Writing a Literary Research Paper Reading and Writing About Literature

What this handout is about

This handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Introduction

OK. Yous've got to write a literature review. Yous dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to consequence a "thumbs up" or "thumbs downward" equally you leaf through the pages. "Literature review" done. Correct?

Wrong! The "literature" of a literature review refers to whatsoever drove of materials on a topic, not necessarily the neat literary texts of the world. "Literature" could exist annihilation from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants y'all to give your personal opinion on whether or not yous liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published data in a item subject surface area, and sometimes information in a particular field of study area inside a certain time period.

A literature review can be simply a simple summary of the sources, but information technology unremarkably has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new estimation of old textile or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the state of affairs, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review unlike from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research newspaper is to develop a new statement, and a inquiry newspaper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research newspaper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that yous contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without calculation new contributions.

Why exercise we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you lot with a handy guide to a particular topic. If yous have express time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them upward to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews besides provide a solid background for a enquiry newspaper's investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most inquiry papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, just mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a department of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written every bit a newspaper in itself.

Let's get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

Analyze

If your consignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

• Roughly how many sources should you include?
• What types of sources (books, periodical articles, websites)?
• Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or outcome?
• Should you lot evaluate your sources?
• Should y'all provide subheadings and other background data, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Await for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to become a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your ain research or ways to organize your final review. You lot can but put the discussion "review" in your search engine along with your other topic terms to observe articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference department of sources you've already read are too excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

At that place are hundreds or fifty-fifty thousands of manufactures and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you demand to read in order to get a proficient survey of the material. Your teacher will probably non wait you to read everything that's out there on the topic, but you lot'll brand your task easier if y'all first limit your scope.

Keep in heed that UNC Libraries accept research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of report. You can accomplish out to the subject librarian for a consultation: https://library.unc.edu/back up/consultations/.

And don't forget to tap into your professor'south (or other professors') noesis in the field. Enquire your professor questions such as: "If you had to read but 1 book from the ninety's on topic X, what would it be?" Questions such as this help you to find and make up one's mind quickly the well-nigh seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines crave that you lot apply information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing co-ordinate to the latest studies. Information fifty-fifty two years sometime could be obsolete. Nevertheless, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, considering what is of import is how perspectives accept changed through the years or within a certain fourth dimension flow. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. Y'all can also utilize this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus

A literature review, like a term newspaper, is usually organized effectually ideas, non the sources themselves every bit an annotated bibliography would be organized. This ways that you will not just only list your sources and get into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely simply selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or problems connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well exercise they present the material and practice they portray information technology according to an advisable theory? Exercise they reveal a trend in the field? A raging fence? Pick i of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis argument (one that makes an statement), but y'all practice need to tell readers what to look. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The electric current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine.
More and more than cultural studies scholars are accepting pop media equally a field of study worthy of academic consideration.

Consider arrangement

You lot've got a focus, and you lot've stated it clearly and straight. At present what is the near effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

Beginning, embrace the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews as well must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations department to end the newspaper. The following provides a cursory description of the content of each:

• Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such equally the key theme or organizational pattern.
• Body: Contains your give-and-take of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more than information on each).
• Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the give-and-take proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you accept the basic categories in place, then you lot must consider how yous will nowadays the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help y'all come upward with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You've decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because y'all've just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale's portrayal is really real. You lot get-go with some articles virtually the physiology of sperm whales in biological science journals written in the 1980's. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early on 18th century. Then yous check those out. So you lot look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales take been portrayed in other forms of art, such equally in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder near American whaling methods during the fourth dimension portrayed in Moby Dick, so you observe some academic manufactures published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

• Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then well-nigh Moby Dick, published in 1851, so the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biological science manufactures (1980s) and the contempo manufactures on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity amongst subjects hither. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other fine art and on American whaling are written recently, they are nearly other subjects/objects that were created much before. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.

• By publication: Order your sources past publication chronology, then, merely if the lodge demonstrates a more important tendency. For instance, you could society a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a alter in autopsy practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.

• Past trend: A meliorate way to organize the in a higher place sources chronologically is to examine the sources under some other trend, such equally the history of whaling. And so your review would accept subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Nether this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.

• Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still exist an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on 1 topic, harpoon technology, it volition still be organized chronologically. The simply difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.Simply more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological society. For case, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as "evil" in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this style would shift between time periods within each section co-ordinate to the point made.

• Methodological: A methodological arroyo differs from the two above in that the focusing cistron usually does not accept to do with the content of the material. Instead, information technology focuses on the "methods" of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences betwixt the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic touch on of whaling on a community. A methodological telescopic will influence either the types of documents in the review or the manner in which these documents are discussed.
  In one case you've decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you demand to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or event.

Sometimes, though, you lot might need to add together additional sections that are necessary for your written report, just exercise non fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections y'all include in the body is up to you. Put in simply what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

• Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
• History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to sympathise the literature review, if the trunk of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Methods and/or Standards: The criteria y'all used to select the sources in your literature review or the style in which you lot present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes merely peer-reviewed manufactures and journals.

Questions for Further Enquiry: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will yous farther your research every bit a result of the review?

Begin composing

Once y'all've settled on a general blueprint of organization, you lot're ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you lot should follow during the writing stage also. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following word:

However, other studies take shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as "author," "pedestrian," and "persons." The students were asked to depict any image they had when writing the judgement. Hamilton plant that people imagined iii.3 men to each woman in the masculine "generic" condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambience sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, "Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Function of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Criminal offense," Women and Language19:2).

Utilise evidence

In the example higher up, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is only like whatsoever other academic inquiry paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed upward with evidence to show that what you lot are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most of import points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of data you cull to mention should relate directly to the review's focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Employ quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do non use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes hither and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills practice quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not mutual knowledge, or taken direct from the report. But if y'all discover yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph likewise as throughout the review. The authors here restate of import features of Hamilton's study, but then synthesize information technology by rephrasing the report's significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your ain vocalization

While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice (the writer'southward) should remain front and centre. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their ain text, but they however maintain their own vocalization by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources back up what Falk and Mills are saying.

Utilise circumspection when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your ain, exist sure to stand for the author'southward data or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such equally Hamilton, or they provide aplenty notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for instance, Gastil'due south. For more data, please see our handout on plagiarism.

Revise, revise, revise

Typhoon in mitt? At present you're gear up to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, non the argument. So cheque over your review again to make certain it follows the assignment and/or your outline. And so, just as y'all would for nearly other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you've presented your data in the almost concise style possible. Be certain to use terminology familiar to your audience; become rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you've documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the revising and editing process, run into our handout on revising drafts.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive listing of resources on the handout'south topic, and we encourage you to practice your ain research to discover boosted publications. Please do non use this listing as a model for the format of your ain reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, delight encounter the UNC Libraries citation tutorial. We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers, sixth ed. New York: Longman.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. 1997. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything Yous'll Ever Write. Berkeley: Ten Speed Printing.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook, 5th ed. New York: Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers, 11th ed. London: Pearson.

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You lot may reproduce it for not-commercial use if you utilise the entire handout and aspect the source: The Writing Center, Academy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Source: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/literature-reviews/

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