The author discusses the function of references in research articles. The author uses a corpus-based approach and examines texts published over a period of about 40 years in analytical philosophy. For the author it is important where the citation was elaborated either as a verbatim quote, in end-notes or in a bilbigraphy at the end of the text. She looks at cross-citational patterns, negational references and text structure. The author concludes that a text is merely a trace of its author's behaviour an cannot be used as the sole evidence for discussing that behaviour.