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THE LINGUISTICS STUDENT’S HANDBOOK 182
The first is that where you are giving examples which consist of whole sentences,
or pieces of text or dialogue which are longer than one sentence, or sets
of words, you should set them off,number them consecutively throughout the
essay, and refer to them by number. This is what has been done in this section
for examples like (5).
Where you present foreign language data, you may need to gloss that data.
Information on glossing is given in section 30.
You need to ensure that
• your data is relevant;
• your data is comprehensible;
• your data is representative;
• your data is consistent with your analysis;
• your data is sufficient in extent to indicate why alternative analyses are
not appropriate.
(Incidentally, if you object to the singular use of data, you are in good
company: many journal editors would agree with you, especially in psychology
journals. I insist upon my right to treat data as a mass singular noun, as it is
used in normal language by large numbers of English speakers. I would sometimes
try to say data set to avoid the problem, but that would not make sense
here. Evidence would have been an alternative.)
Introduction and conclusion
In these days of word-processors, you are no longer restricted to writing your
essay in the order in which it will appear in the final version. This is liberating.
It means two things: (a) you can write a section when you have enough information
to do so and fit it in to the whole later; (b) you do not need to write the
introduction first and the conclusion last.
One good procedure is to write the body of the essay first. Once you have
done that, you can write the conclusion, because you know what you have done
in the essay. Your conclusion should provide a basic summary of the essay. It
should remind the reader of the points you have made, the line your argumentation
has taken, the kind of data you have adduced to support your argument.
If your essay is data-based, it should say where your data takes you, what you
wish to conclude on the basis of the evidence which the data has provided.
Once you have written your conclusion, you are in a position to write the introduction.
The introduction will be a mirror of the conclusion. If the conclusion
says ‘I have shown that x, and then that y, with the result that z’, your introduction
will say ‘I will conclude that z on the basis of x and y.’ For most essays,
this is probably sufficient. For longer documents such as research papers and