UP to How to Write
a Research Paper
Professor Rath's
home page.
For this class a thesis statement must include a verb that DOES
something. If you are not sure if your verb is ok, try putting a form of "DO"
in front of it, e.g. "Literacy killed John." "Literacy DID kill John."
"Pocahantas was smart" but not "Pocahantas did was smart." Note that the last
example contains the verb TO BE in the form "was." Your thesis statement
cannot contain any form of the verb TO BE. Why? The verb TO BE allows
you to hide things and slip in opinions that cannot be tested. For example, "It
is thought that economics is dull." Thought by whom? The verb TO BE (here in
the form of "is") allows you to hide who it is that thinks economics is dull.
If you want to read a bunch of sentences that hide this sort of thing
regularly, try any book on slavery.
A good thesis begs the question "How?" For example, if I say "Literacy killed John," an appropriate question to guide research would be "How did literacy kill John?" Compare this to the ungrammatical "How did Pocahantas was smart?" The answer to the question "How?" is always a full sentence, and if your thesis makes you say "How is that so?" then you are on the right track.
OK, so how do you go about constructing one? Just starting from scratch is a difficult task. Start by coming up with a list of topics that might interst you. A good idea is to browse through the bookmarks for primary sources that catch your interest. Write them all down, even if you are not sure. Then pick a topic or two that you like and brainstorm them. Just write a paragraph or even a list on what catches your interest about each topic. Work quickly. Don't take more than ten minutes on a topic. Turn off your inner editor, don't worry about "DO" or "BE," and just write. When you are finished, go back and pick out every word that could possibly be an active verb (one that you can put DO in front of as shown above).
Then go through your list and find the statements that best describe what you
want to do. Don't worry that they are not exactly right...we'll add all the
modifiers back in later to get them exactly how you want them. Many of the
statements are not very helpful by themselves, like "LT demonstrates irony" but
they may come in handy later we'll see. So for this paragraph, the most
descriptive statement is: "LT uses irony." That doesn't get us very far,
though. Why not? Because the verb doesn't have much meaning...it is vague,
unspecific. Try to find a better verb by asking HOW he uses irony, or in this
case, WHAT does he use irony for? He
uses it to DO something...what does he DO with irony? Note that because we had
a DO verb in our provisional vague thesis statement (DOES use), we have to
answer questions about it with a full sentence. Because of the way we have
extracted the verbs and their arguments, our answer will also have a DO verb in
the sentence. This way we hone in on the thesis. So what does LT DO with
irony? "LT controls the interview." This is probably your best basic thesis.
"Control" has much more specific meaning than "use," so when you ask "How?" you
get a more meaningful answer. As an aside, this process can help you untangle
the densest prose and extract what the author is saying in spite of even the
best attempts at obfuscation...If it fails to work or doesn't make sense, that
means the author isn't really saying anything at all!
So what do we do now? Well, keep asking "How?" How does LT control
interviews? With irony. We can thus write about how LT uses irony in our would-be study of
LT. Perhaps we want to make the sentence more specific, so lets add our
modifiers back in:
LT subtly controls his television interviews using Socratic irony.
When we ask "How?" the answer could be a paper in itself. We would examine how
he uses relaxed naivety and appreciative curiousity. How does he appear
relaxed, naive and curious, when he is actually inquiring about a point the
interviewee doesn't see coming? This is after all the heart of irony. What
are his tactics? How does he get the interviewees less guarded and more open?
To answer these questions, we would need to find out what makes them guarded in
the first place and how LT overcomes that suspicion. How does he get them to
open up? Well, we've already answered some of that with the section on relaxed
naievety and curiosity, but maybe more can be said about how he actually goes
about that in an interview. One tactic is to remain non-adversarial in his
approach to dialogue...How does he go about doing that? As you can see, armed
with a tape or two of LT interviewing people as your primary source, you could
write a pretty good paper using this thesis.
Now suppose we find out in our primary research of LT's interviews that some of
the stuff in our brainstorming session was wrong? What then? Suppose it
wasn't LT exerting subtle control, but actually the ghost of Princess Di? or
that the control wasn't subtle? Or that he wasn't actually controlling it but
just appearing to through trickery? Or that it wasn't the interviewees he was
controlling, but a herd of feral cats along Maille Way? Well, you change your
thesis! "LT" becomes Princess Di's ghost. "Subtly" becomes ""obviously."
Instead of controlling the subjects, your thesis might shift to "LT tricks his
audiences" (followed, of course, by "How?" and all its consequences), or if its
is not the interviewees he controls, "LT subtly controls a herd of feral cats
along Maille Way using Socratic irony."
Your thesis is always a working proposition. You use it as a guide to your research. Always ask if and how your present reading relates to your thesis. This will keep you from getting lost and overwhelmed while doing research. If you find things that change your thesis, change it! Your thesis is not written in stone. You want it to always reflect your best thinking on your subject. When you are done you should have a working thesis and a bunch of research that supports it.
If you have trouble with a thesis statement, come see me before you get too wound up about it.
Next step: Meet with Prof. Rath to discuss your topic.