6. Kinds of morphemes and morphological processes
6.9. Becoming a linguist: How to read an academic article
Academic articles vs. textbooks
You are probably used to reading textbooks, but reading academic articles may be a new skill. Here are some important differences between academic articles and textbooks to keep in mind.
The most obvious difference between a textbook and an academic article is the length. While a textbook is a whole book, an academic article is short. In linguistics, they are often between 15 and 50 pages long.
A textbook is usually used for learning or studying, while an academic article is usually used for research. This changes how you read! When you are reading a textbook, every detail might be important, and your professor will probably expect you to understand all or most of the reading. On the other hand, your professor will probably not expect you to understand every part of an academic article. When you are reading an academic article, you shouldn’t pay equal attention to all parts of the paper. Think about why you are reading that paper, and focus on those parts. For example, if you are studying the same language as the paper, you will spend more time studying the data. If you are trying to do a similar study on your own, you will spend more time studying the methods. If you care most about the theory the paper is arguing for, then you will spend more time studying the argumentation and conclusions.
A textbook will assume that you know nothing about the topic. The purpose of the textbook is to teach you the topic! An academic article, in contrast, assumes you have background knowledge. This is the bit that makes reading academic articles the most difficult. When you are just starting out, of course you won’t have all of the background knowledge! Morphosyntax as a field is big enough that even experienced researchers won’t have all of the background knowledge necessary to understand the article. Academic articles, remember, typically present original research, which means that they are presenting new information. The article will contain brand new ideas, so even the most experienced professor will be learning something new from the article. Here are some strategies that can help you navigate your gaps in knowledge:
- Most of the time, you just need to understand the main claim of the article, not all of the details. Work on figuring out that main claim, and don’t stress over all of the details that you don’t understand.
- Try to figure out which pieces of background knowledge are really necessary to understanding the main goal of the paper, and which are not that important. Don’t look up every word you don’t know.
- Remember your goal for reading the paper! Do you care more about the data, the methods, or the theory? Spend most of your time and energy trying to understand the parts that are relevant to you.
- Pay attention to the year the paper was written. If you know a little bit about the history of linguistics, the year is a big clue about what kinds of assumptions and frameworks the author was working with.
- Sometimes the paper uses a technical term that is new to you, but maybe you do know it, just by a different name. If it looks familiar but they call it something else, don’t doubt yourself! It is good to double check that they mean the same thing, though.
Once you have identified a gap in your knowledge that you really need to fill in order to meet your research goals, how do you go about learning what you need to know? Of course, you can search online, but you may find that online searches might turn up simplified or irrelevant explanations, depending on the term. Here are some ways that you can get more specialized answers, ordered from easiest to most difficult:
- Ask your instructor for advice or ideas about where to go. Your instructor may be able to give you specific advice about individual topics.
- Look up terms in a linguistics glossary or dictionary, such as the one at the end of this textbook or Utrecht’s Lexicon of Linguistics.
- Find a textbook that introduces and explains the topic.
- Find a cover article that explains the topic. A cover article is a special kind of academic article that, instead of presenting new original research, gives an overview of the current ideas and research on a given research area.
- Find a dissertation or book that addresses the topic, and read the introduction or literature review section of the dissertation or book.
Finally, in morphology and syntax, we are often working with a model of grammar. A textbook will present a complete model. It may be a simplified model, and the textbook author has thought about how all the pieces integrate into the whole. On the other hand, an academic article may present just one piece and go deep into that one piece. The author of the academic article might not have an opinion about how this piece interacts with all of the other pieces in the model.
Reading techniques: The three pass method
Believe it or not, most academics do not read an article from beginning to end straight-through. Instead, they bounce around strategically, making decisions about where they want to focus and how much time and energy they need to spend on understanding the article. In this section, I will describe the three pass method to reading an academic article which can help you begin to read more strategically. This description is adapted from Keshav (2002) with elements from Tatman (2016).
The first pass: A strategic skim
The first pass through the article should be quick, maybe even only 10-15 minutes. You’re only going to read parts of the article, and your main goal of the first pass is to decide if this is the right article for you to spend your time on.
Step one: Read the title, abstract, and keywords carefully
As you’re reading, try to figure out what the main goal of the paper is. Decide if you want to spend more time on this article, and if so, which parts are most relevant. Ask yourself why you are reading this paper. Which questions are you trying to answer? Does this article address those questions?
Step two: Scan the introduction and conclusion
Skim through the introduction and conclusion. Try to determine what the main conclusions of the paper are and what kind of evidence was used.
At this point, you may also wish to note any terms you don’t know that are used more than once in both the introduction and the conclusion. Consider looking them up now, so that you are better equipped to understand the meat of the paper in the second pass. Remember, you don’t need to look up every term, just the ones that seem like they will be important.
Step three: Flip through the paper and read the headings and skim the data
In this step, you are figuring out how the paper is structured. You are trying to determine which sections will be most relevant to the questions you’re trying to answer, and how the different sections relate to each other. You can use this information to pace yourself in the second pass, especially if the article is long enough that you won’t be able to read it in one sitting. You might also choose to only read portions of the paper in the second pass.
As you skim the paper, pay attention to what kind of data is used. For example, the data may consist of full sentences, individual words, morphological paradigms, or statistics. Which language(s) does the data come from? Is it adult or child language? Also pay attention to what kinds of formalisms and diagrams are used. For example, the paper may include semantic formula, syntax trees, tables, charts, graphs, or formalisms that are unfamiliar to you. You can use the data and the formalisms used to get a bigger picture of what kind of paper it is: the theoretical framework, the methodology, and the subfields that are relevant.
Step four: Stop and evaluate
At the end of the first pass, take some time to answer the following questions (adapted from Keshav 2007).
- Category: What kind of paper is it? Is it summarizing previous work or presenting a new analysis? What subfield(s) does it fall under? What methodologies are used? Is it descriptive, describing the properties of some language, or theoretical, arguing for a theoretical position, or both?
- Context: What theoretical framework does it adopt? Is it one you are familiar with? What other papers is it related to?
- Corrections: Did you notice any errors or faulty assumptions?
- Contributions: How does this paper advance the field?
- Clarity: Is it well-written?
At this point, decide whether to keep reading. You may choose to stop after the first pass if you don’t think the paper will be useful to you after all, either because it wasn’t quite the right topic or methodology, because you think it makes faulty assumptions, or because you think you already got the information you need from the first pass.
The second pass: A quick read-through
In the second pass, you will either read the paper through from beginning to end or read just the sections that you picked out as most relevant to you. In the second pass, you will read more carefully but you still aren’t trying to understand every detail. Instead, you should focus mainly on trying to understand the main idea of the paper. After the second pass, you should be able to explain the main argument of the paper as well as the main supporting evidence. If you don’t understand a paragraph after reading it a couple times, move on. The second pass shouldn’t take you much longer than 2-3 hours, depending on the length of the paper.
As you read, formulate questions based on what you don’t understand and based on further research goals:
- What don’t you understand? Pick out terms that seem important that you don’t know. Are there parts of their argument that leave you confused?
- What is something you’d like to know more about? If you had to write a research paper about something, what ideas does this paper give you?
There are many reasons why you might still not understand the main ideas of the paper after the second pass. The paper may be in a topic area, framework, or methodology that you aren’t familiar with, with lots of unfamiliar terminology and/or formalisms. In other words, you don’t have sufficient background. The paper may also be poorly written. Finally, maybe you’re just tired. If you don’t understand the paper after the second pass, there are several possible responses. You could rest and try again. This may help simply because the second time trying to understand something is easier than the first time. You could do more background reading and research to fill in your gaps of understanding, and then try again. Or you can set it aside and hope that it’s not going to be important to your course or your career.
The second pass is enough depth for most papers you read. It is enough for most course assigned readings. However, if you are leading a discussion about the paper, writing a critique or review of the paper, or using it as the main resource for your own research, you should probably move on to the third pass.
The third pass: A deep reading
If you choose to do a third pass, this is when you try to understand every single detail in the paper. Consider every step of the argumentation and every piece of data. Read the footnotes. Look for flaws. Ask yourself, if you were writing this paper, would you have made the same choices and drawn the same conclusions?
Check yourself!
References and further resources
For students
Fruehwald, Josef. August 22, 2022. Reading a technical paper. Lin517: Natural Language Processing. https://jofrhwld.github.io/teaching/courses/2022_lin517/resources/reading/
Kerstens, Johan, Eddy Ruys, and Joost Zwarts. 2001. Lexicon of Linguistics. Utrecht University. https://lexicon.hum.uu.nl/
Keshav, Srinivasan. 2007. How to read a paper. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 37 (3): 83-84.
Tatman, Rachael. January 29 2016. How to read a linguistics article in 8 easy steps. Making Noise & Hearing Things. https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2016/01/29/how-to-read-a-linguistics-article-in-8-easy-steps/
