Narrative vs. Argumentative Structures in Academic Writing
When editing academic texts, I often find it helpful to distinguish between the text’s narrative structure and its argumentative structure. Doing so, allows me to see the argument as a dynamic whole rather than a series of claims. It also allows me to better identify what keeps the argument moving and offer rewrites that make the argument more explicit, cogent, and communicable in the text.
So what is the difference between these two types of structure and how can you use them to write more clear and impactful texts?
A text’s narrative structure is the storyline you lay down as an author for your readers to follow. I like to think of it like the skeleton of an animal. It gives the text its physical structure and this structure is visible even if it is wrapped in muscle and skin (i.e., your text’s words and sentences). Academic texts generally follow a very clear, pre-established narrative structure/skeleton, called IMRAD:
Introduction
Method
Results
Discussion
In contrast, the argumentative structure is what moves the text implicitly. More like the heart and internal organs that animate the animal, but remain unseen, the argumentative structure gives the text its dynamism. The argumentative structure of all academic texts is similar:
-A problem
-Established views or answers to that problem
-The flaws (and merits) of those established views
-An original, research-based answer to the problem which should avoid the flaws of the established views; i.e., your thesis1
The problem I find when I edit academics’ work is that they often conflate or do not clearly distinguish between their text’s narrative and argumentative structures. Instead, they adopt a very clear narrative structure–often apparent in the section headings–and leave the argumentative structure to develop itself. The result tends to be texts which have a clear narrative structure (skeleton), but in which the movement of the argument and thesis (heart) gets lost or watered down.
This can make a text feel dead, undynamic, and more like a series of claims—or a “still life.”
In my experience as an editor, this isn’t caused by bad writing. It is caused by academic writers’ unique relationship to structure. Unlike the creative writer, who must compose the narrative structure through the telling, the academic writer often begins with a pre-given structure and just fills in the parts. Today, nearly all peer-reviewed academic texts follow the IMRAD structure or some close variation on it. Since the 1940s, the IMRAD structure has come to dominate academic writing, becoming universal in some fields and the benchmark across all fields.2
The IMRAD structure–and its monopoly on academic writing–has its pros and cons. It is what makes academic texts similar, comparable (important for science), and easy to skim (important for overworked citation-producers)–at least for those trained into the IMRAD style of narration. It also makes structuring an academic text straightforward for the author.
The problem with the IMRAD structure? It can make writers neglect the heart of their arguments.
The solution to this problem, I have found, is taking some time to think and write about the argumentative structure of your text and what moves it. The goal is not to replace the narrative structure (skeleton) with the argumentative structure (heart and internal organs), but rather to make the argumentative structure more explicit in your own thinking and find ways to allow it to drive your text and give your text coherency.
In working with argumentative structure, the first step is to take some time figuring out how its component parts work in your draft, outline, or paper idea. I like to give myself 5 minutes to free-write on each component at various stages in the writing process. The goal with these free-writes is not to create text for publication, but rather to feel into what moves the text and gives it coherency. Then with the argumentative structure more clear in your head, you return to the text and identify spots where you can use the argumentative structure to make the text more cogent and dynamic.
Happy Writing,
The Editing Cooperative
If you found this post useful or would like to know more about working with argumentative structure, join us next month (27 February at 18.00 UTC) for a 2-hour workshop dedicated to the topic! Registration is necessary and the recording will be shared with all who register. You can register here. Please share this widely with your students!
I first encountered this way of thinking about argumentative structure when I was teaching academic writing at Johns Hopkins University. Will Evans introduced me to it and called it “the paradigm of academic argument.” At that time, however, I had not yet made the distinction between narrative and argumentative structures.
Sollaci LB, Pereira MG. “The introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD) structure: a fifty-year survey.” J Med Libr Assoc. 2004 92(3):364-7.