Before you begin writing your literature review, you should (1) clarify your assignment;(2) find models through searching; (3) narrow your topic; (4) consider whether your sources are current; (5) find a focus; (6) construct a working thesis statement; (7) consider organization.
Similar to primary research, development of the literature review requires four stages:
1. Problem formulation: which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues?
2. Literature search: finding materials relevant to the subject being explored
3. Data evaluation: determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic
4. Analysis and interpretation: discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature
In assessing each piece, consideration should be given to:
·Provenance: What are the author’s credentials? Are the author’s arguments supported by evidence (e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings)?
·Objectivity: Is the author’s perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author’s point?
·Persuasiveness: Which of the author’s theses are most/least convincing?
·Value: Are the author’s arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?
Activity4-1: Learning from samples
Read the following samples of literature review and do exercises in groups.
Sample 1:
Language and Gender: A Brief Literature Review
With the general growth of feminist work in many academic fields, it is hardly surprising that the relationship between language and gender has attracted considerable attention in recent years. In an attempt to go beyond “folklinguistic” assumptions about how men and women use language (the assumption that women are “talkative”, for example), studies have focused on anything from different syntactical, phonological or lexical uses of language to aspects of conversation analysis, such as topic nomination and control, interruptions and other interactional features. While some research has focused only on the description of differences, other work has sought to show how linguistic differences both reflect and reproduce social difference. Accordingly, Coates(1988) suggests that research on language and gender can be divided into studies that focus on dominance and those that focus on difference.
Much of the earlier work emphasized dominance. Lakoff’s (1975) pioneering work suggested that women’s speech typically displayed a range of features, such as tag questions, which marked it as inferior and weak. Thus, she argued that the type of subordinate speech learned by a young girl “will later be an excuse others use to keep her in a demeaning position, to refuse to treat her seriously as a human being” (1975, p.5). While there are clearly some problems with Lakoff’s work—her analysis was not based on empirical research, for example, and the automatic equation of subordinate with “weak” is problematic—the emphasis on dominance has understandably remained at the centre of much of this work. Research has shown how men nominated topics more, interrupted more often, held the floor for longer, and so on (see, for example, Zimmerman and West, 1975). The chief focus of this approach, then, has been to show how patterns of interaction between men and women reflect the dominant position of men in society.
Some studies, however, have taken a different approach by looking not so much at power in mixed-sex interactions as at how same-sex groups produce certain types of interaction. In a typical study of this type, Maltz and Borker (1982) developed lists of what they described as men’s and women’s features of language. They argued that these norms of interaction were acquired in same-sex groups rather than mixed-sex groups and that the issue is therefore one of (sub-)cultural miscommunication rather than social inequality. Much of this research has focused on comparisons between, for example, the competitive conversational style of men and the cooperative conversational style of women.
While some of the more popular work of this type, such as Tannen (1987), lacks a critical dimension, the emphasis on difference has nevertheless been valuable in fostering research into gender subgroup interactions and in emphasizing the need to see women’s language use not only as ‘subordinate’ but also as a significant subcultural domain.
Although Coates’ (1988) distinction is clearly a useful one, it also seems evident that these two approaches are by no means mutually exclusive. While it is important on the one hand, therefore, not to operate with a simplistic version of power and to consider language and gender only in mixed-group dynamics, it is also important not to treat women’s linguistic behaviour as if it existed outside social relations of power. As Cameron, McAlinden and O’Leary (1988) ask, “Can it be coincidence that men are aggressive and hierarchically-organized conversationalists, whereas women are expected to provide conversational support?” (p.80). Clearly, there is scope here for a great deal more research that
·is based on empirical data of men’s and women’s speech;
·operates with a complex understanding of power and gender relationships (so that women’s silence, for example, can be seen both as a site of oppression and as a site of possible resistance);
·looks specifically at the contexts of language use, rather than assuming broad gendered differences;
·involves more work by men on language and gender, since attempts to understand male uses of language in terms of difference have been few (thus running the danger of constructing men’s speech as the ‘norm’ and women’s speech as ‘different’);
·aims not only to describe and explain but also to change language and social relationships.
Exercise 1: Read the literature review and complete the following table.
Exercise 2: Identify different ways to report literatures in this literature review. Find out specific examples in this literature review and discuss the functions of these ways.
(1) ___________________________________________________________________
(2) ___________________________________________________________________
(3) ___________________________________________________________________
(4) ___________________________________________________________________
(5) ___________________________________________________________________
Exercise 3: Learning to use referring verbs: Single out all the referring verbs used by the author in this literature review and point out what are neutral verbs and what are evaluating verbs.
(1) neutral verbs: ___________________________________________________
(2) evaluating verbs: ________________________________________________
Sample 2:
To the Lighthouse is generally considered to be Virginia Woolf’s most accomplished and most popular work. In this novel, Woolf has left much room for the possibility of multiple interpretations and for the imaginative power of readers. And it is widely explored by scholars and critics from different perspectives.
The majority of critics approach To the Lighthouse principally as a modernist aesthetic work, largely in terms of its narrative techniques and form. In 1927, The Times Literary Supplement Reviewer focused interest on this novel as plotless one, and commented on the charm and pleasure of the design. In his “The Rhetoric of To the Lighthouse”, Mitchell A. Leaska (1970) considers this novel as Woolf’s “finest novel” which “bears eloquent testimony to her mastery of a complex and disciplined form.” He says that Woolf “translate her explorations to the novel form, she has to abandon that series of dramatic events by which the conventional novel arrested and sustained interest and in its place to create moments of human consciousness” and “she has achieved a unity of design that crowns her triumph in To the Lighthouse” (62).
According to Stella McNichol (1991), what makes To the Lighthouse a modernist novel is its experimental form. It has no traditional plot structure and no characterization in the accepted sense. Instead the novel is organized into three parts that are thematically and symbolically connected with each other. Speculating on the symbolism intended in To the Lighthouse, James Ginden writes in his Harvest of a Quiet Eye: “The lighthouse itself, distant and ambiguous across the water, stands as the central symbol of meaning and achievement in the novel... Woolf’s symbolic searcher must suffer, must pass through the tumult of destruction and war, before he can reach the lighthouse”.
In China, many critics think Woolf’s To the Lighthouse is a masterpiece of stream of consciousness, which in a perfect and harmonious form, manifests the writer’s unusual artistic skill. According to Qu Shijing (1984), a Chinese scholar who has made great contribution to the study on Woolf and her works, Woolf skillfully employs the narrative method of multiple perspectives and levels and the techniques of releasing the stream of consciousness through accidents or external details. Zhong Jiya (1999), Lisen (2000), Li Aiyun (2002), Liunan (2003), Wangchen (2004), and Wang Xueling (2004) all consider To the Lighthouse to be a stream of consciousness novel in high degree of professional proficiency.
Virginia Woolf, living in an age which was undergoing the First Feminism Wave, is a famous feminism theorist. Undoubtedly, her feminism is also embodied in her novels. She becomes both the origin and object of feminist criticism. Therefore, her To the Lighthouse has been criticized by many people from a feminism perspective. There are scholars paying much attention to the feministic view of the author and pointing out the novel tries to fight against the patriarchy “during the suffrage campaigns and First World War” when “the world seemed dominated by the violence of ego; women writers wanted no part of it”(Showalter 240). Jane Marcus (1981) is the most significant figure in US feminist criticism of Virginia Woolf and she has published her first collection of essays about the sexual politics or Woolf’s novel, such as: New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf and Virginia Woolf: A Feminist Slant. Renee R. Curry (1997) says, “Woolf’s greatest artistic achievement in this novel is her depiction of the ideological struggle outlined by feminism—the struggle between Mrs. Ramsay, mother extraordinaire, and Lily Briscoe, single woman/artist”. Joan Lidoff claims that To the Lighthouse has really created a feminine voice, and a new female genre. Ge Guilu (1997) from hermeneutic perspective argues that the novel emphasizes the individuals’ function and diminishes the power of patriarchy. He expounds the novel portrays the marginalized characters like Lily to deconstruct Mrs. Ramsay’s central discourse position and to establish the marginalized person’s proper status and value (175).
According to Li Aiyun (2002), Woolf manages to deconstruct the cruelty, loneliness, worry, hesitation and nihility in the patriarchal culture. In Wang Lieqin’s opinion (2003), the novel represents sexual dichotomy in a patriarchal society, advances her proposals for the deconstructions of sexual dichotomy, and it reflects a conscious application of Woolf’s feminist ideas. Similarly, Qi Yan (2004) thinks that this novel reflects the opposition of the sexes in the traditional society of male chauvinism. Moreover, some people criticize To the Lighthouse from Woolf’s conception of androgyny. Furthermore, some argue that the novel not only shows negative influence of the patriarchal convention, but also proposes the possible solution—the concept of androgyny.
Nancy Topping Bazin (1973) says that the theory of androgyny is the key to understand this novel. Yang Yuehua (1998) tries to use the concept of androgyny to explain the novel and thinks that the author wants to display the female principle, male principle and the explanation of androgyny so as to make her wish that men and women could live harmoniously rather than against each other (30). Shu Yongzhen (2001) also thinks the novel in its writing technique together with its contents tells us the opposition between the sexes and poses overthrowing the Phallocenter and androgyny as the solution (61). Similarly, in Duan Yanli’s (2001) opinion, in this novel, Woolf discloses the hardship and problems that women faced in reality, and points out that only by training the androgynous mind can they find their way out.
This novel is also criticized by many scholars from psychoanalysis perspective. Most of them take the Freudian theory especially the Oedipus complex to interpret the novel. In her “To the Lighthouse: V. Woolf’s Winter’s Tale”, Maria Dibattista (1980) argues that the novel derives from the Oedipus Complex, which not only decides the theme of the novel, but also its structure. The novel is about the inevitable feeling that a child must go through and the parents’ rightly and not rightly exerting their power (422). In “Virginia Woolf and psychoanalysis”, the editors Sue Roe and Susan Sellers (2001) analyze that “Mr. Ramsay has been much read as the Freudian patriarch: as a dominant figure, he is the father who says ‘no’to his son James who is hoping to go to the lighthouse, the house of light, the mother’s house”.
Mitchell A. Leaska (1970) has the same opinion and in his “The Rhetoric of To the Lighthouse”, he points out: “If we consider James in terms of his possessiveness for his mother, his rivalry and jealousy for his father, his insatiable need for paternal recognition, his sense of impotence and rage, and the pervasive anxiety which conditions his introspection, we might easily attach him a Freudian label and summarily dismiss him as a victim modeled after that prototype of antiquity” (82). Similarly, Chinese scholars Wang Xiaoling (2002) and Wang Lili (2003) also think that James’s hatred for his father and love his mother show obviously the Oedipus complex.
Besides the Freudian theory, some critics use Lacan’s theory to interpret the novel. For example, Shannon Forbers (2000) from the perspective of Lacan’s psychological theory detects modern women’s identity in To the Lighthouse by analyzing Mrs. Ramsay’s daughter Cam. In his book Between Language and Silence: The Novels of Virginia Woolf, Howard Harper (1982) thinks the novel is about “the quest for ultimate answer” to life (135). He thinks, “The archetype of the voyage ... finds its fullest expression so far. Constantly present in one form or another throughout the book, the promise of the voyage to the lighthouse becomes the mythic meaning of life itself” (158).
By using Freud’s theory and his psychoanalytical approach to interpret the novel, the thesis uses not only the Oedipus complex, but also the structure of mind—id, ego, and superego, together with the way of analyzing the symbolic meaning of the lighthouse deliberately, to explore the James’ mental development in To the Lighthouse.
Questions to answer
1. What is the thesis of this literature review?
2. How many perspectives did the author write in this literature review? Discuss in details.
3. What approaches did the author use to organize the body of this literature review?
4. What is the function of the last paragraph?
What You should Know
A literature review is written in essay format and groups related works together and discusses trends and developments rather than focusing on one item at a time. It is not a summary; rather, it evaluates previous and current research in regard to how relevant and/ or useful it is and how it relates to your own research. The format of a review of literature may vary from discipline to discipline and from assignment to assignment. A review may be a self-contained unit—an end in itself—or a preface to and rationale for engaging in primary research.
Your job when writing a literature review is to add value to all those papers you have read, where you explain how the many salient ideas of others (often gathered from many disparate sources) have led up to and have contributed to your research problem.
A good literature review, therefore, is critical of what has been written, identifies areas of controversy, raises questions and identifies areas which need further research.
The whole process of reviewing includes:
a. Searching for literature
b. Sorting and prioritizing the retrieved literature
c. Analytical reading of papers
d. Evaluative reading of papers
e. Comparison across studies
f. Organizing the content
g. Writing the review
Language Focus
Referring verbs in Academic Writing
Referring verbs are used to summarize another writer’s ideas or to introduce a quotation from the writer. For example:
1. Wilsher argued that the single play had been consigned to television history.
2. Heffernan (1972) found that adaptation to prison was facilitated by ...
3. ... as Peter Huber has observed, “Coal itself is yesterday’s landfill ...”
Neutral verbs:
The author stated that / indicated that / discussed that / described that / observed that / found that / showed that / proposed that / pointed out that (less formal) ...
Verbs to summarize the author’s ideas, but add a point of view (that is not neutral)：
The author suggested that (the idea is communicated but not directly or strongly) / offered an idea (the author thinks it may be true, but there may be doubt) ...
Verbs to move from one point to the next or show emphasis (these verbs may be found in the present tense even when other verbs are in the past):
The author added that (not the author’s main point) / noted that (reporting an additional worthy point; used instead of “mention”) / stressed or emphasized ...
Verbs to report an author’s argument, belief or claim (these verbs may be in the present tense even if other verbs are in the past)
The author argued that / contended that / maintained that / believed that ...
Verbs with “extra meaning” used to report an author’s argument:
The author claimed that (but the literature reviewer may not agree to this claim)
alleged that ( but the literature reviewer is even less convinced of the argument)
implied that ( but there might be something missing or that the study has not been proven)
gave evidence that (but it is not proven)
...
Notice：
When introducing someone’s opinion, don’t use “says”, but instead an appropriate verb which more accurately reflects this viewpoint, such as “argues” “claims” or“states”. Use the present tense for general opinions and theories, or the past when referring to specific research or experiments.
1. Although Trescovick (2001) argues that attack is the best form of defense, Boycott (1969) claims that ...
2. In a field study carried out amongst the homeless of Sydney, Warne (1999) found that ...
Assignment
1. Go to the library or Internet to find one academic paper in one of the top journals in your academic interest, and then analyze the structure of the literature review in the paper.
2. Skim over the academic article titled Foreign Language Anxiety: Understanding Its Status and Insiders’ Awareness and Attitudes (See Appendix 2). Study its introduction and literature review parts then do the following exercises.
(1) List the structure of literature review of this paper.
(2) How many ways did the author use to write this literature review? Choose examples from the review to elaborate.
(3) Explain the elements comprised in this literature review with detailed examples.
3.Rewrite the following passage to make the passage have more variety of citation patterns (see Activity 2-2 for more references).
The Origins of the First Scientific Articles
The first scientific journal was started in London in 1665. Obviously, the first scientific articles had no direct models to build on, and several scholars have discussed possible influences. Ard (1983) suggests that the first articles developed from the scholarly letters that scientists were accustomed to sending to each other. Sutherland (1986) showed that early articles were also influenced by the newspaper reports of that time. Paradis (1987) declaimed that the scientific books of Robert Boyle were another model. Finally, Bazerman (1988) argued that discussion among the scientists themselves made its own contribution to the emergence of the scientific article.
4.According to the research topic your teacher of some course has assigned to you, write up a literature review on the given topic within 300 words.