4  Some general guidelines

Authors
Affiliation

Thomas Brunner

Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

Vladimir Buskin

Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

4.1 Do’s

  • (Re-)read a published sociolinguistic study (e.g., Barbieri, 2007) before you start writing.
  • Try to write a good first and a good last sentence.
  • Use many examples from your corpus in the results section.
  • Provide a plagiarism declaration.
  • Discuss pros and cons of your corpus (cf. Schneider, 1999).

4.2 Don’ts

4.2.1 Content

  1. General content and style
    • An overly general introduction
    • No obvious coherence between corpus and linguistic phenomenon
    • Narrative elements: First, I thought that… But then, I decided that…
    • Trivial statements: The gender is very important in the field of linguistics.
    • “Steep” introductions
    • Opinions presented as facts
    • Biographies, historical details with no relation to your topics, overly long summaries of textbooks, etc.
    • Sweeping conclusions
  2. Statistics

    • Use of variables in the results section that have not been prepared and introduced in the background section.

    • Figures or tables that are not discussed in the text.

    • Comparisons of non-normalized raw frequency data: use percentages!

    • Graphs based on raw data: use percentages!

    • Figures without corresponding percentage tables, percentage tables without corresponding figures, or percentages without raw data.

4.2.2 Language

  • Avoid expressions like a lot of.
  • Avoid contractions: won’t, doesn’t, mustn’t, etc.

4.2.3 Structure

  • Avoid placing content or results in the introduction, the methods section, or the background section.
  • Avoid repetition of arguments (e.g., in introduction and background sections).

4.2.4 Form

  • Avoid sloppy formatting of the table of contents.
  • Avoid different fonts in the paper (e.g., footnotes, page numbers, graphs, tables, etc.).
  • Understand where to use italics.
  • Avoid spelling mistakes in your references.
  • Avoid using accents instead of apostrophes: English apostrophe: Don’t vs. accent (e.g., in French): é, è. Wrong: Don´t, Don`t.
  • Avoid CAPITALS if you actually want to use small capitals.
  • Avoid using the past tense for quotations: Chomsky (1957) claims that… rather than Chomsky (1957) claimed that….

4.2.5 References

  • Avoid sources from the internet/unpublished sources/sources which have not gone through a peer review process.
  • Avoid indirect references: quoting Labov using someone else’s quotation of Labov.

4.2.6 General

  1. No collaboration.
  2. No plagiarism.
  3. No ghost writers.