Positing a Thesis Statement

What currently passes for good critical thinking instruction leaves students confused: it makes them defensive and leaves them with a distinct impression that we apply our standards haphazardly. The concept of presumption, however, allows us to give them real clarity: more transparent guidance about how to write a good persuasive essay, more insight into the process of building new understanding, and greater clarity about how to think critically. Adept critical thinkers understand this: good argumentation is fundamentally a matter of marshaling presumptive premises to defend nonpresumptive conclusions. Critical thinking is all about finding claims that happen to sit on the wrong side of the ledger, and showing why they need to be moved to the other side.

^[2]

1. Make sure the thesis statement answers a research question.
2. Make sure the question and thesis are of (potential) interest to scholars in the area.
3. The best way to make your thesis statement powerful and relevant is to position it within the ongoing scholarly conversation.
4. The thesis statement is your way to join the scholarly conversation – it says, “hey, pay attention here to something significant/relevant to us in this area of study.”
5. The way to add significance/relevance is to expand or change our current understanding of a literary work, topic, or problem people in the scholarly community are discussing.
6. A good way to do that is to reference other scholars directly. For instance, “this paper argues that ____ [something in the literary work, something in the scholarly literature] revises our understanding of ____ [something in the literary work, something in the scholarly literature] from ____ [previously held belief] to ____ [new belief].”
7. So, for example, “Sigmund Freud’s work on projection revises our understanding of Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’ from a creepy horror story to a warning about how religiously-induced guilt creates scapegoats.”
8. The above thesis statement is clear, arguable, relevant, and compelling to scholars of literature. Of course, Freud is somewhat old news and scholars may have already treated Hawthorne’s work in just these terms. You would need to look at the scholarly literature to see if the above claim is just a rehashing of what’s already out there. If it is, you can maybe add something to it. For instance, you might make a claim about how such projection typically makes scapegoats out of women.
9. The thesis statement is probably the hardest part of writing. It takes a lot of practice to produce your first good thesis statement. After that, it gets easier.
10. One of the best ways to learn how to do it is to look for thesis statements in the work of other scholars. Then emulate what they do.
    • For instance, in Viktor Schklovsky’s Art as Technique, he presents a general thesis about all art (including literature): “The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.”
    • Schklovsky then discusses particular works of literature, and for each he presents a thesis statement. About Tolstoy, he claims, “Tolstoy makes the familiar seem strange by not naming the familiar object. He describes an object as if he were seeing it for the first time, an event as if it were happening for the first time. In describing something he avoids the accepted names of its parts and instead names corresponding parts of other objects.”
    • Schklovsky positioned his claims in the ongoing conversation by siding against his colleagues who argued that the main purpose of art was to create images.
    • Schklovsky’s claims still resonate powerfully to this day in studies of art and literature, and in studies of Tolstoy particularly. These few sentences from him (of course he explains and defends his claims in the rest of his work) have affected the community of scholars for more than a century. His thesis statements were that good!

• It answers a research question
• It is arguable, meaning other answers are possible, but they are not as strong as the thesis you are stating
• It takes a side in an argument (and gives your readers a choice to agree or disagree)
• It is clearly stated
• It is specific
• It is relevant
• It is compelling
• It does not contradict itself (state that two opposing claims are true)
• It organizes all the points made in the rest of the paper

By examining __________________ [topic/approach], we can see _____________________[thesis—the claim that’s surprising], which is important because ___________________________.Example:

“By examining Sixteen Candles through the lens of Georg Simmel’s writings on fashion, we can see that the protagonist’s interest in fashion as an expression of her conflicted desire to be seen as both unique and accepted by the group. This is important because the film offers its viewers a glimpse into the ambivalent yearnings of middle class youth in the 1980s.

Although readers might assume _________________ [the commonplace idea you’re challenging], I argue that _________________________ [your surprising claim].

Example:

Although viewers might assume the romantic comedy Sixteen Candles is merely entertaining, I believe its message is political. The film uses the romance between Samantha, a middle-class sophomore, and Jake, an affluent senior, to reinforce the fantasy that anyone can become wealthy and successful with enough cunning and persistence.