• Autorxs: [[Wayne C. Booth]], [[Gregory G. Colomb]], [[Joseph M. Williams]]
• Publicado por: [[[University of Chicago Press]]
• Año de publicación: [[1995]] + reeds.

Chapter 3: From Topics to Questions

Subject:

• a broad area of knowledge

Topic:

• specific interest within an area.
• specific approach to a subject:
  • asking a question, the answer of which would solve a problem that my readers care about
• How to pick a topic:
  • start with what most interests you
  • you do not have to be an expert on it, you do want to become one
  • make a list of interests that you would like to explore
  • choose one or two by:
    • skimming the subheadings of your topic in general guides/reference books/specialized indexes
    • look for online/paper encyclopedias or other reputed online references and check out the bibliography at the end of the entry for your general topic
    • find ideas in blogs
    • find what interests other researchers
    • skim latest issues of journals in your field (not just articles but conference announcements, calls for papers, reviews)
    • investigate which resources are particularly abundant in your library.
• How to go from a broad topic to a focused topic
  • a topic: a starting point for your research (topos) from which you can head off in a particular direction and narrow it down from broad to focused
    • a topic is too broad if you can state it in four or five words: "Free will in Tolstoy"
  • a topic must be narrowed down by adding words and phrases, specially those deriving from "action" words: "The conflict of free will and inevitability in Tolstoy's description of three battles in War and Peace
    • lacking these action words make your topic a static claim, and these do not lead anywhere: "There is free will in Tolstoy's novels".
    • adding the "action" words transform these claims into something a reader could be interested in: "The conflict of free will and inevitability in Tolstoy's description of three battles in War and Peace --> In War and Peace Tolstoy describes three battles in which free will and inevitability conflict.
    • these claims may seem thin but get richer as your project progresses.
    • caution: do not narrow down your topic so much that there is no information available regarding it
• How to go from a focused topic to questions
  • beginners' mistake: to collect any information available on the topic, which could produce a report on the topic, but does not provide an answer to any specific question, which should be the aim of a serious researcher
  • Thus, the best way to begin working on your focused topic is to formulate questions that direct you to the information you need to answer them
  • Make an inventory of possible questions:
    • start with standard journalistic questions: who, what, when, where
    • focus, however, on how and why
    • to engage your critical thinking, ask about:
      • Topic's history:
        • how does it fit in a larger developmental context?
        • how has its internal history developed?
      • topic's composition
        • how does your topic fit in a larger structure?
        • how do its parts fit together as a system?
      • Topic's categories
        • how can your topic be grouped into kinds
        • how does it compare/contrast with others like it?
      • Turn positive questions into negative ones
      • ask what if and other speculative questions: what if your topic never existed, dissappeared etc.
      • ask questions suggested by your sources (once you have done some reading about the topic):
        • build on agreement
          • extend the reach of someone's claim
          • ask questions that might support the same claim with new evidence
          • ask questions analogous to those that sources have asked about similar topics
        • ask questions that show disagreement
        • ig you are an experienced researcher, look for questions that others ask but haven't answered yet: conclusions usually contain open questions, new research ideas etc.
  • Evaluate questions:
    • look for questions that may help you look at your topic in a new way.
    • avoid this kind of questions:
      • their answer is settled --> questions with how and why may lead to further thinking on the topic
      • their answers would be merely speculative
      • their answers are dead ends
  • Once you have a few promising questions, try to combine them into larger ones that could be potentially interesting to readers
• The most significant question: So what?
  • Once you have a question you that holds your interest, it must be interrogated in a deeper way
  • why would others think your question is worth answering?
  • what will be lost if you don't answer your question?
  • You may not have an answer to "so what" at the beginning of your project, but you must work on this questions throughout your project
  • 3 steps to achieve an answer to the "so what" question:
    • name your topic using nouns derived from verbs:
      • say what yoy are writing about
      • I am trying to learn about... the causes of the disappearence of large North American mammals...
    • add an indirect question that indicates what you do not know or understand about yout topic
      • because I want to find out who/what/when/where/whether/why/how
      • here you state why you are pursuing your topic: to answer a question important to you
      • I am trying to learn about the causes of the disappearence of large North American mammals because I want to find out whether they were hunted to extinction
    • answer so what? by motivating your questions
      • here you find out whether your your questions could interest not just you but others
      • add a second indirect question which explains why you asked your first question:
        • in order to help my reader understand how, why or whether...
        • I am trying to learn about the causes of the disappearence of large North American mammals because I want to find out whether they were hunted to extinction in order to help my reader understand whether native peoples lived in harmony with nature or helped destroy it.
    • this indirect question should seize your reader's interest
    • if it touches on issues important to your field, even indirectly, then your readers should care about its answer.

Chapter 4: From Questions to a Problem