Any given [[academic article]] needs to position itself over and against prior research. This is related to [[ethos]]. (Your "positioning" towards a topic is fundmantally a question of your ethos.) What is the state of the [[research conversation]]? How do you "position" yourself relative to it? (Are you "building on" it? Have you identified a "point of departure"? Etc.) ### Note on terms: "positioning" vs. "they say, I say" ^af23cc I think of positioning as the higher, macro-level strategic decisions a writer makes in this regard. By contrast, "[[they say, I say|they say, I say]]" describes almost the same thing, but on a more nitty-gritty, *micro* level. > **"Positioning"** is macro and theoretical/strategic. > > **"They say, I say"** is more micro and practical. Students intuitively understand positioning. Sometimes they struggle with the actual mechanics of it simply because [[students just lack the vocabulary|they lack the actual vocabulary]], but this is a very different problem!