Any thesis suggestions in sociolinguistics!!

[Vivian.dj.1983]

Hello, I'm an MA student. I was wondering if I can have some suggestions for a thesis in sociolinguistics. I'm really interested in  studying communities of practice, and I'll have to include mainly Arabic or at least make a kind of comparison.

Thanks in advance. 

[Eigen]

A large part of the *point* of a thesis is to show that you're able to come up with an interesting question or area of research. 

Asking other people to give you topics largely obviates that point.

[fuzzylogician]

^In fact, a large point of *research* is being able to come up with interesting, executable ideas that interface with and advance our knowledge. If someone has such an idea, there is no reason why they should give it to an internet stranger instead of carrying it out themselves. 

[fencergirl]

Not to hijack this thread completely but since it might be helpful to OP anyway, what are your suggestions for developing research ideas? I'm in history, and my advisor has asked me to begin thinking about first year paper/possible thesis topics before I start my Ph.D program this fall. I have several specific interests and have been doing a lot of reading in those areas to see what has been done and what hasn't been done, and have found somewhat of an idea for a paper. But how do I know if my idea is workable or not?

[fuzzylogician]

Sounds like you're doing what you should be doing. You do a lot of reading, you try to identify what kinds of questions interest you, and you do some more reading. For my earliest paper topics, I just went through the relevant shelves at the library and picked up books/journals one after the other (back when the easiest way to access a journal paper was to flip through the hard copy, not go online and browse the journal's website!) and had a pretty tough criterion about putting books/papers back on the shelf if they didn't catch my attention pretty quickly. Eventually themes started to emerge in what interested me. They're actually pretty much the same now as they were back then. Likewise if you are taking seminars in your field, can you identify the topics that catch your attention?

Once you have that much going (which it sounds like you do), you start reading background more seriously. In my field, you might want to read both survey articles that introduce the major issues, data, and theoretical frameworks, as well as some seminal papers and some new papers. Survey/handbook articles are usually very good for pointing you in the right direction. This is also a good time to get some advice from an advisor about what you should be reading. At some point, after you've done some reading, hopefully, one of two things will happen: either you'll stumble upon a question in a paper that hasn't been answered that you think that you can say something about (footnotes with language like "we leave this for future research" can be helpful, and often papers' conclusions will have such a discussion), or you identify a problem with a current paper or an extension of the paper, or you can think of a way to apply it to a new dataset, or asking a new and related question, etc. The workable part is a little bit harder to judge when you're new, but this is what you have an advisor for! 

[fencergirl]

Very helpful, thank you! Will keep reading and plugging away. I'm a bit worried about disappointing my advisor if my idea isn't well-received but I'll get over it haha.

[GradSchoolTruther]

Not every idea will be well-received. Not every idea is workable. Whatever you do, don't go to a message board as ask "What should I research?" Those types of posts make me wonder how that person got into and are surviving graduate school.

[hyperjulie]

@fencergirl  - I don't know if this is how it works for everyone, but in my experience part of the reason why you have an advisor is because you can bring ideas that aren't maybe 100% but are in the right ballpark, and they can use their many years of expertise to guide you. Some advisors are really harsh and difficult to please, so YMMV, but if you work with a reasonable person, even if they don't like your idea as is, they may help you to shift it in a good direction. Even as a fourth year, I went to my most recent advisor meeting with an idea for my dissertation. He liked it, and made a suggestion to improve it, and now it's something we're both super excited about.

[Danger_Zone]

As others have said, I can't help you come up with ideas for your thesis - a large part of writing a thesis is being able to formulate ideas that will make a significant contribution to your field but also help you grow as a critical thinker, writer, researcher, etc. - but if this helps at all I am currently reading a book called How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco. He doesn't tell you what to write your thesis on, but goes through the process of finding resources, compiling bibliographies and coming up with a realistic, workable thesis (by that I mean how wide or narrow in scope your thesis should be), among other things. It may help to find resources like this which help with the initial research process. Through this you should be able to find a number of resources essential to your thesis topic and you can go from there.

[Need Coffee in an IV]

1 hour ago, Danger_Zone said:

As others have said, I can't help you come up with ideas for your thesis - a large part of writing a thesis is being able to formulate ideas that will make a significant contribution to your field but also help you grow as a critical thinker, writer, researcher, etc. - but if this helps at all I am currently reading a book called How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco. He doesn't tell you what to write your thesis on, but goes through the process of finding resources, compiling bibliographies and coming up with a realistic, workable thesis (by that I mean how wide or narrow in scope your thesis should be), among other things. It may help to find resources like this which help with the initial research process. Through this you should be able to find a number of resources essential to your thesis topic and you can go from there.

And this is officially in my amazon cart

[Danger_Zone]

@Need Coffee in an IV It's definitely a helpful read. I've picked up a few books on thesis/dissertation research/writing that I thought I'd read before starting my research, so I will have to see how useful I find them. I am hoping I can start grad school much more organized and informed than when I started undergrad!

[Need Coffee in an IV]

@Danger_Zone Thanks for the suggestion! I'm definitely more organized this time around compared to applying to undergrad schools. I was very "where ever is fine" and only applied to three in-state schools. The horror that would strike the rankings obsessed would be too much! I think it worked out fine since I was interning along with William & Mary Students, and Virginia Tech students

[rising_star]

@Need Coffee in an IV and @Danger_Zone, have you seen this video of Eco giving advice to young writers? https://biblioklept.org/2016/02/19/advice-to-young-writers-from-umberto-eco-2/

[historicallinguist]

From what the OP had said, it looks like the OP is in some kind of language program rather than a linguistics program, because usually it is only a specific language program that would constrain linguistic data on a very specific language. What do you mean by communities of practice? Do you mean some kind of pragmatic issues? If that is the case, what is your theoretical approach? Are you doing Neo-Gricean pragmatic theory and its application to the study of Arabic or something else? You said you wanted to compare. But what are you trying to compare? Are you comparing one modern Arabic dialect with another modern dialect? Or are you comparing with one modern Arabic dialect and its historical version? Or are you comparing with one modern Arabic dialect with another modern Semitic language? or something else? Another layer of this question of comparison would be what aspects of these two languages you would like to compare. Are you going to compare the lexical semantics, syntax, phonology, or something else of these two languages? So, all in all, you need to consider very carefully 1. Theoretical Framework of the research 2. Specific Object of research 3. Is this project workable yet trivial, or important yet not workable, or both workable and important? 

[Need Coffee in an IV]

@rising_star Nope, but I'm about to! Thanks for the link.

[Danger_Zone]

20 hours ago, rising_star said:

@Need Coffee in an IV and @Danger_Zone, have you seen this video of Eco giving advice to young writers? https://biblioklept.org/2016/02/19/advice-to-young-writers-from-umberto-eco-2/

I haven't, thanks for sharing! He seems very down to earth, although now I am disappointed to hear that I will not be immediately receiving a Nobel Prize.

[Sigaba]

On 4/4/2016 at 7:46 PM, fencergirl said:

Not to hijack this thread completely but since it might be helpful to OP anyway, what are your suggestions for developing research ideas? I'm in history, and my advisor has asked me to begin thinking about first year paper/possible thesis topics before I start my Ph.D program this fall. I have several specific interests and have been doing a lot of reading in those areas to see what has been done and what hasn't been done, and have found somewhat of an idea for a paper. But how do I know if my idea is workable or not?

@fencergirl The objective is not just to do something that hasn't been done. The objective It is to do something that hasn't been done in a way that advances one or more historiographical debates.

IRT reading works by non-historians as a means of preparation of writing a thesis in a field of history, I ask (rhetorically): Why? Why not instead read a work by or about a prominent historian in your field and/or that historian's master's thesis/report and dissertation as a way of getting a sense of what it's like to write a thesis in history?

(At the very least, I very strongly recommend that you wait until you figure out the lay of the land in your department and a nuanced perspective on the debates over certain trajectories of interdisciplinarity before dropping Ecco's name.)