The Craft of Research

• Claim

• Evidence

• Warrant

Making Strong Claims

• Substantive

• Contestable

• Explicit (Specific)

Using Plausible Claims to Guide Your Research

• You give yourself directions for research when you create substantive claims with explicit topics and concepts:

What do you need to flesh out?

A Strong Claim with Explicit Topics and Concepts

• “Thus the emancipation of the Russian peasants was only symbolic, because while they gained control over their daily affairs, their economic condition deteriorated so sharply that their new social status did not affect the material quality of their existence.”

Where Do You Put Your Claim?

• At the end of your introduction

Offering Reliable Evidence

• Using evidence to develop and organize

• Accuracy

• Precision

• Sufficiency

• Representativeness

• Authority

• Perspicuity

Example of Imprecision

• “The Forest Service has spent a great deal of money to prevent forest fires, but there is still a high probability of large, costly ones.”

• “Charlotte Lucas’s decision to marry Mr. Collins is silly because Collins is a bad/rich guy.”

Example of Insufficient Evidence

• “Shakespeare must have hated women because in Macbeth they are all either evil or weak.”

Avoid “Bare Bones” Quotations

• “Lincoln believed that the Founders would have supported the North,claim because as he said, this country was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” evidence

• Charlotte Lucas is silly in marrying Mr. Collins because she says to Lizzy, “don’t judge me.”

Better Version of Citation

• “Since the Founders dedicated the country to the proposition that all men are created equal and Lincoln freed the slaves because he thought they were created equal, then he must have thought that he and the Founders agreed, so they would have supported the North. It’s obvious

Arguments Based on Contradictions

• Part-Whole Contradictions

• External Cause-Effect Contradictions

• Value Contradictions

• Perspective Contradictions

Arguing against Part-Whole Contradictions

• “In recent years, some have argued that athletics is only entertainment and therefore should have no place in higher education, but in fact it can be shown that without athletics education would suffer.”

Arguing against Internal Developmental Contradictions

• “Recently, the media have been headlining rising crime, but in fact the overall crime rate has been falling for the last few years.”

Arguing against External Cause-Effect Contradictions

• “A new way to stop juveniles from becoming criminals is the “boot camp” concept. But evidence suggests that it does little good.”

Arguing against Value Contradictions

• “It has generally been assumed that advertising is best understood as a purely economic function, but in fact it has served as a laboratory for new art forms and styles.”

Warrant

• Warrant: the general principle you apply in answering your reader’s question

• The most useful way for examining warrants is to break the warrant into two explicit parts, one that expresses the general kind of evidence that the warrant admits and one that expresses the claim it allows.

Types of Poor Warrant

• False

• Unclear

• Inappropriate

• Inapplicable

Examples of Poor Warrant

• Page 117 onward

Pride and Prejudice: Charlotte Lukas as a Victim of Marriage in the Late Eighteenth-Century British Society

• In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Lukas surprises her best friend Elizabeth by her quick acceptance of Mr. Collins’ hand. In a self-defensive tone, she asks Elizabeth not to judge her because Elizabeth is not in her shoes and never knows her difficulties. Lukas’s decision on marrying the vulgar Mr. Collins fully discloses the dilemma in marriage a woman faces in late eighteenth-century British society. [claim]

Claims and Evidence

• Dilemma: A: as a lady of landed gentry; she can’t

work to support herself. evidence British society at that time

B: She is almost past the suitable age for marriage. evidence 27 the average age of women’s marriage

C: Her family is not rich and can’t support an old lady. evidence already a burden

Claims and Evidence

• Marriage to Collins: a unwanted but convenient solution [claim]

evidence Collins is vulgar evidence self-important

evidence full of conceit

evidence Charlotte’s repulsion of his vulgarity

evidence the way she

shunned him

evidence Collins can offer her economical security and

social dignity

Exercise

Does Jane Austin show a feminist critique of the marriage institution of her time in Pride and Prejudice?

Does Hawthorne present a critique of the Puritan community in The Scarlet Letter?

Does Jane Austin show a feminist critique of the marriage institution of her time in Pride and Prejudice?

Evidence 1: people’s high interest and excitement over the arrival of a single rich guy Mrs. Bennet’s request Mr. Bennet’s arrangement

Evidence 2: the snobbish female competition at balls who gets the first/most dances

Does Jane Austin show a feminist critique of the marriage institution of her time in Pride and Prejudice?

Possible contradiction: Lizzy’s eagerness for Jane to marry Binley

Possible contradiction: Lizzy’s entrancement at Darcy’s estate