Role & purpose of citations

There are a surprisingly large number of theories about the role and purpose of citations in academic texts.

• Citations are used to recognize and acknowledge the intellectual property rights of authors. They are a matter of ethics and a defense against plagiarism.
• Citations are used to show respect to previous scholars. They recognize the history of the field by acknowledging previous achievements.
• Citations operate as a kind of mutual reward system. Rather than pay other authors money for their contributions, writers "pay" them in citations.
• Citations are a tool of persuasion; writers use citations to give their statements greater authority.
• Citations are used to supply evidence that the author qualifies as a member of the chosen scholarly community; citations are used to demonstrate familiarity with the field.
• Citations are used to create a research space for the citing author. By describing what has been done, citations point the way to what has not been done and so prepare a space for new research.

Given the indebtedness function it is important that you are exhaustive. If you make specific use of a source, finding information there which have not found elsewhere, then a reference is essential. Given the invitation function it is important that you give references which are absolutely precise. There is no sense in telling your reader what a certain book is called or telling him on which page a certain quotation is to be found if the book is in fact called something else or if the quotation is 20 pages later.

Citations are not just used when you are quoting what someone else has said. Suppose you make a general statement about theories being developed and claims being made in an academic discipline, without in the first instance specifying any particular author. However, as soon as you say that such and such is a common belief, or that such and such is frequently claimed, then you commit yourself to providing your reader with an example, and preferably more than one. You can do this by formulating a reference as follows:

Whether you integrate the reference into the text or supply it separately in a note depends on which mode you are writing in. Legal publications in Belgium, for instance, never have in-text citations. Those style sheets which are important in the field of both linguistics and literature (the MLA, stylesheet for linguistics, and the likes) consider in-text citations the standard.