Who Says? Holdstein & Aquiline, Chapter 4 1

Choosing a topic This can be daunting, but it’s important Choose something that Interests you Is significant/can have an impact Basic steps: 1.Generate a list (your current assignment) 2.Pre-search—try Summon, ProQuest, Google, Google Scholar to see if these seem feasible 3.Narrow your topic to get to a Yes/No debatable non-trivial research question and thesis 2

Topic lists We are starting with the Internet You could add topic areas within that as on p. 32—Internet and politics, music, fashion, etc. Your topic/problem is more likely to be conceptual (social science, humanities) than practical (physical sciences) 3

Pre-searching 1.What resources (books, scholarly journals, databases) does the library have access to? 2.What new angle caught your attention as you were doing the search? [It’s OK to let your research “determine” or direct your choice of topic; better to have a topic you like less with resources than one you like more without resources] 4

Narrowing Move from subject (or topic area) e.g. fashion to a topic (the role of fashion industries on the East Coast) Look at catalog/Library of Congress subject areas (books) or get one book and look at chapter titles Narrow by “journalistic questions”: Who, what, when where, why Start thinking about your audience—how specific or technical can you get? Specific/narrow generally is better. Remember, you’re aiming at 10+ pages, while someone (hopefully) wrote a book about the same topic Again, you should consider following your personal interests [for us, things about the Internet/Web that you already use and wonder about] 5

Audience, tone Imagine that your paper would be read by a wider audience than classmates, and the professor [anticipating the audience is part of the “rhetorical turn”] Your tone must reflect what the audience would expect— not too colloquial, slang, clichéd, but also not too formal/academic. Third-person only. 6

Thesis, RQ Express your topic as a research question (RQ) to which the answer is your thesis. Your paper will “argue” that your thesis is supported by the research you present [note the book says you will “prove” your thesis—I argue that that is impossible] The thesis might/should be a few sentences in the first few paragraphs of your paper. A good thesis will Provide the reader direction Make a claim (point of view, argument) that is supported by evidence [For us we want a Yes/No topic if it is non-trivial e.g. “Does TV violence harm children?”] Be narrow Engage your readers Give readers an answer to “So what?” i.e. lead to a practical purpose 7