The Craft of Research by Wayne C Booth

The Craft of Research by Wayne C Booth

This manual offers practical advice on the fundamentals of research to college and university students in all fields of study. It aims to teach much more than the mechanics of fact gathering, explaining how to approach a research project as an analytical process. The authors chart every stage of research, from finding a topic and generating research questions about it to marshalling evidence, constructing arguments, and writing everything up in a final report. Their advice is designed for use by both beginners and seasoned practitioners, and for projects from class papers to dissertations. This book is organized into four parts. Part One is an introduction to the distinctive nature, values and protocols of research. Part Two demystifies the art of discovering a topic. It outlines a wide range of sources, among them personal interests and passions. Parts Three and Four cover the essentials of argument - how to make a claim and support it - and ways to outline, draft, revise, rewrite and polish the final report. Part Three is a short course in the logic, structure, uses and common pitfalls of argumentation. The writing chapters in Part Four show how to present verbal and visual information effectively and how to shape sentences and paragraphs that communicate with power and precision.

Wayne C. Booth was born February 22, 1921, and died October 10, 2005. Descended from Mormon pioneers, he began as a young man to wrestle with church teachings, a struggle that informed both his decision to root himself in the secular world and his particular interest in the field of rhetoric. He earned a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University in 1944, a master's in 1947, and a PhD in 1950, both from the University of Chicago.

He was the author of several books, including the highly influential The Rhetoric of Fiction. He argued that as a technique rhetoric can enhance communication between author and reader, not merely manipulate the reader's response. To Professor Booth, literature was not so much words on paper as it was a complex ethical act. The author's task, then, is to draw readers into the web of narrative and hold them there. The critic's task is to tease out the specific rhetorical devices. He later considered rhetoric in a number of forms beyond the narrative, from political discourse to television commercials.

Booth was until 1992 professor of English at the University of Chicago, where he was associated with the Chicago school of literary criticism and became especially well known for his works on rhetoric. A former president of the Modern Language Association and founder and editor of the journal Critical Inquiry, his widely influential books have included The Rhetoric of Fiction, Now Don't Try to Reason with Me: Essays and Ironies for a Credulous Age, A Rhetoric of Irony, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent, Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction, and For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals (based largely on his devotion to cello playing).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780226065847
ISBN 10	0226065847
Title	The Craft of Research
Author	Wayne C Booth
Series	Chicago Guides To Writing Editing And Publishing
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Year published	1995-10-02
Number of pages	306
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable