4.5: Word Choice and Research

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Diction and Research

When conducting research for any college assignment, you need to eventually put the information you collect forward in words that are comprehensible and engaging, but before then, you probably need to entrench yourself in the library’s databases. Remember that topic comes from the Greek word for place, so as a writer you are like a guide, offering vistas and perspectives of different places within your overarching topic to your reader that open up new modes of thinking, new juxtapositions and opinions. How you choose to form those words into a specific structure is determined by the writing task or tasks, the prompt, that you receive from your instructor.

When you start to do research for any paper, you need to generate keywords. Keywords are words that you use to find research that relates, or is relevant, to your topic. In the following video, observe how the researcher begins with three words that indicate a topic that they may we writing about for an argumentative paper. You can assume they began with the following research question:

What are the effects of regular fast-food consumption on long-term health?

So, how do you find the right words (the diction) to help you research this topic?

How To Generate Keywords for Research

Step 1: Pull out the most important words from your research question(s).

In this case, we would pull out the words “effects,” “fast-food,” and “health.”

Step 2: Generate synonyms. Use a synonym generator if you need (a thesaurus), like this one from Merriam-Webster.

Keyword Generation Chart With Examples
Effects	Regular	Fast-food	Health
Consequences	Normal	Convenience food	Wellness
Results	Frequent	Junk food	Well-being
Aftermath	Consistent	Take-out	Longevity

Step 3: Sort through the terms to ensure they mean what you want. Use a dictionary to find denotations and connotations that will help you in your paper-writing processes.

For example, aftermath is a word that intones the results of some event, usually cataclysmic or tragic. Longevity is not a direct synonym for health; it deals with the idea of living a long life (long-evity). Although we may look for articles that discuss how consuming fast-food regularly affects longevity, the word has a different shade of meaning than the word health.

Step 4: Input the keywords and begin researching! Note how most articles you find will have related terms. I think of them like librarians do when they archive new materials: like hashtags you use to generate hype about a social media post. Even Wikipedia articles provide linked concepts, artworks, and terms for most subjects—just be aware that an encyclopedia entry is not considered a scholarly, refereed, peer-reviewed research article. You can mine these resources, including the ones you like, or the ones that have more relevance to your research question(s), to find more keywords and then more resources that you can use to quote, summarize, or paraphrase and use as support in your essays, compositions, and papers.

Activity: Generate Keywords \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Directions:

Look at the following research questions and brainstorm some (3-4) keywords or phrases you can take from each one. Try to choose the most important, or meaningful, words from each research question.
Then, generate two synonyms or related words or phrases to use as keywords when searching for resources.

Example Student Response

Research question: Should jails be more rehabilitative than punitive for those with mental illnesses?
Keywords: jails, rehabilitative, punitive, mental illness
Synonymous or related words: prisons, confinements, rehabilitate, reform, punish, criminal, incriminate, mental health,

You can even make a chart if it helps you:

Keyword Generation Chart With Examples
Jails	Rehabilitative	Punitive	Mental Illness
Prisons	Reformative	Penal	Disorders
Correctional facilities	Reintegrated	Corrective	Neurosis

Research Questions and Idea Boxes

Research Question: What are the effects of the Philippines being colonized by the Spanish?