Writing For Social Scientists Third Edition

Students and researchers all write under pressure, and those pressures—most lamentably, the desire to impress your audience rather than to communicate with them—often lead to pretentious prose, academic posturing, and, not infrequently, writer’s block. Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published nearly twenty years ago, Writing for Social Scientists has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker’s message is clear: in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then begin writing. Revise. Repeat. It is not always an easy process, as Becker wryly relates. Decades of teaching, researching, and writing have given him plenty of material, and Becker neatly exposes the foibles of academia and its “publish or perish” atmosphere. Wordiness, the passive voice, inserting a “the way in which” when a simple “how” will do—all these mechanisms are a part of the social structure of academic writing. By shrugging off such impediments—or at the very least, putting them aside for a few hours—we can reform our work habits and start writing lucidly without worrying about grades, peer approval, or the “literature.” In this new edition, Becker takes account of major changes in the computer tools available to writers today, and also substantially expands his analysis of how academic institutions create problems for them. As competition in academia grows increasingly heated, Writing for Social Scientists will provide solace to a new generation of frazzled, would-be writers.

"For more than 30 years, Writing for Social Scientists has offered readers a powerful reassurance: academic writing is difficult, and even accomplished scholars like Howard S. Becker struggle with it. Becker, the consummate sociologist, both analyzes how the professional context of academia contributes to writing problems and offers concrete advice, based on his own experiences and those of his students and colleagues, for overcoming them and gaining confidence as a writer. While the underlying challenges have remained the same over the years, the context in which academic writers work has changed dramatically, thanks to technology and new institutional pressures. This new edition has been updated throughout to reflect these changes, offering a new generation of scholars and students encouragement to write about society or any other scholarly topic clearly and persuasively"--

The classic guide to avoiding pitfalls and achieving success in academic writing—in a fully updated edition with a new preface by the author. For decades, Writing for Social Scientists has been a lifeboat for academic writers of all fields, from beginning students to seasoned professionals. With reassuring candor, author and sociologist Howard S. Becker identifies some of the common problems all academic writers face, including from procrastination and stifling perfectionism to getting caught up in the trappings of “proper” academic writing, and struggling with the when and how of citations. He then offers concrete advice, based on his own experiences and those of his students and colleagues, for overcoming these obstacles and gaining confidence as a writer. This new edition has been updated throughout to reflect the contemporary landscape of academic writing, offering a new generation of scholars and students encouragement to write about society or any other scholarly topic clearly and persuasively. As academics are called upon to write more often, in more formats, Writing for Social Scientists continues be an important resource for any writer’s shelf.

Modern academia is increasingly competitive yet the writing style of social scientists is routinely poor and continues to deteriorate. Are social science postgraduates being taught to write poorly? What conditions adversely affect the way they write? And which linguistic features contribute towards this bad writing? Michael Billig's witty and entertaining book analyses these questions in a quest to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong with the way social scientists write. Using examples from diverse fields such as linguistics, sociology and experimental social psychology, Billig shows how technical terminology is regularly less precise than simpler language. He demonstrates that there are linguistic problems with the noun-based terminology that social scientists habitually use - 'reification' or 'nominalization' rather than the corresponding verbs 'reify' or 'nominalize'. According to Billig, social scientists not only use their terminology to exaggerate and to conceal, but also to promote themselves and their work.

Drawing on more than four decades of experience as a researcher and teacher, Howard Becker now brings to students and researchers the many valuable techniques he has learned. Tricks of the Trade will help students learn how to think about research projects. Assisted by Becker's sage advice, students can make better sense of their research and simultaneously generate fresh ideas on where to look next for new data. The tricks cover four broad areas of social science: the creation of the "imagery" to guide research; methods of "sampling" to generate maximum variety in the data; the development of "concepts" to organize findings; and the use of "logical" methods to explore systematically the implications of what is found. Becker's advice ranges from simple tricks such as changing an interview question from "Why?" to "How?" (as a way of getting people to talk without asking for a justification) to more technical tricks such as how to manipulate truth tables. Becker has extracted these tricks from a variety of fields such as art history, anthropology, sociology, literature, and philosophy; and his dazzling variety of references ranges from James Agee to Ludwig Wittgenstein. Becker finds the common principles that lie behind good social science work, principles that apply to both quantitative and qualitative research. He offers practical advice, ideas students can apply to their data with the confidence that they will return with something they hadn't thought of before. Like Writing for Social Scientists, Tricks of the Trade will bring aid and comfort to generations of students. Written in the informal, accessible style for which Becker is known, this book will be an essential resource for students in a wide variety of fields. "An instant classic. . . . Becker's stories and reflections make a great book, one that will find its way into the hands of a great many social scientists, and as with everything he writes, it is lively and accessible, a joy to read."—Charles Ragin, Northwestern University

Students and researchers all write under pressure, and those pressures - most lamentably, the desire to impress your audience rather than to communicate with them - often lead to pretentious prose, academic posturing, and, not infrequently, writer's block. Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published nearly twenty years ago, Writing for Social Scientists has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker's message is clear; in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then begin writing. Revise. Repeat. It is not always an easy process, as Becker wryly relates. Decades of teaching, researching, and writing have given him plenty of material, and Becker neatly exposes the foibles of academia and its ''publish or perish'' atmosphere. Wordiness, the passive voice, inserting a ''the way in which'' when a simple ''how'' will do - all these mechanisms are a part of the social structure of academic writing. By shrugging off such impediments - or at the very least, putting them aside for a few hours - we can reform our work habits and start writing lucidly without worrying about grades, peer approval, or the ''literature.''In this new edition, Becker takes account of major changes in the computer tools available to writers today, and also substantially expands his analysis of how academic institutions create problems for them. As competition in academia grows increasingly heated, Writing for Social Scientists will provide solace to a new generation of frazzled, would-be writers.

The bestseller that pioneered the comparison of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research design continues in its Fourth Edition to help students and researchers prepare their plan or proposal for a scholarly journal article, dissertation or thesis.

Introduction: so you want to go public? -- Writing beyond the academy -- Telling stories about your research -- Books for general audiences -- The digital turn -- Building an audience -- The perils of going public -- Making it count, making a difference