Naomi Nagy

Writing an abstract for a Small Study of Sociolinguistic Variation

An abstract is a short document that describes a research paper or presentation.
I like to think of it as a PR device - it turns a potential reader/listener into an actual one.

Style

An abstract is an objective, definitive report on what the data shows, in relation to a specific research question or hypothesis. It contains no hedging or subjective commentary. For this abstract, include information on your hypothesis about one sociolinguistic variable, the analysis you conducted, the results, and how you interpreted your analysis.

Preparation

The best way to learn the style of this genre is to look at some abstracts. Include the citations of 3 papers whose abstracts you looked at. Pay attention to how the abstracts are structured and what they include (and don’t include!). You can look at abstracts about any sociolinguistic topic; papers assigned in class are fine, but you could also look elsewhere. To find examples of abstract, try Programs for conferences like New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) (available online, for example, NWAV47, NWAV48) or sociolinguistics journals (also available online), such as:

• Language Variation and Change
• Journal of Sociolinguistics
• Language in Society

Content you should include

1. The title of your paper. (What you would title your paper if you were writing one?)
2. Tell the potential reader of your paper what your research hypothesis is. Make sure to state what the dependent and independent variables, and their variants, are.
3. Briefly describes the methods -- enough detail to convince the reader that the results are valid (e.g., how the data were collected, coded, and analyzed).
4. Provides some measure of the amount of data examined (# of speakers, # of tokens).
5. Summarize the results and their implications. (Why are the findings important?)
6. Put the results in the context of the wider literature, by making explicit reference to at least two of the assigned articles, as well as relevant concepts from the textbook in your abstract.
7. Include a bibliography for any publications you refer to in the abstract. Also include the citations of 3 papers whose abstracts you checked in preparation (see Preparation).

Length

500 words is the standard max for abstracts in sociolinguistics (1 page, single-spaced). Do not exceed that.
(If necessary, graphs, tables, and references can be on a second page.)

Resources