ENGL2401: Cinema and Long-Form Television

Research and the Analytical Essay

This assessment is an analytical essay. This is a kind of essay that sets out to analyse something – break it down, make connections, notice differences – and tries to make assertions through the process of argument and evidence.

Where does research in this analytical process? Firstly, it is crucial to realise that by research we don’t mean typing the essay question into Google, seeing what comes up, and cutting and pasting this into a word document. Nor do we mean prompting a clever essay robot to answer the question for you.

One of the interesting things about English and Literary Studies—and its extension into film and television studies—is that for us research is not primarily about finding stuff out. Instead, research is used primarily to clarify issues so that they can be adequately tested against the text.

Here is a bit of a step-by-step guide …

1. Step 1 is to think carefully about the question you want to answer. We’ve formulated these in fairly general terms to give you scope for independent thought. But this does not mean we want you to answer the question in general terms. We want you to answer the question specifically and with direct reference to examples from the text.

2. Step 2 is to start breaking down the general question you have chosen into more particular questions. For example, if you are answering the question on class, you would want to know class means—what defines class and gives it its meaning. There is nothing wrong with dictionaries or wikis, but these are just starting points. By ‘defined’ we really mean how is the concept (e.g. class) treated in the text, what does it mean in the text.

3. Once you think you have a better (i.e. more particularised) idea of the key terms in your chosen question, then Step 3 is starting to relate these more particularised ideas to examples from text. Re-watch the program and try and isolate some good examples (scenes, moments, effects, etc.).

4. Finally, Step 4 is to try and organise these examples, and your interpretation of them, into an argument which addresses the original question

Okay, but where is the research in this process? A defining feature of English and Literary Studies is that the primary field of its research is the text itself. More than anything else we want to see that you are familiar with the text and have spent time with it and thinking about it. But we also draw on concepts that come from outside the text. You will find some useful concepts in Unit Readings and would like to see you use the concepts that are used in lectures and tutorials and not ones that drift in from elsewhere. The reason for this is that the concepts we offer are the ones that we test in our work (lectures & tutorials) during the semester.

How many references do I need? This is probably the most asked question in the history of university essays. Our answer is that less is more. In other words, we would like you to use your references well—read them carefully, cite them correctly, quote from them effectively, put the ideas back into your own words, apply them to your texts—rather than just tack references on for the sake of it. Also, we want you to use references as authorities for propositions, not as substitutes for developing your own ideas.

The key to the English method of thinking is it goes in two directions at the same time. On the one hand, it sets out to explore how something—say race or class—is depicted in a text. On the other hand, we find that as we try to do this, the text shows us something we didn’t know before about race or class.

In English, we believe that texts teach us. So, we start out trying to find a concept in a text, but we end up with the text teaching us about a concept. In other words, we believe that while sociologists can define class in various ways, it takes a creative text (a drama) for us to really understand what this might mean.

This does mean that English essays are difficult to write, so don’t be too put off if you are finding it difficult! But because of this, English essays also represent a truly valuable learning opportunity—something that will help you right through life as you encounter complex and interconnected problems.