THE LANGUAGE OF PSYCHOLOGY - APA STYLE AS EPISTEMOLOGY

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (4th ed., APA, 1994) is a guide for many aspects of professional writing fo r psychologists. In this article, the authors propose that APA style i nvolves more than a set of explicit guidelines for presenting informat ion; it also incorporates a variety of unarticulated practices that re flect fundamental attitudes and values of psychologists. The authors e xamine some of the less obvious characteristics of APA style to show h ow they support the discipline's commitment to the empirical method an d the discipline's view of itself as a cumulative, collaborative enter prise. Students who enter the field of psychology acquire psychology's language conventions, and in doing so they also come to implicitly en dorse important values of their discipline.