They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing

Formal/informal mixing describes a style of academic writing that meshes traditional scholarly language and tonality with more conversational and creative writing forms of address. Formal/Informal mixing allows writers to write to rigorous academic standards without adopting the stodgy dialect of academic speech and writing.

When a writer “frames” something (such as an argument, a quote, or a concept), they are surrounding that thing with relevant, contextualizing information. This helps to clarify the framed topic’s significance and its finer points. Quotations that are not appropriately framed are thus “dangling quotations.”

A term coined for this book, an “I say” is a writer’s own stated opinion or stance in a particular text. This term is designed to be memorable and easy to understand. It is the sister term to “they say,” which describes the positions that a writer is responding to in their text. 

According to Graff and Birkenstein, “metacommentary is a way of commenting on your claims and telling others how—and how not—to think about them” (129). This term is discussed at length in Chapter 10, which is primarily about how metacommentary can be used to strengthen and clarify one’s arguments.

In the context of this book, the term “naysayer” refers to an in-text representation of a person or idea that opposes the writer’s claims. This figure is first introduced in Chapter 6, “Planting a Naysayer in Your Text.” A naysayer may be another author (to whom the writer is responding), a generalized group who are likely to object to the writer’s claims (e.g., “Many dog owners will say that dogs are cuter than cats, but actually…”) or even a completely hypothetical objector (e.g., “Some people might argue…”).

A return sentence is a rhetorical device used to remind readers of the writer’s key points and their reasons for introducing certain ideas into a text. Return sentences are particularly useful when transitioning between a summary and a point of analysis. “By reminding readers of the ideas you’re responding to, return sentences ensure that your text maintains a sense of mission and urgency from start to finish” (28).

First discussed in Chapter 2, a satiric summary is a summary “in which a writer deliberately gives his or her own spin to someone else’s argument in order to reveal a glaring shortcoming in it” (37). While many argumentative contexts call for objective and unbiased summaries, Graff and Birkenstein acknowledge that satiric summaries can also be rhetorically powerful and entertaining in the right contexts. They present John Stewart’s The Daily Show as a context in which satiric summaries are used to great effect.

A summarization is a brief account of the main points a given text. In Graff and Birkenstein’s views, well-constructed arguments must respond to something (or someone) else. Therefore, a summary of the thing eliciting a response is a crucial part of argumentation; a good summary shows the reader what the writer is responding to.

A “they say” is the opinion or stance a writer’s argument is responding to. Graff and Birkenstein use this term to guide writers through the process of building summaries that complement their central arguments. This term is designed to be memorable and easy to understand. It is the sister term to “I say,” which describes the positions that a writer is arguing for.