Below are nine suggestions to consider when preparing an article for submission to enculturation. These are not to be taken as prescriptive rules, but rather suggestions to increase chances for a successful and timely review.
1. Please ground your work from the beginning in a contemporary exigence and an ongoing conversation in rhetoric and writing studies. This exigence can be cultural and/or disciplinary, but regardless, consider how to pull readers into your article and engage them in some pressing issue that is in need of address. Our readers will especially want to know how you see your work extending and complicating (aka contributing to) a particular area of study.
2. Please provide a clear articulation of your main claim along with a road map toward the end of your introduction, the latter of which should take up no more than 10% of your overall submission. Readers will specifically want to know up front what you are ultimately arguing and contributing to rhetoric and writing studies.
3. Please extend your argument beyond rhetorical analysis or critique. While it is important to examine cases and identify problems, gaps, or misdirections, scholarly work makes significant new contributions to a given field. We encourage you to identify concerns as part of a broader exigence and then spend the majority of your article forwarding your own argument with supported development and analysis.
4. Please articulate your methodology, giving sufficient space to explicate the theories or philosophies on which your analysis and argument are grounded. Try to move beyond performing a literature review in articulating such methodology; instead, define and synthesize necessary theories, key concepts, or significant authors that help readers understand the driving concepts of your work.
5. Please explicate your research methods when qualitative research is undertaken, using footnotes to indicate IRB approval when needed, identifying sample, research strategies, etc. While not every article may need a separate methods section, our reviewers and readers will be interested in how your qualitative research was conducted. Please take a look at how other published articles in our journal have handled identifying their methods for our readers.
6. Please consider multiple perspectives on your issue and in your analysis. Academic arguments can be narrow and technical but can’t ignore broader implications and considerations from varying positions and concerns. In addition to being inclusive, we encourage authors to be mindful of intersectionality as they write about contemporary exigencies both inside and outside of the academy.
7. Please diversify your sources, making concerted effort to engage with diverse voices and perspectives within the body of your manuscript. Systemic exclusion in the academy is upheld by a closed circle of citations and addressing these concerns will be an increasing point of emphasis during review.
8. Please use your conclusion to identify the implications of your work. What is the explicit take away you are offering for our readers? Why is it important to the field and culture at large and how might it address the original exigence you identified? Also, where might rhetorical studies go from here?
9. Please adhere to the latest edition of MLA guidelines and our journal’s word count limit. Initial submissions should be 6000 – 8000 words (including footnotes and references). While some flexibility may ultimately be allowed if reviewers’ revision suggestions call for further additions, please keep your initial submissions to under 8000 words.