More on Writing

Thesis Statement

• A claim that clearly articulates your overall argument
• Includes the observable phenomena & why you think it happens
• Must be contestable given the current field of knowledge
• Answers your research question

The sky is blue because molecules in the air reflect blue light more than other colors

Research Question: Is there a discrepancy between the way masculinity norms and femininity norms are reinforced among children? If so, what causes this discrepancy?

Gender norms are more strictly reinforced on young boys than young girls because patriarchal and heteronormative values allow for the accepted archetype of the "tomboy".

Vignettes

• How do I organize data? How can I include my informants’ perspective or worldview?
• How am I representing my informants? Have I given my reader enough details to visualize or “hear” my informant?
• What sense of place am I offering?
• What assumptions, positions, and tensions do I bring to my interpretations?

"They order two fish and chips and two glasses of water.” “Cheap. I’m surprised they didn’t ask to split one meal,” Erin mumbles.
“When they are done I put the check on the table and tell them I will be right back to collect it for them. I go into the kitchen and when I come back, there is a ten-dollar bill, a dime, a nickel, and a penny on the table.”
“How much is the bill?” I ask. “Ten fifteen.”
“That makes me so mad . . . ,” Erin begins. “But,” Rae smiles, “the woman had left her coat on the chair. They were in such a hurry to get out she forgot her coat! I grab the coat, check, and money, and then I see her coming back for her coat. . . .” “I hope you kept it until they left you a better tip,” I laugh.
(Donna Qualley)

This party of two guys comes in and they order thirty to forty dollars’ worth of food . . . and they stiff us. Every time. So Kaddie told them, “If you don’t tip us, we’re not going to wait on you.” They said, “We’ll tip you.” So Kaddie waited on them, and they tipped her. The next night they came in, I waited on them and they didn’t tip me. The third time they came in [the manager] put them in my station and I told [the manager] straight up, “I’m not waiting on them.” So when they came in the next night . . . [they] said, “Are you going to give us a table?” I said, “You going to tip me? I’m not going to wait on you.” (Greta Paul’s Dishing it Out, 31)

I get pushy with Rosalie, who is new like me and fresh from high school in a rural northern part of the state, about the meagerness of her lunches, which consist solely of Doritos — a half bag from the day before or a freshly purchased small-sized bag. She just didn’t have anything in the house, she says (though she lives with her boyfriend and his mother), and she certainly doesn’t have any money to buy lunch, as I find out when I offer to fetch her a soda from Quik Mart and she has to admit that she doesn’t have eighty-nine cents. I treat her to the soda, wishing I could force her, mommylike, to take milk instead. So how does she hold up for an eight- or even nine-hour day? “Well,” she conceded, “I get dizzy sometimes.”
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed

Analysis/Synthesis

• What is the meaning of what you have observed?
• Why do you think what you observed happened?
• Do you see any connections or patterns in what you observed?
• Do you see connections between what you observed and the findings of similar studies or social theories?