Authoring a PhD
Download 2.39 Mb. View original pdf
|
BOLALAR UCHUN INGLIZ TILI @ASILBEK MUSTAFOQULOV, Ingliz tili grammatikasi
| Analytic explanations It is not difficult to breakup and reorganize a complex description into more analytic headings. The key step is to use organizing categories conjured out of your own brain rather than a sequence of ideas given to you externally. For instance, an analytic approach to describing my home study is shown in Figure b, where I might structure my account around the following headings: ◆ the physical size, shape and features of the room (basically rectangular, with a little add-on bay window); ◆ the services in the room (the windows, ventilation, lights, central heating, plug points, etc.); ◆ the hard or fixed furnishings (shelves, bookcases, immovable heavy filing cabinets, etc and ◆ the soft or variable furnishings (curtains, carpets, movable furniture, PCs and electronic gear, books, CDs, etc.). These different categories do not sit out therein the real world’ for me to pickup ready-to-use: instead they are mental categories of my own choosing. But on the other hand they are not rocket science and they did not take ages to devise. I hope that these distinctions would not need a lot of explanation to be accepted as useful and reasonably familiar by most readers. But if I now run over what there is to see in my home study using these headings, I am pretty sure that most people will see this account as much clearer, as much better organized than the descriptive approach’s almost random sequencing. As well as providing key principles for explaining why sets of things are treated together, the headings also capture clearly my value- added contribution and thus help to personalize the account. Three main types of analytic structures are used inhumanities and social sciences theses: ◆ Periodized historical or narrative accounts breakaway from a beginning-to-end chronology, and instead chunk up the AUTHORING AP H D storyline into a number of clear periods. The characteristics of each period can then be treated more synoptically. The crucial transitions are from one period to another. They are separated out for focused treatment, while the more ephemeral ebb and flow of less important events within each period is given less emphasis. ◆ Systematic accounts disaggregate complex processes into their component parts, as in my study example above. An overall set of phenomena (such as a change processor an intellectual problem) is split into different components and each aspect is treated using appropriate concepts, theories, methods and evidence for that category. For instance, you could split historical processes into separate economic, political, cultural and social changes, and develop different models of each, as well as an account of how they interconnect. Or you could analyse a novel or a play in terms of characters and their interactions, or identify different elements, myths or themes woven through a narrative. ◆ Causal analyses go further than simply handling different aspects under category headings. They seek to reconstruct complex multi-causation processes by grading and sifting how influences are patterned, weighting causes against each other, distinguishing long-term and short-term, or necessary and sufficient causes. Very sophisticated approaches here may trace out a complete algorithm, an analytic model of the processes that are being studied. An analytic structure has many advantages, so long as the set of organizing categories being used is simple and robust, picking out clearly distinguishable sets of phenomena in very clear-cut ways. To organize a whole thesis, you need a fairly restricted structure of big, broad concepts. Fine-grain or subtle distinctions that take ages to explain are not suitable for this top-level organizing task, or indeed for providing an internal structure for chapters (see Chapter 4). Robust organizing categories should also be recognizable ideas, with which readers can easily connect. Both these requirements may seem to limit the scope for you to personalize your thesis organization. P LAN NI N GA NI NT E GRATED THESIS 9 They often seem restrictive for new authors who are convinced of the uniqueness of their individual approach. But it is perfectly feasible to impress clear views on your chapter plan without lurching off into idiosyncrasy or impenetrable distinctions. Once you have an analytic structure of chapters it is also important not to follow through unquestioningly with a further analytic way of carving up material inside each chapter. Do not overdo the analysis. At its limit an ultra-analytic thesis can resemble a fairly unique (and awful) item of British cuisine, the canned fruit cocktail. This dish consists of different kinds of tinned fruit (like peach, apricot, pear, apple, grapes, cherries and soon, all cutup into small cubes and mixed together, and then completely covered in a sugary syrup. When you eat a mouthful of canned fruit cocktail you may know intellectually that you are consuming different types of fruit, but the tastes are so effectively homogenized that you will have difficulty identifying what any given cube consists of. The analogous danger in academic life is that you wrench apart connected phenomena to such a detailed extent that your readers lose any grip on how the parts connect as a whole. For instance, if you analyse a chronological process into separate analytic components, and then analyse each of these in turn into subcompo- nents, readers may lose any working sense of how the processes being described operated overtime, and hence find no clear narrative storyline at all. Overextended analytic arguments can also produce very formalistic patterns of organizing material, with multilayered typologies or sets of categories being expounded which are very remote from ordinary knowledge’ ways of looking at problems. In some technical or highly theoretical areas very formalized treatments maybe acceptable, even expected, especially in the parts of social sciences and philosophy. But outside these areas, they can easily look off-putting or impenetrable, especially where an author uses unfamiliar organizing concepts. Download 2.39 Mb. Share with your friends:
|