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Voices from Across the Curriculum

Making the Thesis Specific

Not so good thesis/question: “What were Humphrey’s and Weidman’s reasons behind the setting of With My Red Fires, and of what importance were the set and costume design to the piece as a whole?”

Good thesis: “While Graham and Wigman seem diff erent, their ideas on inner expression (specifically subjectivism versus objectivism) and the incorporation of their respective countries’ surge of nationalism bring them much closer than they appear.”

What I like about the good thesis is that it moves beyond the standard “they are diff erent, but alike” (which can be said about anything) to actually tell the reader what specific areas the paper will explore. I can also tell that the subject is narrow enough for a fairly thorough examination of one small slice of these two major choreographers’ work rather than some over-generalized treatment of these two historic figures.

—Karen Dearborn, Professor of Dance

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Try This 12.1: Revising Weak Thesis Statements

You can learn a lot about writing strong thesis statements by analyzing and rewriting weak ones. For the following example, first identify the type of problem for each thesis. Then rewrite them, providing solutions as we have done. Revising will require you to add information and thinking—to come up with some interesting claims that most readers would not already have thought of.

In this paper, I discuss police procedures in recent domestic violence cases.

The way that the media portrayed the events of April 30, 1975, when Saigon fell, greatly influenced the final perspectives of the American people toward the end result of the Vietnam War.

From cartoons in the morning to adventure shows at night, there is too much violence on television.

The songs of the punk rock group Minor Threat relate to the feelings of individuals who dare to be different. Their songs are just composed of pure emotion. Pure emotion is very important in music because it serves as a vehicle to convey the important message of individuality. Minor Threat’s songs are meaningful to me because I can identify with them.

It is important to understand why leaders act in a leadership role. What is the driving force? Is it an internal drive for the business or group to succeed, or is it an internal drive for the leader to dominate over others?

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HOW TO REPHRASE THESIS STATEMENTS: SPECIFY AND SUBORDINATE

Weak thesis statements can be quickly identified by their word choice and syntax (sentence structure). Each of the first three problem examples for Weak Thesis Type 5, for example, relies mostly on nouns rather than verbs; the nouns announce a broad heading, but the verbs don’t do anything with or to the nouns. In grammatical terms, these thesis statements don’t predicate (affirm or assert something about the subject of a proposition). Instead, they rely on anemic verbs like is or are, which function as equal signs that link general nouns with general adjectives rather than specify more complex relationships.

By replacing the equal sign with a more active verb, you can force yourself to advance some sort of claim, as in one of our solutions: “The differences between the Carolingian and Burgundian Renaissances outweigh the similarities.” While this reformulation remains quite general, it at least begins to direct the writer along a more particular line of argument. Replacing is or are (verbs that function only as equal signs) with stronger verbs usually impels you to rank ideas in some order of importance and to assert some conceptual relation among them.

The best way to remedy the problem of overgeneralization is to move toward specificity in word choice, in sentence structure, and in idea. If you find yourself writing “The economic situation is bad,” consider revising it to “The tax policies of the current administration threaten to reduce the tax burden on the middle class by sacrificing education and health