Chapter Two: Identifying a Problem / Evaluating Relevance and Purpose / Considering Audience
Identifying a Problem
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On this page we discuss the following themes:
- Strategies for Generating Scholarly Problems
- Addressing Problems
- Relation of Problem to Audience
- Do Problems Need to Be “Original”?
Many instructors and textbooks tell students to “identify a problem” for their research. When students learn they have to find a “problem,” they often think about an affliction, disaster, or catastrophe. But in the language researchers use, a problem is just something unknown or not understood, similar to the way math gives us problems. When facing a math problem, we ask “What is X?” The “problem” in math – X – is neither good nor bad. What you need to get started on a research project is something you want to know or understand; that thing is your problem. Then, with the research materials you discover, try to help your audience better understand that thing by making a claim about it. To help you learn how to identify the problem, we include the following passage from Aaron Ritzenberg and Sue Mendelsohn:
Strategies for Generating Scholarly Problems
Notice that each problem requires two parts. Like a rubber band that can only be stretched when you pull each end in opposite directions, a scholarly tension requires two elements to be at odds. For instance, merely noticing that something seems strange doesn’t constitute a scholarly problem until the researcher places it in tension with a second element: what we think of as typical. As you read the highlighted passages, you’ll notice that we have underlined language that indicates the kind of tension the author is calling attention to. As they research, scholars generate problems to drive their research by looking for tensions or dissonances between . . .
Common Understanding and Complication
Begin by observing a tension between the way others have understood the text and some aspect of the text that appears to diverge from that understanding.
Example: In this excerpt from his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness,” William Cronon complicates our common understanding of the idea of “wilderness” as a realm separated from civilization (passage highlighted in light gray). Cronon observes that, in fact, wilderness is a product of civilization (passage highlighted in dark gray):
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The common understanding of wilderness
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For many Americans wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a refuge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet. As Henry David Thoreau once famously declared, “In Wildness is the preservation of the World.” |
| A complication: reasons to rethink the common understanding of wilderness | But is it? The more one knows of its peculiar history, the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation—indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. (7) |
Consider the stakes by asking how this new complication might challenge the common understanding of the text.[1]
A problem is not necessarily a bad thing to have. In fact, it can be a great thing to have! When we try to solve important problems, we advance our knowledge. A problem can be technical like how to design a bridge that withstands wind pressure and soil erosion; philosophical like how to understand the nature of being; economic like how to make our resources go further; political like how to ensure the rights of immigrants; or historical like how to understand why the U.S. government incarcerated approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. The best researchers identify research problems so rich and rewarding that they can work on them throughout their careers and leave more work for future generations of researchers. Marie Curie’s research problem was to understand radioactivity. Sigmund Freud’s research problem was to understand how the mind worked. Zora Neal Hurston’s research problem was to preserve and promote African-American culture. Though all three researchers died long ago, other researchers have continued their work. When we “plow the fields” of research established by others, we owe them a debt of gratitude, which we pay by continuing the tradition and passing it on to the next generation of researchers.
Addressing Problems
When working with math problems, we can say we solved the problem. In literary studies, not all problems can be solved definitively. Sometimes, as in the problem of interpreting a literary text, we get an answer that is better than one we had before. We often use the word “address” instead of “solve” in these cases. Thus, we might say that Joseph Campbell addressed the problem posed by the structure of myths. He didn’t solve the problem definitively since other people have addressed this problem in different ways and have come up with different answers.
To address problems in literary studies, we do research. For example, to address the problem of interpreting an Emily Dickinson poem, we might look for critical texts. Even if you find well-known critical texts, perhaps you see them differently from how other people see them; your perspective and your insights help others better address the problem.
Sometimes a problem is well studied, like the examples listed above. Sometimes you discover a new problem and are introducing it for the first time. In literary studies, lots of unknown things are out there but not all of them are significant or worth knowing. For a problem to be significant, it means that an audience somewhere might care about it. For instance, perhaps we don’t know how many words are in Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. Just because the answer is unknown doesn’t mean it is significant. Would the answer help us better understand the text or the author? Maybe not, or not much.
Also, consider whether the problem – the unknown thing – is too easy or too difficult to answer and then avoid doing either. Using a computer and a text file of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, you could figure out how many words are in it quite easily, much faster than if you counted the words yourself. We should choose problems that are not this easy to answer. In any case, counting words in a novel makes little sense unless you can explain why doing so helps us to address another more significant problem, like whether audiences were consuming longer novels at the time or whether the length of a novel was a major consideration for publishers. Even then, providing a page count is probably sufficient.
Set aside questions that are too difficult to answer like the impact of Shakespeare’s work on authors who came after him. Such a project would take an immense amount of research and require years of study, far more than you can do for a term paper. Just because a problem is too difficult for a smaller project, however, doesn’t mean it is not worth pursuing. Measuring Shakespeare’s impact on later authors is an important objective. What you can do in a term paper is manage a smaller part of such a big question. For instance, what impact did Shakespeare’s work have on 20th century playwright August Wilson?
When you address a problem in literary studies, you should consider the history of the problem; have other people addressed it before? Weigh the significance of the problem; is it one that has relevance to the scholarly conversation? Finally, before exploring the problem in great detail, determine whether you can feasibly address the problem given your available time and other constraints.
Relation of Problem to Audience
To get a sense of whether a problem is worth addressing you need to imagine your audience. The audience for your research is other literary critics and scholars. The best way to get to know your audience is by reading what they write: works of literary criticism and scholarship. Your audience may range from novices (such as students) to experts (such as professors). In the writings of these literary scholars and critics, you will come to know what kinds of concerns they have and what problems they find relevant and significant. Your goal is to join the conversation by adding something of value.
Do Problems Need to Be “Original”?
By reading works of literary criticism and scholarship, you will find many significant problems. Great scholars are great problem-finders and they don’t always have time to solve all the problems they discover. Sometimes they leave them for other people – like you – to work on. For your research project, you don’t necessarily need to come up with an “original” problem unless your instructor asks you to do so, because literary criticism is not like math in which most problems have only one possible answer. Literary criticism and scholarship are more like law; in many legal cases, we can come to different interpretations of evidence and of the law itself. Let’s say you find other works of literary criticism discussing the problem of the color line in the work of Langston Hughes. You can still address the same problem in your research project because you might have something new or different to say about the problem. You can add value by uncovering new information or by taking a different perspective on the problem.
Good research problems |
Poor research problems |
| Addresses an unexplored problem or proposes a novel solution to an old problem | Proposes a well known solution to a well known problem |
| Identifies a tension between common understanding and complications | Proposes unproved common understandings |
| Addressing the problem is a challenging yet manageable task | The problem is too easy or too difficult to answer |
| Audiences might care about it | Chances are no one would care about it |
| Joins the conversation in critical literature | Unrelated to the conversation in critical literature |
| You might have something new or different to say about the problem | You are unlikely to have anything new or different to say about the problem |
On the following pages we will discuss how to evaluate the relevance and purpose of the problem you’ve identified.
More resources:
Discover how to establish a Problem Statement that helps the reader understand the relevance of your research.
- Aaron Ritzenberg and Sue Mendelsohn. How Scholars Write. Oxford University Press. 2020, 22. ↵
