Linguistics

Week 3 assignment for Final Paper Draft

You will prepare a first draft for your Final Paper. Your Final Paper must only expand on the first draft submitted here. The goal of creating this first draft is to help prepare and organize your writing for your Final Paper, which is to be based on original research on a speech event.

The first draft should follow the format that a typical research proposal follows:

Title: 10 to 12 words maximum

Research Objective (what you aim to find): State your research questions in the present and/or the future tense. Present them in relation to the eight components of the S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G model. Consult p. 163-179 of your textbook and Dr. Milburn’s Ethnography of Communication (Links to an external site.) at http://www.cios.org/encyclopedia/ethnography/index.htm
http://www.cios.org/encyclopedia/ethnography/index.htm
Literature Review: This is the section where you will discuss the five sources you used to do research on the culture you chose. It will contain a more in-depth explanation of your research objectives by contextualizing it within a body of scholarly literature. Do not start explaining the books and articles you read. Take a few points from each source that provided information about your culture. Then, utilize those ideas, combined with a mix of paraphrasing and quoting, to explain the culture. Do not just put quotes around the author’s words and reiterate everything you found out about the culture. Find a few, short sentences to quote. The rest of the information should be paraphrased (i.e., changed into your own words). Avoid plagiarism at all costs. Make sure you provide proper in-text citations when quoting and paraphrasing. Make sure you relate the sources to the S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G model and other concepts in the textbook.

Methodology: Expand upon the information you provided in your assignment in Week One. Address the ethical considerations pertaining to your research, the group you will observe, and how/when you will conduct your observations. What do you expect to find in your research, based upon your literature review?

Personal Rationale: Reflect on your hypothesis on the significance of the project, what you think you will find, and what factors you think will affect, limit and/or expand your observation. This reflection will be informed by the research you’ve done for your literature review. Come up with at least two research questions that you will address during the course of your observations. You don’t have to report on your observations in this assignment, but keep in mind that you will have to integrate your literature review with your observations. After doing your observations, you may want to revisit your literature review and expand up on it, depending upon the content of your observations.

Conclusion: Summarize major findings, point to further directions for research on this type of speech event. The conclusion never introduces new ideas. Your conclusion should summarize your research statement.