Writing a Research Proposal for English Studies: Some Hints

Coming up with a clear research proposal is the foundation of your research project. The clarity you bring to your research proposal goes a long way in impacting the quality and velocity of your work. Any research proposal is basically a statement and plan of your research project that explains what you want to do, why is it important to do it, and how you propose to do it. The following write-up offers some hints for a beginner who intends to take up a post-MA research project leading up to an M.Phil or a Ph.D in English studies in India. My hints are mainly regarding exploratory, qualitative research in literary studies in an Indian context. English Language Teaching not being my field, my suggestions and observations will come from literary studies.

One of the major difficulties faced by an aspiring researcher while coming up with a sound research proposal is having insufficient clarity about the research question. Many Indian post-graduates approach me asking for what ‘topic’ they should select for their research- or even worse, that they have already found one,  and want me to supervise it. Most of the times these ‘topics’ are dreadfully clichéd, and the researchers often come up with a justification that they selected them because ‘they liked it and are interested in it’. I say, “Good for you that you are interested. I am not.” It is then that they start asking me what topic would be good.  This happens largely because of the ignorance of what research in literary studies is. I suggest the beginner to look up my earlier blog entry ‘A Beginners Guide to Doing A PhD in English’ for help in this regard. In very early stages, one can only decide a broad area of research interest which may tentatively include specific form/s, author/s and literature/s. I suggest that one should go for the area which one can relate to, or appeals to you as a human being, and excite you.

The research question comes from what is called the ‘research gap’, a ‘gap’ in the existing knowledge, an unexplored or an under-explored aspect of the textual archive (the body of texts termed as ‘primary sources’). This gap may be an unexplored or under-explored methodological (or theoretical) angle that one brings in to bear on a canonical archive- as for instance ‘Caste Consciousness in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri’ which deploys ideas and insights from Dalit studies in reading the canonical Indian Writing in English text, or it may be an underexplored textual archive ( primary sources)  using an established theoretical framework -as for example in ‘Postcoloniality and the question of Identity in contemporary Gujarati Poetry’.  Identification of the research gap makes your project specific. (Check out my blog on application of the theory of interliterariness to Indian literature)

It is important to note that I have assumed that after the ‘crisis in English studies’ debate of the late nineteen eighties, English studies in India have moved far beyond the study of ‘English Literature’ or ‘Indian Writing in English’, and have imbibed the spirit of comparative literature ( You can read my entry on Comparative Literature   and Translation Studies in India on this blog)  in being open to literatures in Indian languages (‘bhashas’ as Prof GN Devy terms them) and open to the expanded notion of the text which includes films, popular literatures, visual culture, oral narratives, and popular culture. This makes the research work inevitably interdisciplinary in nature. I am aware that this assumption is not always accepted by many English departments in India. However, this is the assumption I uphold and promote. (Check out my blog on how to read translation)

Identifying the ‘research gap’ and arriving at the research question will automatically lead to ‘why’ and ‘how’ of your research project. Obviously, in trying to locate what is unexplored or underexplored in your domain, you have to find out what is already explored. This demands extensive reading of already existing knowledge (‘secondary sources’) in the particular domain. Mentioning what you have read in your research proposal is often called ‘Review of Literature’. This extensive pre-reading is indispensible in formulating your argument which is the backbone of your research project. The argument begins when you either disagree with prevalent views and ideas about your subject or you start being aware of the limitations of these views. The ‘why’ of your research (rationale/objectives/ justification) emphasizes the underexplored aspects of your subject and the limitations of the already prevalent views. The rationale also underscores the contemporary social relevance of your research project (the scope and significance). It implies that the knowledge that you produce will be useful and contributing for the society that you inhabit by promoting enhanced understanding of itself.  In my personal view, the research projects dealing with languages and cultures of the society we inhabit, the Indian society, have more direct relevance than those dealing with societies and cultures which are distant from us.  (Check out my blog on the possible areas of research in translation studies)

The ‘how’ or the question of ‘method’ of the research project follows logically from ‘what’ and ‘why’ of it. Using Griffin’s distinction between ‘skills, methods and methodology’ (2005), one can say that ‘Postcoloniality and the question of Identity in contemporary Gujarati poetry’ will evidently use exploratory, qualitative methods involving textual analysis and explication. It might include oral interviews, archival methods, and draw upon the methodological frameworks from comparative studies, postcolonial studies, and identity studies. I recommend Research Methods for English Studies (2005) edited by Gabriele Griffin to everyone who want to do research. (Check my blog on Theorizing Indian Literatures for a brief introduction to Semiotics of Culture as methodology)

As I am talking about exploratory and qualitative research in humanities, it is not necessary to talk about ‘hypothesis’ the concept which belongs more accurately in the domain of natural sciences. As MPhil and PhD programs come with their own time-frames in India, it is not very important to talk about them either. Chapterization of the thesis also comes later and need not be laid down or may be mentioned tentatively. The ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ is usually followed by a list of important books and articles (bibliography) you have mentioned in your ‘Review of Literature’ section. You should use the format given by MLA Handbook (8th Edition).

So the outline of your research proposal may be as follows:

I) The Title and the Topic: The discussion of ‘what’ of your project, the research question in specific terms, and a brief introductory background to the author/s, and texts.

II) Rationale (‘why’ is it important): The discussion of the ‘research gap’, ‘Review of Literature’ and its social significance.

III) Methodological (Theoretical) Framework: The discussion of the relevant theoretical concepts and ideas and their justification.

IV)  Bibliography

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO DOING A PhD IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

There is a sudden rise in the number of PhD aspirants in these parts of the country. This may be because many universities in Gujarat and elsewhere offering the PhD Entrance Test (TET) in a quick succession. It may also be due to the UGC resolution that those who have completed their PhD following 2009 norms will be exempt from National Eligibility Test (NET) for lecturer-ship, and probably also due to the new Academic Performance Index being introduced by the UGC in the sixth pay commission.  However, not many are clear about what research in literary studies means, or why they are doing it in the first place.These dreadful questions may haunt them later in many forms if they jump on the bandwagon hastily.

This lack of clarity shows up in the stock responses to the question ‘why do you want to do PhD./doctoral research?’. The typical responses range from ‘ I want to develop myself further/ increase my knowledge’  or ‘ For intellectual pleasure’ to ‘ for a better job/salary/ status’. Though all these reasons are valid, it should be kept in mind that doing doctoral research is not the only way of fulfilling on these objectives. One could read widely, or clear the N.E.T., or get rich by starting one’s own business or by becoming a religious preacher, for instance. So why should one do doctoral or Mphil research at all? An answer to this question lies in knowing what doctoral or Mphil research is.

So what is doctoral or M.Phil research after all? Well, the obvious answer is that it is a program that trains you to become a systematic and disciplined researcher: it builds the foundation to the later research actitivity. Hence the real reason why should do Mphil or PhD is that you want to be researcher for the rest of your life, and the doctoral research program is the opportunity to equip and train yourself to become a serious researcher. It is a net practice and coaching program if you want to graduate from gully-cricket to international cricket. (Click here to read my other entries on research). 

Research is commonly perceived as as purposive and systematic search for information and knowledge about something. Even the hunt for a date on the Internet can be an example of research. However, research as we understand it academically is not primarily  a search for answers to the personal questions. The whole idea of ‘objectivity’ in research does not imply that you are ‘ impersonal’ but what you are investigating and exploring has value beyond one’s personal quest for answers. Hunting for a date for yourself may also be research, but gathering information about pretty girls in your surrounding locality has relevance to more than one person and hence of greater social value.

So what is research, especially in literary studies, after all? In very ordinary language, research is a contribution to a particular domain of knowledge. By contribution, I mean addition to what we already know about the particular area. If I want to write one more thesis on ‘Postcolonialism in Amitav Ghosh’ ‘ Spirituality in Sri Aurobindo’ or ‘ Feminism in Shashi Deshpande’, I am not really adding to what scholars already know about these things. Research which provides knowledge which is obvious and already known is of little use to anyone. Reinventing the wheel may earn you a degree (very often in our universities we keep doing that) but that would not prove that you have done research.

By ‘particular domain’ I imply an area of research which is sufficiently specific and sufficiently narrow enough to be ‘ do-able’ within time and space of the thesis. Yet it should not be so narrow that the generalization we make would be nullified. 'Postcolonial consciousness in Indian Writing in English' would be too vast an area, and probably an analysis of a  single novel by Salman Rushdie would be too narrow for making valuable generalizations about either Salman Rushdie or Indian writing in English.

Learning how to develop an argument is a crucial research skill-after all, the term 'thesis' means 'a position.' It is very important to understand the logical movements from specific and particular to generalized knowledge or theoretical knowledge ( inductive approach) and from generalization ( theoretical) to particular and specific ( deductive approach) in your exploration. You may start with a general understanding of the area and form a hypothesis which can be verified by analysis of specific texts or patterns or else you may start with particular observations about the patterns in the texts/ authors and then generalize and theorize them. Which approach is suitable for your purpose depends on your research question. If you want to examine ‘ Representations of Masculinity in the post-independence Indian novels in English’, you may start with the hypothesis that the representation of masculinity in the post-Independence  Indian novels in English differs significantly from the representation of masculinity in the pre-Independence Indian novels in English, and that this shift occurs because of historical reasons.  The logical movement of your argument would largely be deductive. ‘Archetypal Patterns in the Post-nineties Indian Poetry in English by women’ may start with an analysis of patterns in various Indian women poets in English writing in the nineties and then may move on to theoretical generalizations in an inductive fashion. Though usually it is a combination of both logical processes, one process is often primary.

The key to successful research lies in asking a valuable research question, an important question which is not often asked or not sufficiently  explored regarding the area of research. ‘The Elements of Grotesque  in Sri Aurobindo’s Poetry’ or ‘ Folk motifs in Shashi Deshpande Short Fiction’ would be yield knowledge that is not very common and hence, interesting. ‘Surrealism in Arun Kolatkar’s poetry’ is an obvious observation, the research,  however,  begins when you want to understand why surrealism is found in his works, how does he deploy surrealistic devices, what does it do in the particular cultural context and what is its significance.

One of the most important questions of writing a research paper or thesis is the question of  language of research. What is the appropriate ‘register’ for the language of research? What is the place of technical and theoretical vocabulary in the language of research? What about the jargon? The answer becomes clear when we understand that a research thesis is a serious dialogue or a conversation between two experts and scholars, and not between two M.A. students or even between a postgraduate student and the examiner, or even worse, between a teacher and a student.  In your research paper or thesis, an expert speaks with an expert. Hence the language has to be technical ( remember two lawyers discussing law in the court or doctors discussing a disease or treatment?). This does not mean that you should use the technical terminology to show-off your learning ( pedantry) or obscure you own ignorance (cheating). Bad research today often suffers either from naivete ( as if a teacher talking to her student) or from the other extremity- pedantry, obscurantism and masking of ignorance ( brahminism).

When we understand that in research writing, an expert is talking to another expert, we can also cut down and structure our thesis in a better way. What is already well-known is usually not elaborately discussed, and is often reduced to minimum. So the things like biographical details, details of various works or well known facts and information occupies minimum space.

This brings us to yet another important and problematic question: what is the place of ‘theory’ in the period which is ‘post-theory’. Theory as we know is not vaseline or Tiger Balm to be ‘ applied’. Theoretical approaches ( Psychoanalytical, Marxist, structuralist, postcolonialist,  Feminist,subaltern, LGBTs, poststructuralists etc etc) are perspectives, points of views, ways of looking and conceiving the object of our research. ( Click here to read my blog on various theoretical approaches) Today, we know what ‘IS’ our object of research ( what we once knew as ‘literature’ in our good very old days) has become more and more problematic and contested, and what is literature often depends on how we look at it. ‘What’ we see is very often a function of ‘How’ we see it, and so it is not as simple as there is preexisting ‘literature’ “ out there” and we use theoretical frameworks as aspects to see it. You cannot imagine literature existing independently of a conceptual frame, and when you claim that you are not using any theory, it is very likely that some theory already is using you. Today, if you are honest, you have to be self-conscious of which the theory is using you, and you are using which theory, and you should have an awareness of advantages and limitations of your own conceptual frames ( those which are using you and those you are using). Literary research today has to be autocritical.

Besides, I have also often heard complaints that too much criticism and theory is  spoil sport and it takes away ‘fun’ from reading literature. You don’t need to ‘study’ literature in order to have fun and enjoyment. You may enjoy watching flowers, but you don’t become botanist in order to enjoy flowers. You may get pleasure and enjoy studying plants, but you need not produce a body of knowledge about plants to enjoy viewing them or tending them. You need not be an expert in evolutionary biology to enjoy playing with your cat. The same thing applies to the study of literature. When you ‘study’ literature, you are engaging with a vast body of knowledge about literature. That it provides a distinctive type of intellectual pleasure  may be a bonus, but it is more likely to produce lot of pain in some unmentionable parts of your body. You HAVE to go beyond your personal likes and tastes , and you HAVE to read plenty of difficult theoretical writings, if you want to be a serious researcher. Reading Lacan, Judith Butler or Spivak is not an enjoyable pastime, but then research in literature is not a pastime.  

I want to end this longish entry by recommending two very useful books for the beginners here: i) Research Methods for English Studies by Gabrielle by Gabriele Griffin and ii) Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler. Critical comments, suggestions and feedback on my blog entries are welcome.

Useful Links ( click on them):
i)  Choosing a Topic for the Research Project in English Studies: Some Tips
ii) Writing a Research Proposal for English Studies: Some Hints

iii) Possible areas of research in English studies in India.
iv)  Comparative Literary Studies
v) Translation Studies in India: A Brief Overview

vi) My blog on various theoretical approaches to the study of literature

How Did I Become a Researcher? An Autobiographical Aside

When I look at my life as a researcher and how I ended up in the world of academic research, I can't help being surprised.I never saw myself as excelling in academics. I thought I was an average student whose percentage hovered around sixty most of the times. Had someone told me when I was doing my graduation that I would end up writing a PhD dissertation or research papers and hopping from one national conference to another international conference, I wouldn't have believed it. Nor would I have believed it if someone were to tell me that I would be teaching obscure literary theory and criticism to postgraduate classes and writing books on translation theory. In short, I never dreamed of being a research scholar or university teacher. 

What I dreamed of when I was a kid was to be a terrific cricketer. I used to play lots of gully cricket with a tennis ball or a rubber ball in my friend Tejas's cemented compound. However, I was scared of fast deliveries and used to get out very early most of the times. As a bowler, I am credited for giving away a couple of million runs and as a fielder I might have given away billions of runs. I ran slower than others, thanks to my weight, ill-health and probably, knock-knees. The more I failed more I fantasized of becoming a cricketer. I thought I will never be good enough for physical sports.

In my early teens, the eighties,  I decided that the only way to overcome my failures as cricket was to have lots of knowledge about the game.  I started keeping a diary and hoarding plenty of information about the game from magazines like '  Sports-star' and the newspapers -there was no Google in those days, friends- in Valsad library. I even learned how to bowl a googly from a book. I made a decision that the only way to excel in performance in a game was to acquire lots of knowledge about it. Knowledge acquisition became a habit, a habit that was formed in response to my perceived failure to be a sportsman. The habit consolidated when  the asthma became more and more chronic. By the time I was in my twelfth standard I discovered that even if I jogged for two hundred meters, I would not only be out of breath, but my lungs would hurt very badly too.

When I was in my teens, I had a series of one-sided crushes started with a one sided love for a girl in my school-bus in the seventh standard. I found myself on the wrong side of these ' one sided' travails. I said to myself that I am timid and can never express my feelings and emotions to the girl I loved and that I was a failure in love. When I fell in love at the age of thirteen, I did not know there was something like love and had I really gathered courage and spoke to the girl, I don't know what I would have said! I said to myself, I don't know what happens to me when I fall ill, I don't know what happens to me in such situations- I must try to understand what's wrong with me. 

And I tried to cope with or overcome my sense of failures with the drive for knowledge acquisition. I tried to 'understand' what was wrong with me and how could I fix it.I read voraciously on occultism in my twenties and thought that if I could have occult powers, I would be able to overcome all failures of my life. I read on Yoga and occultism and tried to actually practice it. I thought the best way to overcome the sense of failure and the idea that I was weak was to acquire more and more knowledge. What I actually gathered was a tremendous amount of absolutely useless information like what was the colour of agna-chakra or what is a chinaman or how is the Petrarchan sonnet different from the  English sonnet-or how Derridian 'differance'   undoes the architecture of western thought.The drive for knowledge acquisition became my habitual way of being. It has played a role in whatever success I have got till now, but even then, it was constituted to survive and fix what I thought was 'wrong' with me, and so more I went about gathering knowledge, more unfulfilled I was. It was a habitual way of being put in place to compensate for lack of power and effectiveness in my life and the more I practiced it the more powerless and ineffective I felt in life. So whenever, I perceive something is wrong, I bring out this habitual mode of being to deal with it- I try to 'understand', 'analyze' and 'research' that problem instead of taking actual actions needed to deal with it.

 So here it goes-I selected ' Translation of Narsinh Mehta's Poetry into English: With a Critical Appreciation' in order to' fix' what was wrong with my cultural identity- I saw myself as a 'rootless' person- having no real language or land of his own- a Maharashtrian born and brought up in Gujarat and teaching English literature to students who are neither interested in English nor in literature. I thought translation was a strategy to overcome my own cultural predicament and overcome my cultural alienation.  I thought writing poetry in Marathi would help me overcome this estrangement. Obviously, neither of the strategies worked.

This habitual mode of being that is more or less productive and that has given us some results in life is called a 'strong suit' in the language of Landmark Education. The strong suits are past-based and work in the default context of human life: survive and fix something seen as wrong or shouldn't be.It is our personal 'best practice' but it is incapable of giving us 'breakthrough' results in life where we are struck- had it been so capable it would have created breakthrough results by now. 

In fact, the strong-suits often result in misery. This drive for knowledge acquisition isolates me from friends and people in life who don't have such drives, I am estranged from them and I end up living in the world of loneliness and suffering.What actually was coming between me and my wife was my intellectual arrogance. It often has a negative influence on my performance. The Landmark Education points out how 'knowledge' doesn't necessarily lead to action- that there is no ' cause-effect' relation between knowledge and action ( Hamlet taught us something like this - but then Hamlet was all about 'literature' for a student of literature).  Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan in The Three Laws of Performance point out that the real source of our action is how situations or people 'occur' to us. Knowing how to control anger or fear or how to reduce weight does not necessarily lead us to taking actions- when the situation 'occurs' infuriating we are angry -no matter what formulas we have memorized or what knowledge of anger we have.

So how does one become a researcher? 

On Being a Researcher: A counter-intuitive observation

Most of the discussion of research seems to focus entirely on research methodology, or theory of research. However, the question of 'how to be a researcher' has hardly received any attention, probably because of the assumption that 'knowing how to do research effectively' will automatically lead to 'being an effective researcher'. Though this assumption looks logical enough, in actual practice the knowledge of 'how to do' research' hardly seems to lead automatically to ' how to be a researcher'. The crucial distinction which seems to be missing in the most of such discussions is the one between 'being someone' and 'knowing how to do something', that is 'being' is distinct from ' knowing' or 'having'.  For instance, 'knowing about scientific method or having scientific knowledge' as being distinct from ' being a scientist', or 'knowing how to cook' being distinct from 'being a cook', or even 'knowing how to raise children' is distinct from 'being a parent'. Similarly, 'being a manager' is distinct from ' knowledge of how to manage'. 

If one asks 'WHO is a scientist?' or 'WHO is a doctor?', we realize that the scientist is not just a person who knows 'how to do' science, and the doctor is not just a person who 'knows' medical science, though it is just a part of who he is. A scientist is not just a scientist when he is in the laboratory or a seminar hall or library, a scientist is a scientist even when he is playing with his children, and a doctor is a doctor even when he is with his girlfriend.  Entire life seems to show up as laboratory, seminar hall or library for someone who IS a scientist. The scientist IS a scientist not when he HAS scientific outlook but the scientist IS a scientist when the scientific outlook HAS HIM. A scientist is not 'somebody who USES scientific method, the scientist is the person who is USED BY scientific method. Hence, while we think that being a scientist or a parent is all about knowing 'how to do science' or how to parent' well, it seems that it is 'being a scientist or a parent' leads to 'knowing how to' do these things.

Therefore, it seems that the researcher is not a person who 'uses' research methodology, but someone who is used by research methodology. A literary theorist is not someone who 'uses theoretical terminology' but someone who is used by theoretical terminology. One is a critical theorist not when one 'knows how to to think critically', but someone who is used by critical thinking. A researcher is not someone who 'has research skills' but someone whom research skills have. You become a researcher not when you 'learn how to do research' but when the research starts having you, and you no longer use 'research methodology' but research methodology starts using you. The research or scientific outlook becomes the context of the researcher's life and the whole life shows up inside this context.The activity of research and writing dissertation, thesis or research report , then, becomes a natural expression of who the researcher is, much in the same fashion as a poem is a natural expression of who the poet is or parenting is a natural expression of who the parent is. 

The above observations are counter-intuitive and out-of-the-box, but I think they will definitely be useful to people who want to 'do research'. I owe these insights to the profound ontological technology developed by Werner Erhard, one of the greatest and unacknowledged educationists of our times. Indeed, such insights start showing up when the ontological technology made available by Landmark Education start using you.