A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, 7th edition - Kate L. Turabian 2007

What a research argument is and is not
Planning your argument
Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

Most of us would rather read than write. There is always another article to read, one more source to track down, just a bit more data to gather. But well before you've done all the research you'd like to do, there comes a point when you must start thinking about the first draft of your report. You might be ready when your storyboard starts to fill up and you're satisfied with how it looks. You will know you're ready when you think you can sketch a reasonable case to support your working hypothesis (see 2.3). If your storyboard is full and you still can't pull together a case strong enough to plan a draft, you may have to rethink your hypothesis, perhaps even your question. But you can't be certain where you stand in that process until you try to plan that first draft.

If you're not an experienced writer, we suggest planning your first draft in two steps:

Sort your notes into the elements of a research argument.

Organize those elements into a coherent form.

In this chapter, we explain how to assemble your argument; in the next, how to organize it. As you gain experience, you'll learn to combine those two steps into one.

5.1 What a research argument is and is not

The word argument has bad associations these days, partly because radio and TV stage so many abrasive ones. But the argument in a research report doesn't try to intimidate an opponent into silence or submission. In fact, there's rarely an “opponent” at all. Like any good argument, a research argument resembles an amiable conversation in which you and your imagined readers reason together to solve a problem whose solution they don't yet accept. That doesn't mean they oppose your claims (though they might). It means only that they won't accept them until they see good reasons based on reliable evidence and until you respond to their reasonable questions and reservations.

In face-to-face conversation, making (not having) a cooperative argument is easy: you state your reasons and evidence not as a lecturer would to a silent audience, but as you would engage talkative friends sitting around a table with you: you offer a claim and some reasons to believe it; they probe for details, raise objections, or offer their points of view; you respond, perhaps with questions of your own; and they ask more questions. At its best, it's an amiable but thoughtful back-and-forth that develops and tests the best case that you and they can make together.

In writing, that kind of cooperation is harder, because you usually write alone (unless you're in a writing group; see 2.4), and so you must not only answer your imagined readers' questions, but ask them on their behalf—as often and as sharply as real readers will. But your aim isn't just to think up clever rhetorical strategies that will persuade readers to accept your claim regardless of how good it is. It is to test your claim and especially its support, so that when you submit your report to your readers, you offer them the best case you can make. In a good research report, readers hear traces of that imagined conversation.

Now as we've said, reasoning based on evidence isn't the only way to reach a sound conclusion, sometimes not even the best way. We often make good decisions by relying on intuition, feelings, or spiritual insight. But when we try to explain why we believe our claims are sound and why others should too, we have no way to demonstrate how we reached them, because we can't offer intuitions or feelings as evidence for readers to evaluate. We can only say we had them and ask readers to take our claim on faith, a request that thoughtful readers rarely grant.

When you make a research argument, however, you must lay out your reasons and evidence so that your readers can consider them; then you must imagine both their questions and your answers. That sounds harder than it is.