Academic Discourse

ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

Discourse Communities

All Sources Ere Not Equal: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary

Primary Sources

Primary means closest to the source. If you do the research yourself rather than reading about research someone else has performed, then it's primary. It doesn't have to be fancy. You might survey your friends, count the amount of cars that come down your street in an hour, or take not of how many of your shoes are actually comfortable. Or, of course, it could be something you do long term such as take notes and video of the way your child is acquiring language across the first three years of her life. Any of that would qualify as primary research.

The terms primary, secondary, and tertiary are used to describe resources used in research. Which applies to this web document?

Which of the following sources of information
would you say are primary sources?
Handwritten census records from 1820 showing when your family first settled in Lancaster.
Your Great Grandmother's diary, showing the slang and regionalisms she used as a young woman.

The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary definition of slang.

An article on the speed of slang development and change in the teenage years.

Interviews you conduct with your family and friends using a questionnaire you have devised to find out what slang words they habitually use.

If you answered 1, 2, and 5, you were correct. Those are all original documents, instances in which people have done research themselves. Even the diary? Yes! You are going out and finding the primary materials themselves, assessing them, and eventually forming conclusions about them which you will report on in your own paper.

Were you tempted to include #3? A dictionary has to have source materials (documents, interviews) from which it derives the information upon which it bases its definitions. If, on the other hand, you polled your friends as to what new slang words they have heard in the last two weeks, that would be primary research.

Similarly, #4 probably represents a published work whose author is reporting on research that you will then use to write your own paper. The author will probably have parenthetical citation and a works cited section to make it very clear just where your paper's information came from. That might include information derived from #5, and methods used to assemble that information might be discussed in an appendix. You in turn will cite this article in your own paper. Finding and using an article,pamphlet, or book like that is called secondary research.

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