Research All Grown Up: The Literature Review

All Annotated Bibliographies want to be Literature Reviews when they grow up.

So you’ve done your research, you’ve developed your thesis, you have a good idea of what you want to do for your research essay. You have all this helpful research, but you’re at a loss of how to incorporate it it, and prove you’re not just spouting random things, that you’re ideas are grounded in the work of the experts.

This is why we have Literature Reviews. The granddaddy of the Annotated Bibliography, this is a form of writing that fulfills many of the same purposes of the Annotated Bibliography, but while putting them into the essay itself. This isn’t literature as in fiction; rather, this refers to the influential works and writings of the scholars and experts in a field. Basically, you’re taking what the experts have said and bringing it all together.

Both genres, the Annotated Bibliography and the Literature Review, are ways for researchers to present their research. However, Annotated Bibliographies are preliminary pieces, done before the main ideas and concepts are formed, generally so the author can catalogue and make sure they have a basic understanding of their topic and what the experts say about it. Annotated Bibliographies are rarely published and remain a resource for the researcher as they work on a larger piece. The Annotated Bibliography is work researchers do for themselves, which is why it is a popular assignment in writing classes: go through the process of understanding and evaluating your research early on.

Literature Reviews are different. First and foremost, they get published, though not usually independently; they are significant parts of larger pieces of research and fulfill specific purposes. Find a major scientific study and the first couple of pages will likely focus on work other people have done, identifying current theories and concepts. They won’t be comprehensive, i.e., bringing every piece of research ever that’s related to the topic, but it will focus on more recent and more significant ones.

The Literature Review, though, is not where authors provide and discuss their own ideas and conclusions. The Literature Review opens a piece as a kind of information genealogy. In a way, you are taking your Annotated Bibliography and sorting the information by theme or concept (generally using a graduated or comparative method of organization), and showing how different scholars and researchers have addressed similar issues that contribute to your own work. It is a matter of showing how you can take other’s ideas and concepts and synthesize them. Therefore, Literature Reviews generally do three closely related things.

First, it’s how researchers can demonstrate their expertise. Major research pieces can have bibliographies that go on for pages, but some of these sources can be mentioned a handful of times in a research piece. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s the researcher’s opportunity to show the work they’ve done, and the extent of their knowledge and familiarity with the information.

Second, it is where the researcher traces how they developed their ideas, and that their work fits with the rest of the literature. They can take different ideas and synthesize them, bring them together to generate new knowledge and information, tracing the history of their topic, within their own research, and contextualize their work within the greater picture.

Third, it shows how your research fits in the bigger picture. You don't want to just know a lot of stuff, but show you can fit your work in with the work of others. Writing and research don’t take place in a vacuum, and if you try to, or even if you only do some research, you’ll likely just make claims others have made, and done a better job making, before. It’s a good way to showcase your ignorance, and you don’t want to do that.

There’s a lot riding on a Literature Review. It’s an exercise in establishing your credibility and showing the people who know about your topic you’re worth taking seriously. A bad Literature Review can break your piece faster than a bad idea. You could have a great idea, but if you can’t show where it fits with the rest of the research being done, nor can you demonstrate your own familiarity with the discipline, it’s going to be really hard for those who do know to take you seriously.

Why in that order? Methods of Organization

Let’s say you have bad news to pass on to someone. What approach do you take? Do you blurt out the bad news and then run? Do you give a letter and then run? Or do you scuttle up whatever good news you have in order to cushion the blow? Do you consider your timing, delivery, and what other information you have to mitigate the damage?

Welcome to Organization, the simple art of determining what information goes where.

Unfortunately, it sometimes seems like organizing an essay is little more than Paragraphs go here! In all honesty, I blame the 5 Paragraph Essay and the teaching of Transitions. The 5 paragraph essay because it can promote the idea that order doesn't matter: so long as there are three paragraphs addressing the overall topic of the essay, all is well. And Transitions because it takes organization from a significant part of essay writing and turns it into sentences that begin and end paragraphs forced to resemble one another.

Reducing organization to having transitions is kind of like saying there's no difference between a Main Coon, a Sphynx cat, and a Chartreux cat because each one was put in the same funny hat (thank you internet). Each has distinct traits and for accuracy should be recognized individually, as opposed to being just cats in funny hats.

Organization is quite complex. It can be as instrumental in conveying information than any other aspect in a piece of writing because it determines the order the information is presented. It is not enough for information to be there, but knowing where and how to present information influences how later information will be received. Once information is presented, it influences the way other information will be received: how a piece is organized sends messages.

The next step is to make sure your organization sends the right message. For this, I turn to a number of different Methods of Organization. Each method has its own purpose and in turn, conveys a specific message about the information. Not only is it helpful in using these to figure out the order of the paragraphs, but it helps make those pesky transitions easier to write and more fluid because it gives the order purpose.

The methods themselves can be divided into three groups: Sequential, Graduated, and Comparative.

The first, Sequential, deals with the relationship of topics in time:

• Chronological: Organizing events in the order they occurred without considering connections between them.
• Cause and effect: Identifies how one event or situation leads to another.
• Procedural: Identifies specific action to be taken in a specific order.
• Problem to Solution: Explores an issue in detail before exploring ways to resolve it.

The next group is Graduated and deals with information presented in scales from more important to less important, more detailed to less detailed, etc:

• General to Specific: Begins with basic ideas and then explores them in greater detail.
• Familiar to Unfamiliar: Introduces basic, acceptable information before introducing new or controversial topics.
• Climactic: Starts out with simple topics and leads to the most important or exciting detail or information.

Each form of Graduated organization can be reversed. For example, a piece can start out specific and then become more general, etc.

The last group is Comparative and deals with identifying similarities and differences across and between topics:

• Thematic: Organized by distinct topics or ideas.
• Classification: Groups related topics based on similarities.
• Spatial: Identifies the relationship between physical properties.
• Block Compare & Contrast: Explain all of the aspects of one topic before another.
• Point by Point Compare & Contrast: Alternate between specific aspects of two or more topics.

Picking a method of organization can depend on the form and genre of the essay, and its audience, usually dictates what methods are appropriate. There are even situations where an essay will need multiple forms of organization at different times. When considering what methods to use, think of the kind of information you're dealing with. From there, it becomes easier to structure an essay and move from paragraph to paragraph because the form of the essay has a purpose, and transitions become easier to write. 

I like to say that every paragraph has two purposes. The first is to prepare the reader for the next paragraph. The second is to prepare the reader for the rest of the essay. Determining and using methods of organization just helps you figure where and why each paragraph goes where it does.

The Toulmin Model

The Toulmin Model is a way to structure arguments to best understand what the information does, and the relationship each bit of information has with everything else. It helps us to dissect or prepare an argument by demonstrating how each bit of information relates to the claim being made: the model is made up of the following parts:

• Claim: The basic argument being made.
• Grounds: The facts, data, and evidence the claim is based on.
• Warrant: The logical connection between the claim and the grounds.
• Backing: Evidence that establishes the credibility of the warrant.
• Rebuttal: Restrictions placed on the claim,
• Qualifier: Words that denote how certain the claim is, like “probably,” “rarely,” “certainly,” etc. These are made to accommodate the rebuttal.

You'll notice each term has a direct connection with another, even the claim. When forming an argument, or constructing a Toulmin Model, these components are best expressed as brief statements to simply demonstrate the corresponding information, which in turn, shows its relationship to everything else. Here's an example based on the cost of college textbooks:

• Claim: Textbooks are too expensive for college students.
• Grounds: Individual textbooks can be more than a hundred dollars and students need to buy a couple of books for each class.
• Warrant: Students rarely have a lot of money and have to deal with tuition, so several hundred dollars in textbooks strains already limited funds.
• Backing: Increasing tuition costs; delayed graduation rates as students take time off of school to work.
• Rebuttal: Some students have scholarships. Not all disciplines have very expensive textbooks.
• Qualifier: Most textbooks are too expensive for many college students.

The Toulmin Model can be used for any level of argument: fact, definition, value, and policy. The above example is a fact level argument because the grounds and warrant seek to clarify whether or not textbooks are in fact too expensive. Consider it again as a policy level argument. Please note this is all hypothetical!

• Claim: Because textbooks are too expensive for college students, the university bookstore should lower the prices of textbooks.
• Grounds: Individual textbooks can cost more than a hundred dollars and students need to buy a couple of books for each class. The University Bookstore has a considerable profit from other sales.
• Warrant: Students rarely have a lot of money and have to deal with tuition, so several hundred dollars in textbooks further strains their limited funds. With a sizable profit elsewhere, the bookstore can lower textbook prices and still be solvent.
• Backing: Increasing tuition costs. Delayed graduation rates as students take time off of school to work. Profit and income statements of the university bookstore.
• Rebuttal: Some students have scholarships. Not all disciplines have very expensive textbooks.
• Qualifier: Because most textbooks are too expensive for college students, the university bookstore should lower the prices of many textbooks.

As the type of argument changes, the claim naturally changes also, and because the claim changes, the other information has to change to accommodate it. 

Note it is possible for the rebuttal to entirely refute an argument. If the rebuttal had been the bookstore profits fund scholarships and other academic programs, which in turn help students, the claim would have to change along with it, either being dropped entirely, or the argument would need to suggest eliminating or funding those programs another way to benefit more students a little, rather than a few students a lot.

Ultimately, everything pivots around the claim: it is the focal point of the argument and is to be defended or refuted. While Toulmin is not an organizational method for writing an essay, it provides a strong basis for analyzing, understanding, and developing arguments by giving every bit of information, whether hard evidence, logical inferences, or potential rebuttals, a specific place.