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179 ESSAY WRITING
for your sections. These headings in effect provide the plan for the essay. They
have a dual function:
• They show the fundamental structure of your work.
• They remind you, as writer, what material needs to go in to each
section (and, by implication, what is not relevant in that section).
Some of these section titles are sanctioned by usage: ‘Introduction’ and
‘Conclusion’ may be boring titles, but they are safe. (For more on their content,
see below.) ‘Discussion’ will typically follow a section entitled ‘Results’, and
will elaborate on the possible reasons for particular results of a survey, experiment,
etc.
Furthermore, in linguistics essays, just as in linguistics articles and books,
you may be encouraged to number your paragraphs. There are several ways of
doing this, so you may find varying practice in your reading, but here a standard
method will be described, which is usually called ‘decimal numbering’
(however misleading that may be).
Let us assume that you have been asked to write an essay on the classification
of consonants in the system used by the International Phonetic Association. In
this system, you are aware, there are three labels for any consonant, a voicing
label, a place label and a manner label. Accordingly you might say there are
three main areas you have to cover in your essay, and you may set out your fundamental
plan as in (1)
(1) * Voicing
* Place
* Manner
To this fundamental structure, we can add the ubiquitous Introduction and
Conclusion, to make five major points for the essay, and they will be numbered,
as in (2).
(2) 1. Introduction
2. Voicing
3. Place
4. Manner
5. Conclusion
(You may find that some people use a number ‘0’ for an introduction, but this
is not usually a favoured approach these days, and it is not recommended: start
at ‘1’.) Under ‘Voicing’ you are going to have to deal with at least two options:
consonants are usually classified as either voiced or voiceless, though extra