Graduate Writing as the Burkean Parlor:Expectations for Entering the Conversation

Kevin Eric DePew

The Burkean Parlor"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; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself 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."

Your Work Should…

• Have an argument• Support this argument• Critically engage existing scholarship• Pay attention to how scholars arrive at their

conclusions• Not defer authority to existing scholarship• Contribute to existing scholarship

Research • Find out what has already been said on the

topic (i.e., literature review) • Determine who the important voices are;

acknowledge them• Since you are writing to an audience in a

specific field focus on the resources they value

• If you are blazing a new trail, practice creative extrapolation

Doing Textual Research

• Go to library indexes • Use the internet (search engines and book

store searches; also Google scholar and Google books

• Use article and book bibliographies• Listservs related to your topic

Mediating the Conversation• You should lead the conversation by

focusing on your argument • Put other scholars into conversation with

each other – Show where they are similar and different;

create camps– Explain ideas that are useful– Acknowledge the nuances of their arguments

Your Contribution

• Develop a framework by reasonably pulling what is useful out of other’s scholarship– You will have to justify your decisions

• To illustrate your argument apply it to a specific example

• Depending upon constraints, choose the the best, most representative examples

• Acknowledge important inconsistencies among your examples