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University of Florida
Writing Pedagogy Conference
Keynote
26 January 2013
Brawling with the Bully Thesis
Every semester, the Writing Center at my university holds a workshop on how to write a thesis
statement. These are valuable sessions, I’m sure; after all, the thesis is considered the backbone of
academic writing—without it the essay would collapse under its own weight. Most of my first-year
students have been battle-trained in writing thesis statements by the time I get them, though all are not
equally good at it.
The thesis is the convention they most associate with school writing; it is certainly the most
famous feature of the revered and reviled five-paragraph essay: say what you’re going to say, say it, and
say what you said. While the five-paragraph form has given birth to some really bad ideas about how
writing works, I’m not sure that the thesis statement is one of those bad ideas. After all, ever since the
first composition courses at Harvard, the principle of “unity” has been the guiding principle of writing
instruction. As Harvard’s A.S. Hill put it in 1902, ““Unity in expression grows out of unity in thought: a
writer who is in the habit of grouping things in his mind things that belong together is more like to form
his sentences on a similar principle than one whose mind is a scene of confusion” (415).
The thesis is the great unifier. It’s helps writers locate a place to stand relative to a topic and
directs their gaze so as to avoid confusion. In these respects, the thesis statement is a very good thing
for both writers and readers. But there is another side to the thesis, and instead of offering a guiding
hand this one carries a baseball bat. This thesis is a thug that muscles its way into writers’ thoughts and
beats information into submission. The thuggy thesis is a bully, insisting that everything is subordinate
to him. He is master. Unfortunately, this is the thesis that most of our students bring with them into
our writing classes.
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I’m not here today to argue that there is no place for the thesis-proof paper in our writing
classes. I’m not against thesis statements. What does bother me, though, is how thoroughly this
convention dominates our discussions about what is meant by strong academic writing. The thesis has
been hogging the bed, and I think it’s time to make more room for its tossing-and-turning partner in
academic inquiry: the question.
I’ll return later to what a Writing Center might do in a workshop devoted to crafting good
questions rather than composing thesis statements. But first I’d like to talk a little about how we came
to surrender the entire bed to the thesis in the first place, and why that isn’t a good thing. As a textbook
writer, I’m naturally drawn to the story that textbooks tell us about the history of writing instruction. But
there are other reasons to look at textbooks as well. For many years, historian Robert Connors tell us,
composition textbooks were the only source of theory about writing instruction until the growth of
scholarship in the discipline, and even today, textbooks profoundly influence how people teach.
What’s interesting about the thesis, according to the textbooks I’ve surveyed beginning in 1900,
is how recently it elbowed its way into the room and laid claim to most of the bed. The earliest mention
of the thesis statement that I could find was in 1939, and that was only in a single text. It was only in the
fifties and sixties that the term was used more widely in textbooks; now, of course, you’d be hardpressed to find any text that doesn’t lavish attention on the thesis. Early composition textbooks did
frequently mention the term “proposition,” but this was exclusively applied to writing arguments. There
was no equivalent term for proposition that applied to other forms of writing like expository or narrative
essays. Now, of course, we assume that the thesis is required in all kinds of academic writing, not just
arguments.
Naturally, textbooks don’t reveal the story behind the story here: how the term “thesis”
became so dominant. It wasn’t resurrected from classical rhetoric. The term does surface first in Greek
rhetoric and later among the Romans. For Cicero a thesis is a type of general question and a hypothesis
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a more specific application of that question: “Should one marry?” vs. “Should I marry Karen?” The
thesis, according to classical rhetoricians, was not a part of rhetoric but dialectic, and was intended to
force agreement from an opponent through use of syllogisms (McKoen 11). There are still hints of this
distinction in current definitions of thesis and hypothesis: the first implies mastery and authority and the
second a more tentative, unproven assumption. But it would be a stretch to claim that modern
textbook writers rummaged around in classical rhetoric for a word like “thesis.” The five-paragraph
theme—a fifties manifestation of the practice of “daily theme writing” that begin at Harvard at the turn
of the century—might have also provided a convenient perch for the thesis statement to land (Tremmel
32). It roosts there in the introductory paragraph like Poe’s raven, announcing its dark intentions. But
this is all speculation. The point is that the thesis is a relatively recent term in writing instruction.
While the question of the historical origins of the term is interesting, what matters more here is
how the thesis-proof form patterns thought and shifts the writer into a particular relationship to
knowledge. No one has written about this more eloquently than Keith Fort in his 1971 essay “Form,
Authority, and the Essay.” Though Fort focused on the writing of critical essays on literature, his
argument applies to all kinds of academic essays that require a thesis that must be proved. This
“standard form of the essay,” Fort claimed, ultimately limits what students can write about since “the
only ideas that are acceptable are those that can be proved” (631). This, in turn, fundamentally shifts
writers’ relationships to the texts they’re writing about: information is necessarily subordinated to the
master idea, and the paper is arranged hierarchically. As Fort put it, “In other words, if the only form in
which a writer can express himself (sic) on literature is one that requires a thesis, then he has to look at
literature as a sources of theses” (633). While this is hardly a tragedy, a literary text—any text-- is
certainly diminished when its sole function is to be a servant to a thesis.
You might be thinking that when we teach the thesis in composition, we aren’t endorsing the
bully version of the thing. Contemporary textbooks, including my own, are very careful to say that the
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thesis is not an inert element; it is intended to mix with what we learn and change as our thinking
changes. Sadly, this does not seem to be the kind of thesis that is rattling around in most students’
heads. Many years ago, when I was studying the history of the freshman research paper, I surveyed 250
first-year writing students on their beliefs about writing with research. One result stood out: Sixty
percent of the students agreed with the statement that you “have to know your thesis before you start”
(28). Apparently, not much has changed. In 2010, Project Information Literacy published a report on
students “research styles”—their routines when writing research papers—and the result was similar to
mine: nearly sixty percent of students surveyed believed it was necessary to “create a thesis statement
early on.”
While it is true that there are rhetorical situations in which dreaming up a thesis early on is a
very good idea—I’m thinking, for example, essay exams and the ACT writing test—the habit of rushing
to judgment is an anathema to academic inquiry. Scholars might very well have a hunch about what is
true—we might even have a hypothesis—but what motivates us is the act of discovery, of coming to see
things differently. The thug thesis is like the mallet in the arcade game “whack-a-mole”—a weapon for
keeping discovery in its place: out of sight. The thesis-proof essay is, of course, a valid form of
deductive reasoning, and there is a place for that. It’s particularly helpful when learners tackle what
cognitive researchers call “well-defined problems,” or problems in which there is likely a “correct and
knowable solutions” (Schraw et al. 523). The subject matter in our classes rarely—if ever—fits this
definition. If anything, students are writing about “ill-defined,” complicated subjects that might raise
questions with multiple answers, none of them necessarily “correct.” The kind of reasoning skills illdefined problems demand is much more likely to involve induction rather than deduction. Any final
judgment is delayed until the evidence is examined. And when we do come to a conclusion, we arrive at
a hypothesis not an assertion like a thesis, which implies a final judgment (Yu). In other words, we let
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the moles pop up and then we take a look at them before we even think about whacking them on their
heads.
A writing pedagogy that relies largely on writing a thesis and then subordinating all information
one encounters to that claim is not a pedagogy that encourages exploration or inquiry. If anything, it
reinforces students’ epistemological beliefs about the world that we hope to complicate: that there is
one “correct” solution to every problem, that all claims can be “proven,” and that inquiry into a topic
largely involves finding the “right” authorities—i.e. the people who believe what we already believe.
What I’m saying, then, is that while the thesis-driven essay is rhetorically valuable, the form’s
elevation as the ideal for academic essays has also privileged a certain kind of thinking that has the
following effects on student writers:
1. It limits what they can write about.
2. It reinforces simplistic ideas about the nature of knowledge.
3. It suggests that deductive reasoning is the best method of solving complicated problems.
What’s the alternative? After all, A.S. Hill wasn’t wrong when he said that most writing has a
sense of unity. A few years before he died, Donald Murray, as was his habit, printed up and laminated
small cards that he handed out to his friends and colleagues. This one said “S.O.F.T.” Every piece of
writing, Murray argued, needs to “say one fucking thing.” For the last forty years, that one thing, in
academic writing, at least, was something we called a “thesis.”
I’m not suggesting we stop asking for a thesis in student writing. What I am suggesting is that
we put at least equal emphasis on the importance of the question. It’s striking how little we talk about
what makes a good question, one that will sustain inquiry into a topic for at least a few weeks or more.
After all, in academic inquiry, the question is the mother of all theses. Our claims arise from particular
questions we pose and the (often messy) process holding those questions close to the evidence. Oddly,
writing instruction has focused nearly exclusively on the child-- rather than the parent.
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I’d like to spend the next few minutes talking about what makes a good question, and in
particular, how to teach the question to our students. Many years ago, I had a student who posed this
question as a focus for his research essay: “Is Elvis really dead?” We intuitively know that this isn’t a
very good question, in part because the answer is obvious. But suppose we posed the question this
way: “What does the enduring belief among some that Elvis is still alive say about the nature of
celebrity in our culture?” This seems much better, much more like the kind of question an academic
might ask. But why? For one thing, obviously, a good question doesn’t have a simple answer. I also
seems likely that someone has said something about the nature of Elvis’ celebrity or why people believe
things that are patently untrue. But perhaps the most essential element is this: That’s the kind of
question that can lead to judgment, to a proposition or a hypothesis that might be explored or
evaluated. The investigator is prompted to have something to say about Elvis, celebrity, or the nature of
belief.
But we don’t arrive at these questions easily, as any dissertation or master’s thesis writers will
attest. Certainly our first-year writing students struggle with identifying a question that will drive their
inquiry into a topic. For many years, I expected students to do just that: within a week of picking a
research topic for the essay, when they knew almost nothing about it, I asked that they craft a research
question. Predictably, they weren’t very good: Is Elvis dead? Why do we shave? Why is it the so many
of us go through life hunched over? It took me years to finally understand the problem, and like a lot
these long-awaited revelations, the answer was obvious. Our ability to craft a good question depends,
more than anything else, on possessing some knowledge of the subject. In an inquiry-based class, of
course, since discovery is key, we encourage students to write about things they don’t know much
about. Naturally, they don’t write about it very well until they have some working knowledge of the
topic.
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Think about how we pursue things that we’re curious about. The first questions we ask are
typically questions of definition or fact: What is this? What is known about this? There is necessarily an
initial stage in the inquiry process when we just try to understand the problem we’re trying to solve. We
are not only unprepared to ask much more than questions of fact or definition, we are also completely
unprepared to make good judgments, and especially to craft a provable thesis. So I’ve learned to make
room in the beginning of an investigation for students to get their bearings on a topic—to develop that
working knowledge—before I expect them to ask good questions. This is a time of open-ended
exploration—the kind of space the thesis statement pedagogy rarely opens up for very long, if at all, in
our rush to get students to find something to prove.
But of course we aren’t usually interested in mere exposition about a topic. We want them to
do more than simply report what they know. We want them to pursue questions that lead to judgment,
including, perhaps, a thesis. So we need to guide students towards the kinds of questions do this, and
these are questions that lead to evaluation, interpretation, claims, hypotheses, propositions, and
analogy or comparison. One way to do this is to identify categories of questions that lead to those kinds
of judgments. For example,

What might it mean? (Interpretation)

What is its value? (Evaluation)

What should be done? (Proposition)

What do the facts suggest is true? (Claims)

What is the best explanation? (Hypothesis)

What is the relationship? (Analogy and comparison)
You might see that a number of these questions are also typically associated with certain
genres: critical essay, review, proposal, factual argument, and so on. What I’m proposing, then, is that
we teach the question in a developmental way, one that recognizes the centrality of using curiosity as
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the engine that drives both the acquisition of new knowledge and its application to exploring a question
that leads to some kind of judgment.
Open
(to find out)
How do I know
what I think
un l I see what I
say?
I know what I
think, now how
can I say it?
Ques on
Purpose
Inven on
“Essay”
Direct
(to prove or
explain)
Arrangement
Thesis-proof,
Fiveparagraph
theme
But I’m also arguing that the focus on the question rather than the thesis might also lead to a
different product as well, one that is an alternative to the hierarchical and deductive thesis-proof paper.
What I’m talking about, of course, is the Montaignian essay. The essay in its original form may have had
a thesis but it was often a delayed one, and even then, it wasn’t really a thesis at all but a tentative
judgment: This is what I know now. What I find particularly exciting about this form of the essay is that
it encourages a different—even contrasting—system of thought than the conventional academic paper.
It relies far more on induction than deduction, and it greatly expands rather than limits what one can
write about. Freed from the imperative to prove, writers can take on any topic, even when they don’t
know what they think about it.
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One of the greatest gifts of the writing process movement was the resurrection and renewal of
rhetorical invention. We write to learn. And yet, for most student writers of the thesis-proof essay the
focus is largely on arrangement—where to put things and how to order them effectively. Invention is a
secondary concern if considered at all. The essay puts invention first. It celebrates exploration and
discovery. Montaigne once had coins minted with the phrase “What do I know?” This was the motive
behind his essay, which in French means, “to try, to attempt.” I can’t think of a better motto for a
pedagogy that makes write-to-learn its beating heart.
It may seem that I’m implying that the two forms—the essay and the argument—are
incompatible. But I can see the two systems of thought working together in much the way that
scientist’s reason. More than a century ago, the pragmatist Charles Pierce proposed a method of
discovery that attempted to join deduction and induction, something he called “abduction.” Abduction
begins with the observation that something is curious or unique, that it defies one’s expectations. What
makes the question “Is Elvis dead?” interesting is that it’s hard to believe than anyone actually believes
it. Naturally, we wonder why? What might be the explanation? This leads to a tentative proposition—a
hypothesis--that we then test. In other words, abduction as a form of inquiry closes the gap between
exploration and judgment. It is a process for discovering a thesis.
To teach abduction in an inquiry-based writing class would be to join the “open” and
exploratory process of writing—one that fundamentally depends on invention—with the more “closed”
and deductive process of proving a point, one that would have otherwise minimized the role of
invention in favor of arrangement, which is typified by the five-paragraph theme.
What I’m saying, then, is not only that the thesis-driven essay should share the bed with more
open forms of writing like the Montaignian essay. I’m also arguing that methods of discovery like
abduction might be the means of actually joining the two forms (see Figure 1). To accomplish this, I
think we need to be more transparent about the these inquiry and reasoning strategies, not only making
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them a part of our learning outcomes but an explicit part of our teaching of writing assignments. Years
ago, Ann Berthoff wrote that from the assignment in English 101 to the last assignment in English 102
should enact certain “essential acts of mind.” When we teach academic inquiry, those essential acts of
mind should create the conditions for discovery, and one of those conditions—perhaps the most
important one of all—is the importance of withholding judgment, at least for awhile. To do this, we
need to wrestle with the bully thesis, and urge our students to substitute the mallet for the question.