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The essay introductions that follow are all taken from third-year undergraduate courses in literary studies. They are not being offered as models of perfection – but all of them met the requirements for a first-class grade. The fifth example is from a coursework assignment at postgraduate level – an MA in Literary Studies.

Essay introductions – Example 1

Question
In an essay of about 1,500 words analyse either ‘A Painful Case’ by James Joyce or ‘The Old Chief Mshlanga’ by Doris Lessing, paying close attention to narrative technique, including narrative voice, characterization, imagery and symbolism, dialogue and descriptive detail.

Answer
‘A Painful Case’ by James Joyce is a short story taken from a collection entitled ‘Dubliners’, which was first published in 1914. Joyce makes use of a variety of narrative techniques and literary devices in the construction of his work.

Joyce’s chosen method of discourse is a third-person omniscient narrator. Unlike the first-person narrative mode, which only gives access to the thoughts and feelings of one of the characters, an omniscient narrator has the advantage of being in a position to know everything about all the characters in a story. The opening sentence provides an example of how the narrator is able to reveal the opinions of the main character through focalization: ‘Mr James Duffy lived in Chapelizod …because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious.’ (1) The narrator is speaking, but the viewpoint is that of Mr Duffy, and is presented without any narrative comment. The reader is, therefore, free to draw his or her own conclusions as to what this reveals about the personality of Mr Duffy, without guidance from the narrator.

Overall grade=88

[The overall grade is determined by a number of qualities in the work – not simply the introduction.]

Essay introductions – Example 2

Question
‘The language of poetry resembles dancing; it has no purpose beyond itself. “Dancing goes nowhere”‘. Discuss the ideas in Paul Valéry’s essay ‘Remarks on Poetry’ in the course materials by considering in detail a passage from The Waste Land and a paragraph from Mrs Dalloway.

Answer
Mrs Dalloway displays many of those aspects of language which Paul Valéry identifies as essentially poetic. I have chosen to concentrate upon paragraph two on page 124 (Grafton edition) to illustrate this argument.

Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow, which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow, seemed to Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting room; watching the watery gold glow and fade with the astonishing sensibility of some live creature on the roses, on the wall-paper. Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room, and through the waves came the voices of birds singing. Every power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand lay there on the back of the sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he was bathing, floating, on the top of the waves, while far away on shore he heard dogs barking and barking far away. Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more.

Attention is drawn to the language itself, to the relationship between words and phrases. For example, the alliterative quality of words is clearly exploited in phrases such as ‘seemed to Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting room’ where the repetition of the soft ‘s’ sound (carried on still further into the next clause of the sentence) imitates the sound of rustling leaves or water. Alliteration and assonance work together to develop an ‘ebbing’ or ‘lapping’ rhythm which underlines the imagery of waves and water developed throughout the paragraph: ‘watching the watery gold glow …’

Similarly, words are grouped and repeated so as to reinforce a sense of underlying patterning. Notably the first sentence has alternating images of light and shadow, yellow and grey, and repeated sequences of words and stresses: ‘which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, …’

Overall grade=80

[The overall grade is determined by a number of qualities in the work – not simply the introduction.]

Essay introductions – Example 3

Question
According to Pierre Macherey, the ideology of a literary work resides in its incompleteness, in its significant gaps and silences. With reference to two texts from different genres, suggest how Macherey’s theory of ideology might yield new insights and meanings in literary criticism.

Answer
No text is ‘complete’ in itself according to Macherey. The words on the page may appear to produce a clear-cut, easily discemable meaning, however if we accept this at face value we are not appreciating the work as a whole, for as well as the explicit meaning of a work, the reader should also be aware of the gaps, silences and contradictions inherent in a text. Only in this way can we understand the full significance of a literary work, and reveal its relation to the circumstances in which it was produced.

Although Macherey argues that the silences are a prior condition of the text, in that without absences the text itself would not exist, the reader must first examine what is given, the explicit ideas and arguments presented, in order to spot the gaps and silences. When we first read ‘A Sahib’s War’ by Rudyard Kipling, for example, we learn about the characters, the events which make up the story, note the use of an unusual narrative technique and also form opinions as to the meaning or intention of the story. From this basis we can then go on to consider elements not present, and judge whether these reinforce or contradict the explicit meaning of the text.

Overall grade=88

[The overall grade is determined by a number of qualities in the work – not simply the introduction.]

Essay introductions – Example 4

Question
‘silence is both a condition of women’s oppression and a part of their language’. With detailed reference to at least TWO texts from different genres, discuss the relation between gender and silence

Answer
Simone de Beauvoir, in her book, The Second Sex, says that ‘One is not born but rather becomes a woman’ and goes on to say that there is no such thing as a female nature, consisting of essentially female qualities. She holds that concepts of femininity are socially constructed and not biologically determined.[1]

At the time de Beauvoir wrote her book, the currently operating social construct was that language in the public domain was very much organised by males and the language in the private domestic world was organised by women. The implication being, that men’s language dealt with the ‘weighty’ issues of the world, whilst women’s language dealt with the domestic trivia.

To this one could also add that, historically, women have only been able to guarantee their economic security through marriage. This meant that sexual relations were also economic relations and therefore, whilst marriage satisfied the problem of the woman’s economic insecurity, it constrained her to the public silence required of her by both society and her husband. At the same time, of course, we could usefully argue that the husband was equally a ‘prisoner of the system’ in that society demanded of him, a wife who obeyed the rules and accepted her socially constructed subordinate role. A husband who could not keep his wife within the limits of expected behaviour, could expect criticism of his failure, from society. The effect of this pressure was to force women into roles that were recurrent stereotypes, virgin, whore, spinster, etc. (p.9)

Grade = First class

[The overall grade is determined by a number of qualities in the work – not simply the introduction.]

Essay introductions – Example 5

Question
Discuss how a scholarly editor of a novel by Charles Dickens might approach the task of establishing an accurate text. You should outline both the practical and theoretical questions involved.

Answer
It is acknowledged in textual criticism that any act of transmission is inherently partial to corruption. Moreover, that when further copies of a text are made new errors can be introduced. The consequences of this means that in novels for instance (subject to compositorial mistakes, deletions and so on), the first and subsequent editions seldom presents the reader with the author’s intentions or even his exact words. As a printed text, Bleak House has been subject to the above conditions. The scholarly editor then is faced with the task of trying to present the text as accurately as Dickens intended, elucidating features which have been obscured by misreadings or the passage of time. The key word here is ‘intended’, for the status of authorial intention has become one the most contentious issues in twentieth century textual theory, and the textual scholar’s choices in editing a critical text (choices which at some point must be conjectural) subject to intense scrutiny.

The problem of intention is closely allied to the choice of copy text (the version on which to base a single edition) – and before the editor decides which version of the novel to adopt as copy-text, he must first consider what system or rationale to use to make these decisions. The most dominant copy-text theory in the second half of the twentieth century has been W.W. Greg’s. Briefly, Greg called into question the then-held belief that the authoritative copy-text should be the last edition published in the author’s lifetime. He proposed that wherever possible the editor should select a copy-text on the basis of its accidentals (punctuation, spelling, and typographical matters such as the use of italics), this being as close as possible to authorial intention (therefore usually a manuscript if one exists), and that this copy-text should be emended when it could be shown that later versions of the text contained substantive changes introduced by the author. After this assimilative process, the editor would then assemble a new eclectic version of the text, one based on editorial interpretation of an author’s putative intentions.

Overall grade=88

[The overall grade is determined by a number of qualities in the work – not simply the introduction.]

© Roy Johnson 2009

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Sample Essay Literary Studies

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Access to further and higher education

This example is from an access course which offers students an introduction to literary studies. It allows them to explore their own potential for the subject before either passing on to ‘A’ level or undergraduate study. The student in this case has a much higher than usual ability in analytic and conceptual skills, and a very firm sense of structure in essay construction. However, because the conventions of academic writing take some time to acquire, there is still plenty of comment to be made about the details of this essay.

Question

Present an analysis of the main characters in Thomas Hardy’s story, ‘The Withered Arm’. In other words, say what we know about them in terms of their physical appearance, their psychological motivation, and their relationship to each other.

Answer

Thomas Hardy tells the story of ‘The Withered Arm’ using three main characters: Rhoda Brook, Farmer Lodge, and Gertrude Lodge; and three subsidiary characters: the son of Farmer Lodge and Rhoda Brook, ‘Conjurer’ Trendle and the executioner Davies. The drama is played out in and around Hardy’s imaginary village of Holmstoke and town of Casterbridge, and the action takes place between the years 1819 and 1825. Rhoda Brook is introduced in the opening paragraphs of the story as a forlorn character – the eternal fallen and abandoned woman.

When the story opens Hardy describes her as thirty-years-old, thin and faded (p.25). But, as the story is developed, he gives many clues to her previous appearance, and a clear picture emerges of a tall, large-framed woman of enduring strength, with well defined features (p.34) dark, handsome eyes (p.27) and an abundance of dark hair. We can appreciate that, at the age of seventeen, it would have been a girl of considerable attraction to whom Farmer Lodge was drawn.

Rhoda’s affair with Lodge gave them a son – who is twelve years old when the story begins. But the relationship does not appear to have endured. Lodge has not spoken to Rhoda for years, (p.26) and always ignores his son whenever he sees him.

Although the relationship is long over for Lodge, it is plain that Rhoda has continued to hold on to the idea that there might be, in time, some sort of compensation for what she must have seen as a ruined life. All chances of such an event happening vanished with the arrival of Gertrude as Lodge’s wife (p.36) but the kind of reparation that lay in Rhoda’s mind is revealed by the importance of the wedding ring with which the spectre in her nightmare torments her (p.31). Rhoda had, it seems, dreamed of marriage and respectability.

Although she has had a hard life, Rhoda is not a hard woman. She is, for example, inclined to be indulgent with her son by allowing him to stay at home instead of sending him to work in the fields (p.36). When she meets Gertrude in the flesh she responds readily to her ‘sweet voice and winning glance’ and quickly forms a good relationship with her which borders on affection.

When Gertrude first reveals to her the blight on her arm, Rhoda feels some elation that the beauty of the young girl has been tarnished (p.36) but she also feels the beginnings of a guilt which is to become obsessive. She is a simple countrywoman strongly inclined towards superstitious beliefs and, during her years of rejection and relative isolation, she knows that she has been called a witch (p.35). Her troubled mind refuses to accept the blight on Gertrude’s arm for the coincidence that it really is (p.34) and she allows herself to believe that she might indeed have some malignant powers and, in fact, be responsible for Gertrude’s suffering.

Gertrude Lodge enters the story as the nineteen year old bride of Farmer Lodge. Hardy gives a clear picture of her appearance at that time through the eyes of Rhoda Brook’s son, who reports back to his mother that Gertrude is a small, pretty young woman, doll-like, with fair hair, blue eyes, and a soft complexion. She is almost the perfect opposite to the tall and darkly handsome Rhoda.

Although little more than a girl, Gertrude is mature and ‘a lady complete’ (p.29) and immediately on her arrival in the village sets about the duties of the yeoman’s wife by bringing gifts to the poorer people in the parish. She is however, timid by nature, and has a natural shyness, as is shown by the ordeal of her first public appearance in church (p.30).

When the blight first appears on her arm Gertrude’s enlightened and educated mind accepts it as a natural misfortune. Although blessed with good looks she is not vain, for she confides to Rhoda that she herself ‘does not much mind it’ (p.36). But she does mind the effect that she thinks it has on Farmer Lodge. She is astute enough to realise that personal appearance is very important to him, and she begins to fear losing his love.

When the suggestion to visit conjurer Trendle is first made, Gertrude rejects the idea out of hand as superstitious nonsense (p.37). But as the condition becomes worse, she abandons reason and is willing to try Trendle’s powers. During the following five years Gertrude’s interest in her arm declines into an obsession, and she becomes ‘irritable and superstitious’ (p.42), seeking a cure in the wildest of remedies from herbs to black magic. The pursuit of a cure demonstrating considerable single-mindedness and strength of purpose.

Although she loves her husband, Gertrude is distanced from him by age and her irrational fears, and is unable to discuss the misery of her affliction calmly with him. She is tortured by the belief that the disappearance of the blight from the arm will re-generate her husband’s lost interest in her, and she summons up all of her dwindling strength to face the awful contact with the freshly-hanged corpse. An encounter which proves altogether too much for her ‘delicate vitality’ (p.54).

In contrast to the liberal and detailed description of the two women, Hardy gives very little information about the physical appearance of Farmer Lodge. He is, at the time of his marriage to Gertrude, about forty years old (p.25) and in the prime of his life. We are told that his face is clean-shaven, and has a ‘bluish vermilion hue’, which suggests a very dark-haired man, otherwise there are no clues on which to build a picture.

Lodge is a man of considerable means, the inheritor of land which has been owned by his family for over two hundred years (p.42). He is a proud man, and given to ostentation. He brings his new wife home in a bright, handsome new gig (p.27) wears ‘great seals’ in his waistcoat, and swells with pride when he makes his first public appearance with his bride (p.30). Appearances do seem to be important to him.

Lodge’s behaviour during the telling of the story shows him to be an enigma. He is able, publicly, to ignore his son completely (p.29) and yet harbour notions of adopting him. He is unable to give Gertrude the comfort and reassurance that she needs when the blight first appears and flies into a fury at the mention of superstitious village beliefs (p.45). He is however gentle enough to her when he suggests ‘for her own good’ (p.42) that she rids herself of her hoard of quack cures.

He becomes ‘gloomy and silent’ (p.41) as time passes, but in spite of Gertrude’s distress gives her no real cause to think that he has ceased to love her. He does not appear to have contributed any of his considerable wealth towards the upkeep of Rhoda and his son, for they live in a dilapidated cottage, relying for their living on Rhoda’s hard work as a milkmaid and the boy’s occasional poaching (p.30). And yet in Rhoda’s hour of desperate need he takes time away from his business to attend the trial of his son, and appears with Rhoda to claim his corpse for burial (p.53); although he has no tears to shed for the boy. His subsequent softening of character is as puzzling as the rest of his behaviour.

Of the minor characters in the story much less detail is given. The ill-fated boy – we are provided with no name or physical description – is bright-minded, perceptive and impressionable when judged by his reports about Gertrude Lodge (p.30). But there are suggestions of the lack of discipline – his carving of the chair (p.27) reluctance to work in the fields (p.32) and his poaching – which led him into the trouble which bring his life to a tragically early end. There is an interesting comparison between the grey-bearded, red-faced Trendle, who affects not to believe in his powers, and the hangman Davies, an old man who earns his living as a jobbing gardener, but who insists that his ‘real calling ‘ is that of an Officer of Justice (p.50).

Hardy takes quite unrelated happenings and links them through bitterness and superstition to produce this gloomy drama. The affair between Rhoda and Lodge, and her subsequent rejection with the burden of an illegitimate child, sets the seeds of bitterness which Lodge’s eventual marriage to enter Rhoda’s frustrated mind. Gertrude’s unfortunate but natural affliction becomes, for Rhoda, a source of guilt fed by superstition and her own unhappiness. Gertrude’s fear of losing Lodge’s love displaces her natural reason and deteriorates into an obsession. Lodge’s inability to give comfort and reassurance to his young wife allows her mental anguish to fester for years and leads her to seek the most outrageous of cures. The boy’s lack of discipline leads to the grisly scene which brings them all together again for the last time.

Tutor comment

This is a first rate piece of work Ken. You have obviously read the story very attentively, and the remarks you make about it indicate a mature perception. You also give plenty of evidence of ‘close reading’ – that is, paying scrupulously close attention to the text in its detail. I was also struck by the very firm control you have over your material: the sense of a solid and well-planned structure was very striking.

The only thing I felt was missing was that there might have been a little more explication of the change in Gertrude’s nature as she becomes more distressed. Her moral deterioration might then have been linked to Hardy’s sense of ‘tragic fatalism’ which is very strong in this story.

You have made very good progress on the course, and you are now operating at a level which is the equivalent of university undergraduate studies. This gets an A- grade on this course.

© 2003

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Sample Essay Sociology

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Second year university undergraduate study

Students working at this level are required to show that they are developing confidence in their grasp of their chosen subject and beginning to develop their powers of independent and critical examination. They should by this stage be able to produce fluent and well argued responses to essay topics and questions, and show that they are conversant with the set texts and the secondary literature of criticism and commentary in their subject. They should by now be at ease with the conventions of academic writing and if they have any flair or originality it is around this stage that it is likely to show. They may also be required to produce essays of up to 3000 words in length as part of assessed course work. The example is from a second year course dealing with issues in sociological thought.

Question

What is the value of studying the writings of dead men? Is sociology too obsessed with the classics?

Answer

The glib and superficial answer to the first part of this question is that the work of the great thinkers of the past has an influence on the present, and is therefore worthy of consideration. Perhaps, however, this answer is not as glib as it appears at first sight, but is indeed founded on a fundamental truth. In this essay I shall attempt to argue that this is in fact the case, and that the classical legacy of sociology quite rightly exerts a strong influence on contemporary thought.

Comte, Spencer, Marx, Weber, Simmel and Durkheim: nineteenth century names whose influence on modern society can be realised by a brief survey of the terminology used in dealing with almost any social issue today. It is impossible to talk of politics, poverty, education, work, or religion without recourse to concepts of class, status, alienation and anomie; of structure, interaction or social phenomena – all issues which were rigorously studied and researched by these earlier masters.

Auguste Comte first coined the term sociology in the early nineteenth century. Living as he did in the wake of the French Revolution, and at a time of tremendous social upheaval, instability and disorganisation, he must have felt a great need to produce a rational system of thought which would explain the social behaviour of men, and offer some sort of counter-balance to the seemingly destructive nature of organised groups. Comte was, of course, influenced by the science and reason of the Enlightenment. He was interested in the progress of science and felt that human intelligence had evolved to a stage where it could provide a scientific explanation of human behaviour. Comte’s interest was in the methodology of social research and his approach was a positivist one: all knowledge should be subject to canons of verification in terms of experience. Comte’s credo can be summed up in the words “To know in order to predict and to predict in order to control” (Coser and Rosenberg, 1964, p.2).

It is this question of control which, Dawe argues, is at the root of conflict within modern sociology. If we view sociology as having been shaped by the conservative reaction to the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, then we must see sociology itself as a response to the problem of social order. Conservative thinkers, most notably Burke, sought a restoration of social order in the face of the subversive, anti-religious rationalism of the Enlightenment, the traumatic chaos of the French Revolution and, later, the evils of industrialisation. Thus Comte’s holistic view of society as an organic community became linked to concepts of authority. Conservative reaction confirmed Hobbes’s view of men’s lives as “solitary, poor, nasty, mean, brutish and short” (Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt I, Ch.13). Therefore, men needed constraints in order for society to function above the level of animals. The internalisation of these constraints is a feature of Durkheim’s work on moral solidarity, and also in Weber’s study of bureaucracy.

However, we can also view sociology as springing directly from the ideas of the Enlightenment, in which case we are dealing with ideas of human liberation and individual freedom. In this case, the problem is one of control: how can humans regain control over man-made institutions? Hence there is a contradiction between the construction of an external social system which exercises constraints, and the more subjective concept of social action. The social system theory argues that in order to provide for individual well-being, society exists before its participants: a view subscribed to by Durkheim. The social action theory argues that man is essentially autonomous and only able to create a social order when freed from constraints – as argued by Marx.

Thus there is a tension, not only between differing sociological ideas; mechanical versus organic, atomism versus holism, individualism versus collectivism; but also within the works of individual sociologists. Therefore we have Durkheim’s ideal of “a sociology justifying rationalist individualism but also preaching respect for collectivist norms” (Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, 1968, p.97). There is also Marx’s conflict between his humanitarian ideal of socially creative man and his pessimistic view of the nature of nineteenth century capitalists.

Gouldner (1971) also argues that there is ambiguity and conflict inherent in sociology in that culture and society are man-made creations, but take on a life of their own quite apart from their creator. It could be argued that it is this autonomous nature of society which makes it worthy of scientific study. In this way, sociology can be seen as a response to the alienation of men from the society which they have created. But if sociology retains the idea of man as creator, then it has a potentially liberating capacity.

So, a powerful argument for the importance of studying classical theorists is that they have been influenced by the earlier events of history; thus they represent a continuity in human wisdom. But what about criticisms of the continuing importance of what may appear to be anachronistic theories? Do such ideas have any contemporary relevance? Why study sociology at all?

Perhaps it is helpful to start with the last question. It is often suggested that the concept of “society” is merely an abstraction and therefore not a viable subject for study. For instance, if we accept that there is no society, only individuals, sociology can be subsumed by psychology. Philosophers have spent centuries arguing about the concept of language and how we name things. On the one hand, everything can be seen as a particular and individual form, whether we are discussing tomatoes or people. On the other hand, we do abstract general terms for reality, so that we can observe enough resemblance between things we recognise; for example, a particular style of painting or architecture, or to discuss such concepts as Protestantism, liberalism, racism, or feminism.

All these are collective phenomena, and all conform to Durkheim’s view that “the whole does not equal the sum of its parts; it is something different” (Durkheim, 1982, p.128). Therefore sociology differs from psychology, because society is a collection of individuals in association, it is a group, a separate entity which acts and exerts influence and force over its individual members. We may all become extremely well-balanced individuals by means of expert psycho-analysis, but in life we have to interact with others and make sense of the way in which they behave.

Is sociology too theoretical and divorced from real life? Certainly theory was of prime importance to nineteenth century thinkers on the subject, although the practical application of such theories was frequently the ultimate objective. The emphasis on theory stemmed from the desire to create a social science, and no one would deny the importance of theory in physical sciences. They can solve practical problems when allied with research, and this is exactly what the classicists attempted. One thinks of Durkheim’s work on suicide, of the hours spent by Marx in the British Museum, and of Engels’ empirical work on new industrial cities such as Manchester. It is equally important to remember that no single theory is an absolute truth. In order to have contemporary relevance, sociology must develop and adapt, just as science has evolved and made new discoveries. But the basic tenets of any ‘ology’ retain their significance. Although modern physics has evolved at a phenomenal rate, no scientist would deny the importance of Newton’s discovery of the laws of motion.

Perhaps another criticism of sociology is that it is just based on common sense. Certainly many sociological statements do appear to be stating the obvious. “Two’s company: three’s a crowd” might be one interpretation of Simmel’s work on the dyad and the triad. Nonetheless, how many laymen stop to examine what lies behind the obvious fact that a close relationship between two people is altered by the arrival of a third person.

In the same way, wise women and herbalists have prescribed remedies without knowing why they work: for example, the use of dried foxgloves as a heart stimulant without knowing about the existence of digitalis. There can be a world of difference between knowing that something works and understanding why – a difference which can sometimes be crucial in terms of life and death.

Modern studies of society are ineluctably linked with the writings of Marx, Weber and Durkheim, whether in agreement with them or in conflict. Capitalism, class, status, bureaucracy, and organicism are all issues of contemporary concern. One cannot envisage a study of work, for instance, which does not consider the tension generated between capital and labour. Sociology itself is subject to criticism on the grounds of class. The Left attacks its practitioners as being too middle-class and, therefore, afraid and incapable of inquiring too deeply into areas which the rich and powerful wish to protect. Alternatively, the Right views sociology as a hotbed of subversive radicalism. None of these arguments would be possible without the work of Marx.

Nor is it possible to discuss bureaucracy, social interaction or the work ethic without first referring to Weber’s studies. Weber’s work on the Protestant ethic and capitalism is particularly valuable for the way in which it linked two apparently unconnected ideas, and also for its notion of unintended consequences. Certainly the works of the classical theorists have sometimes had consequences unintended by their authors. It might be interesting to speculate on what these dead men would make of modern sociology.

The creative imaginations of the nineteenth century thinkers sparked off ideas which led them to attempt to construct whole social systems which were based on theory and verified by scientific data and research. No doubt they would have welcomed many of the further developments and specialisations which have followed, although it is difficult to imagine what they would have made of such subjects as the sociology of jazz, or of sleep. The important thing about all these sub-divisions is that they are but particular manifestations of the overall study of men’s social relationships.

One significant feature of the classical legacy is that it cast a totally different perspective on history. It enabled us to escape from ‘Whig’ history, from the ‘Great Men’ accounts of the past, and to allow for the importance of individuals; of the social conditions in which people lived as well as the outcome of political battles. In The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills argues that the purpose of sociology is to provide this link between biography and history; between personal problems and public issues. Thus men see themselves as “minute points of the intersections of biography and history within society” (Mills, 1959, p.7).

The success of this idea can be seen in the increasing popularity of social history and in the number of Marxist historians such as Eric Hobsbawm, E.P. Thompson, and Christopher Hill, who have provided new angles on our interpretation of past events via the study of individual lives. As Engels remarked in his letter to Bloch in 1890, “the ultimately determining factor in history is the production and reproduction of real life.”

Men are conscious and active, therefore sociology must remain conscious and active. Of course we must beware of falling into the trap of accepting classical theories as unchallengeable conventional wisdoms: it is doubtful whether knowledge as absolute truth exists in the field of the social sciences. Nonetheless, the works of the founding fathers of sociology contain much of relevance and value and a study of their works may save us the task of re-discovering certain basic facts.

The one thing all these thinkers have in common is that they were trying to provide solutions to the problems of human existence. As science rationalised the physical world, so the desire to rationalise human activity became stronger. It may well be that human behaviour is essentially subjective and incapable of being totally understood. This may not be such a bad thing. The implications otherwise are that whole groups of people could be subject to experiments in social engineering. Nevertheless, it seems certain that people will never stop trying to make sense of the often chaotic conditions in which they find themselves. If that is the case, then we ignore history at our peril: a refusal to learn from the mistakes of the past can only lead to a repetition of such errors. The great men of sociology’s past have at least provided us with some ammunition to protect ourselves against such eventualities.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coser, L. & Rosenberg, B., Sociological Theory, Macmillan, 1964.

Durkheim, E., The Rules of Sociological Method, Macmillan, 1982.

C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, O.U.P., 1959.

Thompson, K. & Tunstall, J., Sociological Perspectives, Penguin, 1971, (especially essays by Dawe, A. ‘The Two Sociologies’ (1970) and Gouldner, A. ‘Sociology’s Basic Assumptions’ (1971) in the above).

Tutor Comment

This is an elegant and thoughtful essay which covers a lot of the central issues. You might possibly have mentioned the gender issue – that these were literally ‘founding fathers’ – but this might have made for another and much longer essay. This is a well argued defence of the classic tradition with some interesting illustrations.

Mark – a clear 1st – 75 plus.

© 2003

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Searching the Internet

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Search engines

1. Searching the internet is the quickest way to locate data when researching for an essay or term paper. For this you will need a search engine. The most popular without a doubt is Google, but there are others – such as Alta-Vista, Yahoo, and Infoseek.

2. Remember that anybody can put data on the Net. You need to evaluate the quality of the information you recover.

3. Always give full details of the source of any information you use. There are new conventions for citing electronic sources.

4. A search engine will scan its database (or the Net itself) for whatever word(s) you type in the FIND box. It will then return a number of ‘hits’ – possibly rated according to likely significance.

5. Most of the popular search engines use slightly different methods and databases. If you don’t find what you want with one, try another. Some will quote the first few lines of an extract.

Search techniques

6. Be as specific and ‘narrow’ as possible in defining your request. General and ‘wide’ requests will result in too many hits. For example…

7. Say you were researching pineapple production in Brazil in 1997. A search on ‘pineapple’ might result in 10,000 hits. You have ten thousand documents to evaluate!

8. But choosing ‘pineapples+Brazil+1997’ narrows the search to documents which include all these terms.

Boolean terms

9. Most search engines will recognise the use of terms which help you to narrow your request.

10. ‘Bacon AND tomato’ will locate documents which contain both these terms.

11. ‘Bacon OR tomato’ will locate documents which contain either of these terms.

12. ‘Bacon NOT tomato’ will locate documents which contain one term, but not the other.

13. You can also use keyboard symbols to refine a search. The wildcard [*] is powerful but should be used with care. A search for ‘Colum*’ would return Columbus, Columbia, Columbian, Column, and so on.

General points

14. Letter case doesn’t matter with most search engines. ‘Smith’, ‘smith’ and ‘SMITH’ are all the same.

15. Don’t assume the data you are looking for must be available on line.

16. Thousands of pages are added to the Web daily, but the total is still far less than the volume of printed material in big libraries.

17. Many search engines will now allow you to narrow your searches by

  • language (Spanish, English French)
  • date (in last 2/3 days, week, month)
  • continent (co.uk, com.ca, ac.au)
  • source (Web, newsgroups, companies)

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Self-plagiarism – how to avoid it

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how to understand and avoid self-plagiarism

What is self-plagiarism?

Self-plagiarism is literally copying your own work. It can occur when quoting your own work without acknowledgement, or when you use the same piece of work for two different purposes.

Plagiarism is commonly defined as “taking someone else’s ideas or words and trying to pass them off as your own original work”. Self-plagiarismMost people understand the rules. If you quote from somebody else’s work, you put the words in quote marks and acknowledge the source, either as part of your text or in an endnote or footnote. Details of how to use quotations accurately are a separate issue. These conventions allow a reader to check the validity of the claims being made, the accuracy of the quotation, and to see (if necessary) how the quotation was used in its original context.

However, what if the words quoted were written by the same author of the text in question? Does this constitute plagiarism? If plagiarism is thought of as an issue of ‘ownership’, it would seem that it’s impossible to steal from yourself. But a number of cases exist where the re-use of your own work can easily become self-plagiarism.

Self-plagiarism in academic writing

It’s not normally permitted to submit a piece of work witten for one course and award as a submission for part of another. That is, a dissertation on The Poetry of Thomas Hardy written for a BA in English Literature cannot be re-submitted as part of the requirements for a separate MA course in’ Landscape and Literature’.

Even though the writing is an original piece of work by the author, academic rules forbid the re-use of material in this way. Dissertation and thesis rules normally stipulate that the material submitted for the award of a degree must not have appeared anywhere else before. Attempts to use the same material for two different purposes is sometimes known as ‘double-dipping’.

Academic authors are under a great deal of pressure to publish more and more of their research findings. This sometimes leads to the practice of publishing the same research data, with a slightly different analytic commentary. This is classed as duplicate or redundant publishing, and is severely frowned on by publishers. It is sometimes know as ‘Salami-slicing’.

The converse of this practice is known as ‘data augmentation’. This occurs when an already-published piece of work is re-published with new data, as if it were a new piece of work. This too is frowned on by the academic community and is regarded as a form of self-plagiarism.

Self-plagiarism and copyright

When a piece of work is published, copyright is automatically established, and rests with the original author. In contracts between publishers and authors, the author normally agrees to share copyright with the publisher. This means that the publisher is free to publish and re-use the author’s material (usually to the author’s benefit) and the author is normally allowed to maintain ownership of the work.

But if the author then re-cycles the work in question and publishes it elsewhere, this creates a case of both self-plagiarism and breach of copyright – since the original publisher may share copyright to the material.

Text recycling

Some parts of an academic paper may relate to research methods and procedures. The researcher describes accurately the sequence of events, the materials used, and the procedures of the research project. It’s quite likely that these will be the same in another experiment or piece of research of a similar kind.

There is therefore a great temptation to use templates of ‘boilerplate’ descriptions which can be re-used from one piece of research to the next. This is currently a contentious area of self-plagiarism, but it is worth noting that is is very easy to detect.

Citation stuffing

Academic authors are often rated according to how many times their work is quoted in academic papers and journals. Authors therefore have an built-in temptation to quote from their own work as much as possible – no matter how relevant it might be to the subject under discussion. In its worst cases, when authors articifically quote themselves for the sake of increasing the number of their own citations, this is therefore regarded as a form of self-plagiarism.

Fortunately, this is reasonably easy to detect, but it is a practice which is likely to continue so long as it is encouraged by publishers – who themselves also have an interest in their papers and journals being cited, thus enhancing their reputation.

You can perhaps see that there are very subtle links between academic honesty, accuracy of quotation, referencing, and the economics of both publishing and academic career structures. It is not the polite gentleman’s club that many people might imagine.

Internet publishing

Self-plagiarism is a very easy trap to fall into on the Internet. It’s possible to write an article, then publish it to a web site or a personal blog. Having done that, there is nothing to stop you posting the same article on another web site which aggregates similar materials. The article appears twice – with or without acknowledgement. This creates what in academic publishing is known as duplicate or redundant publication.

Unless you are a well-known author, few people are likely to complain, but it is worth noting that since Google will index the same article twice, the web page will immediately be given a lower ranking by Google, because it contains ‘duplicate material’. In terms of search engine rankings, the second instance of the article is competing against the first.

Newspaper journalists are faced with this problem all the time. But many of them now make a clear distinction between the articles they write as part of their contract with the newspaper, and the occasional smaller pieces they post onto personal blogs.

Re-cycling

Some people argue that if a piece of writing is published in a different context, for a different audience, then there can be little possibility of offence. The text may be re-edited to suit the new audience. But strictly speaking, this would still be plagiarism, unless the original source was acknowledged with a note such as: “This article first appeared as ‘Travels through Norther Italy’ in Atlantic Monthly Vol XII, number 28.”

Commercial publishing

One newspaper or magazine will occasionally reprint and article which has already been published elsewhere. The publisher usually does this fully conscious of the fact – and the article is likely to be followed by a note to its original source: “This article first appeared in Weekend magazine July 2010. The author may even be paid twice, but would not be accused of plagiarism, because no attempt to conceal the original source is being made.

Books which go out of print are occasionally re-printed by a separate publisher who see further commercial potential in the work. In such cases there will be an acknowledgement on the page listing publishing details – such as ‘First published by Acorn Books 1992’.

© Roy Johnson 2011

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Semicolons in essays

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sample from HTML program and PDF book

1. If you are in any doubt at all concerning the correct use of semicolons – then avoid using them entirely. They are the most commonly misused and misunderstood mark of punctuation.

2. It is perfectly possible to write clearly and effectively using only the comma and the full stop. Do this if you are in any doubt about the use of the semicolon (and the colon).

3. Remember that the semicolon represents a pause which is longer than a comma but shorter than a full stop (and a colon). It is normally used to separate clauses which could stand alone, but which are closely related.

4. It is used when the second clause expands or explains the first:

Neither of us spoke; we merely waited patiently in silence to see what would happen next.

5. It is used when the clauses describe a sequence of actions or different aspects of the same topic:

There was a sharp, bracing air; the ground beneath us was dry; the sea was calm and clear.

6. It is used before clauses which begin with ‘nevertheless’, ‘therefore’, ‘even so’, and ‘for instance’:

He usually took great care; even so he made a few errors.

7. It is used to mark off a series of phrases or clauses which themselves contain commas:

For this exercise you will need the following materials: some scrap paper; a pen, preferably blue or black; some A4 envelopes; and some good, white, unlined writing paper.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Sentences in essays

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sample from HTML program and PDF book

1. Short, clear, and simple sentences are usually more effective than those which are long and complex. Avoid piling up clause upon clause. In the majority of essays, you should aim for clarity and simplicity in your written style. If in doubt, remember this rule: Keep it short. Keep it simple.

2. Punctuate your work firmly, making a clear distinction in your writing between marks such as the comma, the semicolon, and the full stop.

3. Remember that all sentences without exception must begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop.

4. Remember that the common word order (syntax) of a simple sentence written in English is as follows:

subject – verb – object

The cat eats the goldfish
Elephants like grass
We are the best team

If you are in any doubt at all, follow this pattern. Sentences which go out of grammatical control often lack one of these elements, or they have them placed in a different order.

5. You should avoid starting sentences with words such as ‘Again’, ‘Although’, ‘But’, ‘And’, ‘Also’, and ‘With’. These words are called conjunctions, which normally belong in the ‘middle’ of a sentence, not at its beginning. Sentences which begin with a conjunction are very often left grammatically incomplete.

6. Remember that speech and writing are two different forms of communication. Avoid the use of a casual or conversational style when writing. For instance don’t string together clauses which are grammatically unrelated. This is quite normal in speech, but it should be avoided in formal writing.

7. What follows is an example of a statement which has too many unrelated clauses, which goes on too long, and which eventually skids out of grammatical control.

Less smoking would undoubtedly lead to redundancies in the tobacco industry, a consequent rise in the number of unemployed, more people dependent upon State benefits to be supported by a government with subsequently reduced income.

8. The same arguments can be expressed far more clearly and effectively by splitting them up into two separate and shorter sentences. (I have also made one or two minor changes to enhance the sense.)

Less smoking would undoubtedly lead to redundancies in the tobacco industry and a consequent rise in the number of unemployed. More people would then become dependent upon State benefits, which would have to be paid out by a government with a reduced income.

9. Most problems in sentence construction are caused by two or three closely related factors:

  • The sentence is much too long.
  • Too many unrelated clauses.
  • The sentence starts with its verb or object, rather than the subject.
  • The sentence start with a conjunction (‘although’, ‘because’).

10. The solution to this problem is worth repeating:

Keep it short. Keep it simple.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Signposting in essays

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sample from HTML program and PDF book

1. In most essays (up to 3000 words) you should avoid ‘signposting’ your argument. That is, you do not need to use expressions such as

‘Later in this essay I will be discussing…’
‘Let us now go on to consider…’
‘As I demonstrated earlier…’
‘We will now turn to evaluate another example…’

2. Just state clearly the point of your arguments and leave them to speak for themselves, uncluttered by any direction indicators. You do not need to offer a commentary on what you have already said, or what you will be saying later. In a well-planned essay, this progression should be self-evident from the arrangement of your work.

3. A sound essay plan and a coherent structure will reveal the logic of your argument and the relationship of its parts. If you have, for instance, four main topics to discuss, simple state clearly what those topics are, then deal with them separately, one after the other.

4. Each new topic should be clearly identified or defined as soon as you begin dealing with it. This statement will provide all the indication needed of your intentions. Remember that each paragraph should deal with just one principal stage or item of your argument. Each new topic requires a separate paragraph.

5. If you wish to some light indication of structure, it is perfectly acceptable to use formulations such as

‘The first reason … The second…’
‘On one hand … on the other…’
‘However, the main argument against this is…’

These statements will demonstrate that you have control of your argument.

6. Remember that although an essay may take many hours to write, it will only take a few minutes to read. Signposting is only necessary in very long pieces of work. Even then, skillful writers will integrate any direction indicators into their work as unobtrusively as possible.

7. The conventions on signposting may vary slightly from one subject to another. In some of the sciences it is necessary to announce in advance what you will be writing about. However, these pieces of work are likely to be closer to experimental reports than continuous prose arguments.

8. Similarly, in some branches of psychology or linguistics, students may sometimes be required to offer a meta-critique of a written assignment. They will be expected to describe what they are writing. This is to demonstrate their awareness of the processes in which they are engaged.

9. With these few exceptions, you should not normally comment on the manner in which you have written an essay. Your tutor doesn’t need to know in what order you assembled your evidence, or what difficulties you encountered during its composition. Some students try to disarm possible criticism by announcing in advance how difficult the question was to answer. Your tutor will already know its degree of difficulty, and doesn’t need to be told again.

10. However, you may wish to argue that the question raises a certain number of difficulties or crucial issues. This is acceptable – so long as you say what they are. You should then go on to discuss their relevance to the subject in question, and maybe even suggest some answers to them.

11. The conventions on signposting in report writing are different. Reports are normally written to a pre-determined structure or set of headings. These provide the sequence of events which in a conventional essay have to be constructed by the author.

12. A report of an investigation or an experiment will also have its own sequence of events, so it will be quite acceptable to use expressions such as ‘First the X was added to the Y … and then Z occurred … The results were then analysed and are shown in Table One’.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Spelling checkers used for essays

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sample from HTML program and PDF book

1. Most word-processors have spelling checkers these days. You should use the checker before printing out your documents. This should form part of your regular editing procedures.

2. Checking your work with a spell-checker will help to highlight and correct commonly mis-spelt words such as ‘accommodation’, ‘parallel’, ‘recommend’, and ‘silhouette’.

3. The checker will also highlight mis-keyed words such as ‘hte’ for ‘the’ or ‘nad’ for ‘and’. You may either choose the correct word from a list, or the processor may offer you the opportunity to reverse the mis-keyed letters. [The latest even perform this function automatically.]

4. It will not be able to recognise specialist terms and unusual proper nouns – names such as Schumacher, Derrida, or Nabokov. These will not be in the processor’s memory. You will have to check the correct spelling of these yourself, as you would do with any other unusual words.

5. Remember that a spell-checker will not alert you to a mistake if you write ‘They washed there own clothes’ instead of ‘They washed their own clothes’. That’s because the word ‘there’ is spelt correctly even though it is being used ungrammatically in this sentence. The same would be true of ‘It is over hare’ instead of ‘It is over here’. That’s because ‘hare’ exists in its own right as a correctly spelt word.

6. Most spell-checkers will spot unwanted double words such as ‘going to to the fair’, and will offer you the opportunity to delete the second occurrence. But they will not notice anything wrong with a word broken by a space such as ‘to morrow’. That’s because these two terms exist in their own right as separate words.

7. The checker will not alert you to any mistake if you key the word ‘practice’ instead of ‘practise’, because both words exist separately. The same would be true of ‘advise’ and ‘advice’. [Most grammar-checkers will alert you to these common problems.]

8. If you decide to add to the processor’s memory names which are frequently used in your own subject discipline (Freud, Jung, Adler or Marx, Engels, Bukharin) make sure that you enter them correctly spelt.

9. Beware of adding too many names which might be thrown up in the checking of your document. Some proper nouns may be the same as mis-spelt words. If you were to add ‘Fischer’ to the dictionary as a name, this would mean that the spell-checker would not alert you to a problem if you mis-keyed ‘fisher’ as ‘fischer’.

10. Beware of adding to your processor’s dictionary just because it is easy and seems a profitable thing to do. You might for instance add your own postcode of ‘SE9 6OY’ – but if you then mis-keyed the word ‘TOY’ as ‘6OY’ the spell-checker would not then be able to pick up your mistake. It would assume that you wished to regard ‘6OY’ as an acceptable ‘word’.

11. A spell check is usually performed after all your text has been generated and edited. However, there are good arguments for using the checker at earlier stages. Layout and spacing might be affected; the document will be in a reasonably good condition at any given stage; and it may eliminate the necessity for a search and-replace procedure at a later stage.

12. Finally, here is a cautionary (and amusing) ditty which might help you to remember some of these points:

‘My New Spell Checker’

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

[Sauce unknown]

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Spelling Guide

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beginner’s simple guide to spelling and language

Spelling worries many people. Understandably so, because mistakes in spelling are often regarded as a black mark in terms of literacy and written competence. Oxford University Press have just brought out a series of short beginners’ guides on communication skills. The emphasis is on compact, no-nonsense advice directly related to issues of everyday life. In his Spelling Guide Robert Allen takes a reassuring line in explaining why spelling is difficult in English, and he offers a variety of solutions to the problem.

Spelling Guide Beginners in particular will find his approach very helpful, and even advanced users will probably learn a thing or two. He starts by showing you how to use dictionaries, then how to use spell-checkers. He explains how and why English spellings have often become so irregular. And fortunately, he also explains the cases where some rules do apply.

Some of his advice tips over into tutorials on the nature of language – quite rightly. For instance, one good tip for many people is that the apostrophe in terms such as who’s and it’s stands for a missing letter. Knowing this might help you to understand the spelling, and help you put the apostrophe in the right place.

He deals with all the most common problems – not only the most notorious misplaced apostrophe, but the s/z issue in words such as realise/realize, and word endings, especially the doubling of consonants in words such as regret/regretted. (Yet it’s target/targeted – how strange!)

There’s a whole chapter explaining why spelling is such a complex issue. Basically, it’s because English is comprised of so many different languages. The influence of Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, French, and German are all still actively present.

The second half of the book is a series of checklists of ‘problem’ words – short (weird) long (accommodation) confusables accept/except) noun and verb forms (advice/advise) how to choose the right ending (stationary/stationery) verb endings (finalize/surprise) irregular plurals (banjos/zeros) and words with Latin and Greek endings (addendum/vortex).

The chapters of this book are short, but almost every page is rich in hints and tips. The strength of this approach is that it avoids the encyclopedic volume of advice which in some manuals can be quite frightening. This is a book which will reassure those who need it.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Robert Allen, Spelling, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp.128, ISBN: 0198603835

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