Graduate Research Writing
Week 1
Research is all around us, in every part of our daily life. Don't be too burdened by the prospect of researching for your thesis.
“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him [sic]; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself [sic] against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress."
- Kenneth Burke
“intellectual understanding is one of the best versions of the Golden Rule: Listen to others as you would have others listen to you. Precise demonstration of truth is important but not as important as the communal pursuit of it. When addressing someone else’s ideas, your obligation is to treat them as you believe all human beings ought to treat one another’s ideas.”
- Wayne C. Booth, My Many Selves: The Quest for a Plausible Harmony