Teaching the Concept of Motive in Sociological Writing

• In Event: 165 - Regular Session. Teaching Sociology

Abstract

Sociologists have often studied the pedagogical value of writing within the sociology curriculum. Yet the unit of analysis in many of these studies is the writing assignment; they tend not to drill down to focus on a particular writing skill or rhetorical technique. A further application of writing pedagogy into the sociology curriculum seems to require thinking about individual rhetorical elements of academic writing as units of instruction and assessment. This paper recommends that sociology professors focus some of their instruction on an element of academic writing called motive, which the authors define as the part of an essay that establishes the particular puzzle, inconsistency, or question that makes the essay worth writing and reading. This paper thus describes a classroom exercise that uses a simple three-point concept map to visualize the motivating problem of an essay and clarify the way the thesis statement explains that problem in a sociological essay.

Authors

• Maria Medvedeva, Princeton University

• Timothy Recuber, Princeton University