Activity

Making connnections

Step 1

Read the extract from Messner, et al. (1993) to see how these authors refer to the work of others in order to support their argument.

Note:

The use of multiple sources to support one point
The use of reporting verbs
How the authors refer to a source for a general idea (citation at the end) or the findings of a particular piece of research (author(s) as subject of the sentence)
Pay particular attention to the parts in bold font!

Click here for the extract

Much of the continued salience of sport as an institutional site for the construction and legitimation of masculine power lies in its role as mass- mediated spectacle (Clarke and Clarke 1982; Hargreaves 1986; Willis 1982). There has been a boom in female athletic participation, but the sports media have been very slow to reflect it. Bryant's (1980) two-year content analysis of two newspapers revealed that only 4.4 percent of total column inches were devoted to coverage of women's sports. Graydon (1983) observed that, in the early 1980s, over 90 percent of sports reporting covered men's sports. Theberge and Cronk (1986) noted that work routines in newspaper sports departments and values of reporters tended to preclude adequate coverage of women's sports. Rintala and Birrell's (1984) analysis of Young Athlete magazine and Duncan and Sayaovong's (1990) examination of Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine revealed that visual images of male athletes in these magazines tend to outnumber those of female athletes by a roughly 2:1 ratio. Moreover, text and visual images tend to frame female and male athletes "as fundamentally and essentially different" and, thus, to support stereotypical notions of natural differences between the sexes (Duncan and Sayaovong 1990, 91).

*Messner, M. A., Carlisle Duncan, M. & Jensen, K. (1993). Separating the Men from the Girls: The Gendered Language of Televised Sports. Gender and Society, 7(1), 121-137.

Points for reflection

Note the use of tenses in this extract
Multiple sources are cited alphabetically
And note how the verb 'reveal' is used appropriately here
The referencing style here is in-text citation, as in the University of Birmingham Harvard style
The authors are included in the sentence content when the focus is on their research activity, but for the more generalised, theoretical claims of the opening sentence and concluding summary point, then the writer takes over, and the authors are relegated to an acknowledgement in brackets at the end of the sentence.
Is there anything about this extract that is different from the conventions you have been asked to follow in your department?

Moving on

Step 2