WRITING THEOLOGICAL RESEARCH WELL: RESOURCES FOR QUOTING SOURCES

AND GIVING CREDIT TO THEIR AUTHORS

Lucretia B. YaghjianEDS/WR 1234

WRITE SEMINARFall 2011

STARTING POINTS

• Preparing a research project is both a research process and a writing process.

• As a writing process, preparing a research project involves integrating words that you write with the written words of your sources.

• In order to distinguish your words from those of your sources, it is necessary to give credit where credit is due, or

• To acknowledge sources that you quote, paraphrase, or refer to in your writing.

WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO ACKNOWLEDGE SOURCES?

• Using ideas and words of others without attribution has been viewed differently across ancient and contemporary cultures.

• In ancient and (some) contemporary cultures, use of others’ words and ideas is deemed an honor, and attribution is not required.

• As the concept of property rights emerged in 17th century Europe, intellectual property was also included in that concept.

• The term “plagiarism” first appears in the Oxford English Dictionary (1621), with the connotation of “kidnapper”.

• In North American academic culture, using the intellectual content of others without acknowledgement is deemed academic dishonesty, or “plagiarism.”

• Giving credit to sources begins with giving credit on your research notes, which should:

• Identify the sources of all words and ideas you quote as you take notes, with full citation information and page numbers

• Include photocopies or downloads of longer quotes to insure accuracy, with full citation information/page numbers

• Avoid paraphrasing sources so closely in research notes that they are liable to charges of plagiarism in the final paper

• Write notes in such a way that you clearly distinguish your own thoughts from those of your sources

TAKING RESEARCH NOTES

TAKING RESEARCH NOTES: AN EXAMPLE

• Reading Notes, “Writing and Spiritual Direction” /DMurray:• Donald Murray, “Listening to Writing” in Thomas Newkirk and Lisa C. Miller,

eds., The Essential Don Murray: Lessons From America’s Greatest Writing Teacher (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook/Heinemann, 2009), 55-71.

• “I try to start each day with a few quiet moments when I listen for writing, [and] listen to hear the words I watch my pen put on the page. . . . The quiet moments when that happen have a religious quality for me. . . . It is my habit to turn on the timer [for 15 minutes], open the notebook, uncap the pen, and listen”(57).

• Murray suggests a morning practice of listening for 15 minutes to whatever might come that day, and writing what comes. His job is to be open, to be patient, to be receptive. His practice is analogous in many ways to the practice of centering prayer, except he is listening for “writing” rather than for God. But since “in the beginning was the Word”, I think he is engaging in a contemplative, if not an explicitly religious practice. How might I compare his listening to that of the spiritual director as well?

QUOTING AND PARAPHRASING

• Mikhail Bakhtin writes, “The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes ‘one’s own’ only when the speaker [or writer] . . . appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention.” (1)

• We make others’ words our own when we quote or paraphrase them in our own writing. The slides that follow offer some examples of using direct quotes and paraphrasing and suggestions of how, when, and why to use one or the other in your research.

• (1) Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and M. Holquist [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981], 284.

WHEN TO QUOTE SOURCES ?

•A good quote summarizes data succinctly•A good quote provides evidence for an

argument•A good quote authorizes an argument•A good quote provides a counterpoint to an

argument•A good quote says it distinctively

HOW TO QUOTE SOURCES ?• You can quote sources in your text directly by

• Inserting quotes of four or fewer lines into your own text, enclosed by quotation marks: “. . . . . . . . . . . .”)

• Indenting quotes of five lines or more into a single-spaced block quotation, introduced by the author’s name (e.g.,“As . . . . . . . . . . . writes in her article, . . . .”)

• When inserting a quote into your own text, keep the grammar of quote and text consistent!

• To make a quotation consistent with your text, rephrase the quotation as needed, but don’t change its meaning!

• Indicate changed words with [brackets] and deletions with ellipses (3 dots for omissions, 4 dots for end of sentence . . .).

• Envelop your block quotation with your own comment or summary at the end (See examples that follow).

A GOOD QUOTE SUMMARIZES DATA SUCCINCTLY

• If your source provides summarized information that you need to include, quoting directly is often the best option. For example, in a paper arguing for the Jewish backgrounds of Matthew’s gospel, you write:

Although there is no consensus on the place where Matthew’s gospel was written, its Jewish provenance has been established by Daniel Harrington, who explains:

After A.D. 70 Judaism was very much in transition. Several movements arose that claimed to provide the authentic means of continuing the Jewish tradition. Among such movements were the early rabbis (“scribes and pharisees”) and the early Christians (such as Matthew’s community). The stakes were high (the survival of Judaism, the transition was at a very early stage (late first century A.D.), and the tensions were severe. . . . It is against this background that we need to understand Matthew’s theological program, for it was intended as a way of preserving and continuing the Jewish tradition. (2)

According to Harrington, then, it is appropriate and necessary to read Matthew’s gospel through the lens of its response to the challenges posed by post 70 A.D. Judaism.

(2) Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., The Gospel of Matthew (Sacra Pagina 1, ed. Daniel J. Harrington; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2007), 16.

A GOOD QUOTE PROVIDES EVIDENCE FOR AN ARGUMENT

• A well-chosen quote can provide evidence for the writer’s position. For example, in a paper exploring the background of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, you want to argue that the Pope’s document was influenced by his firsthand experience with the working poor, and you write:

Given Pope Leo XIII’s conservative and anti-secularist stance for much of his papacy, his authoring of the groundbreaking Rerum Novarum came as a surprise to many of his contemporaries, and continues to raise questions for present-day Roman Catholics committed to the values it espouses. However many voices were part of the final document, I maintain that the Pope’s firsthand experience of the working poor was the major influence upon the document’s social stance. As Thomas Massaro, SJ, asserts:

. . . The future pope . . . served for three years (1843-46) in Brussels, as a papal nuncio to Belgium. There he experienced his most prolonged contact with a highly advanced industrial society, and his observations of the horrifying plight of the low-paid workers there made a distinct and lasting impression on him. The new factory-based system of mass production trapped this new class of the proletariat into a cycle of dire poverty. . . . (3)

Since this was the Pope’s first sustained exposure to these “horrifying” social conditions, I suggest that they prompted his writing of Rerum Novarum.(3) Thomas Massaro, SJ, “The social question in the papacy of Leo XIII,” in James Corkery and Thomas Worcester, eds., The Papacy Since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 152-153.

A GOOD QUOTE AUTHORIZES AN ARGUMENT• A good quote adds the authority of established scholars or authoritative

documents to your argument. Arguing for the importance of adult catechesis for the church, Jane Regan quotes this ecclesial document, and concludes by restating its significance for her argument:

Adult Catechesis in the Christian Community (ACCC) says this with profound clarity:

In summary, in order for the Good News of the Kingdom to penetrate all the various layers of the human family, it is crucial that every Christian play an active part in the coming of the Kingdom . . . All of this naturally requires adults to play a primary role. Hence it is not only legitimate, but necessary to acknowledge that a fully Christian community can only exist when a systematic catechesis of all its members takes place and when an effective and well-developed catechesis of adults is regarded as the central role of the enterprise. (4)

So, to speak of evangelizing catechesis clarifies the place of catechesis at the heart of the mission of the church. (5)

(4) International Council for Catechesis, Adult Catechesis in the Christian Community: Some Principles and Guidelines, With Discussion Guide (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1992), 25.

(5) Jane E. Regan, “The Aim of Catechesis: Educating for an Adult Church,” in Horizons & Hopes: the Future of Religious Education, ed. Thomas H. Groome and Harold D. Horrell (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003), 37.

A GOOD QUOTE PROVIDES A COUNTERPOINT FOR AN ARGUMENT

• A quote can also provide a counterpoint to your argument. For example, see how Elizabeth Johnson, in She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Discourse, responds to theologian Leonardo Boff’s argument for Mary as the “maternal face of God”:

In his essay on Mary as the maternal face of God, Latin American theologian Leonardo Boff holds that. . . in analogy with the incarnation of the Word in Jesus, the Spirit divinizes the feminine in the person of Mary, who in turn is . . . united to the third person of the blessed Trinity, for the benefit of all womankind:

The Spirit, the eternal feminine, is united to the created feminine in order that the latter may be totally and fully what it can be—virgin and mother. Mary, as Christian piety has always intuited, is the eschatological realization of the feminine in all of its dimensions. (6)

[But] the simplest feminist analysis makes clear that in the case of actual women in all their historical concreteness, the categories of virgin and mother come nowhere near summing up the totality of . . . women’s self realization. (7)

(6) Leonardo Boff, The Maternal Face of God: The Feminine and its Religious Expressions, trans. R. Barr and J. Diercksmeier (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987), 101.

(7) Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 52.

A GOOD QUOTE SAYS IT DISTINCTIVELY

• Sometimes an author expresses an idea in a very distinctive way, and you want to quote the language “verbatim”. For example, in a paper on Augustine’s ecclesiology, you like Francine Cardman’s use of “the wheat and the tares” to connect Augustine’s church with our own, and you quote her in your paper, introducing the quote as follows:

Augustine’s image of the church as a “church of wheat and tares” is a helpful image for our own context, as Francine Cardman suggests:

In our own context, Augustine’s experience can remind us that the church of wheat and tares must really be a church for all of us. . . . [and] to live in this church of wheat and tares is to dwell on God’s threshing floor and hope that on the way of winnowing all shall be wheat. (8)

This imagery of the wheat and the tares is helpful to me as I formulate my own ecclesiology and try to implement it in the contemporary church of my own time, with its own gifts and challenges.

(8) Francine Cardman, “The Praxis of Ecclesiology: Learning From the Donatist Controversy,” CTSA Proceedings 54 (1999), 35.

QUOTING AND PARAPHRASING

• How to Quote Portions of a Longer Quote• How to Paraphrase, or Put a Quote in Your

own Words• How to Combine Quoting and Paraphrasing

QUOTING AND PARAPHRASING

QUOTING FROM A LONGER QUOTE• If you want to use part of a quotation and omit some words, using an ellipsis (. . .) and/or

inserting your own words [in brackets], here's how to do it:

• Original Quote: • To be a community of witness, a parish should reflect the good news it proclaims and be

recognizable as a community of faith, hope, and love. Beginning with Vatican II, official documents increasingly portray the church as “God’s universal sacrament of salvation” (no. 45). Recall Aquinas’ definition of sacrament—a sacred symbol that causes what it symbolizes. As such, every parish should be effective in realizing what it preaches. Members must constantly ask: Does the life of this parish—its worship, shared prayer, and spiritual nurture, its community ethos, lifestyle, and structures, its human services, outreach and social values, its preaching, catechesis, and sharing faith programs— bear credible witness to the way of Jesus? (9)

• Modified Quote: • To be a community of witness, a parish should reflect the good news it proclaims and be

recognizable as a community of faith, hope, and love. . . . [In this endeavor] every parish should be effective in realizing what it preaches. Members must constantly ask: Does the life of this parish . . . bear credible witness to the way of Jesus? (9)

• (9) Thomas H. Groome, “Total Catechesis/Religious Education: A Vision for Now and Always,” in Horizons & Hopes: The Future of Religious Education, ed. Thomas H. Groome and Harold Daly Horell (Mahweh, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003), 22-23.

PARAPHRASING, OR “IN YOUR OWN WORDS”• A paraphrase is a detailed restatement of a passage in your own words. If the information

is relevant to the point you're making, but neither detailed enough nor so compellingly written that you feel the need to quote it, paraphrase it. For example, here is a quotation from Karl Rahner, followed by a paraphrase:

• The Quote: • All of these considerations should not lead us to overlook the fact that, despite their orthodox

confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere “monotheists.” We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged. Nor does it help to remark that the doctrine of the incarnation is theologically and religiously so central for the Christian that, through it, the Trinity is always and everywhere inseparably “present” in his religious life.” (10)

• The Paraphrase: • The starting point for Rahner’s groundbreaking work on the trinity is his conviction that

the doctrine bears little connection to the other core beliefs of Christians. While they might be trinitarians by profession, they seem to be monotheists in practice. Although in fact the doctrine of the trinity is intimately linked with the central doctrine of the incarnation, it almost seems that Christians understand the latter without any real reference to the former. The idea, simply put, is that God becomes human. What is necessarily trinitarian about that? In his reappraisal of trinitarian doctrine, Rahner hopes to make it intelligible to believers today in a way that relates more clearly to the life of faith. (10)

• (10) Karl Rahner, The Trinity (New York: Seabury Press, 1974), 10-11.

COMBINING PARAPHRASING AND QUOTING• You can combine paraphrase and quotation if there are cogent phrases

you want to keep (think of this as "peppering" your work with quotes).For example:

The starting point for Rahner’s groundbreaking work on the trinity is his conviction that “despite their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists’.” While they might be trinitarians by profession, they seem to be monotheists in practice. Although in fact the doctrine of the trinity is intimately linked with the central doctrine of the incarnation, it almost seems, according to Rahner, that “should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.” In his reappraisal of trinitarian doctrine, Rahner hopes to make it intelligible to believers today in a way that relates more clearly to the life of faith. (11)

(11) Rahner, Trinity, 10-11.• The short quoted passages are often called "apt phrases," or phrases

worded in a unique or characteristic way. The subsequent reference footnote citation, by implication and common sense, acknowledges the three quotations. Note that this citation is abbreviated because it has been referenced fully above (see previous slide).

GIVING CREDIT WHEN USING THE INTERNET

• The same guidelines for “giving credit” to words and ideas from books and articles applies to materials from the Internet.

• If you use material from a website for your research, it must be quoted or paraphrased, with full citation information, including date of accessing the website.

• NEVER download Internet materials and insert them “wholesale” into your own paper. Unauthorized use of Internet materials constitutes an act of plagiarism, whether unintentional or intentional.

HOW TO GIVE CREDIT WHEN USING THE INTERNET?

In a paper discussing Pope Benedict XVI’s references to “agape” in“DeusCaritas Est – On Christian Love” (2005), you use the online version of the encyclical, write this introduction, and cite the reference as follows:

Like many Roman Catholic theologians, Benedict XVI privileges agapic love in Deus Caritas Est, describing a “path of ascent” that proceeds from the erotic to the agapic expression of love. After close reading and analysis of Benedict’s position as articulated in the document, I will propose an understanding of eros and agape as complementary, not conflictual, expressions of God’s love, and of human beings’ love for one another. (12)

(12) Pope Benedict XVI, “Deus Caritas Est—On Christian Love,” December 25, 2005, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_desus-caritas-est_en.html, para. 3-8, 14 (accessed January 20, 2011).

GIVING YOUR OWN WORDS CREDIT: A CONCLUDING REFLECTION

• When we use the words of others in a research paper without citing them, it is often because we do not trust our own words. Yet the best researchers are writers whose own words and ideas blaze a path for the words and ideas of their sources. By giving credit to your own words and trusting them to lead-- not follow--your research process, you will also learn how and when to give credit to the words of others (the authors of your sources).

FURTHER RESOURCES FOR QUOTING SOURCESAND GIVING CREDIT TO THEIR AUTHORS

• Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007 [see 73-81 for quoting, paraphrasing, and avoiding plagiarism].

• Yaghjian, Lucretia B. Writing Theology Well: A Rhetoric for Theological and Biblical Writers. New York: Continuum, 2006 [see 118-123 and 129-139 for sections on “Note-Taking,” “Integrating Reading, Writing, and Research,” and “Plagiarism Preventions and Interventions”].