APPENDIX
B
Writing a Research Paper
What Research Is Not, and What Research Is
Because a research paper requires its writer to collect and interpret evidence—usually including the opinions of earlier investigators—it is sometimes said that a research paper, unlike a critical essay, is not the expression of personal opinion. But such a view is unjust both to criticism and to research. A critical essay is not a mere expression of personal opinions; if it is any good, it is an argument, offering evidence that supports the opinions and thus persuades the reader of their objective rightness. And a research paper is in the final analysis largely personal, because the author continuously uses his or her own judgment to evaluate the evidence, deciding what is relevant and convincing. A research paper is not the mere presentation of what a dozen scholars have already said about a topic; it is a thoughtful evaluation of the available evidence, and so it is, finally, an expression of what the author thinks the evidence adds up to.
Primary and Secondary Materials
The materials of literary research can be conveniently divided into two sorts, primary and secondary. The primary materials, or sources, are the real subject of study; the secondary materials are critical and historical accounts already written about these primary materials. For example, Langston Hughes wrote poems, stories, plays, and essays. For a student of Hughes, these works are the primary materials. (We include several of his works in this book.) If you want to study his ways of representing African-American speech, or his representations of whites, or his collaboration with Zora Neale Hurston, you will read the primary material— his own writings (and Hurston’s, in the case of the collaborative work). But in an effort to reach a thoughtful understanding of some aspect of his work, you will also want to look at later biographical and critical studies of his works and perhaps also at scholarly writing on such topics as Black English. You may even find yourself looking at essays on Black English that do not specifically mention Hughes but that nevertheless may prove helpful.
Similarly, if you are writing about Charlotte Perkins Gilman (we include one of her stories), the primary material includes not only other stories but also her social and political writing. If you are writing about her views of medical treatment of women, you will want to look not only at the story we reprint (“The Yellow Wallpaper”) but also at her autobiography. Further, you will also want to look at some secondary material, such as recent scholarly books and articles on medical treatment of women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Locating Material: First Steps
This appendix is devoted to traditional resources. Consult the next two appendices for a detailed introduction to electronic resources.
The easiest way to locate articles and books on literature written in a modern language—that is, on a topic other than literature of the ancient world—is to consult the
MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles in the Modern Languages and Literatures (1922– ),
which until 1969 was published as part of PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Association) and since 1969 has been published separately. It is also available on CD-ROM through WilsonDisc, and in fact the disc is preferable since it is updated quarterly, whereas the print version is more than a year behind the times. Many college and university libraries also now offer the MLA International Bibliography as part of their package of online resources for research, and it is even more up-to-date.
MLA International Bibliography lists scholarly studies—books as well as articles in academic journals—published in a given year. Because of the great number of items listed, the print version of the bibliography runs to more than one volume, but material on writing in English (including, for instance, South African authors who write in English) is in one volume. To see what has been published on Langston Hughes in a given year, then, in this volume you turn to the section on American literature (as opposed to British, Canadian, Irish, and so forth), and then to the subsection labeled 1900–99, to see if anything that sounds relevant is listed.
Because your time is limited, you probably cannot read everything published on your topic. At least for the moment, therefore, you will use only the last five or ten years of this bibliography. Presumably, any important earlier material will have been incorporated into some of the recent studies listed. When you come to read these recent studies, if you find references to an article from, say, 1975 that sounds essential, of course you will read that article too.
Although MLA International Bibliography includes works on American literature, if you are doing research on an aspect of American literature you may want to begin with
American Literary Scholarship (1965– ).
This annual publication is noted for its broad coverage of articles and books on major and minor American writers, and is especially valuable for its frank comments on the material that it lists.
On some recent topics—for instance, the arguments for and against dropping Huckleberry Finn from high school curricula—there may be few or no books, and there may not even be material in the scholarly journals indexed in MLA International Bibliography. Popular magazines, however, such as the Atlantic Monthly, Ebony, and Newsweek—unlisted in MLA—may include some useful material. These magazines, and about 200 others, are indexed in
Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature (1900– ).
If you want to write a research paper on the controversy over Huckleberry Finn, or on the popular reception given to Kenneth Branagh’s films of Shakespeare’s Henry V, Much Ado about Nothing, and Hamlet, you can locate mate-rial (for instance, reviews of Branagh’s films) through Readers’ Guide. For that matter, you can also locate reviews of older films, let’s say Olivier’s films of Shakespeare’s plays, by consulting the volumes for the years in which the films were released.
On many campuses Readers’ Guide has been supplanted by
InfoTrac (1985– ),
on CD-ROM. The disc is preinstalled in a microcomputer that can be accessed from a computer terminal. This index to authors and subjects in popular and scholarly magazines and in newspapers provides access to several database indexes, including
• The General Periodicals Index, available in the Academic Library Edition (about 1,100 general and scholarly periodicals) and in the Public Library Edition (about 1,100 popular magazines)
• The Academic Index (400 general-interest publications, all of which are also available in the Academic Library Edition of the General Periodicals Index)
• The Magazine Index Plus (the four most recent years of the New York Times, the two most recent months of the Wall Street Journal, and 400 popular magazines, all of which are included in the Public Library Edition of the General Periodicals Index)
• The National Newspaper Index (the four most recent years of the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times)
Once again, many college and university libraries are now making available online versions of these and similar resources for research. Some students (and faculty) prefer to use the books on the shelf, but the electronic editions have significant advantages. Often, it is easier to perform “searches” using them; and in many cases they are updated well before the next print editions are published.
Other Bibliographic Aids
There are hundreds of guides to authors, publications, and reference works. The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (1997), edited by William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, provides detailed entries on authors, literary works, and many literary, historical, and cultural topics and terms, as well as suggestions for further reading. Reader’s Guide to Literature in English (1996), edited by Mark Hawkins-Dady, is a massive work (nearly 1,000 pages) that gives thorough summaries of recent critical and scholarly writing on English and American authors.
How do you find such books? Two invaluable guides to reference works (that is, to bibliographies and to such helpful compilations as handbooks of mythology, place names, and critical terms) are
James L. Harner, Literary Research Guide: A Guide to Reference Sources for the Study of Literatures in English and Related Topics, 4th ed. (2002)
and
Michael J. Marcuse, A Reference Guide for English Studies (1990).
And there are guides to these guides: reference librarians. If you don’t know where to turn to find something, turn to the librarian.
Taking Notes
Let’s assume now that you have checked some bibliographies and that you have a fair number of references you must read to have a substantial knowledge of the evidence and the common interpretations of the evidence. Most researchers find it convenient, when examining bibliographies and the library catalog, to write down each reference on a 3d ¥ 5d index card—one title per card. On the card, put the author’s full name (last name first), the exact title of the book or article, and the name of the journal (with dates and pages). Titles of books and periodicals (publications issued periodically—for example, monthly or four times a year) are underlined; titles of articles and of essays in books are enclosed in quotation marks. It’s also a good idea to put the library catalog number on the card to save time if you need to get the item for a second look.
Next, start reading or scanning the materials whose titles you have collected. Some of these items will prove irrelevant or silly; others will prove valuable in themselves and also in the leads they give you to further references, which you should duly record on index cards. Notes—aside from these bibliographic notes—are best taken on larger index cards. The 3d ¥ 5d cards are too small for summaries of useful materials; we use 4d ¥ 6d cards, which allow you to record a moderate amount of information. Using these medium-sized cards rather than larger ones serves as a reminder that you need not take notes on everything. Be selective in taking notes.
Two Mechanical Aids: The Photocopier and the Word Processor
Use the photocopier to make copies of material from the library (including material that does not circulate) that you know you need, or that you might want to refer to later. But remember that sometimes it is even more efficient to
• Read the material in the library,
• Select carefully what pertains to the purpose of your research, and
• Take your notes on it.
The word processor or computer is useful not only in the final stage, to produce a neat copy, but also in the early stages of research, when you are getting ideas and taking notes. With the help of the computer, you can brainstorm ideas, make connections, organize and reorganize material, and develop (and change) outlines. This file can be a kind of creative “work space” for your research paper.
A Guide to Note-Taking
Some students use note cards—we have already mentioned that we use 4d ¥ 6d cards—for taking notes during the process of research. Others write on separate sheets of a notebook, or on the sheets of a yellow legal pad. Still others take their notes using a computer or word processor, and then organize and rearrange this body of material by copying and pasting, moving the notes into a coherent order. (We advise you not to delete material that, when you reread your notes, strikes you as irrelevant. It probably is irrelevant; but on the other hand, it may turn out to be valuable after all. Just put unwanted material into a file called “rejects,” or some such thing, until you have completed the paper.)
Whichever method you prefer, keep in mind the following:
• For everything you consult or read in detail, always specify the source, so that you know exactly from where you have taken a key point or a quotation.
• Write summaries (abridgments), not paraphrases (restatements).
• Quote sparingly. Remember that this is your paper—it will present your thesis, not the thesis and arguments and analyses of someone else. Quote directly only those passages that are particularly effective, or crucial, or memorable. In your finished paper these quotations will provide authority and emphasis.
• Quote accurately. After copying a quotation, check your note against the original, correct any misquotation, and then put a checkmark after your quotation to indicate that it is accurate. Verify the page number also, and then put a checkmark on your note after the page number. If a quotation runs from the bottom of, say, page 306 to the top of 307, on your note put a distinguishing mark (for instance, two parallel vertical lines after the last word of the first page) so that if you later use only part of the quotation, you will know the page on which it appeared.
Use ellipses (three spaced periods) to indicate the omission of any words within a sentence. If the omitted words are at the end of the quoted sentence, put a period where you end the sentence, and then add three spaced periods to indicate the omission:
If the . . . words are at the end of the quoted sentence, put a period where you end. . . .
Use square brackets to indicate your additions to the quotation. Here is an example:
Here is an [uninteresting] example.
• Never copy a passage by changing an occasional word, under the impression that you are thereby putting it into your own words. Notes of this sort may find their way into your paper, your reader will sense a style other than yours, and suspicions of plagiarism may follow. (For a detailed discussion of plagiarism, see pages 1776–1777.)
• Comment on your notes as you do your work, and later as you reflect on what you have jotted down from the sources. Make a special mark—we recommend using double parentheses ((. . .)) or a different-colored pen to write, for example, “Jones seriously misreads the passage,” or “Smith makes a good point but fails to see its implications.” As you work, consider it your obligation to think about the material, evaluating it and using it as a stimulus to further thought.
• In the upper corner of each note card, write a brief key—for example, “Swordplay in Hamlet”—so that later you can tell at a glance what is on the note.
Drafting the Paper
The job of writing up your argument remains, but if you have taken good notes and have put useful headings on each note, you are well on your way.
• Read through the notes and sort them into packets of related material. Remove all notes that you now see are irrelevant to your paper. (Do not destroy them, however; you may want them later.) Go through the notes again and again, sorting and resorting, putting together what belongs together.
• Probably you will find that you have to do a little additional research—somehow you aren’t quite clear about this or that—but after you have done this additional research, you should be able to arrange the packets into a reasonable and consistent sequence. You now have a kind of first draft, or at least a tentative organization for your paper.
• Beware of the compulsion to include every note in your essay; that is, beware of telling the reader, “A says . . .; B says . . .; C says . . .”
• You must have a point, a thesis. Make sure that you state it early, and that you keep it evident to your readers.
• Make sure that the organization is evident to the reader. When you were doing your research, and even perhaps when you were arranging your notes, you were not entirely sure where you were going; but by now, with your notes arranged into what seems to you to be the right sequence, you think you know what everything adds up to. Doubtless in the process of drafting you will make important changes in your focus, but do not abandon a draft until you think it not only says what you want to say, but says it in what seems to you to be a reasonable order. The final version of the paper should be a finished piece of work, without the inconsistencies, detours, and occasional dead ends of an early draft. Your readers should feel that they are moving toward a conclusion (by means of your thoughtful evaluation of the evidence) rather than merely reading an anthology of commentary on the topic. And so we should get some such structure as “There are three common views on. . . . The first two are represented by A and B; the third, and by far the most reasonable, is C’s view that. . . . A argues . . . but. . . . The second view, B’s, is based on . . . but. . . . Although the third view, C’s, is not conclusive, still....
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