Beginnings, Middles, and Ends

1. Statement of Purpose. At the outset (``The Beginning") state the goals you wish to accomplish in your paper (``My goal is to describe how the language policy of Vietnam evolved under French colonialism ...").

2. Methodology. Then state the method(s) by which you hope to accomplish this goal: ``I shall demonstrate that this policy evolved from an indigenous Sinophilic tradition to a French centrist model beginning in the 1880's and continuing until the liberation of Saigon ..." or ``I shall compare indigenous life stories of Vietnamese speakers who had to deal with the confrontation of French policy superimposed on their own linguistic culture. In these interviews, speakers reveal ... "

3. In the Middle or Body of your paper, build your case. Review the literature (see sample below) on the subject; do not reinvent the wheel. Show that you are familiar with what others have said about this situation. (This is a form of academic courtesy, and helps establish your credibility. If you do not do this, people may think you are talking off the top of your head, or have no respect for the work of other scholars, and may lose interest in your project, and stop reading.) Describe, analyze, and evaluate the previous work, and give those authors credit by citing their work (see below for format). Then show how previous work could be improved, or how others admit the existence of a problem but have not solved it, or whatever it is you wish to show. If you find you are deadlocked, and don't know what to say that is new, try asking yourself the following questions:
   • What have we discussed in this course about language policy that may be a different way of looking at this material?

   • Is there a covert policy operating in this situation that has not been looked at?

   • Do some researchers tend to put all their eggs in one basket, attributing everything to one factor such as neo-Marxist economics, colonialism, post-modernism, or whatever?

   • Are there some aspects of the linguistic culture of [my topic] that may be in conflict with the overt or official policy of the polity I am examining? (Are there religious, historical, mythic, or other attitudinal factors that have not been examined here?)

   • Is there diglossia (Ferguson 1959) operating in this situation? Do the planners/policy-makers ignore or discount it? Do they treat language like a `black box' having no interrelationship with the policy?

   • Is there some religious framework (e.g. Islam, Buddhism, Christianity) that influences the policy-makers and strongly undergirds the covert aspects of policy and linguistic culture?

   • Is there some political philosophy (e.g. Marxism) that the policy-makers are operating under that may be blind to covert aspects of policy and of linguistic culture, or that makes policy planners act as if their theory is omnipotent?

4. When you have said all you would like to say, summarize what you have done. One paragraph may be sufficient. You do not have to show that you have done something revolutionary or earth-shaking; merely reviewing the literature on the subject may be the most useful thing you could do, if you do it systematically and present your review clearly.

5. If you have more than one point to make, summarize and wrap up the first before going on to the next. Try to stand back from your writing and see that the ideas flow smoothly, and that when there is a transition, that it is evident that you are shifting gears. Tell us that you are now going to shift gears, or now going to contrast and compare, etc.

6. Remember that the focus of this course is on the humanistic aspects of language policy, and that we assume that there is no such thing as no policy: that is, we always assume that there is a language policy, even if it is covert, implicit, unstated and perhaps buried in linguistic culture. So instead of saying things like ``There was no language policy in Alaska when the U.S. purchased it in 1867" we say ``Language policy in Alaska in 1867 was a blend of individual laissez-faire policies practiced by the Alaskan native tribes with an overlay of 19th-century Czarist absolutist Russian-supremacist policy in the few coastal settlements ... " or ``The native Seputsi people had a language origin myth according to which they had once had a written language, but it had been stolen by the Raven. They believed that one day other peoples would come in great canoes and bring back their written language. Thus when the Russians arrived, the Seputsi welcomed them with open arms and took to literacy, first in Russian, then in Seputsi, with great gusto ... "

7. Final rules of thumb:
   1. Do not reinvent the wheel.
   2. Build on the work of others, and give credit where credit is due.
   3. Ask for help, even if you don't think you need it.
   4. Show your work to someone else to read; check for clarity, transitions, whether you are making your points.
   5. Try to think of who your audience is, and write to that audience.
   6. If you are better at oral presentations than written, tape-record what you have to say and then transcribe it onto paper.
   7. Give credit by citations and attributions to ideas that are not yours. I prefer the form ``As Smith points out (Smith 1991:354)", with Smith 1991 spelled out in full in the bibliography.