A Source's Role in Your Paper

When you begin to draft your paper, you will need to decide what role each of your sources will play in your argument. In other words, you will need to figure out what you're going to do with the source in your paper. As you consider what role each source will play in your paper, you should begin by thinking about the role that source played in your research process. How did the source shape your thinking about the topic when you encountered it? If a source provided you with context for a particular problem or issue, then it may well do the same thing for your reader. If a source provided you with evidence that supports your claim, then you will probably want to lay out that evidence to your reader and explain how it leads you to the position you've staked out in your paper. If a source made an argument that challenged your own argument and made you refine your thinking, then you'll likely want to introduce that source in your paper as a counterargument before explaining why you have concluded that your own argument is stronger. On the other hand, if a source offered evidence or ideas that complicated your own thinking and made you shift your argument, you should explain how the source has led you to your new position.

Some assignments will ask you to respond in a specific way to a source. For example, you might be asked to test a theory developed in one source by using a body of evidence found in another source. Or you might be asked to respond to a claim or assumption laid out in a particular source. Other assignments may specify the number of sources you should use, but will not include instructions on how you should use those sources.

Here are some common roles that sources can play in your argument:

• Provide primary evidence: a source can serve as the main object of your analysis, or offer evidence that has not yet been analyzed by others.
• Establish what’s at stake: a source can present or highlight a problem, question or issue that provides a “so what” for your essay.
• Serve as a lens: a source can offer a theory or concept that gives you a framework or focus for analyzing your evidence and building your argument.
• Provide key terms/concepts: a source offers a central concept or key term that you apply to your own argument.
• Provide context: a source can offer background (historical, cultural, etc.) that readers need to understand the argument you’re making or the issue you’re analyzing.
• Serve as a supporting expert: you want to offer a claim, and you cite a scholar or researcher who notices the same or similar idea, thereby supporting your claim.
• Advance your argument: a source provides a new insight that helps establish a main supporting claim to your overall argument; your use of that source should usually agree with and extend the idea or insight, demonstrating its application to your own analysis.
• Provide a complication or counterargument: a source introduces an idea or raises a question that presents a problem for your argument, or an objection to contend with; your response to that complication enriches and adds nuance to your discussion.
• Create a critical conversation: one source offers an idea that another source can respond to, sometimes in a very direct way (i.e. critic A explicitly disagrees with critic B), or by providing a different angle on or approach to the question (i.e. source A offers a new way of thinking about an idea raised in source B, a different "take" on the issue). 

Remember that a source can—and often will—play more than one role in your argument. Each time you mention a source in your paper, you should make sure you have a clear sense of what you're doing with that source in your paper.