A Rhetorical Approach to Citations

Image by Lorenzo Cafaro from Pixabay

The writing center is a place students can visit for help with assignments and projects at any step of the writing process, including drafting, revising, proofreading, integrating evidence, and, of course, citing. While writing center professionals have published about training tutors to work with students at different stages of the writing process and on various writing concepts (Ryan and Zimmerelli; Fitzgerald and Ianetta; Murphy and Sherwood; Rafoth), there needs to be further discussion about the importance of training tutors on how to discuss citations with students who visit the writing center. Specifically, training tutors to discuss the why with a student can contextualize the practice of citing sources and help a student grasp the concept of participating in a larger community when they use citations in their writing.

To discuss the why of citing can shift the conversation between a tutor and student in a writing session. Typically, a conversation about citing focuses on details, including format, punctuation, and style. While these details are important for the student and tutor to discuss, it’s equally important to discuss the rationale behind standard conventions: the why. This is similar to how writing center supervisors have trained tutors to discuss grammar with students in a writing session: go beyond correcting a grammatical error and engage the student in a conversation about the rationale behind the rules so that the student has the knowledge to make informed choices and decisions in their writing.  

To discuss the why can shift the conversation to be more rhetorical: citation is a professional practice that helps to build and share knowledge. This might sound abstract, but a conversation can empower a student to think about the relevancy and credibility of their sources as well as how they might integrate sources in their writing. It is less abstract than it sounds and more about establishing credible citation practices as Shirley Rose explains, “[c]redible citation practice is more than a matter of selective quotation, fluent paraphrase, accurate summary, avoidance of plagiarism, and precise punctuation. It is an act of building community, collaboratively constructing shared knowledge” (45). 

To prepare tutors how to shift the conversation about citation to be about building community and sharing knowledge, there are a few questions writing center supervisors can ask their tutors in a workshop or training session:

• Why are citations important?

• Why are there different citation styles?

• Why do writers use citations?

These questions can engage tutors in a group discussion or be incorporated as a part of an activity where they can review a sample paper, their own paper, or a peer’s paper. Ultimately, the goal of the questions is to help tutors consider how to move beyond a narrow conversation about a particular citation to a conversation about the purpose and significance of citations in writing. These questions can help tutors understand the concept of disciplinary communities, their choices of citation styles, and how citations can impact their ethos as a writer.

A conversation about the purpose and significance of citations can help to address why there are different citation styles. When a tutor engages a student in conversation about the practices and rationales behind citation, it can help the student to grasp the concept of disciplinary communities and the values of those disciplinary communities. For example, the Modern Language Association (MLA) emphasizes authorship whereas the American Psychological Association (APA) places value on date of publication and the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) focuses on the origin of sources (Purdue Online Writing Lab). A tutor can help a student not only understand a critical aspect of their writing (i.e., citations), but also what is common practice and valued in their disciplinary community. As a result, a student can enter into their field with more knowledge and understanding of best practices.

An understanding of the why carries with it added rhetorical benefits as well. First, a writer's understanding about best practices and why those are the best practices provide a level of ethos for the writer. The practice of citing helps to bolster the credibility of a writer as a reader recognizes the writer’s knowledge of his or her topic. Moreover, when a writer understands that citing is a practice that is part of a larger community they wish to belong to, they can, in a more intentional way, share knowledge within their particular field (Rose, 42). This type of knowledge building and knowledge sharing highlights that a conversation about citations can make for a rhetorically-savvy writer (Adler-Kassner and Wardle, 181).

As with conversations about argument, organization, and grammar, it’s important for tutors to share with students the why when it comes to citations. As Rose mentions, citation practice is more than quotations, paraphrased information, and a way to avoid plagiarism; students have an opportunity to build upon and share knowledge within a particular community and/or communities (45). By engaging tutors in a training about the larger purpose and practice, tutors can feel more prepared to have a meaningful conversation about citations with students who visit the writing center. As a result, students can come to better understand the choices behind their decisions when it comes to choosing a source, integrating a source as a piece of evidence, and citing a source in their writing.

Works Cited

A Tutor’s Guide: Helping Writers One to One, edited by Ben Rafoth. 2nd ed., Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2005.

Fitzgerald, Lauren, and Melissa Ianetta. The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research. 1st ed., Oxford University Press, 2016.

Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. Utah State University Press, 2015.

Murphy, Christina, and Steve Sherwood. The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors. 4th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011.

Purdue Online Writing Lab. “The Purdue OWL: Citation Chart.” Purdue University, 2018, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/using_research/documents/20191212CitationChart.pdf. Accessed 24 June 2021.

Ryan, Leigh, and Lisa Zimmerelli. The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors. 6th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.

Shirley Rose. “What’s Love Got To Do With It? Scholarly Citation Practices as Courtship Rituals.” Research on the Language of the Disciplines, vol. 1, no. 3, 1996, pp. 34-48.

Author Bio:

Adam Daut is the Coordinator, Sr. for the Writing Center and Graduate Writing Center at Arizona State University's Downtown Phoenix campus. Adam supervises undergraduate and graduate writing tutors, creates training curriculum, collaborates with faculty across disciplines, delivers writing workshops, and facilitates graduate summer writing camps.

Keywords:

Citation, Community, Discipline, Knowledge, Rhetoric