Linguistics Master Thesis Research Ideas

[aku]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm a graduate student majoring in Linguistics, need to find an idea of what to write for my thesis. I actually have some, but this two might be the most possible topic to write.

 

Here it is.

 

1. Online review analysis, I'm interested in beauty blogs for the data. A lecturer suggested me to use Argumentation Theory from Toulmin, but I doubt it is the most suitable theory for beauty blog analysis. Some linguistic features that caught my eyes are, the use of adjecives and appraisal verbs to express opinion. By the way, anyone here familiar with Appraisal Theory? It's new for me, though I have a feeling that this theory is good too for this data/type of text I'm going to analyze, I am afraid I don't fully understand it yet.

 

What do you think, any suggestions?

 

2. Language attitude, one thing that stopped me was when I was asked this question, "Is there any advantage for people or the country from this research, what do people have to do with your language attitude research, they don't need it...." I was like -_______- plus it is a 'field' research. I love sociolinguistics, I just don't have any ideas other than language attitude topic. Maybe language use in CMC, but then again what is the advantage of this research...

 

I have to make up my mind soon, because the Research Methodology examination is on 4th June and have to submit my paper (proposal) on 28th May. Thank you in advance...

 

Cheers

A

[Coline]

I'm actually researching beauty blogs for my thesis as well-- I plan on using Critical Discourse Analysis. I'm not familiar with Appraisal Theory but I think you can do a lot from a CDA and multimodality standpoint. 

[ἠφανισμένος]

This is a zombie thread that should have been posted in the linguistics subforum anyway . . .