Drafting Theses with the Six Journalistic Questions

In other posts, I've discussed the relationship between the 6JQ and theses. Basically, once you've identified your criteria with the 6JQ, you can use them to put together a thesis statement. Rather than go into detail about this concept here, I want to give a few examples, pulling from different posts, altered slightly. I'll be using different colors to distinguish between each criteria in the list and in its corresponding thesis.

From “Genre and Purposeful Theses”:

• Who: High school students, American authors with different cultural backgrounds
• What: Multi-cultural, American literature, The English Literary Canon
• When: High School years
• Where: American high school literature courses
• How: Studying multi-cultural literature
• Why: To gain a better understanding of other cultures

Thesis:

High school students who study literature by American authors from different cultures in their literature courses gain a better understanding and appreciation of the complexities.

Notice there can be overlap: “High school” applies to both Who and When. The same for “from different cultures,” just with the Who and How.

From the same post:

The local school district should use high school literature classes to improve young people’s understanding of different cultures by having students read books written by authors of different backgrounds, in addition to the English canon.

Here, the local school district is not colored, because, in this situation, it is not a “Who” or a “What”, but an audience.

And, another from the same post:

From my high school literature classes, I gained a greater understanding of different cultures  than I would have just by reading from the English canon.

From “Specificity and the 6 Journalistic Questions”:

• Who: The Irish
• What: Potatoes, Immigration, the Potato Blight
• When: 1840's & 50's
• Where: Ireland
• How: Potato Blight’s Spread
• Why: Monoculture

A potential thesis:

Reliance on monoculture in 1840's and 50's Ireland made it easy for the Potato Blight to wipe out crops, driving many Irish to immigrate.

A different thesis:

The Potato Blight in 1840's and 50's Ireland stemmed from monocultured crops, which made it easy for the Blight to spread.

In this situation, the ideas of the Blight spreading would be a “How” because it's dealing not just with the Blight itself, but how the Blight worked, and so would need to be added to the 6JQ criteria.

From “Quantity and Specificity: Getting a lot, and the most, out of the Six Journalistic questions”:

• Who: Bullied students
• What: Specific uniforms, business casual uniforms, bullying
• When: Last 15 years.
• Where: High schools in California
• How: Relationship of bullying to types of uniforms
• Why: Impact of uniforms on bullying

Thesis:

By looking at reports of bullying at high schools in California over the last 15 years, this essay will explore the impact different types of uniforms, such as specific uniforms traditionally worn by private and religious affiliated institutions; and more casual, open styles of uniforms, have had on bullying and bullied students.

Note some parts of this are not in the 6JQ, but rather explain how this potential essay would work. Remember how you're doing your project and the “How” in the 6JQ are different.

And, here at the end, a few pointers:

• If you need to expand your criteria based on the form the thesis takes, do so. Just keep track of both and make sure they line up so your thesis, and by extension the essay, don't get broad, vague, or tangential. In short, be flexible, but consistent.
• It is okay if one term or phrase covers multiple criteria.
• You do not need something in every criteria. If you find yourself forcing criteria into a thesis, it might be better to drop the criteria.
• Don't forget about Genre. While you can take most any set of criteria and use them for different genres, you can't force a genre to work with your criteria, only alter the criteria and thesis to fit the genre.
• The same can be said for Stasis: a Policy level Thesis will combine the criteria in a different way than a Value or Definition level thesis.

To wrap this up, I want to say that drafting theses is hard, but it doesn't have to be. All it is is summarizing your entire essay in a sentence or two, and with the Six Journalistic Questions, you can take this seemingly insurmountable task, and make it quite simple.

And there