Purpose and technique
Knowledge About Publication
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chapter7
Knowledge About Publication Even if the author does not state the purpose of a piece of
writing directly, where an article is published reveals much. An article appearing in a professional journal like Journal of the History of Ideas, Harvard Theological Review, or Journal of Geology is most likely to present new information or research and to evaluate current knowledge with a scholarly intent. An article in a general-circulation magazine devoted to one field, like Scientific American, Psychology Today, or High Fidelity, is more likely to present existing knowledge in a way understandable and useful to the nonspecialist, rather than presenting scholarly research. An article in a magazine issued by a corporation or other special-interest group, such as Ford World, Teamster International, or Gun and Rifle, would tend to convey a favorable impression of the organization's interests. Thus the stated and unstated editorial policy of the publication helps define the purposes of all articles that appear in it. With books, attention to the publisher, the place of publication, and the date will give early approximations of an author's purpose. A book from an academic press, such as University of Pennsylvania Press or Stanford University Press, will usually have a scholarly purpose aimed at the advancement of knowledge. Commercial publishers range from well-established houses—such as Houghton Mifflin, W. W. Norton, and Random House, which publish nonfiction books of some seriousness of purpose for a general market, as well as other material—to sensationalist houses more concerned with playing on readers' prejudices or exploiting current popular topics than with providing substantive knowledge. In addition, special-interest publishers press the causes or beliefs of specific groups: many religious publishing houses, for example, are currently thriving. The more you know about the publisher, the more you will know about the purposes of the books it publishes. The date and place of publication also may be a clue to understanding the purposes of the book. A book about Vietnam published in the United States in 1967 will probably be either highly critical or strongly supportive of American participation in the Vietnam War, and a reader would be wise to look out for author partisanship. A book published twenty years later by the same publisher on the same topic may be inquiring into what happened or how Americans now view the morality of that war. Books on the same topics published both in 1967 and 1987 by the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing, China, will have different purposes defined by their historical periods of publication. Everything you know about the history of the subject of a book will help you place the purpose of the work in proper perspective. If you become engaged in research touching on a controversy, you will become especially aware of such factors.
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