Writing Research Papers in My Courses

I have put together these ideas about writing research papers because I often see that students do not cover all the territory in their papers, and I would like students to make the best use of their time (and my time) and get the structure down early in the game. Remember that we are talking here both about form and content. If the paper has good form, it can convey its ideas (content) better than if it is poorly organized.

In later sections of this document I indicate some sources that can be used to help the beginning (or even the advanced) researcher. One that is available for purchase in the University Bookstore, is a handbook entitled The Craft of Research by Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams, published by U. of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-226-06584-7 (paper), card catalogue no. Q180.55.M4B66 1995. This is an extremely useful book that goes beyond just the style of a paper to deal with structure, argumentation, goals of research, the basic ideas of what we are trying to do when we do research and present it to our readers.

1. Statement of Purpose. At the outset (``The Beginning") state the goals you wish to accomplish in your paper (``My goal is to describe how the language policy of Vietnam evolved under French colonialism ...") or ``The goal of my paper is show how the recruitment of certain verbs of motion in (Korean, Aztec, whatever) has proceeded, and how the grammaticalization of these verbs as aspectual auxiliaries has been developing for some centuries."

2. Methodology. Then state the method(s) by which you hope to accomplish this goal:

   ``I shall demonstrate that this policy evolved from an indigenous Sinophilic tradition to a French centrist model beginning in the 1880's and continuing until the liberation of Saigon ..." or ``I shall compare indigenous life stories of Vietnamese speakers who had to deal with the confrontation of French policy superimposed on their own linguistic culture. In these interviews, speakers reveal ... "

   Or:

   The methods by which we might know whether verbs that are being grammaticalized in any language are to ascertain whether (a) meanings have changed, especially between the 'lexical' and the `grammatical' meaning of the verbs; (b) phonological reduction has taken place; and (c) metaphor or metonymy is often involved. I will show in this paper how some of the languages of the Altaic family, which are typologically similar to languages of both the Dravidian and the Uralic language families, often exhibit verbal `auxiliaries' that have been recruited to provide aspectual distinctions, and that furthermore many of the same verbs are used in these processes."

3. In the Middle or Body of your paper, build your case. Review the literature (see sample below) on the subject; do not reinvent the wheel. Show that you are familiar with what others have said about this situation. (This is a form of academic courtesy, and helps establish your credibility. If you do not do this, people may think you are talking off the top of your head, or have no respect for the work of other scholars, and may lose interest in your project, and stop reading.) Describe, analyze, and evaluate the previous work, and give those authors credit by citing their work (see below for format). Then show how previous work could be improved, or how others admit the existence of a problem but have not solved it, or whatever it is you wish to show. If you find you are deadlocked, and don't know what to say that is new, try asking yourself the following questions:
   • What have we discussed in this course about language policy (grammaticalization, whatever) that may be a different way of looking at this material?

   • Is there a covert policy operating in this situation that has not been looked at? Have researchers focused mainly on grammatical descriptions of the literary or formal language, and ignored the spoken language? Is there diglossia in the situation?

   • Do some researchers tend to put all their eggs in one basket, attributing everything to one factor such as neo-Marxist economics, colonialism, post-modernism, or whatever? Do researchers require formal models that require categorial rules, ignoring variability?

   • Are there some aspects of the linguistic culture of [my topic] that may be in conflict with the overt or official policy of the polity I am examining? (Are there religious, historical, mythic, or other attitudinal factors that have not been examined here?)

   • Is there diglossia (Ferguson 1959) operating in this situation? Do researchers, planners, or policy-makers ignore or discount it? Do they treat language like a `black box' having no interrelationship with the policy? Do they only look at the literary variety of the language?

   • Is there some religious framework (e.g. Islam, Buddhism, Christianity) that influences the policy-makers and strongly undergirds the covert aspects of policy and linguistic culture?

   • Is there some political philosophy (e.g. Marxism) that the policy-makers are operating under that may be blind to covert aspects of policy and of linguistic culture, or that makes policy planners act as if their theory is omnipotent? Is there a linguistic theory that arrogates to itself all truth, and ignores the possibility of more functional approaches?

4. When you have said all you would like to say, summarize what you have done. One paragraph may be sufficient. You do not have to show that you have done something revolutionary or earth-shaking; merely reviewing the literature on the subject may be the most useful thing you could do, if you do it systematically and present your review clearly. In the case of grammaticalization, since things may be as yet unfinished, categorical statements may be impossible.

5. If you have more than one point to make, summarize and wrap up the first before going on to the next. Try to stand back from your writing and see that the ideas flow smoothly, and that when there is a transition, that it is evident that you are shifting gears. Tell us that you are now going to shift gears, or now going to contrast and compare, etc.

6. If this is a paper on language policy, remember that the focus of this course is on the humanistic aspects of language policy, and that we assume that there is no such thing as no policy: that is, we always assume that there is a language policy, even if it is covert, implicit, unstated and perhaps buried in linguistic culture. So instead of saying things like ``There was no language policy in Alaska when the U.S. purchased it in 1867" we say ``Language policy in Alaska in 1867 was a blend of individual laissez-faire policies practiced by the Alaskan native tribes with an overlay of 19th-century Czarist absolutist Russian-supremacist policy in the few coastal settlements ... " or ``The native Seputsi people had a language origin myth according to which they had once had a written language, but it had been stolen by the Raven. They believed that one day other peoples would come in great canoes and bring back their written language. Thus when the Russians arrived, the Seputsi welcomed them with open arms and took to literacy, first in Russian, then in Seputsi, with great gusto ... "

   If this is a paper on some other topic, e.g. grammaticalization, remember that the focus is on functional approaches (i.e. `how does it work?'), not on specifying what the theory says must be the case.

7. Final rules of thumb:
   1. Do not reinvent the wheel.

   2. Build on the work of others, and give credit where credit is due.

   3. Ask for help, even if you don't think you need it.

   4. Show your work to someone else to read; check for clarity, transitions, whether you are making your points.

   5. Try to think of who your audience is, and write to that audience.

   6. If you are better at oral presentations than written, tape-record what you have to say and then transcribe it onto paper.

   7. Give credit by citations and attributions to ideas that are not yours. I prefer the form ``As Smith points out (Smith 1991:354)", with Smith 1991 spelled out in full in the bibliography.

The purpose of the Review of the Literature is to show your reader that you have `done your homework' and that your work is credible. That is, you want to convince the reader that you know what you are talking about, and have not made things up out of whole cloth. You need to convince the thoughtful reader, especially one with some background of his/her own on the subject, that you have read what others have said about the topic--the so-called `standard literature' on the subject. You don't have to agree with it, but you have to know it and show that you have taken what others said seriously. If you are going to disagree with what others wrote, you have to do it convincingly, showing exactly how they are `wrong' and why your approach is better. Otherwise people may simply ignore your writing, dismissing it as `out in left field' or just simply whacky.

The review of literature can take various forms; below is an example of a very minimal review of the literature I wrote for a chapter in a longer book. Your review of the literature for your paper should be at least this long and comprehensive. Note that I chose this review because when I wrote it, I was faced with a problem:

1. I am not an expert on language policy in France or any of its regions. People reading my work who are experts in this area know this, and are going to look at my work very skeptically.

2. The French are notoriously difficult to please, so I need to convince French readers, or those who know France, that my approach is credible.

3. I learned later that some readers even went and looked up my sources to make sure they said what I said they said, because those readers didn't believe me automatically.

4. In order to forestall any criticisms, and check for accuracy, I asked a French scholar to review my French chapters before the book went to press. He found some errors, and suggested some other sources, but in general accepted my work.

5. In the end, a French scholar who wrote and published a review of my book criticized me, not for being harsh on the French, but for being too harsh in my chapters about the U.S.!

The best source of the linguistic history of Alsace, together with clear statements about the actual distribution of dialect forms, isoglosses (subdialectal boundaries) and other interesting facts of linguistic practice in Alsace is to be found in the two-volume work of Lévy (1929). A more succinct version of the linguistic history of the area can be found in Philipps (1975); Hartweg in a number of articles (1981, 1983, 1986) summarizes both the linguistic and the sociolinguistic situation admirably. Gardner-Chloros (1995, 1991) describes the interesting kinds of code-switching and other multilingualism that still occurs in Strasbourg, even in fancy shops and banks, not just by uneducated or rural people. Denis and Veltman (1989) gives a pessimistic view of the future of Alsatian dialect, while Vassberg (1993) presents an eclectic overview of the history, attitudes, policies, conversational and code-switching behavior, and results of a questionnaire-survey in upper Alsace (Haut-Rhin, centered around Mulhouse) and lower Alsace (Bas-Rhin, centered around Strasbourg). (Schiffman 1996:145)

Here are some on-line descriptions of the literature review you can consult:

• U. of Toronto page.

• Deakin page.

• Canberra page.

1

Booth, Wayne C., Gregory C. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. 1995. The Craft of Research Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

2

Gardner-Chloros, Penelope. 1985. ``Language selection and switching among Strasbourg shoppers." International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 54:117-135.

3

Hartweg, Frédéric. 198?. ``Le dialecte Alsacien: domaines d'utilisation." In Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. Volume 32. P.H. Nelde (ed.), Sprachkontakt und Sprachkonflikt. Pp. 75-82. Wiesbaden: Fr. STeiner Verlag.

4

Hartweg, Frédéric. 1981. ``Sprachkontakt und Sprachkonflikt im Elsaß." In Meid, W. and K. Keller (eds.), Sprachkontakt als Ursache der Sprach- und Bewusstseinsstruktur. Innsbruck.

5

Hartweg, Frédéric. 1983. ``Tendenzen in der Domänenverteilung zwischen Dialekt und nicht-deutscher Standardsprache am Beispiel des Elsaß." In Besch, Knoop, Putschke and Wiegand (eds.), Dialektologie: ein Handbuch der deutschen und allgemeinen Dialektforschung. pp. 1428-1443. Berlin: de Gruyter.

6

Hartweg, Frédéric. 1986. ``Die Entwicklung des Verhältnisses von Mundart, deutscher und französischer Standardsprache im Elsaß seit dem 16. Jahrhundert." In Besch, W., O. Reichmann and S. Sonderegger (eds.), Sprachgeschichte. Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Erforschung. Pp. 1949-1977. New York, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

7

Lévy, Paul. 1929. Histoire linguistique d'Alsace et de Lorraine. Paris: Société d'Édition Les Belles Lettres.

8

Picard, Olivier. 1993. ``Maternelles bilingues: la charte est signée." Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, No. 6, January 8, 1993.

9

Philipps, Eugène. 1975. Les luttes linguistiques en Alsace jusqu'en 1945. Strasbourg: Culture Alsacienne.

10

Philipps, Eugène. 1978. L'Alsace face à son destin: la crise d'identité. Strasbourg: Société d'Edition de la Basse-Alsace.

11

Philipps, Eugène. 1982. Le défi Alsacien. Strasbourg: Société d'Edition de la Basse-Alsace.

12

Vassberg, Liliane M. 1993. Alsatian Acts of Identity: Language Use and Language Attitudes in Alsace. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

13

Denis, M. N. and Veltman, Calvin. 1989. Le déclin du dialecte alsacien. Strasbourg: Association des publications près les Universités de Strasbourg.

14

Vermes, Genevieve et Josiane Boutet (eds.) 1987. France, pays multilingue. Vols. I and II. Paris: L'Harmattan.