Argumentation and originality in writing research articles in literature

Abstract

This study aims to understand how research articles in literature establish and argue for the originality of their arguments. To this end, a corpus of 28 Spanish-language articles from this discipline is used, and a thematic analysis focused on their content is conducted to identify the various ways in which the desire for originality manifests itself, both in literary interpretation and in the delivery of new knowledge resulting from novelty and dialogue with the field. Through this analysis, it is possible to observe whether argumentation and originality appear in a manner like that described by critics of academic papers in the humanities, whose objections cite a lack of originality as one of the negative consequences of implementing/imposing argumentative paper writing in the humanities. In contrast to this criticism, the interesting aspect of this research is the possibility of recognizing disciplinary particularities that differentiate academic writing in literature and that, therefore, demand new and more systematic analyses of its characteristics. These analyses should foster improvements in both the understanding and production of academic writing, as well as the implementation of more appropriate forms of evaluation for the discipline.