10.4 Listening to Sources and Signal Phrases

Strong analysis and argument need good evidence. While credible sources matter, how you use them in your writing matters just as much. Many students treat sources only as proof that an expert agrees with them, pulling quotes that match their ideas. Academic writing is really about joining a conversation. You add your own ideas to an ongoing discussion. Sources help you do that: sometimes they support your point, and other times they help you explain, compare, or challenge ideas.

Students often fall into two extremes. Some rely too heavily on sources and feel they can’t say anything without expert backing, which limits their original thinking. Others summarize sources but then make claims that don’t connect to them. The goal is to be more balanced by using sources to support and shape your ideas, not replace or ignore them.

The remainder of this chapter explains some key principles for incorporating sources, principles which follow from the general point that academic writing is about entering an ongoing conversation.

Listen to your Sources

Have you ever had the maddening experience of arguing with someone who twisted your words to make it seem like you were saying something you weren’t? Novice writers sometimes inadvertently misrepresent their sources when they quote very minor points from an article or even positions that the authors of an article disagree with. It often happens when students approach their sources intending to find snippets that align with their own opinions. In that way, it harms his or her credibility.

Academic journal articles are especially likely to be misrepresented by student writers because their literature review sections often summarize several contrasting viewpoints. For example, one study notes that students who work more hours are more likely to drop out—but the authors actually argue that lack of interest in school leads to both working more and dropping out. Quoting the first point without explaining the authors’ full argument would misrepresent the source.

Use Sources Efficiently

When you fully connect sources to your argument, you focus only on what matters. It’s a very good sign for your paper when most quotes are short (key terms, phrases, or parts of sentences) and the longer quotes (whole sentences and passages) are justified by the discussion in which they’re embedded. Every bit of every quote should feel indispensable to the paper. An overabundance of long quotes usually means that your argument is undeveloped. The most incandescent quotes will not hide that fact from your professor.

Also, some student writers forget that quoting is not the only way to incorporate sources.

 Paraphrasing and summarizing are sophisticated skills that are often more appropriate to use than direct quoting. Some students avoid them out of fear of plagiarism, but learning to paraphrase well can make your writing clearer and more concise.

The key is to choose carefully: use quotes, paraphrases, or summaries based on what best supports your point.

Provide Context

Another error beginners often make is to drop in a quote without any context. If you simply quote, “Students begin preschool with a set of self-regulation skills that are a product of their genetic inheritance and their family environment” (Willingham, 2011, p.24), your reader is left wondering who Willingham is, why he or she is included here, and where this statement fits into his or her larger work.

Many writing instructors encourage their students to contextualize their use of sources by making a “quotation sandwich”; that is, introduce the quote in some way and then follow it up with your own words. If you’ve made a bad habit of dropping in unintroduced quotes, the quotation sandwich idea may help you improve your skills, but in general, you don’t need to approach every quote or paraphrase as a three-part structure to have well-integrated sources. You should, however, avoid ending a paragraph with a quotation. If you’re struggling to figure out what to write after a quote or close paraphrase, it may be that you haven’t yet figured out what role the quote is playing in your analysis. If that happens to you a lot, try writing the whole first draft in your own words and then incorporate material from sources as you revise.

Referring to the Author within a Signal Phrase

A signal phrase, also known as an attributive tag, is a device used to smoothly integrate quotations and paraphrases into your essay. It is important to use signal phrases to clearly attribute supporting evidence to its author or authors and to avoid interrupting the flow of an essay. Signal phrases can also be used as meaningful transitions, moving your readers between your ideas and those of your sources.

A signal phrase consists of an author’s name and an active verb indicating how the author is presenting the material. A signal phrase may also include information explaining an author’s credentials and/or affiliations as well as the title and/or publisher of the source text.

In many instances, signal phrases will contain only the last name of the author of the source text (as opposed to the author’s first and last name). For instance, APA style guidelines require no reference to the author’s first name at any point in an essay.  But in MLA papers, if you are referring to an author for the first time in your essay, you should include that author’s first name as well as the author’s relevant credentials or affiliations in your signal phrase (you might also want to include the title of the source text). Once you have supplied an author’s first name and credentials, any subsequent signal phrase referencing that same author should contain the author’s last name only. For example:

• Michael Pollan, Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the University of California Berkeley, observes that “Americans today are having a national conversation about food and agriculture that would have been impossible to imagine even a few short years ago” (29).
• Pollan continues, “But the national conversation unfolding around the subject of food and farming began in the 1970s” (29).

Notice how each signal phrase verb is followed by the word “that” or a comma, which is then followed by one space before the opening quotation mark.

You should also vary your signal phrase verbs (rather than simply using “says” throughout your entire essay) to maintain your readers’ interest and to indicate the author’s intended use of the excerpted material. More precise choices carry a lot more information than “says”, enabling you to relate more with fewer words. For one thing, they can quickly convey what kind of idea you’re citing. A speculative one (“postulates”)? A conclusive one (“determines”)? A controversial one (“counters”)? You can further show how you’re incorporating these sources into your narrative. For example, if you write that an author “claims” something, you’re presenting yourself as fairly neutral about that claim. If you instead write that the author “shows” something, then you signal to your reader that you find that evidence more convincing. “Suggests” on the other hand is a much weaker endorsement.

Types of Signal Phrases

While providing the author’s credentials and the title of the source are the most common types of signal phrases, there are others we should be aware of. In the examples below, the information relevant to the type of signal phrase is underlined.

Author’s credentials are indicated. Presenting an author’s credentials should help build credibility for the passage you are about to present. Including the author’s credentials gives your readers a reason to consider your sources.

• Example: Grace Chapmen, Curator of Human Health & Evolutionary Medicine at the Springfield Natural History Museum, explains…

Author’s lack of credentials is indicated.  Identifying an author’s lack of credentials in a given area can help illustrate a lack of authority on the subject matter and persuade the audience not to adopt the author’s ideas. Pointing to an author’s lack of credentials can be beneficial when developing your response to counterarguments.

• Example: Matthew Spencer, whose background is in marriage counseling, not foreign policy, claims…

Author’s social or political stance, if necessary to the content, is explained. 

• Example:  Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Roland Hayes, a prominent civil rights activist, preaches… (or) Ralph Spencer, who has ties to the White Nationalist movement, denies…

Publisher of the source is identified. Identifying the publisher of the passage can help reinforce the credibility of the information presented and you can capitalize on the reputation/ credibility of the publisher of the source material. It also informs the reader where the cited passage is being pulled from.

• Example: According to a recent CNN poll… (or) In “Understanding Human Behavior,” Riley argues …

Information that establishes context is presented. Presenting the context in which the original information was presented can help the audience understand the author’s purpose more clearly.

• Example: In a speech presented during a Free Speech rally, Elaine Wallace encourages …

Connecting It All

At the same time, a college student attending full-time may be expected to have original and well-considered ideas about pre-Columbian Latin American history, congressional redistricting, sports in society, post-colonial literature, and nano-technology, all in about two weeks. Under these conditions, it’s easy to see why some would long for the days when simple, competent reporting did the job. You probably won’t have an authentic intellectual engagement with every college writing assignment, but approaching your written work as an opportunity to dialogue with the material can help you find the momentum you need to succeed with this work.