communication- research method

Remember: Your intended audience is NOT your professor; it’s a person who is interested and capable of understanding the material you develop and who is looking to you to explain it in enough depth so that they know what you know.

Remember one more thing: You are NOT writing the research paper – That would / could come later when you undertake a Capstone or other major paper. You ARE writing a proposal for the research paper. This Proposal will allow you to complete a WTE Declaration and Activity Report and begin at Week One of a Capstone semester fully prepared to move forward and complete the project in 13-14 week.

Section: Annotated Bibliography

I would develop or draft this section first.

Include both scholarly sources relating to specific qualitative approaches and media / cultural sources relating to the event or situation that is your focus.

Include and cite specific chapters in the textbook (e.g., Narrative Approaches, Autoethnography). Don’t cite the textbook as a whole. Refer to the APA guides for citation form (“chapter in an edited book”)

There are strong scholarly sources (which we’ve covered in class) in the Readings folder (e.g., Goodall, Fisher, Burke, Ellis in Shepard …)

The annotations will help you develop other sections of the paper such as Literature Review and discussion of possible theories that will be used in the actual research paper when / if it’s undertaken.

Section: Literature Review

See the posted file in Support that describes how to do a simple literature review for an academic paper.

In this proposal, your literature review will go into some depth as to the body of knowledge you’ve developed (and are sharing with your reader) about qualitative CN Studies research generally and the three specific approaches you are considering related to your topic (Case Study. Autoethnography. Pentadic Analysis.)

It should help to establish a sound rationale as to why your choice of approach for your topic is the best one.

Section: Theoretical Basis

In this section, you will define and discuss the three possible qualitative approaches you consider AND the theories underlying these.

Specifically, for pentadic analysis: Pentadic analysis is the method. Dramatism and other Burkean theories and concepts are the theoretical foundation – and the entire point of doing pentadic analysis.

Burkean concepts include: Symbol mis-using. Hierarchy. “The Negative.” “Identification by division.” Guilt and the scapegoat process (“Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle”). “Rotten with perfection” (which creates guilt due to humans’ urge to compare against others and establish hierarchy). …And so on…