Linguistics

I wrote this proposal for my English class in the spring of 2017. The assignment was to propose a discourse study that would systematically explore a particular concept, problem, or question dealing with written discourse that we learned about in the class. We were also tasked with convincing our readers that we were the right researchers to carry out our study. Basically, we needed to review a literature that motivates a problem, argue for a plan of analysis, and provide a brief sample of that analysis in the proposal. A helpful guideline that was offered for the proposal was as a breakdown of what we should include in each section as well as a rough estimate of how long each section should be. For example, the methods section should have been about two single-spaced pages and include information about our design strategy, the context of the study, the empirical materials we will collect, how we will analyze the data, and more.

I was very interested in examining gender differences in both verbal and written communication, so I decided to make this the topic of my paper. I argued for using Goffman’s frame theory as a way to analyze communication between same-gender and cross-gender participants. I thought that a frame approach could prove to be useful and revealing when examining gender differences in verbal and written communication. In addition, I thought that researchers were focusing too much on finding and labelling each gender difference that they found without thinking about why exactly those differences existed in the first place. In order to support my thoughts and show a gap in the literature, I included a section in my paper that was a review of related research. At the end of this section I described how my study would successfully fill-in this gap by incorporating the framing approach to show how frames and footings play a part in both same-gender and cross-gender tendencies in conversation. The rest of my paper described a study that could be done in order to fill-in the gap and offered some sample analyses that used the frame approach.

This paper demonstrates my ability to write a research proposal. A research proposal takes certain writing capacities such as constructing an evidence-based argument, synthesizing a lot of sources from relevant research, proposing a study that makes sense, and providing sample analyses to let readers know exactly how to perform the study. I utilized all of these skills in my proposal by including a lengthy literature review, an in-depth methods section, some preliminary analyses, and a detailed discussion section that responded to each of my research question. This paper showcases my ability to generate an original idea for a research study. A large chunk of the papers that I have written at Wake Forest are in response to research that has already been done. This text is unique in that not only did I respond to research that already existed, but I also proposed a new research study that could fill-in a gap in the research that I found.