because we’ve grown up reading textbooks written this way. Maybe “Hamlet was written between 1599 and 1602” doesn’t sound that bad to you, but what if the passage read “Shakespeare wrote Hamlet between 1599 and 1602”? Now we can visualize a man sitting down to do something, and we naturally begin to wonder, what was going on around him? Why did he write this play at that moment? What was he trying to say?

Similarly, rather than saying “there were riots” as if they just happened like rain from a cloudless sky, we might say “outraged by the execution of their friends and neighbors, farmers and city union-members rioted and attacked symbols of the state.” This active construction opens the door to all kinds of possible questions about the situation and the parties involved. Of course, the active version requires the writer to know more information about the event than just the date when it “happened” (which may be why lazy textbook authors resist the active voice). And it requires the writer to take a stand (which may be why some students avoid it).

Hopefully you can see that in addition to making your writing much more interesting to read, using active verbs allows you to really explore your subject. By writing actively, you can change a string of flat, dead facts into a series of actions and reactions. That means, a series of choices. That means a series of questions that may open new and interesting avenues for exploration.

Common sentence problems

Confusing sentences distract the reader from the point you are trying to make. Here are examples of some of the most common mistakes, along with corrected sentences. You can catch most of these by reading your draft out loud and asking yourself (or a friend) if it makes sense.

The most common sentence problems are FRAGMENTS and RUN-ONS.

Connect the fragment: “What am I going to do with my life is a question…
Overall the English invasion was a complete success with some learning curves thrown in at the beginning, but for the most part, it was a complete and utter domination of the indigenous people. Separate the thoughts: simplify the sentence and drop the qualifiers to divide these ideas and emphasize the “but.” “The American colonies were a great success for the English, but they were an utter disaster for indigenous peoples.”
Still a fragment: what’s the object of “recognizes”? What’s the predicate of “the dread of something after death”?
A) Two sentences: …verbally as well. The first words…
B) Comma and conjunction: …verbally as well, and the first…
C) Semi-colon: …verbally as well; the first words…

A related Subject-Predicate problem concerns REPETITION of the subject.

Trim, then combine these thoughts: Native families commonly shared resources, and believed this sharing was protected in their contracts with colonists. (47 words to 16. And we got rid of the passive voice )
Don’t complexify a simple sentence . One subject, one predicate. Some pagans in Beowulf’s culture believed in creating their own destiny.
Eliminate repetition & contradiction: Sentence 3 contradicts sentence 2. Maybe the writer meant: “Beowulf killed dragons, and became a hero by overcoming his fear.” (26 words to 11)

Many sentence problems in essays are due to a lack of PARALLEL STRUCTURE.

Don’t mix tenses: either “finds—leads” or “found—led”
Try not to change subjects: “They” are the subject of first part, “the concept” is the subject of second (and there’s that active-passive voice issue again). How about: “The natives held land to protect their villages, not for private gain.”
Make parallel : Either “liked to drink, hang around…and fight” or “liked drinking, hanging…and fighting.”
Faulty comparison: Christian philosophy should be compared to pagan philosophy , or Christians to pagans.
Another way of thinking about it: Does my modifier clearly refer to what it is supposed to modify? “Unlike the Christian philosophy of mourning a loved one” does not modify “the pagans,” but it could modify “pagan philosophy.”

Without a clearly expressed SUBJECT and PREDICATE, your “sentence” merely confuses the reader.

The static theme of Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality is tested when the hero’s only undefeatable conflict evolves into the sobering death of his beloved counterpart.
Subject? Predicate? Is the theme tested? What does “static” mean here? Is the quest tested? How? Does “undefeatable conflict” mean victory or defeat? This is very difficult to understand. Perhaps the reader means: “The death of his beloved Enkidu sobers Gilgamesh and stimulates his quest for immortality.” Perhaps not. The writer should be interpreting this, not the reader.
Does the simple sentence buried here (gender must necessarily be a highly-dynamic concept) mean anything? The writer of this sentence was very unhappy he had to write a paper about Joan Scott’s book Gender and the Politics of History. It shows.
No specific predicate . Areas could mean anything. Do platforms spring up all over the stage? Such a vague predicate can only irritate your reader.

Hemingway: I rewrote the ending to Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.

Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had you stumped?

Hemingway: Getting the words right.

Making the reader see, “getting the words right,” or as Hamlet put it, holding “the mirror up to nature,” becomes increasingly difficult in a world facing accelerating change, clashing cultures, and serious questions about the nature of reality. Literature and History have led the humanities and social sciences in many of these challenges to old notions about language and meaning. But unless you’re asked to write an essay about postmodernism or the “linguistic turn,” your essays will probably not engage head-on with the cultural construction of language, identity, and reality. And even when you are asked to write on these subjects, your essay will still need to make sense to your readers.

The 1992 edition of The American Heritage Dictionary contained 16,000 new words that had not been in the first edition twenty-five years earlier. Its executive editor, Anne H. Soukhanov, said “the most important shift in English usage in 400 years [is] the pervasive change in words linked to gender.” In addition to the gender-oriented changes, the dictionary added “nerd,” “passive smoking,” “couch potato,” “Mirandize,” and “job-sharing,” as these new concepts demanded new vocabulary. Soukhanov recalled that 2,500 years ago Confucius had claimed it was impossible to know humans without understanding the power of words. We continue to re-create ourselves and our worlds with language.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein claimed “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” While it may not always be necessary for you to expand your world in order to complete an essay assignment, it is important to choose appropriate words. Remember that in addition to trying to earn some respect for your argument, you are always trying to hold onto and focus your reader’s attention.

Watch Out For

Unnecessary Repetition & Wordiness: We often say more than we need to say. Voltaire is rumored to have apologized at the end of a long letter to his mother, saying “If I had had more time, I would have made it shorter.” We’ll come back to this when we talk about editing, but keep it in mind. Why say “at this point in time,” when “now” will do? Remember the words of John Travolta in Get Shorty : “I’m not going to say any more than I have to, if that.”
Clichés are overworked expressions such as “last but not least”, “in my humble opinion”, “lifestyle”, “back to square one”, and “in the final analysis.” They give readers the impression that the writer is tired or doesn’t care enough to keep the reader’s interest with original thought. If the words are recycled, perhaps the ideas are as well.
Jargon is technical or specialized language that quickly becomes clichéd, such as “wired”, “out of the loop”, the whole nine yards”, “bottom line”, “self-actualizing”, “anal retentive”, and “bourgeois.” When jargon words are new and have specific technical meanings, they may not be understood by non-specialists; by the time they are well-known they have become clichés.
Pop culture references tend to be more local and fleeting than elements of “high culture” that are recorded and taught as part of “cultural literacy.” Sometimes elements of popular culture become permanent (like the word “nerd” being added to the dictionary), but it’s hard to tell just what will be preserved and when this will happen. “Poodle skirts”, “Project Mayhem”, “moon walking”, “Hitchcock plots”, “TANSTAAFL”, and “Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica” might be obvious signals to a particular group – but usually you’ll want your writing to be understood by a wider audience.
Empty Words: Vague generalizations such as “the people”, “family values”, “the American way of life”, “liberal media bias”, “the workers”, “the humanist agenda”, and “fake news” suggest that you haven’t thought very hard about your subject, or that you’re trying to slide something by your reader.

Sometimes writers deliberately use words that lack specific meanings ( denotation ), not out of carelessness but for their ability to create subjective, irrational responses in readers. Words have histories of their own, and many words are able to call on strong positive or negative associations. These connotations are often more important than the information the words provide. Habitual use of these words suggests either a high level of cluelessness (if the user isn’t aware the subject is controversial) or a deliberate attempt to push readers’ emotional buttons and sabotage reasonable discussion. Examples include:

Words with Contested Meanings: Like empty words, these are terms whose meaning has changed over time or words that have been defined differently by competing groups. “Liberal”, “conservative”, “capitalist”, “progressive”, and “socialist” are obvious examples, but most general terms mean different things to different people. It’s best to be as specific as possible: Jefferson’s agrarian ideal, Mary Lease’s populism, Edward Bellamy’s utopian socialism, and Hildegard von Bingen’s Christianity, for example.
Code-words: Words that deliberately disguise what their users mean to say. Euphemisms hide the less acceptable elements of ideas (but from whom?); argot tries to create group identity and shared specialized knowledge. Examples include “Job-creators” (that is, the rich), “pro-life” (anti-abortion), “enhanced interrogation” (torture), “freedom fighters” (terrorists on our side), as well as more benign terms like “passed away” and “make love.” Using code-words suggests that you share the point of view of others who regularly use them.

Much (some people say all) language is metaphorical. We use metaphors (implied comparisons) to connect the unfamiliar to the familiar, so that readers can “see, hear, feel” abstract concepts as if they were well-known everyday things. For example, most science texts fifty years ago described atoms as little billiard balls, in spite of quantum mechanics which showed a hundred years ago that this metaphor was inaccurate. More recent science texts describe Einstein’s gravity (curvature of space-time) as a metaphorical “rubber sheet” that massive objects create depressions in, so that planets spin around massive stars the way pennies circle the big funnel at the museum. This is a really complicated metaphor when you think about it – it tries to explain a nearly unimaginable process in three-dimensional space using a two-dimensional metaphor, the rubber sheet. A few things to keep in mind about metaphors when reading and writing:

Overextended metaphors: The rubber sheet metaphor suggests one possible difficulty. Because most of us are not physicists, we have to rely on the assurances of experts that understanding this metaphor really tells us something about the way gravity really works in relativistic space-time. But even if it’s a good, valid metaphor, it’s still just a picture of a thing, not the thing itself. We need to be careful not to believe we “really know” the thing – or some vital detail that was not in the picture may jump out and metaphorically “slap us upside the head.”
Misapplied Metaphors: Because metaphors are often complex, we sometimes forget that they are “pictures” and try to use them where they don’t belong. For example, the simple ideas scientists use to describe the complex theory of evolution are easy to misapply. When we say “survival of the fittest” and think we’ve understood the whole complex theory, then it’s simple enough to take that idea and apply it to, say, people. The result was called Social Darwinism, which was not only bad science, but really bad for society.
Mixed Metaphors: When we’re using metaphors, it’s important to stick with one at a time. Mixing metaphors can confuse the reader. The other examples were mostly for you to be aware of when reading – this one applies to your writing. Consider: “This chain of events burned Beowulf’s bridges behind him.” The alliteration is very Anglo-Saxon, but metaphorical chains can’t burn metaphorical bridges. Or: “The Republicans, Democrats, and Independents in the Senate are just the flip side of a coin with nothing to choose from between them.” But they can’t be, because a coin only has two sides, and just one flip side . And the point was perfectly clear without the clunky coin metaphor. Even when physically possible, mixed metaphors usually paint an absurd picture: “President Bush failed to subdue Iraqi insurgents. He could lead the horse to water, but when he couldn’t make it drink the anti-war rats left his administration’s sinking ship.”

A Few More Things to Watch Out For

Diction: You can keep your readers motivated to follow your argument by choosing words with just the right shade of meaning and the right level of usage. Just as it’s possible to be too dry and formal (which we’re trying to avoid in this handbook by adopting an informal, conversational tone – how’s it working?), you also need to avoid being too informal or vulgar. Writing “Jefferson really screwed up the South with his hypocritical position on slavery” or “Hamlet wanted to get into Ophelia’s pants” is not going to convince your reader you ought to be taken seriously – no matter how true each statement might be. Precise, appropriate writing suggests (and at the same time, encourages) precise thinking.
Sexist Language: Remember that you are dealing with two “realities” in your writing: the perceived one outside yourself and the one you are creating in your interpretation. The more personal your interpretation, the more important it is to gain your readers’ sympathy so they will give you a fair hearing. Remember also that language not only describes a culture as it is , but also (intentionally or not) tends to prescribe how it should be. Sexist language is inappropriate and it is one of the quickest ways to needlessly lose the goodwill of a large segment of your audience. The problem arises from the lack of a common-gender third person pronoun in English. Americans are reluctant to use the English expression “one,” as in: “One should improve one’s mind.” But it is no longer acceptable to use “man” to indicate humanity or “he” to indicate an unspecified subject.
Use the plural: Instead of “A writer should choose his words carefully,” try “writers should choose their words carefully.”
Use “you”: Instead of “If a person thinks about it, he will see…” try “If you think about it, you will see…”
Try another form: Instead of “When a person studies, he will improve his grades,” try “Studying improves grades.” You may have noticed that using these three techniques also tends to make your writing more active and more personal.
Use a hybrid like “s/he”: This is much more acceptable than it was a few years ago, but will still trip up some readers, and you still have to decide what to do about object pronouns (her/him, hers/his). Many writers have chosen to use the feminine pronouns all the time. You probably don’t have to be told that this could be seen as a political act, with results that may vary depending on the politics of your reader.

This is the time to make sure that your strongly-felt ideas become a solid essay. Just as wine must spend some time in the barrel, the bottle, and the glass before it’s ready to drink, you must put your ideas into structured paragraphs, clear sentences, and appropriate words to prepare them for your reader (Did you notice the metaphor and the parallelism there? Barrel->paragraph, bottle->sentences, glass->words). And, if Forster is right, to be sure you really understand them yourself.

Examine the shape of your essay:

Does it have a clear beginning, middle, and end? Is your thesis introduced clearly, developed with concrete examples, and brought to a strong conclusion?
Have you anticipated your readers’ questions and objections? Have you addressed these concerns with convincing examples, data, analysis, and material from your texts?
Does all the evidence that you’ve presented belong in your argument? Does each paragraph stick to the point and support your thesis? Do your points flow logically from your thesis to your conclusion? Are your transitions smooth?
Is your conclusion what you set out to prove? Check it against your thesis statement. Have you stuck to your point?
Have you introduced a new idea along the way (especially at the end) that needs support? If so, you might want to go back and make it part of your thesis statement, or take it out and save it for another paper.
Beginning: Interesting introduction and clear thesis statement?
Middle: Are you developing and sticking to your point with data or examples from your texts?
End: Do you reasonably conclude your argument? Can the reader answer the question, “So what?”

Specific Details

Just as proportion in your overall structure will help your reader follow your argument more easily, attention to the details of sentences and words will win their respect and help insure they will seriously consider your argument. Revising and editing your writing— as many times as it takes —is the hard work that produces a style. Handbooks and manuals like this one or Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style can set you on the right path. But remember, Virgil could only get Dante through the Inferno; he couldn’t get him into Paradise. At some point you’ll have to leave your guide behind (after it has helped you avoid obvious errors) and make the positive creative choices that lead you to your own style.

But we’re still here with you, somewhere between the Inferno of the rough draft and the Purgatory of early revisions. So let’s clear up those obvious errors. Of course you should use a spell-checker. It will flag or automatically correct the obviously misspelled words, but you still need to proofread for word choice. The spell-checker won’t protect you from using the wrong word spelled correctly (using except when you mean accept , effect when you mean affect , discreet when you mean discrete , site when you mean cite , and even pubic when you mean public !). Proofread carefully. When in doubt, check the dictionary.

Here are some of the problems we find in many student essays, and sometimes in our own early drafts, too:

Lack of agreement between subject and verbs

Faulty: He reminds Dante that each of the sinners have been justly judged.

Correct: … each of the sinners has been …

(“Sinners” are not the subject, “each” is. Each is singular – as are everyone, anybody, someone, either, and neither.)

Faulty: Hamlet’s search for truth and understanding reveal his loss of faith.

Correct: Hamlet’s search…reveals

Don’t be confused by the phrase; the subject is singular.

Faulty: The limits of language makes a profound impression on Descartes .

Correct: The limits of language make…

Plural subject needs a plural verb.

Lack of agreement between pronoun and antecedent

Faulty: A medieval chronicle usually included very violent events, but they rarely included graphic descriptions of violence.

Correct: chronicles…they or chronicle…it

“Chronicle” is the subject, not “events.”

Faulty: Nobody in Beowulf’s band helped their leader fight the dragon.

Correct: Nobody in Beowulf’s band helped his leader…

Although there were a lot of men in Beowulf’s band, words such as “nobody”, “anyone”, or “somebody” are all singular.

Incorrect pronoun case

Incorrect: Socrates and them often met in the marketplace to debate.

Correct: Socrates and they often met…

We need a subject pronoun here. You wouldn’t say “Them often met.” But you could say “Socrates often met them in the marketplace…” if that was what you were really getting at.

Incorrect : When Beowulf returned, the king gave he and his men rings and gold.

Correct: …the king gave him and his men…

Object pronoun here. You wouldn’t say “The King gave he rings and gold.”

Subject and object pronouns

Singular: He, she, and I (subjects) wrote about him, her, and me. (objects)

Plural: We and they (subjects) painted a portrait of us and them. (objects)

Use active verbs

Boring facts: King Charles was beheaded on January 30, 1649.

Better: Cromwell’s victorious Parliamentary forces executed King Charles in a public beheading on January 30, 1649.

Now we can see that specific people deliberately did something serious to another real person, and we can begin to wonder who they all were and why they did it.

Tortured, unclear interpretation: Raskolnikov’s salvation is credited to his love for Sonya, but his will to love is the more fundamental emotion that saves him.

Better: Raskolnikov’s will to love, more fundamental that his love for Sonya, saves him.

Now we don’t have to wonder where that other opinion came from – we have the writer’s strong statement to anchor us to this argument.

Confusing passive: The witch is killed by Beowulf by having her head cut off.

Better: Beowulf decapitates the witch.

Now we know who did what to whom. The first was a weak description of such a violent act.

Wordy and weak: Fire comes out of the dragon’s mouth.

Better: The dragon breathes fire.

It did it deliberately, after all.

Consider: [The Carmel River] rises in the mountains, and tumbles down a while, runs through the shadows, is dammed to make a lake, spills over the dam, crackles among round boulders, wanders lazily under sycamores, spills into pools where trout live, drops in against banks where crayfish live. (John Steinbeck)

We are concerned with writing essays, not fiction – still, we can learn something here. Active verbs move writing along and carry the reader with them. Avoid “is..-ing” or is…-ed” constructions except where absolutely necessary. In this example it is appropriate that the river “is dammed” because the damming is not of its own volition. Active verbs, concrete nouns, straightforward word order, and minimal use of adjectives and adverbs constitute the style of this passage.

Mixed tenses

Faulty: In his new existence Gregor Samsa finds a modicum of freedom and enjoyed climbing on the walls.

Correct: finds…enjoys or found…enjoyed.

Choose a tense and then stick with it. This is obviously harder over a longer stretch of words than a single sentence and it’s easy to switch tenses without noticing, especially if you are writing different parts of your essay at different times. When you are relating the details of a story told in a text, it is equally valid to use the present or the past tense. But you have to be consistent, so watch carefully!

Misplaced or dangling modifiers

Confusing: Being more than half a god , we would expect to see a Gilgamesh who has knowledge, compassion, and wisdom that is above and beyond that of normal men .

Clearer: We expect to see in Gilgamesh, who is two-thirds god, superior knowledge, compassion, and wisdom.

The clearer version puts the important point, “We expect to see,” at the beginning where the reader can’t miss it, and it replaces the whole final phrase with the word “superior.”

Dangling: Walking down to the second ledge , the voices of the damned arose.

Clearer: Walking down to the second ledge, Dante heard the voices of the damned.

Or, if the voices are more important: The voices of the damned rose as Dante approached the second ledge .

Split infinitive

Awkward: Jeff asked Francesca to carefully explain her presence there.

Better: Jeff asked Francesca to explain her presence there carefully .

Interrupting an infinitive with a modifier distracts the reader.

Awkward: As an escaped slave, Harriet Jacobs had to tearfully watch her children from a hidden crawlspace in a nearby house.

Sometimes, although there may be someplace you could put the adverb that would “work” in the sentence, what’s really called for is a more complete, concrete description of the emotion you’re just brushing by with the adverb.

Faulty predication

Incorrect: The book says that…

Even worse: It says that…

Correct: The narrator says that… or the author writes that…

Awkward: Poetic justice is when the punishment fits the crime.

Better: Poetic justice consists of the punishment fit ting the crime.

Alcibiades crowns Socrates as a man “whose words bring him victory over all men at all times” ( Symposium , p. 98).

Use punctuation only if needed before the opening quotation marks. Closing quotation marks go after the exact quote and before the in-line reference (or footnote). Punctuation that doesn’t end the sentence goes before the closing quotation mark. If there is no inline reference, end punctuation goes before the closing quote. If there is an inline reference, end punctuation goes after it.

Socrates points out: “Men are quite willing to have their feet or hands amputated if they believe…those parts diseased” (p 85).

Use three dots … to indicate when you’ve left words out of the interior of a quote (not the beginning or end).

Aeneas journeys to the underworld solely “to go to [his] dear father’s side and see him” ( Aeneid , VI, 162).

Use square brackets [ ] to show that you’ve added words.

According to the text:

In the original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote, “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable,” but he changed to the familiar “we hold these truths to be self-evident” sometime before John Adams first saw the document.16

Block-quote (indent) passages that would amount to more than three lines of your paper. Do not use quotation marks around the block quote (which means you can use double quotes inside it if necessary). Put the inline citation or the footnote after the final punctuation.

Punctuation

Commas indicate a minor break in your train of thought, connect a subordinate clause to a main clause, or separate a series of items.
Use commas after introductory subordinate clauses . When Dante descended into the pit, he feared for his life.
Semicolons indicate a more distinct break in your thought; they separate independent clauses.

Faulty: Gilgamesh had no equal, he became arrogant and cruel.

More correct: Gilgamesh had no equal; he became arrogant and cruel.

Clearer: Because Gilgamesh had no equal, he became…

Adding a subordinating conjunction makes one clause dependent and helps the reader understand your point.
Periods show the end of a particular thought. That’s why the British call them “full stops.”

Miscellaneous common errors

Criterion and phenomenon are singular; criteria and phenomena are their plurals.
Prophesy is a verb. Prophecy is a noun. Prophesize is not a word!
It’s is a contraction for it is . Its (like his and hers ) indicates possession and needs no apostrophe.
Possession is shown by adding ‘s or s’ to a word. The book’s cover is singular; the books’ covers are plural.
Plural nouns get ’s : children’s, people’s.
Some writers add ’s to singular nouns or names ending in s , others do not. Bill Gates’s money is the same as Bill Gates’ money.

Use this as a guide while revising and editing your essay. Check every item.

_____Do I have an interesting introductory paragraph?
_____Is my thesis clearly stated? Is it arguable?
_____Does each of my middle paragraphs develop my thesis?
_____Do I support my argument with enough specific material?
_____Am I telling too much, and not showing enough
_____Do I present more detail than is necessary?
_____Have I introduced extraneous material?
_____Am I retelling too much of the story?
_____Do I anticipate and address relevant counterarguments?
_____Does my conclusion follow from my thesis and argument?
_____Have I defended my position?
_____Did I oversimplify for the sake of closure?
_____Do I have logical transitions between sentences and paragraphs?
_____Do my transitions connect my ideas explicitly enough?
_____Do they show that I am developing an argument, not just repeating?
_____Do all my paragraphs have either explicit topic sentences or clearly implied main ideas that are connected to my thesis?
_____Do all my sentences clearly support their paragraph’s main idea?
_____Should I rearrange any sentences to better effect? Paragraphs?
_____Can I vary the makeup of any sentences to avoid monotony?
_____Can I cut out any sentences that I don’t need for my argument?
_____Do I use any pretentious words, clichés, or jargon?
_____Do I use any offensive language or inappropriate diction?
_____Have I looked specifically for spelling, punctuation, and usage problems that have been pointed out to me in previous essays?
_____Have I merely given a “reading” or have I presented an argument grounded in texts or evidence?
_____Have I borrowed any ideas from others without crediting my sources? That is, have I accidentally plagiarized?

This is where you can add appendices or other back matter.

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Controversy and Conversation: The Relationship Between the Humanities and the Sciences

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First Online: 30 June 2020

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essay about humanities and social sciences

Zoe Hope Bulaitis 5

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This chapter reconsiders the two cultures debate. In contrast to the misrepresentative, yet pervasive, perception that the sciences and the humanities are fundamentally in opposition, I propose a more nuanced history of these disciplines. This is achieved through investigating the discourse between the sciences and the humanities through examples of cross-disciplinary debate. Returning to the Snow-Leavis debate reveals how rhetorical intervention can alter public perception and how opposition can be a productive site for articulation. However, analysis of Matthew Arnold and Thomas H. Huxley’s exchange serves as a reminder of the many values that scientists and humanities scholars share. The chapter recognises the significance of both how the humanities are represented and who it is that articulates values within and outside of higher education.

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Communication
Controversy
Conversation
Collaboration
Arts and humanities methodologies
Two cultures
Thomas H. Huxley
Matthew Arnold
F. R. Leavis
Interdisciplinary
Management culture
Mutual understanding
Academic knowledge

3.1 Introduction

This chapter examines the relationship between the humanities and the sciences, which is a connection that has become particularly significant in the context of contemporary valuation of higher education. The British Academy report “Past, Present, and Future: The Public Value of the Humanities and Social Sciences” ( 2010 ) identified the “tendency to see STEM subjects as the key to the success of universities and to national economic recovery” ( 2010 , 3 my italics). The present division between Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics subjects (STEM) and the arts, humanities and social sciences (HASS henceforth) is made explicit in government policy. It is concerning to observe the ways in which government policy is shaping the cultures of valuation and ultimately encouraging a shift in the significance of specific disciplines within higher education.

The debate over value between the sciences and the humanities has, in different guises, been taking place since the beginning of scholarly debate. In retracing the conversations between the disciplines, this chapter underlines how “[humanities] scholars and scientists share more, and have a greater interest in common where the role of universities is concerned, than the hackneyed contrast tends to suggest” (Collini 2012 , 101). There are many more than two perspectives and approaches to knowing, despite the stereotypical binary of humanities versus sciences. However, within a complex field of disciplinary practices, concentrating on this binary opposition allows for something meaningful to be articulated. The present preference for science over the humanities is not timeless. As the two cultures debate illustrates, some sixty-five years ago, science was in a defensive position. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to document how value has previously been articulated when the humanities and the sciences came into public confrontation. The discussion moves from the present backward through historical debates: Section 3.2 explores the present policy-defined distinctions between the disciplines; Section 3.3 interrogates the two cultures debate between Charles P. Snow and Frank R. Leavis in the 1960s; Section 3.4 revives the correspondences between Matthew Arnold and Thomas H. Huxley. Taking a longer view of the connection between STEM and HASS can open up a series of conversations with more productive and open-ended results. Re-contextualising the present value crisis scholars face, at the level of national governance and funding, this chapter explores how the humanities and the sciences have previously negotiated tensions between their disciplines. Focusing on past debates draws attention to useful discursive tools as well as a reassurance that the current myopic perspective of policymaking is not destined for permanence. A narrative history reveals that such declarations of disciplinary difference were announced between the arts and the sciences, not about them. Therefore, this chapter offers an articulation of the value of the humanities that is not presented as a justification to policy but as an example of the active processes of understanding that are inherent in the disciplines themselves.

3.2 Part I: Policy and the Relationship Between the Disciplines

3.2.1 present policy preferences.

The discussion in Chap. 2 demonstrated the prioritisation of economic skills within the Browne Report in the funding bias towards STEM subjects, in terms of grants for undergraduate tuition. The removal of block grants, as a consequence of the policymaking decision to “withdraw public investment through HEFCE from many courses to contribute to wider reductions in public spending” (Browne 2010 , 25), has impacted the arts and humanities to a greater extent than the sciences. Writing in The Telegraph , 20 February 2011, Simon Schama observes how “sciences and subjects which seem to be on a utilitarian measure useful have retained their state funding while the arts and humanities are being stripped of theirs” ( 2011 ). STEM subjects are seen to be able to produce economically beneficial discoveries. The Browne Report recognises that “the costs of these courses are high and, if students were asked to meet all of the costs, there is a risk that they would choose to study cheaper courses instead” ( 2010 , 25). Despite the privatisation of tuition fees and the adoption of a free market of education, there is nonetheless “public investment to support priority courses and the wider benefits they create” (25). Therefore, this is not a free market of education, but rather a marketplace with specific incentives and sponsorship from the state. Such delineation between disciplines has caused concern amongst humanities scholars, who argue that their work has been sidelined as less valuable than the work of their colleagues in the sciences.

In terms of research funding, a preference towards metric evaluation has led to further concern. Speaking about the UK context in 2008, Martha Nussbaum observed how “the current Labour government [had] recast all research, including humanities research, on the model of research in the sciences” ( 2010 , 128). The remodelling of research assessment frameworks in 2008 saw the application of categories used to assess science and innovation also used to justify value in the humanities. The Independent Review of the Research Excellence Framework, known as the Stern Review, published its assessment of the 2014 REF in July 2016. The report “Building on Success and Learning from Experience” summarises how the reforms between 2008 and 2016 aspired towards a “metrics-based, target-driven exercise” (Stern 2016 , 42) that would “better demonstrate and incentivise the economic and societal contribution, and justify continued investment in, public funding for Science & Research” (42). Introduction of impact metrics into the 2014 Research Excellence Framework further altered the valuation of research, the implications of which are directly addressed in Chap. 5 . To briefly encapsulate the relevance of these changes to the present discussion: policymakers were dubious that “the peer review based system was as effective and efficient as it could be” (Stern 2016 , 42). Changes to research assessment have introduced a new policy landscape which, most commonly, recognises value when presented in metric form. Many researchers within the humanities argued that a quantitative approach to research assessment favours STEM subjects which are more naturally inclined to produce data and evidence-based results.

The valuation of tangible resultsis evidenced across the higher education sector, from marketing campaigns, to funding allocations, to module design. Footnote 1 For example, a promotional video “A Year in the Life of the University of Exeter” published on YouTube, 12 December 2013, celebrates that year’s research across the university. It exhibits a heavy bias towards the sciences: of the eight examples demonstrated in the video seven are the consequence of STEMresearch (University of Exeter 2013a ). The lone contribution from the humanities, an Archaeology project, explains “Buoyant Bronze Age Boat Makes History in Cornwall”. Footnote 2

This singular humanities example is the exception that proves the rule. Archaeologists worked alongside the National Maritime Museum to reconstruct a working bronze-age boat using original materials and techniques. The projects celebrated in the video all provide clear tangible results and each idea is communicated with fewer than ten words. The subtitles provide further insight into the domination of results: “scientists prove”, “scientists get”, and scientific “study uncovers”. The video pronounces the creation of “350 jobs” and celebrates breaking into the “Top 150 World Ranking” ( 2013a ) for universities worldwide. Numerical results, economic profits, and tangibility of research outcomes become indicators of a successful year in higher education. This poses a problem for the humanities since not many scholars are able (or, significantly, willing) to balance research and teaching with shipbuilding. Although this example is hyperbolic, the demand for tangible and marketable values leads to the funding of projects that can be readily defined in quantitative terms.

The above discussion is not a debate about the value of the humanities and the sciences, instead, it is an indication of how the marketing of higher education and the white papers of Parliament value the kinds of research that science produces, as well as the graduates that it creates. In From Two Cultures to No Culture: C.P. Snow’s ‘Two Cultures’ Lecture Fifty Years On Frank Furedi et al. describe how in the contemporary period “questions about the role of the sciences and of the humanities in education seldom acquire the form of a debate about substance. Increasingly, concerns about the intellectual content of education have given way to narrow technical ones about the organisation of the curriculum” ( 2009 , 64). In terms of both scope and scale—the defence of an entire mode of thinking—returning to genuine conflict in the two cultures debate provides a point of contrast to higher education today. Furedi et al. highlight how “in 1959 Snow worried about divisions between the two cultures; we now have to ask ourselves whether our culture can survive, in any meaningful sense, at all” ( 2009 , 25). The melodrama of such a claim clearly fits in with the allure ofcrisis narratives, discussed in the introductory chapter. However, the monoculture of market value is a serious concern for both scientists and humanities scholars alike. Furedi et al. are correct in identifying that today it is not the scientist and the literature professor who are in direct contest, but, instead, the policymaker and the scholar. This is a novel pairing since historically the dispute concerning value developed between the disciplines. Before turning to specific examples of debate, the following section briefly outlines the nature of this repetitive debate.

3.2.2 A Brief History of an Age-Old Argument

Empirical and humanistic forms of knowing provide near-constant counterpoints as ways in which to perceive the world. Patricia Waugh details the repetitious nature of opposition within academic cultures as follows:

in antiquity, an emergent rationalism vied with a literary culture concerned with the training of the orator-lawyer; in the Renaissance, an emergent humanism with an entrenched Scholasticism, the foundation of a theological training and world-view; since the 19th century, the cultures of the humanities have found themselves repeatedly clashing with the positivist or rationalistic foundations of the research model of scientific training. ( 2009 , 308)

All of the above exchanges are disputes or conversations amongst scholars themselves. Helen Small’s The Value of the Humanities makes a similar reference to the repetitive nature of debates such as these. She identifies how “Sokal was a repetition of Snow/Leavis; Snow/Leavis of Huxley/Arnold; but the deeper historical roots go back into classical antiquity” ( 2013 , 37). Footnote 3 Repetition does not make the debate any less significant, in fact, Small argues that returning to moments of conflict can provide a lens through which to more clearly distinguish disciplinary forms. The re-interpretation of scholarly history is an important part of the work that humanities scholars do. With this in mind, this chapter follows a similar genealogy to Small in tracing the relationships of Snow and Leavis before returning to Huxley and Arnold. Small observes how in debates concerning the sciences and the humanities all repetitions are different,

but they share two positive features: a recognition of the rhetorical power of binary oppositions; and a provisional commitment to their utility as diagrammatic accounts of the educational field as it encounters the political field. They crudify matters, but they also clarify them, and when faced with complexity we may be persuaded to put up with quite a lot of crudeness in the service of getting a basic outline from which refinements can start. ( 2013 , 37)

Operating through hyperbole, these debates are able to capture a crude caricature of the values that are at stake in the work of the humanities. In “C. P. Snow’s Fiction of Two Cultures” Peter Stringer argues that “simplifying and ordering properties help to make sense in particular of complex, large-scale and troubling phenomena” ( 1983 , 172). The problem facing the humanities and the sciences today is surely complex and troubling. Small’s idea of crudeness in repetition provides the benefit of “getting a basic outline” ( 2013 , 37) of the relationship between the humanities and the sciences, which appears to be so instrumental in shaping the landscape of value in higher education. Upon this foundation, more advanced speculations can be built.

3.3 Part II: The “Two Cultures Controversy”, Then and Now

The infamous debate between C. P. Snow and F. R. Leavis during the 1960s forms this chapter’s first example of such an oppositional relationship between the sciences and the humanities. An extensive body of scholarship describes the implications of the two cultures debate and chronicles the contemporaneous critical commentary with equal precision. Footnote 4 As a result, I will not re-tread old ground in the hope revealing a new revelation concerning the content of the exchange between Snow and Leavis. However, returning to this moment of contact between the sciences and the humanities presents an articulation of the humanities in a moment of confident self-valuation, which is in stark contrast to the defensive language commonly deployed in the present moment. This section specifically considers how articulations of value can be established though rhetorical confrontation; the investigation is not a case of who said what when but rather, who said what how . Returning to the exchange between Snow and Leavis provides an opportunity to explore the productive capacities of voicing disciplinary conflict.

The discussion is structured as follows. First, I introduce the specific lectures in which the controversy emerged, exploring the motivations behind and rhetorical structure of both Snow and Leavis’ public statements. Second, I outline the continued interest in the two cultures as a defining moment between the humanities and the sciences. Drawing upon the recently re-edited Canto editions of Snow’s The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (2012) and Leavis’ The Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow (2013) both introduced by Stefan Collini, I discuss how the lectures represent value through their formal properties. Finally, in drawing upon critical theory concerning opposition and rupture, I argue that the activity of speaking up for values in the form of a public lecture produces a significant social event. The vitality of speech-acts and the opportunities that a public lecture affords is an area of scholarship concerning the “two cultures” that has been underdeveloped. Although Snow and Leavis are dismissive of many aspects of each other’s culture, and remain in the realm of oppositional and stereotypical criticisms, reading these avid defences of discipline leaves an audience with little doubt that there are cultures to be preserved.

3.3.1 The Birth of a Controversy

The Snow-Leavis controversy is perhaps the most regurgitated public debate in the history of modern intellectual life. Such notoriety is, in part, due to the aggressive defences of science and literature that the exchange produced. On 7 May 1959, British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow delivered a lecture that was to make the term “two cultures” famous. Footnote 5 The occasion was the annual Rede Lecture held at Cambridge University and the speech was published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution later that same year. Snow describes a “gulf of mutual incomprehension” and “lack of understanding” ( 1959b , 5) between the humanities and the sciences. Throughout the lecture, Snow adopts the term “two cultures” to describe the particular incomprehension between “literary intellectuals” and “physical scientists” ( 1959b , 4). Despite the narrow focus of Snow’s contention, subsequent critical debates, and coverage in the media over the past fifty years has used the two cultures to represent a broader distinction that is made between the study of subjects within the humanities and the sciences as opposed to literature alone. Footnote 6 Within this more general division of disciplines, the arts and social sciences are often included in the category of humanistic culture (such as SSH or HASS) with scientific culture being comprised of natural sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Footnote 7 In his recent introduction to The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution , Collini observes how Snow “talk[s] about characteristics of research scientists and of writers as groups, and makes no practical proposals for shrinking the gap he identifies between them” (see Snow 1959b , xxvi). The purpose of the lecture was to distinguish one culture above another: literary scholars were to be seen as “self-impoverished” (Snow 1959b , 14) by their ignorance and traditional value, while scientists “have the future in their bones” (12). Collini notes how the debate that Snow initiated was not “concerned with the structure and content of educational arrangements” (see Snow 1959b , xxvi) but rather with the ideological positioning of disciplines within society at large. For Snow, national progress required “breaking the pattern into which they had crystallised” ( 1959b , 40) and recognising the value of applied sciences above that of literary culture.

The “two cultures” became the “two cultures controversy” when that “ auteur of hauteur” (T. Miller 2007 , 45), F. R. Leavis, assumed the task of response. Three years after the Rede Lecture, Snow’s assertions about the value of science became one side of an emerging dispute. Leavis used the occasion of the annual lecture at Downing College, Cambridge, 28 February 1962, to deliver his rejoinder to Snow. Although Leavis’ lecture addressed the disciplinary differences between literature and science, it was also a direct and personal attack on Snow’s authority to speak on the topic. Charlotte Sleigh describes how Leavis “loudly and publicly scoffed at the value of science, and denounced the quality of Snow’s novels for good measure” ( 2011 , 3). Some of the most acerbic of remarks that Leavis levies against Snow include: “he doesn’t know what he means, and he doesn’t know he doesn’t know” ( 1962 , 55); “the intellectual nullity” of “Snow’s panoptic pseudocogencies, his parade of a thesis: the mind to be argued with—that is not there” (56); “Snow is, of course, a- no, I can’t say that; he isn’t; Snow thinks of himself as a novelist” (57). Leavis was unrelentingly sarcastic and authoritative in his dismissal. His lecture argued that Snow grossly misunderstood literary culture and identified how, as a result of the speakers’ ignorance, the vision outlined in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution was largely erroneous.

Although Leavis’ criticisms were directed at Snow as an individual, it was not the result of any long-standing personal feud. In his lecture, Leavis notes how, at the time of the initial publication of Snow’s treatise in 1959, he had “perceived plainly enough what kind of performance the lecture was, and had no inclination to lay down three and sixpence” ( 1962 , 55) to purchase the publication in order to give it further scrutiny. His belated response three years later was likely partly fuelled by an irritation that Snow’s novels were being used in examination papers to read English at Cambridge. In his lecture, Leavis complains that “sixth-form masters were making their bright boys read Snow as doctrinal, definitive and formative” (56). Leavis remarks with surprise at how “it rapidly took on the standing of a classic” (55) and it was likely the lasting influence of Snow’s argument that was the greatest insult to Leavis. The wide circulation and lasting power of Snow’s speech, rather than the immediate content, is what caused Leavis to react so strongly.

Leavis lived and worked in Cambridge for his entire life. The tone of the lecture at a time when one might expect a gracious retirement is a central component of the shock-factor of the confrontation. Footnote 8 Initial reactions to the lecture flooded the letters page of The Spectator . Many were highly critical of the acerbic tone and personal nature of Leavis’ speech, for example, in The Spectator , 16 March 1962, Stephen Toulmin argued that it “amounts to an abuse of language” (12); Lord Boothby called it “reptilian venom” (11); and Susan Hill resented the “cheap jibes and highly personal statements” (11–12). Beyond surprise at the anger of the lecture, critics also identified that in his destructive critique, Leavis had offered little articulation of the value of the humanities. Hill commented that “having knocked down C. P. Snow, he presents us with no alternative to Snow—presumably, as he does not, he has none” ( The Spectator 1962 , 11); Boothby similarly, argued that “there is not a single constructive thought in his lecture; and the Cambridge audience who tittered at his malicious asides, and applauded at the end because they thought it was the right thing to do, should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves” (11). The many affronted respondents to Leavis’ lecture reveal the high-stakes in the debate. While Snow’sRede Lecture had been received well at first and had been relatively undisputed, Leavis’ lecture opened up a controversy in its first utterance. Footnote 9

Leavis published a transcript of The Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow in Spectator on 9 March 1962 enabling further circulation and speculation upon the debate. In subsequent reprints of his lecture Leavis stood by his comments about Snow. Much critical attention has been paid, both in contemporaneous and present-day discussions of the Snow-Leavisaffair (as it became known), as to how Leavis attacked Snow so personally within the content of his lecture. In the introduction to The Two Cultures: The Significance of C. P. Snow Collini offers an alternative interpretation to the assumptions presented above. He defends Leavis by arguing that “the Richmond lecture has been frequently misperceived as a personal attack on Snow” (see Leavis 1962 , 11). Instead, Collini insists that the comments were merely designed to “correct the overestimation of Snow as a sage” (11). Leavis was increasingly resistant to the relationship between fame and academia, and avoided participating in literary celebrity life that was particularly located in London at the time. As Collini observes how Leavis “despaired of the superficiality and mutual back-scratching of contemporary literary culture” and sought to foster a “university of a minority public capable of true critical discrimination” (see Leavis 1962 , 6). Leavis, accordingly, describes Snow as a “portent” who is largely “created by the cultural conditions manifested in his acceptance” ( 1962 , 54). Therefore, Collini posits that the central criticism of The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution is not directed at Snow, but at the society that has promoted him to such theocratic heights within the academy.

This consideration leads to a wider question: how can an individual critic speak up against a value system? Leavis’ answer was through a specific and embodied attack on the rhetorical speech of someone whom he perceived to be a figurehead. Attacking Snow’s professional abilities has been remembered infamously in the years following the debate. However, I argue that the form of the argument itself is of use for the contemporary value debates in higher education through paying close analysis to how large-scale systemic values are expressed in a discrete and embodied format, such as a public lecture. The following section explores how the form of the argument of the two cultures controversy has continued to captivate, and questions why no intellectual disagreement has exceeded the scandal of Leavis and Snow in the past half-century.

3.3.2 The Form of the Debate

Watching from across the Atlantic, Lionel Trilling, writing for the Higher Education Quarterly , November 1962, observed how “so curious a storm rages in England” (9). Trilling’s account provides a concise survey of the two lectures and ensuing correspondences. Significantly, his article concludes with identifying several similarities between Snow and Leavis. He notes that “if ever two men were committed to England, Home and Duty, they are Leavis and Snow—he would say that in this they are as alike as two squares” (27–28). Both men promote what they believe to be the best way to value knowledge within higher education. Therefore, Snow and Leavis provide active performances of the tacit tensions in the academy at that time. Small reports that “observation on the most famous and fractious of two culture encounters” in fact “tells us very little about the kinds of work the participants’ university colleagues were doing at the time but a great deal about the wider social, cultural, institutional, and political factors that had a bearing on the argument” (see Leavis 1962 , 35). These wide institutional and political concerns motivated Snow and Leavis’ public lectures to put forward their statements on the matter. It is these wider factors, rather than their individual personalities that maintain the relevance of the debate to our present context.

Frank James argues that “there is a tendency by non-historians to view issues and ideas, such as the Two Cultures, as timeless” ( 2016 , 109). Instead, each manifestation, although repetitive, should be understood as historically contingent. The phrase “two cultures” did not simply appear by coincidence in 1959 but instead provided a name for an already existent phenomenon at a critical moment. Guy Ortolano provides a meticulously researched account of the specific context of post-war Britain and its significance in the emergence of the two cultures debate in The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain ( 2009 ). He argues that “the exchange between Snow and Leavis was one such dispute, one that was charged by—and is revealing of—the context and culture in which it took place” (7). While drawing upon an awareness of the socio-historical context that Ortolano’s study provides, I reject his conception of thinking of history as a series of “episode[s]” (9). Both scholarly writing and media coverage of “the two cultures controversy” predominantly focuses on recounting one or two episodes. I want to challenge the idea of the two cultures controversy as an episode in history and instead consider it as a rupture of ideological forces that were long operational beneath the surface. It is a refrain, or a repeating motif, that is expressed in a particular way for a particular reason. As Leavis was well aware, analysis of argumentative style holds disruptive potential. In The Way We Argue Now Amanda Anderson observes, “intellectual and aesthetic postures are always lived practices” ( 2006 , 7). The two cultures controversy is a clear example of this, and in enlivening the values they represent, Snow and Leavis offer us distinct academic values to consider.

The speeches of Snow and Leavis as speeches are significant in developing an understanding of the ideological implications of a moment of rupture and the moment of response. Therefore, I will discuss the formal qualities of the events that history has chosen to remember (Ortolano’s “episodes”), in order to understand how two academic lectures could have produced so long-lived a debate. I argue that the form of the debate generates value within a particular historical context. Collini observes how “a lecture is above all an occasion, in both senses of the word—it is a social event and it is an opportunity” (see Snow 1959b , xxviii). He argues that, in comparison to other forms of argumentation, “the lecture strikes a more declarative or argumentative pose, and even though the best lectures exploit a collusive relation with their audience, the form is inherently pedagogic” (xxviii). A lecture represents an occasion in which language can produce expressions of opinions that endure. The opportunity to discuss disciplinary value was always present; it was simply the “occasion” that brought about the expression in the medium of a pedagogic and polemical lecture. Therefore, a lecture provides a formalised opportunity to express a perspective with the guarantee that the speaker will be heard. Understanding value in these terms is much like Judith Butler’s notion of performative agency. Footnote 10 Butler argues that speech acts “bring about certain realities” ( 2010 , 147) especially when uttered from those wielding social status. Although, admittedly, “utterance alone does not bring about the day” she argues that it “can set into motion a set of actions that can, under certain felicitous circumstances, bring the day around” (148). Snow delivered his treatise in a public lecture in Cambridge in 1959 and Leavis presented his cutting response to an audience within the same institution three years later. The medium of controversy was born in the lecture hall and continued in newspaper columns and printed responses. These events were not specifically designed for the purpose that the speakers elected to use them for. Two eminent scholars took the opportunity to co-opt the lecture space to represent the values they sought to uphold within the academy. Such coercion of a public event might yet be revived as a strategy for articulating the value of the humanities.

Beyond the basic properties of a lecture, further formal qualities of controversy are also worthy of attention. In bringing oppositional forces into contest, sides are established and polarities are drawn. It was when Leavis responded to Snow, that the two cultures became the two cultures controversy . It is important to distinguish between these two phrases. Richard Rorty notes how “rivalries such as these will doubtless always exist, simply because Hegel was right that only a dialectical agon will produce intellectual novelty” ( 2004 , 28). Agonism, the belief that contestation can be a productive force in society, has been explored in the work of Nietzsche, Adorno, and Foucault. Nietzsche’s “Homer’s Contest” defines the purpose of Agonistic critique as,

a thought that is hostile to the ‘exclusivity’ of genius in the modern sense, but assumes that there are always several geniuses to incite each other to action, just as they keep each other within certain limits, too. That is the kernel of the Hellenic idea of competition: it loathes a monopoly of predominance and fears the dangers of this, it desires, as protective measure against genius – a second genius. ( 2006 , 178)

With the arrival of the “second genius” (178) a productive intellectual articulation is instigated. The agonistic approach of the controversy is important to maintain, to avoid a singular perspective, which seeks to dominate all value judgements. This speaks back to the productive cultures of liberalism highlighted in Chap. 1 , a significant contrast to the vacuum of value in public discourse today.

Above all else, the two cultures controversy represents an embodied performance of disciplinary values. Leavis’ response demonstrates a confident grasp of rhetorical tools and an ability to persuade an audience. It is a brazen example of “an alternative of [the kind of] reductive instrumentalism” (Collini, see Leavis 1962 , 47) that Snow’s vision of higher education represented. Collini argues that “infiltrating it [an alternative vision] into the critique of one’s opponent’s language, may be the only strategy for avoiding such vacuity” (48). Instead of speaking in abstract terms about the value of literary criticism, Leavis uses the form of the lecture to enact that value.

3.3.3 The Two Cultures Today

In contemporary higher education, such an oppositional relationship and attentiveness to rhetorical critique is wanting. Although the Snow-Leavis controversy is often regarded as a negative part of the history of higher education, I argue that a variety of diverse cultures is better than one unregulated market. Humanities scholars can return to the two cultures controversy through the printed legacy that was left behind. Although when transcribed, lectures lose many of their formal charms and confidences, these speeches continue to be significant. In 1995, Michael Caines cited Snow’s The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution as one of the most influential books since World War II. Footnote 11 The past five years has seen increased media interest in reviving the debate between Snow and Leavis. Footnote 12 This resurgence of interest correlates to the passing of the fiftieth anniversary of the debate. However, if the commemoration of the two cultures is simply to narrate its sequence, there seems little point in digging up the dirt. It is, therefore, beneficial to observe the formal qualities of the controversy, the rhetorical tools, and the potential for agonism.

Leavis’ response presents a critique of language; in the present moment humanities scholars should equally attack the “leaden, cliché-ridden, over-abstraction of so many official documents” and “the meaningless hype of advertising and marketing” (Collini, see Leavis 1962 , 48). In the context of neoliberal monoculture, the existence of a multiplicity of voices and values is something worth fighting for, not about. In the present state of populism, in which inaccurate perspectives are held and shared without concern for veracity, we require critical voices that challenge the status quo. In his chapter in Gadamer’s Repercussions, Richard Rorty optimistically envisions a future in which disciplinary differences are no longer seen as a weakness but as a strength:

every area of culture would be expected to have its own parochial description of every other area of culture, but nobody will ask which of these descriptions gets that area right. The important thing is that it will be herrschaftsfrei [free of domination] ; there will be no one, overarching filing system into which everybody is expected to fit. ( 2004 , 28)

An academy that is herrschaftsfrei should be of interest to all scholars. Through conflicting discussion and through contest, comes intellectual cultivation.

3.4 Part III: A Liberal Valuation: Arnold and Huxley’s Exchange

This section moves from a discussion about conflict into the realm of conversation. It is, nonetheless, not without some tension between scientific and cultural discourse. In Professions: Conversations on the Future of Literary and Cultural Studies ( 2001 ) Donald Hall describes how “conversations can take us places that we never imagined going. Unlike monologues multi-voiced discussions do not proceed according to any one individual’s plan; they develop […] in surprising ways through chance occurrence and spontaneous articulation” ( 2001 , 1). Matthew Arnold and Thomas Henry Huxley’s exchange during the 1880s is a pronounced example of a “multi-voiced discussion” (1) between science and literature. In the face of significant differences between their disciplinary approaches, Arnold and Huxley engaged in a conversation rather than a controversy. Although in both letters and public lectures, each is persuasive, they do not seek to shut out the possibility to consider another angle of the debate. While Snow and Leavis had no prior amicable relationship, Arnold and Huxley engaged in a long correspondence and shared belief in the value of a liberal education and the importance of fostering a richer cultural life in England. Footnote 13

A sense of productive communication between the two men, as opposed to entrenched thinking, is captured in their correspondences. Walter Armytage’s “Matthew Arnold and T. H. Huxley: Some New Letters 1870–80” ( 1953 ) provides valuable evidence of this mutual respect. For example, in a letter dated 17 October 1880, Arnold writes to Huxley: “God forbid that I should make such a bad return as to enter into controversy with you” (352 my italics). Attentiveness to the form of response and to the importance of speech-acts is not limited to Arnold’s literary approach. Huxley was equally interested in expression and communication. His article “On Literary Style” concludes by citing Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s dictum: “le style c’est l’homme” [the style is the man]. Footnote 14 The style of their conversation is considered and both Arnold and Huxley avoid being framed as omniscient.

3.4.1 The Start of a Conversation

On 14 June 1882 Arnold presented the annual Rede Lecture, “Science and Literature”, at the very same occasion that Snow would introduce the concept of “the two cultures” some eighty years in the future. Whereas Snow’s lecture initiated a debate, Arnold’s lecture was a response. Arnold’s speech was a formal answer to the renowned biologist, Huxley, who had presented his understanding of the relationship between “Science and Culture” two years prior, 1 October 1880, at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason’s Science College in Birmingham. Huxley used this inauguration to argue that “the diffusion of thorough scientific education is an absolutely essential condition of industrial progress” ( 1882 , 11). His lecture offers a history of the dominance of humanities disciplines and their traditional role as the guardians of culture. Huxley directly names his opposite, “Mr Arnold” (14) as the archetypal humanist scholar: “our chief apostle of culture” (14). Huxley introduces Arnold as an example of someone who has “true sympathy with scientific thought”, and describes himself as “the last person to question the importance of genuine literary education, or to suppose that intellectual culture can be complete without it” (25). The tone of Huxley’s reference to Arnold is very different to that of Leavis’ attack on Snow or, indeed, Snow’s comments about literary “Luddites” ( 1959b , 22). Directly naming Arnold is not framed as an attack but as an acknowledgement of his position as an advocate for humanistic study, and as an invitation for a response.

Communication and negotiation are at work in their exchange. The further relevance of style is evidenced by a significant part of Huxley and Arnold’s exchange consisting of a clarification of vocabulary. How one expresses a point of view is of high importance. Throughout numerous letters, each continually concedes and appreciates the other’s point of view and associated vocabulary. For instance, in a letter dated 17 October 1880, Arnold explains that,

the dictum about knowing ‘the best that has been known and said in the world’ was meant to include knowing what has been said in science and art as well as letters. I remember changing the word said to the word uttered, because I was dissatisfied with the formula for seeming not to include art […] however I went back to said for the base reason that the formula runs so much easier of the tongue with the shorter word. But I never doubted that the formula included science. (qtd. in Armytage 1953 , 352 italic original)

Here, Arnold discusses the famous passage from Culture and Anarchy , in which he describes culture as the “pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world” ( 1869 , 193). As the central tenet of his view of culture, and the function of criticism, one might assume that Arnold would be stubborn in acknowledging any fault with this conception. The above letter reveals how he is critically aware of the implications of language and remains adamant that science should be included in his broad definition of culture. This concession on Arnold’s part reveals a deep concern for the critical analysis of language that remains at the heart of much humanistic study today. Arnold explains his language choice to Huxley with reference to rhetorical ease and a considered awareness of implicated meaning.

Irrespective of this aesthetic choice, which Arnold defends to Huxley, his 1882 Rede lecture makes an explicit concession in this regard. “I talk of knowing the best which has been thought and uttered in the world; Professor Huxley says this means knowing literature. Literature is a large word; it may mean everything written with letters or printed in a book” (220). Here we see the impact of cross-disciplinary conversation informing Arnold’s expression with said being replaced by uttered as a gesture towards the inclusion of arts and science as discussed in the correspondence above. As Huxley named Arnold, so Arnold recognises Huxley. Despite its verbal inelegance, Arnold adopts ‘utterance’ to emphasise the diversity of mediated knowledge.

The desire for the correct rhetorical expression of the idea of ‘culture’ is a recurrent theme throughout Arnold’s career. He even eventually came to feel the limitations of his famous dictum “sweetness and light”. Small’s The Value of the Humanities identifies how Arnold acknowledged the “frippery” ( 2013 , 83) of the phrase in an address at the University of Liverpool, 30 September 1882. She traces the literary and philosophical allusions of “sweetness and light”: observing that there is “too much packed into it by way of historical and intellectual argument” ( 2013 , 86). However, Small emphasises one way in which the expression functions effectively as a descriptor of cultural value, arguing that “sweetness and light” “marks the place at which no terms will sustain their value for long as descriptors of certain things about culture which Arnold wants us to understand are valuable, but which depreciate as soon as they pass into a language of critical appreciation or evaluation” (86). In the pursuit of the right words, Arnold captures the striving towards values that lie beyond the limitations of linguistic category, something that articulations of value in the humanities strive towards.

However, this pursuit of value should not be understood as an exclusively humanistic trait. Rorty demonstrates how this is equally the case within the philosophy of science. He explains how:

Gadamer once described the process of Horizontverschmelzung as what happens when ‘the interpreter’s own horizon is decisive, not as the standpoint of which he is convinced or which he insists on, but rather as a possible opinion he puts into play and at risk.’ He [Gadamer] went on to describe this process as ‘the consummatory moment of conversation [ Vollzugsform des Gesprächs ] in which something is expressed [ eine Sache zum Ausdruck kommt ] that is neither my property nor that of the author of the text I am interpreting, but is shared’. ( 2004 , 29)

This phrase is applicable to the exchange between Huxley and Arnold. The letters and lectures demonstrate a sense of playfulness with language and value, rather than treating them as part of a conflict. The aspiration towards that “consummatory moment of conversation” might not be fully realised, as the following section will evidence, however, each aspires towards a process of meaning-making that is shared. Their dialogue is not a contest of mutually exclusive opinions but rather represents a jostling for the immediacy of attention between literature and sciences. Rorty describes how this is different from the conflict of Snow-Leavis because such rivalry “would not be thought of as controversies about who is in touch with reality and who is still behind the veil of appearances. They would be struggles to capture the imagination, to get other people to use one’s vocabulary” ( 2004 , 28). Neither Arnold nor Huxley is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, instead, they are engaged in a persuasion for their preferred vocabulary. It is the tone of their argument that is of principal interest. Huxley and Arnold’s conversations, both in public and in private, clarify that there are two sets of ideas which cannot be fully aligned. However, each offers mutual respect and indicates a willingness to talk despite their disciplinary differences. Huxley describes how “the lesson of later life, is the renunciation of that encyclopaedic grasp the hope of which stirred the ambition of youth—and the resigning oneself to the conviction that in order to know one thing one must be content to be ignorant of thousands of things” (“On Literary Style” c.1890). That so much of their exchange concerns rhetoric demonstrates the significant value of precise and articulate language. Despite their diverse disciplinary expertise, each makes an effort to address areas where a fault is identified. Arnold continually insists on the value of the humanities in an increasingly technological world. Huxley wanted to forge a system of liberal education that included scientific discoveries in the physical sciences. However, the discussions between Arnold and Huxley do not mark a clear division between stasis and progress or between social knowledge and individual discovery. Instead, Arnold and Huxley are seen to subscribe to two alternative approaches to knowledge production that exists in harmony, reinforcing similar ends. The following section details how a common belief in liberal education enabled such considered and constructive correspondence.

3.4.2 “Darwin’s Bulldog” and “Our Chief Apostle of Culture”

Although both Arnold and Huxley had specific motivations, their interest in the reform of education from primary through to higher education was a common goal, and they respected the benefits of each other’s area of enquiry. Huxley was perhaps best known for coining the phrase ‘Darwinism’ and his career-long support of the evolutionary theorist earned him the nickname “Darwin’s Bulldog”. Footnote 15 However, his aggression in defending Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution does not reflect upon his manner in conducting conversations concerning the relationship between science and literature. In fact, in many ways, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) contains aspirations of tolerance inherent in a liberal education. For example, in Darwinism, War and History (1994), Paul Crook argues that “literature has undervalued Darwinism’s peace implications and especially Darwinism’s capacity for assimilation into traditional value systems” (192). Footnote 16 Within the harsh biological fabric of evolutionary theory, Darwin listed examples of social cooperation and repression of individual desires in order to benefit society, or civilizations, at large. In his famous chapter, “Natural Selection”, in On the Origin of Species , Darwin notes how “in social animals it will adapt the structure of each individual for the benefit of the community; if each in consequence profits by the selected change” ( 1859 , 84). Driver ants form a prominent example and Darwin suggests that “we can see how useful their production may have been to a social community of insects, on the same principle that the division of labour is useful to civilized man” ( 1859 , 219). On the Origin of Species, a book at the forefront of scientific knowledge is connected to Arnold’s efforts to promote self-cultivation as a means to a better society. The cultivation of a healthy “social community” (Darwin 1859 , 219) is recognised as being of benefit to the individual. This broadly encompasses the aspirations of science and the humanities alike: to provide a way for human beings, for humanity, to “profit by the selected change” (84). The precise means to “profit” (84) which Huxley and Arnold respectively favour may differ, but their general ambition is the same: the aspiration of these two eminent Victorians was the furtherance of a liberal education.

Arnold was relatively welcoming of the expansion of science within the university curricula. However, it must be acknowledged that Arnold’s attempt to include science within culture only extended so far as science that was readily contained within literary forms. For example, Arnold discusses the importance of the written works of Isaac Newton’s Principia (1687) and Euclid’s Elements (c. 300 BC). In this sense, Arnold remains restrictive in his remit of culture, as he only accesses science through literature. The experience of culture, for Arnold, is found in what can be read and what is written, detached from live scientific processes, such as experimentation. Arnold’s engagement with scientific knowledge was amateurish. As Fred Clarke recognises, it was a serious failure not “to realise that science was a necessary ingredient, growing in importance, of any conception of culture that could even then be called ‘adequate’” (qtd. in Connell 1950 , xv). In his defence, Dinah Birch contends that Arnold “didn’t understand the development of scientific culture, as he simply never had the opportunity to encounter it” (qtd. in Bragg 2013 ). Arnold does not actively seek to disregard the value of the sciences, rather has a limited experience of it.

While Arnold avoided engaging directly with scientific knowledge he gestured towards their mutual benefit in “General Conclusion: School Studies” published in Schools and Universities on the Continent (1868): “he whose aptitudes carry him to the study of nature should have some notion of the humanities; he whose aptitudes carry him to the humanities should have some notion on the phenomena and laws of nature. Evidently, therefore the beginnings of a liberal culture should be the same for both” (300). Footnote 17 This vision of liberal education includes both scientific and humanistic learning, not because they are different but because they can contribute to the same end. Both Arnold and Huxley recognised the importance of state intervention in education in order to achieve such reform. Each frequently cited examples from universities in Germany and France as evidence of the successes of a liberal education. Arnold’s A French Eton ( 1864 ) presents his staunch belief in the successes of the French state intensive education programme in the development of lycée. In particular, Arnold celebrated “scientific instruction and the study of the mother-tongue which our school-course is without” (269). Praise of both science and modern literature demonstrates his awareness that educational improvement requires a broad range of disciplines. Although Arnold clearly cites the importance of scientific education, the “mother-tongue” (269) receives the greatest praise and critical attention. Arnold further records how the French “school-boy has a more real advantage over ours; he does certainly learn something of French language and literature” lamenting that “of the English, our schoolboy learns nothing” (270). Once more, Arnold’s bias towards the value of the humanities is evident.

Huxley also urged for state intervention in education. Much like Arnold, his ideal was found in mainland Europe: “in Germany the universities are exactly what […] the English universities are not […] corporations of learned men devoting their lives to the cultivation of science” ( 1868 , 107). The use of the word “cultivation” in reference to the sciences suggests an approach to learning that is focused on a rounded, rather than applied, education. Huxley’s interest in Continental Europe also included praise of subjects beyond his personal investment in the physical sciences. In a letter published in the Pall Mall Gazette , 22 October 1891, Huxley insisted that “the works of our great English writers are pre-eminently worthy of being systematically studied in our schools and universities as literature” (301). Clearly, an echo of Arnold’s A French Eton , such commentary reveals the cohesion in ideas between Arnold and Huxley despite their different backgrounds and principal interests.

3.4.3 Articulating the Value of a Liberal Education

The celebration of general cultivation and recognition of the benefits of multi-disciplinarity are clear indications of Huxley and Arnold’s shared view of the value of a liberal education. The following quotation from Huxley’s “Science and Culture” lecture, 1 October 1880, demonstrates some of the more complex relations to knowledge and culture that both Huxley and Arnold embraced. Huxley stated that:

I often wish that this phrase, ‘applied science,’ had never been invented. For it suggests that there is a sort of scientific knowledge of direct practical use, which can be studied apart from another sort of scientific knowledge, which is of no practical utility, and which is termed ‘pure science’. […] Applied science is nothing but the application of pure science to particular classes of problems. It consists of deductions from those general principles, established by reasoning and observation, which constitute pure science. No one can safely make these deductions until he has a firm grasp of the principles; and he can obtain that grasp only by personal experience of the operations of observation and of reasoning on which they are founded. (26)

In this passage, Huxley clarifies the value of “general principles” and challenges the idea that “applied sciences” are distinct from other scientific studies. Huxley is insistent that a firm grounding in pure scientific knowledge is required for all applied science. Much like Arnold, it is important for a scientist to grasp universally accepted knowledge, or “the best that has been thought and uttered in the world” ( 1882 , 220), before making his own applied or practical contribution. Huxley’s approach to describing the strength of science as distinct from utility seems a long way from the languages of STEM centre research outcomes in the 2010s. His words promote a pursuit of a knowledge base without specific utility and this semantic distinction from the present outcome-driven approaches is a significant linguistic (and social) leap.

As noted above, there are significant differences between Arnold’s valuation of historical cultures and Huxley’s appreciation of the general principles of physical science. Although both value non-instrumental forms of education, it is worth noting that a prerequisite of scientific knowledge is that it is continually falsifiable. Huxley observes that,

the notions of the beginning and the end of the world entertained by our forefathers are no longer credible [science] admits that all our interpretations of natural fact are more or less imperfect and symbolic, […] it warns us that the assertion which outstrips evidence is not only a blunder but a crime. ( 1880 , 22)

This reliance on the physical truth that is ‘nature’ is in many ways the opposite of Arnold’s ‘culture’ and remains a fundamental distinction between Huxley and Arnold’s thinking throughout their exchange. As Gesche Ipsen et al. suggest, Arnold would likely add “the caveat that what matters to humans is truth among words as much as, if not more than, truth among things” ( 2013 , 266). This difference in methodology is unresolved in the conversations, letters, and lectures of Arnold and Huxley. Despite their intention to speak to each other, not against one another, mutual misunderstandings leave a significant gap of incomprehension in their amicable exchange. Although their dialogue is imperfect, both Arnold and Huxley speak with a self-awareness of their own positions.

However, alongside differences, there are moments of recognition, or Horizontverschmelzung , (Gadamer’s phrase for sharing horizons of intellect) which are worthy of reconsideration. For example, in a speech given at South London Working Men’s College, 4 January 1868, Huxley maintained that “we must have History; treated not as a succession of battles and dynasties; not as a series of biographies; not as evidence that Providence has always been on the side of either Whigs or Tories; but as the development of man in times past, and in other conditions than our own” (“A Liberal Education” 1868 , 109). To understand the development of humankind in this fashion and the significance of “other conditions than our own” does not deny the progress of science, but it does allow room for the valuation of the past. Such a statement offers hope that the value of the humanities might yet be understood not as a list, or a collection of dates, but as an active process of development and learning to understand others.

3.4.4 Conclusion

This chapter has reflected on the contemporary split between the humanities and STEM within policy by retracing two seminal exchanges between the sciences and the humanities. Although distinct in tone and historical context, both examples demonstrate the importance of how value is articulated. In these moments of public expression and contest, the way we argue (to borrow Anderson’s excellent expression) is more important than what we are arguing about. How we choose to argue is a reflection, or as Anderson argues, an embodiment, of our values. Debate is both vibrant and malleable. Such attentiveness to the value of words that is evident in Arnold and Huxley’s exchange, and the productive mutation of meaning through their letters and lectures provide a model for considered scholarly communication that should be acknowledged and admired. Despite their disciplinary biases both worked towards the promotion of a liberal education that, they believed, would support the development of curricula, and the general cultivation of individuals within universities and beyond. Their appeal to roundness stands in stark contrast to the applied and instrumental valuations that face contemporary higher education.

Unfortunately, in many ways, the academy has inherited more from Snow and Leavis’ debate than it has from Arnold and Huxley’s exchange. The distinction between the two cultures continues to be produced, and re-produced, in a variety of ways. The systematic organisation of colleges within higher education institutions is one example; the coverage of artistic and scientific study in prescribed ways in the media is another. Just as Leavis enacted a close rhetorical dismissal of Snow’s claims about the two cultures, so too should scholars be attentive to the ways in which the humanities are defined by those who are not qualified to speak for them. Although the use of language in the Snow-Leavis exchange is less constructive, I argue that it serves as an important example of styles of articulation in the creation of value. The form of the debate in public lectures reveals the power of an individual’s voice to take control over “social event” (Collini, see Snow 1959b , xxviii). In the history of education, the importance of such speeches should not be overlooked. Footnote 18

As suggested in Sect. 3.2 , a concern about the two cultures of scientists and literary critics is not the most pressing concern in terms of contested sites of value within higher education. Instead, present antagonism comes from outside the academy, in the pressure of the monoculture of economic rationalism in policymaking that does not befit knowledge production in either sector. Huxley argued that “there is no more complete fallacy” (1882, 26) than the belief that applied skills need not rely on forms of pure science. Today, the government’s support of specific kinds of STEM in light of their specific economic applications, represents a similar fallacy. There are numerous examples of how cuts to higher education budgets since 2008 have had an adverse effect on the sciences as well as the humanities. For example, in an open letter published in Nature, 8 October 2014, scientists affiliated with the organisation EuroScience state that:

despite what some politicians believe, applied research is unlikely to have much immediate impact on the market. Marketable research products are the low-hanging fruit of an intricate research tree, and undermining basic research will slowly kill the roots [scientific research] should not just serve the economy, but also aspire to increase knowledge. (Moro-Martín et al. 2014 )

Attached to the open letter was a petition that, as of April 2018, 19,317 people had signed since 8 October 2014. The petition “They Have Chosen Ignorance” iterates clearly that “they” stands for the policymaker: “they have chosen toignore that applied research is no more than the application of basic research and is not limited to research with short-term market impact” (Moro-Martín et al. 2018 ). The echoes of Huxley are strong in this petition, perhaps nowhere more so than in the closing sentence. The cultivation of individual education is not a redundant concern from the nineteenth century. Huxley concludes his 1880 lecture with the question: “if we could mould the fates to our own will” what kind of education “would [we] give our children?” (1882, 81). In a recapitulation of a liberal view of education, the scientists authoring this open letter “call on researchers and citizens to defend this position with us. […] We owe it to our children, and to the children of our children” (Moro-Martín et al. 2014 ). If Huxley’s question is still relevant, there might also be value in Arnold’s response. In Culture and Anarchy , he argues that:

our poor culture, which is flouted as so unpractical, leads us to the very ideas capable of meeting the great want of our present embarrassed times! We want an authority, and we find nothing but jealous classes, checks, and a dead-lock; culture suggests the idea of the State. We find no basis for a firm State-power in our ordinary selves; culture suggests one to us in our best self . ( 1869 , 99)

Although universally unattainable under the present conditions of higher education, certain aspects of a liberal education remain useful as ideals. In “The Limbs of Osiris: Liberal Education in the English-Speaking World” ( 1993 ), Sheldon Rothblatt explores how the “ideal resembles an experiment [… which] may or may not work in practice, but its value is in the trying and reaching” (70). This allows one to “explore alternatives and to exercise a creative reach in order to prevent human life from being overrun by the humdrum and banal” ( 1993 , 70).

The potential of imaginative and fictional articulation of value will be explored in the subsequent chapter. In a move away from thinking only within the limits of economic policy, a turn towards expressive ideals offers an escape from “the humdrum and banal” (70). However, this is not only the task of the humanities: “there is, after all, a level at which science and literature begin with the same question: what if?” (Bigsby 2013 ). The sciences and the humanities must strive to coordinate their efforts across disciplinary distinctions in the current debate concerning value in higher education.

Twenty-five years after the two cultures debate, Thomas Pynchon argued that “today nobody could get away with making such a distinction” ( 1984 ). In 2007, Toby Miller reasserts a similarly utopic image where “young computer scientists are playing in the same virtual environments as young literary critics” (41). With increasing technical specialisation (databases, hypertext mark-up), the advent of digital practices (big data, distant reading), and collaboration (neurolinguistics, bio-ethics, cultural mapping) the humanities and the sciences are more often in conversation as opposed to conflict on an interpersonal level. Policymaking practices since the 1980s have suggested otherwise. In the languages and actions of policy, the two disciplinary groups are hierarchised. In this narrative, it becomes clear that today, the humanities and sciences are currently facing a greater adversary than one another. Whilst Small notes in the opening pages of The Value of the Humanities “there are clear and definitive differences between the kind of work pursued in the different faculties of universities” ( 2013 , 4) these need not be perceived as being exclusively in conflict. In the preface to the first book edition of Culture and Anarchy , Arnold argues that “to convince those who mechanically serve some stock notion or operation” it is essential to “turn a free and fresh stream of thought upon the whole matter in question” ( 1869 , 192). This chapter has identified how specific attentiveness to language has served the humanities in internal debates in higher education. It emphasises that the process of articulation and revision are natural aptitudes of the humanities. Chapter 4 questions whether or not such attention toreading, rhetoric, and the way the humanities are represented in fiction can be a productive site for further disrupting the external pressures and definitions regarding the value of the humanities.

See John Guillory (1993) Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation for a critique of the “technobureaucratic conditions” (264) of curriculum design.

See promotional video on the University of Exeter’s YouTube page or read the associated news coverage “Buoyant Bronze Age Boat Makes History in Cornwall” (University of Exeter 2013b ).

The Sokal affair was a publishing hoax in which Alan Sokal, Professor of Physics at New York University (NYU), published an article “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” (1996) in leading cultural journal Social Text, before announcing his article was written as a deliberate attempt to unmask the dangers of postmodernism. For discussion see Editors of Lingua Franca, The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook The Academy ( 2000 ).

See Trilling, L. (1962) “Science, Literature and Culture: A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy”; Kimball, R. (February 1994) “‘The Two Cultures’ today”; Ortolano, G. (2009) The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain ; Furedi et al. (2009) From Two Cultures to No Culture C.P. Snow’s ‘Two Cultures’ Lecture Fifty Years On ; Collini, S. (2013) “Leavis v Snow: The Two-Cultures Bust-Up 50 Years On”.

Snow first used the phrase in an article in the New Statesman , 2 October 1956 (Snow 1959a ).

The significance of literature (and by association the subject of English) as a representative subject for the humanities is addressed further in Chap. 4 , see Sect. 4.3.2 .

Kagan, J. ( 2009 ) among others, has argued that the social sciences constitute an entirely distinct third culture.

Leavis’ retirement plans were well-known prior to his Downing lecture.

For evidence of the relative neutrality and broad assent towards Snow’sRede Lecture see Encounter (August 1959) “C. P. Snow and ‘The Two Cultures’” responses from Walter Allen, A.C.B. Lovell, J. H. Plumb, David Riesman, Bertrand Russell, Sir John Cockcroft, and Michael Ayrton 67–73; see also Encounter (September 1959) “The Two Cultures” 61–65.

The term “performativity” develops John L. Austin’s idea of “performative utterance”. See Austin, J. L., “How to Do Things with Words” ( 1962 , 22).

This list was published in The Times Literary Supplement (6 October 1995).

See Whelan, R. ( 2009 ); Collini, S. ( 2013 ); Bragg, M. ( 2013 ).

These similarities between Arnold and Huxley include a common distrust in the truth claims of organised religion and a shared devotion to educational reform in England. Ortolano, G. ( 2009 ) draws similar attention to shared values between Snow and Leavis including meritocratic and broadly liberal views.

Incidentally, Buffon was also a scientist interested in discursive style. He presented his “Discourse on Style” on being elected to the French Academy, 25 August 1753, in which he used the dictum “le style c’est l’homme même” [style is the man himself].

See Huxley, T. ( 1860 ) 569.

Further discussion of Crook’s work on Darwinism can be found in Gagnier R. ( 2010 ) 15.

These beginnings, for Arnold, include “the mother-tongue, the elements of Latin, and of the chief modern languages, the elements of history, of arithmetic and geometry, of geography, and of the knowledge of nature” ( 1868 , 300).

Most famously, J.S. Mill’s “Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrews” 1 February 1867. See also John Newman’s Lectures, 1852 at the Catholic University in Ireland which were the basis of The Idea of a University , and John Ruskin’s “Traffic”, delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford, 1864.

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How to Write a Social Science or Humanities Thesis/Dissertation

Writing a thesis/dissertation is a huge task, and it is common to feel overwhelmed at the start. A thesis and a dissertation are both long pieces of focused research written as the sum of your graduate or postgraduate course.

The difference between a thesis and a dissertation can depend on which part of the world you are in. In Europe, a dissertation is written as part of a Master’s degree, while a thesis is written by doctoral students. In the US, a thesis is generally the major research paper written by Master’s students to complete their programs, while a dissertation is written at the doctoral level.

The purpose of both types of research is generally the same: to demonstrate that you, the student, is capable of performing a degree of original, structured, long-term research. Writing a thesis/dissertation gives you experience in project planning and management, and allows you the opportunity to develop your expertise in a particular subject of interest. In that sense, a thesis/dissertation is a luxury, as you are allowed time and resources to pursue your own personal academic interest.

Writing a thesis/dissertation is a larger project than the shorter papers you likely wrote in your coursework. Therefore, the structure of a thesis/dissertation can differ from what you are used to. It may also differ based on what field you are in and what kind of research you do. In this article, we’ll look at how to structure a humanities or social science thesis/dissertation and offer some tips for writing such a big paper. Once you have a solid understanding of how your thesis/dissertation should be structured, you will be ready to begin writing.

How are humanities and social science thesis/dissertations structured?

The structure of a thesis/dissertation will vary depending on the topic, your academic discipline, methodology, and the place you are studying in. Generally, social science and humanities theses/dissertations are structured differently from those in natural sciences, as there are differences in methodologies and sources. However, some social science theses/dissertations can use the same format as natural science dissertations, especially if it heavily uses quantitative research methods. Such theses/dissertations generally follow the “IMRAD” model :

Introduction

Social science theses/dissertations often range from 80-120 pages in length.

Humanities thesis/dissertations, on the other hand, are often structured more like long essays. This is because these theses/dissertations rely more heavily on discussions of previous literature and/or case studies. They build up an argument around a central thesis citing literature and case studies as examples. Humanities theses/dissertations tend to range from between 100-300 pages in length.

The parts of a dissertation: Starting out

Never assume what your reader knows! Explain every step of your process clearly and concisely as you write, and structure your thesis/dissertation with this goal in mind.

As you prepare your topic and structure your social science or humanities thesis/dissertation, always keep your audience in mind. Who are you writing for? Even if your topic is other experts in the field, you should aim to write in sufficient detail that someone unfamiliar with your topic could follow along. Never assume what your reader knows! Explain every step of your process clearly and concisely as you write, and structure your thesis/dissertation with this goal in mind.

While the structure of social science and humanities theses/dissertations differ somewhat, they both have some basic elements in common. Both types will typically begin with the following elements:

What is the title of your paper?

A good title is catchy and concisely indicates what your paper is about. This page also likely has your name, department and advisor information, and ID number. However, the specific information listed varies by institution.

Acknowledgments page

Many people probably helped you write your thesis/dissertation. If you want to say thank you, this is the place where it can be included.

Your abstract is a one-page summary (300 words or less) of your entire paper. Beginning with your thesis/dissertation question and a brief background information, it explains your research and findings. This is what most people will read before they decide whether to read your paper or not, so you should make it compelling and to the point.

This section lists the chapter and subchapter titles along with their page numbers. It should be written to help your reader easily navigate through your thesis/dissertation.

While these elements are found at the beginning of your humanities or social science thesis/dissertation, most people write them last. Otherwise, they’ll undergo a lot of needless revisions, particularly the table of contents, as you revise, edit, and proofread your thesis/dissertation.

The parts of a humanities thesis/dissertation

As we mentioned above, humanities and some social science theses/dissertations follow an essay-like structure . A typical humanities thesis/dissertation structure includes the following chapters:

References (Bibliography)

The number of themes above was merely chosen as an example.

In a humanities thesis/dissertation, the introduction and background are often not separate chapters. The introduction and background of a humanities thesis/dissertation introduces the overall topic and provides the reader with a guide for how you will approach the issue. You can then explain why the topic is of interest, highlight the main debates in the field, and provide background information. Then you explain what you are investigating and why. You should also specifically indicate your hypothesis before moving on to the first thematic chapter.

Thematic chapters (and you can have as many of them as your thesis/dissertation guidelines allow) are generally structured as follows:

Introduction: Briefly introduce the theme of the chapter and inform the reader what you are going to talk about.
Argument : State the argument the chapter presents
Material : Discuss the material you will be using
Analysis : Provide an analysis of the materials used
Conclusion : How does this relate to your main argument and connect to the next theme chapter?

Finally, the conclusion of your paper will bring everything together and summarize your argument clearly. This is followed by the references or bibliography section, which lists all of the sources you cited in your thesis/dissertation.

The parts of a social science thesis/dissertation

In contrast to the essay structure of a humanities thesis/dissertation, a typical social science thesis/dissertation structure includes the following chapters:

Literature Review
Methodology

Unlike the humanities thesis/dissertation, the introduction and literature review sections are clearly separated in a social science thesis/dissertation. The introduction tells your reader what you will talk about and presents the significance of your topic within the broader context. By the end of your introduction, it should be clear to your reader what you are doing, how you are doing it, and why.

The literature review analyzes the existing research and centres your own work within it. It should provide the reader with a clear understanding of what other people have said about the topic you are investigating. You should make it clear whether the topic you will research is contentious or not, and how much research has been done. Finally, you should explain how this thesis/dissertation will fit within the existing research and what it contributes to the literature overall.

In the methodology section of a social science thesis/dissertation, you should clearly explain how you have performed your research. Did you use qualitative or quantitative methods? How was your process structured? Why did you do it this way? What are the limitations (weaknesses) of your methodological approach?

Once you have explained your methods, it is time to provide your results . What did your research find? This is followed by the discussion , which explores the significance of your results and whether or not they were as you expected. If your research yielded the expected results, why did that happen? If not, why not? Finally, wrap up with a conclusion that reiterates what you did and why it matters, and point to future matters for research. The bibliography section lists all of the sources you cited, and the appendices list any extra information or resources such as raw data, survey questions, etc. that your reader may want to know.

In social science theses/dissertations that rely more heavily on qualitative rather than quantitative methods, the above structure can still be followed. However, sometimes the results and discussion chapters will be intertwined or combined. Certain types of social science theses/dissertations, such as public policy, history, or anthropology, may follow the humanities thesis/dissertation structure as we mentioned above.

Critical steps for writing and structuring a humanities/social science thesis/dissertation

If you are still struggling to get started, here is a checklist of steps for writing and structuring your humanities or social science thesis/dissertation.

Choose your thesis/dissertation topic
What is the word count/page length requirement?
What chapters must be included?
What chapters are optional?
Conduct preliminary research
Decide on your own research methodology
Outline your proposed methods and expected results
Use your proposed methodology to choose what chapters to include in your thesis/dissertation
Create a preliminary table of contents to outline the structure of your thesis/dissertation

By following these steps, you should be able to organize the structure of your humanities or social science thesis/dissertation before you begin writing.

Final tips for writing and structuring a thesis/dissertation

Although writing a thesis/dissertation is a difficult project, it is also very rewarding. You will get the most out of the experience if you properly prepare yourself by carefully learning about each step. Before you decide how to structure your thesis/dissertation, you will need to decide on a thesis topic and come up with a hypothesis. You should do as much preliminary reading and notetaking as you have time for.

Since most people writing a thesis/dissertation are doing it for the first time, you should also take some time to learn about the many tools that exist to help students write better and organize their citations. Citation generators and reference managers like EndNote help you keep track of your sources and AI grammar and writing checkers are helpful as you write. You should also keep in mind that you will need to edit and proofread your thesis/dissertation once you have the bulk of the writing complete. Many thesis editing and proofreading services are available to help you with this as well.

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What are the parts of a social science thesis/dissertation? +

A social science thesis/dissertation is usually structured as follows:

How long is a typical social science thesis/dissertation? +

What are the parts of a humanities thesis/dissertation +.

Humanities theses/dissertations are usually structured like this:

Thematic Chapters

What is the typical structure of a thematic chapter in a humanities thesis/dissertation? +

A thematic chapter in a humanities thesis/dissertation is structured like this:

How long is a typical humanities thesis/dissertation? +

A typical humanities thesis/dissertation tends to range from 100 to 300 pages in length.

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College Majors

Careers for Social Sciences and Humanities Majors

Updated: monday, november 04, 2024.

By an IvyWise Academic Advisor

As an academic advisor, it is not uncommon for my advisees to find a subject they are passionate about but express concerns that it is a poor choice to declare as their major. After all, with STEM majors increasing in numbers and taking center stage these days, and their marketability and professional trajectory obvious, students interested in the social sciences and humanities can feel like they have chosen a major with an ambiguous career or graduate school path. Plus, with college tuition on the rise as families grapple with the financial hits from the pandemic and inflation, the pressure is on for students to make the “right” choice in majors that will provide a return on their investment and a good livelihood.

Humanities Majors Build Valuable Work Skills

Despite social sciences and humanities majors dropping in numbers over the last decade, I find that with these majors, students graduate with an arsenal of transferable and soft skills that can be widely applied to a variety of careers. Whether you graduate and go on to be a user experience researcher using communication skills to talk to a client, a product manager using emotional intelligence with your team, or an attorney using public speaking skills in the courtroom — no matter what path your career takes you, you will utilize soft skills that employers want.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ Job Outlook 2021 survey , there are several soft skills that employers look for in new grads. In fact, 81% of respondents said they value candidates with the ability to work on a team, while verbal and written communication skills were highly valued by 73.2% and 72.7% of employers, respectively. These are all soft skills that social science and humanities students hone in their coursework, more so than their STEM peers whose curriculum focuses on hard skills.

Jobs for Humanities and Social Science Majors

Social science and humanities students are never stuck with a lack of options; they just need to be able to identify their strengths and soft skills and learn how to market them. Let’s take a quick look at some common majors and the valuable transferable skills that students can garner from their coursework.

English and History Major Careers

Aspiring English and history majors often think that they are relegated to a career in education. However, these majors graduate with above-average reading comprehension, critical thinking, and composition and writing skills. I also find that the students in these majors are incredibly hard-working and resilient, given the exorbitant amount of reading and writing these students have to churn out for homework. These majors create excellent communicators with strong work ethics. While the career options are endless, these students would be well-suited for roles like attorney, copywriter for an advertising agency, social media manager, librarian, journalist, technical writer, and of course, teacher.

International Affairs Careers

In the international affairs, East Asian studies, and Latin American studies majors, most students are required to complete at least one study abroad experience and take several foreign language courses. As a result, these students graduate with valuable foreign language skills, cross-cultural communication skills, and the ability to work well with different cultures and people. These students are agile thinkers and are great at bringing people together. Some careers that these majors could consider are product managers in tech, lobbyists, diplomats, interpreters, diversity and inclusion consultants, non-profit managers, or even work in various roles within international business and more.

Psychology Careers

Next, let’s look at a very popular major: psychology. And while we’re at it, let’s also lump in sociology and anthropology. These majors teach students research skills and help them hone their qualitative and quantitative data analysis skills and critical thinking skills. At the core of these curriculums, students learn their place in the world and grow into socially conscious and thoughtful citizens who care about others and our world. These students could graduate and become social workers, user experience researchers, sales representatives, case managers, human resources representatives, attorneys, therapists, and so much more.

Education Careers

Finally, education majors tend to have high emotional intelligence, strong public speaking and time management skills, and patience — especially after they have completed their student teaching practicums and internships! Through their coursework, these students graduate with an above-average understanding and respect for others of different backgrounds and abilities. Often their coursework will involve a significant amount of group work, which means graduates can collaborate and work well with others in various settings. Of course, many education majors end up working in education as Teachers. However, these students could also consider roles like guidance counselor, academic advisor, college admissions representative, curriculum designer, corporate trainer, child psychologist, or even go on to work in various roles in the ed tech space.

No matter the major, sometimes it can be challenging to identify these transferable skills and connect them with a postgraduate plan that you can get excited about. However, with the right academic and career advisors in your corner, students in the social sciences and humanities should have no problem finding pathways to achieving their postgraduate goals, whether that is finding their dream job or enrolling in graduate school.

There’s no way around it — families are concerned with ROI on a college education, especially when it comes to liberal arts and humanities majors. Whether you’re studying English literature with an eye toward publishing or biology for a pre-med track, our academic advisors can help you make the most of your academic experience on campus. This includes guidance on course selection to help you graduate on time and advice on career paths that can help you get the best ROI on your degree — no matter what your major. For more information on our academic advising services, contact us today.

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Finding Your Best Fit School: Spotlight on American University

These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things…

At IvyWise, we love helping students discover the schools that will be a great academic and social fit for them, where they will be happy and successful. That said, when given the chance, we never hesitate to give a shout out to our own alma maters and share what made that school a great match for us. Previously, members of our team told tales of Turkey Trotting at Lehigh, classes in the Commons at Emerson, and following in the footsteps of strong women at Barnard. This week, the newest member of the IvyWise team, our Executive Assistant Ashley, tells us about her experiences at American University in Washington, DC:

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Nov. 6, 2024

Rice hosts southeast mellon mays fellowship conference, fostering future scholars in humanities and social sciences.

The Southeast Regional conference of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) Program unfolded at Rice University Nov. 1-3, gathering undergraduate fellows from across the Southeast to present their research, connect with peers and explore graduate school opportunities. The annual conference is an essential component of the fellowship, which aims to diversify the professoriat by supporting undergraduate scholars committed to greater equity in the academy as they pursue Ph.D.s in the humanities and selected social sciences.

“All of the fellows descended on Rice to present their work to each other, to talk to one another, to make each other better by listening to and questioning and criticizing and encouraging each other’s work,” said Alexander Byrd , vice provost of diversity, equity and inclusion. “These people who are here today are the folks who are going to be leading our universities in schools of social sciences and arts and sciences in the humanities into the next generation.”

MMUF has cultivated thousands of scholars since its founding in 1988 with many fellows going on to become professors and mentors themselves.

“We’ve got this intergenerational mentoring that happens,” Byrd said. “People in leadership positions at the university now get to be in front of students as kind of models. And for us, we get to hear what the next generation is thinking and doing, which informs our work in the present.”

The conference featured keynote addresses by Rice alum Fay Yarbrough , William Gaines Twyman Professor of History and senior associate dean of humanities, and celebrated author Kiese Laymon , the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English at Rice.

“It feels like this amazing opportunity for me to give something back to a program that gave me so much,” Yarbrough said. “I can honestly say I would not be in this job — I don’t think I would be a professor anywhere — were it not for Mellon.”

For Yarbrough, MMUF is a deeply personal journey that began when she joined the program as an undergraduate in 1995. Recounting how the program helped shape her path, Yarbrough shared a story of the late Edward Cox , her former adviser and Rice professor emeritus of history, who first introduced her to the idea of graduate study.

“He asked me what I wanted to do after I graduated,” Yarbrough said. “At the time, I wasn’t totally sure.”

Cox, however, had a vision and encouraged Yarbrough to attend graduate school and get a Ph.D. in history, a route Yarbrough had never considered but soon embraced as she applied for MMUF.

“It’s an amazing gift, because it isn’t just the time that you’re on campus as an undergrad; Mellon keeps helping you and creating this network for you,” Yarbrough said. “The Mellon Foundation clearly thought about how to help you get into graduate school but also what you then needed to be successful.”

Laymon, who became a Mellon Mays Fellow in 1996, echoed Yarbrough’s sentiment on the fellowship’s transformative impact.

“On the ground level, it’s gotten me in doors — the name Mellon gets you in doors,” Laymon said. “It’s just an incredible program that taught me the kind of professor I wanted to be as opposed to teaching me how to become a professor.”

A key message Laymon hoped to convey to the undergraduates who attended his keynote was the importance of honoring their backgrounds.

“If you come from places where there aren’t a lot of professors, the idea is that you have to forsake all that you were to become something different,” Laymon said. “In my experience, you need to take the best of home with you. Stylize that and become the writers, the researchers, the activists you want to be.”

Rice students shared their own journeys within the Mellon Mays community. For Jaquelyne Bardales, a senior studying sociology and social policy analysis, the fellowship offered a newfound understanding of research in the social sciences.

“I had this idea that [research] was like a lab coat and no idea that social science and humanities research existed, to be honest,” Bardales said. “So entering this space has really opened my eyes, and it’s just been amazing.”

Bardales, who expressed gratitude for the network of supportive peers and mentors, sees the conference as an inspiring showcase of future scholars. At the event, she presented a paper entitled “Are Community Colleges Supporting Texas Students?” drawn from her research on community college outcomes in the Lone Star State.

“I love the Mellon conference, because you get to see all the work that everyone is doing and they’re asking amazing questions,” Bardales said.

Samantha Peltrau, a junior majoring in English, said she found a similar sense of direction within the fellowship. Her conference presentation, “Appropriations of Medieval History in 21st Century Cinema,” drew on her expertise in her major as well as from her interest in media studies.

“I think now that I’ve started to do research and start conversations with other people, I feel really in my element,” Peltrau said.

With fellowship alumni like Yarbrough and Laymon now guiding today’s students, MMUF remains a powerful force for change, creating a pipeline for diverse academic leadership and ensuring future scholars are able to see the paths before them as both attainable and essential.

“You have to see it before you can achieve it,” Yarbrough said. “Otherwise, it’s just not in your universe of possibility.”

Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences

Conservative leadership contest: what we know about how mps voted in race between kemi badenoch and robert jenrick.

Published on 06 November 2024

This article, originally written by Dr David Jeffery , Senior Lecturer in British Politics, in our Department of Politics , was originally written for The Conversation:

Kemi Badenoch’s victory in the Conservative party leadership election was hardly a landslide. She secured only one-third of MPs’ support in the final round, just one vote ahead of her rival Robert Jenrick. Her share of the membership vote in the final round is also the lowest ever for a winner under the current system, in which a ballot among MPs is followed by a membership vote.

Conservative MPs are evenly split between MPs on the right of the party – supporting Badenoch, Jenrick and Priti Patel – and the centre of the party – those supporting James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Mel Stride.

The centrists scuppered their chances of getting one of their candidates through to the final round when Cleverly supporters engaged in uncoordinated tactical voting to keep out the stronger rightwing candidate. This backfired spectacularly and simply served to boost both of Cleverly’s rivals’ support levels at the expense of his own.

I have been collecting information on public declarations by MPs to find out how support for the final two candidates was split. That has been a difficult exercise since MPs have been less forthcoming about who they were supporting in this contest compared with previous contests. By the time the membership ballot closed, just 47.5% of MPs disclosed who they were supporting, with 30 MPs backing Badenoch and 27 Jenrick.

In terms of demographics, Badenoch attracted a greater proportion of female and ethnic minority MPs (27% and 20% of her support respectively, compared with 22% and 7% for Jenrick). Of the five LGBT Tory MPs, just one made a public declaration of support, and it was for Badenoch.

There is also a clear experience divide. MPs from the new 2024 cohort make up just 7% of Badenoch’s support compared with 26% of Jenrick’s. MPs who served in an opposition position and therefore have more experience, make up 80% of Badenoch’s public supporters, compared with just 44% on the Jenrick side.

We also see some interesting divides from previous leadership elections (note that I’ve excluded the new cohort of MPs from this part of the analysis).

Half of Jenrick’s support base backed Liz Truss in 2022, compared with 32% of Badenoch’s base – and the figures are basically reversed for support for Sunak. Funnily enough, of the eight MPs who publicly backed Badenoch in 2022, four supported her again in 2024 while the other four backed Jenrick.

In the second of 2022’s leadership contests, 61% of Badenoch’s supporters backed Sunak compared with just 35% for Jenrick. Notably, none of the ten MPs who backed Boris Johnson publicly endorsed Badenoch this time around, compared with five who backed Jenrick.

Free marketeers v one nationers

We can also look at the relationship between affiliation with Conservative-aligned groups and candidate support. MPs associated with one nation groups (Bright Blue, One Nation Conservatives, and the Tory Reform Group) were evenly distributed across both camps. These MPs make up 45% of the total Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP), and totalled 46% of Badenoch’s support and 45% of Jenrick’s.

Jenrick, however, did much better among the culturally conservative Common Sense Group (20% to Badenoch’s 4%) and the Eurosceptic European Research Group (40% of his support base, compared with 25% of Badenoch’s – although the difference in raw numbers is just one MP). We also see the hawkish China Research Group of MPs lean towards Jenrick – despite making up 14% of the PCP they comprise 30% of Jenrick’s support versus 11% of Badenoch’s.

On the economic dimension, Badenoch won a greater proportion of the relatively small free market MPs (those affiliated with the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Free Market Forum or Conservatives for Canzuk, which wants a post-Brexit realignment of foreign affairs towards Canada, Australia and New Zealand) – 11% v 5% for Jenrick.

MPs who support levelling up (those affiliated with Blue Collar Conservatism, Onward’s Levelling Up Taskforce, and the Northern Research Group) made up 45% of Jenrick’s base. Although they only made up 36% of Badenoch’s support base, she actually won a greater number of MPs from this group (ten against nine).

Taken together, then, some interesting themes emerge. First, Badenoch was the favourite of established MPs compared with Jenrick, who won the backing of new MPs. This is a good position for the new leader to be in, given that new MPs will be more eager to climb the opposition ranks and thus more likely to show loyalty to the new leader rather than rebel. Having experienced MPs on-side will help deliver stability to her shadow cabinet.

Second, despite the whole contest being pitched as a battle between the right and centre of the party, MPs affiliated with the one nation wing were evenly spread among the final two candidates. They did not decide to abstain, which would have sent a powerful message to whoever became the future leader.

Even in the fourth round, when a centrist candidate – Cleverly – was available, one nation MPs who publicly declared for a candidate made up half of Badenoch’s support, 39% of Jenrick’s and just 33% of Cleverly’s. This suggests the one nation cohort within the party is more eclectic than they are perhaps presented in commentary. And we can feel reasonably sure that they weren’t part of the failed tactical vote because they publicly declared their position.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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The present division between Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics subjects (STEM) and the arts, humanities and social sciences (HASS henceforth) is made explicit in government policy. It is concerning to observe the ways in which government policy is shaping the cultures of valuation and ultimately encouraging a shift in the ...
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This article, originally written by Dr David Jeffery, Senior Lecturer in British Politics, in our Department of Politics, was originally written for The Conversation:. Kemi Badenoch's victory in the Conservative party leadership election was hardly a landslide. She secured only one-third of MPs' support in the final round, just one vote ahead of her rival Robert Jenrick.

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3.1 Introduction

3.2 Part I: Policy and the Relationship Between the Disciplines

3.2.2 A Brief History of an Age-Old Argument

3.3 Part II: The “Two Cultures Controversy”, Then and Now

3.3.1 The Birth of a Controversy

3.3.2 The Form of the Debate

3.3.3 The Two Cultures Today

3.4 Part III: A Liberal Valuation: Arnold and Huxley’s Exchange

3.4.1 The Start of a Conversation

3.4.2 “Darwin’s Bulldog” and “Our Chief Apostle of Culture”

3.4.3 Articulating the Value of a Liberal Education

3.4.4 Conclusion

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