The Art of Committed Reading

Designing a Research Proposal

Dr Brainerd Prince

We have indeed arrived at our academic home in the mountain. We have located the research community or the academic discipline in which we want to locate our research. We have also found the special phrase or the thematic, which is the focus of our research. If we take the academic mountain analogy further, then, our present achievement is that we have found our research community in the academic mountain, and we have taken board and lodging amongst them. Each member of this community has authored books or research papers on our thematic within our chosen academic discipline.

The first stage of research is to develop a mature research proposal. A good research proposal has three main components: (a) a section on the research question, (b) a section on the primary sources or object of research, and (c) a section on methodology.

I call these sections or components of the proposal as the three buckets of research and use the colours of the traffic lights to name them. The first bucket, the section on the research question, I call the red bucket as it stops our reading and exploration with a question worth answering through our research. The second bucket, the section on the primary sources or the object of research, which is the main source from which we get the answer to our research question, I call, the green bucket, as it takes us forward in our enquiry and supplies answers and takes the discourse forward.  Finally, the third bucket, the section on methodology, I call the yellow bucket, as it provides the conceptual lens with which we can both collect and analyse data from primary sources as well as make our argument in the research – it prepares us to tackle the green bucket.

A good research proposal does a deep dive into all these three sections. The ensuing proposal script that gets written down often provides the primary material for the first chapter of one’s dissertation. There are different kinds of research projects – experimental research or computational research. However, I claim that all research experimental or computational, must begin as conceptual research. What I mean is that it does not matter if our research, broadly speaking, is in the sciences or humanities, dealing with experiments or computations, they must possess a theoretical or conceptual dimension to it. It does not matter where our primary data will finally come from – experimentation, a field, computations or from texts, all research projects must have a strong conceptual understanding of the problem and question they are addressing and the hypothesis they are putting forward. Furthermore, I claim that all research projects must begin with the conceptual or theoretical, even if the evidence and new knowledge will finally come from experimentation or computation. This is the first stage of research leading to a mature research proposal.

The red bucket entails three strategic steps: firstly, it begins by doing an annotated-committed reading of key texts on our thematic that have been identified to be central to our enquiry; secondly, writing out a literature review that will capture the historical discourse on our thematic; and finally, finding the gap in the literature by articulating the contemporary debate on the thematic which is then framed as the central research question. If this is done well, then a high degree of conceptual clarity comes to the research project that will save the researcher from many futile future wanderings.

In this article, we will focus on how we can do an annotated-committed reading and I argue that learning the discipline of doing a committed reading is a significant life skill. One of the biggest problems faced by students in this age is their dislike of reading deeply. We are in the age of tik tok and insta reels – each of which, hardly over thirty seconds long,is in the audio-visual format. We have lost the art of reading deeply with our reduced attention spans. 

Furthermore, when we watch something visually, the interpretation of that text is already given in the visualization and we become passive consumers. However, if we read the same material, then our mind is forced to offer its own interpretation of every word and sentence. This keeps our minds sharp, analytical, and creative.

When we did cursory reading, we got a theme, and also a bibliography, a list of key academic sources, that we had surveyed. While sifting through texts, we identified the semantically dense texts for our project and had already made note of the central interlocutors for our research. All of this has been accomplished through cursory reading. 

With committed reading, we begin by reading these key texts one by one, cover to cover, and critically taking notes and annotating, to glean out what is important for our research project. This form of reading, which is focused, intense, and does not gloss over, or skim and scan, is called committed reading. All of us have limited time and there is an explosion of published work in our fields. Hence, it is important that through our cursory reading, we have carefully identified the key relevant texts for our research and the choosing of our academic community of writers. Then we read every key text completely, without any shortcuts.

When we are reading a text, we ask four questions to the text which will help us glean out what we need. Firstly, we always begin by locating the text. The question we ask is – where does this text belong? The goal is to locate the text within the world of texts – literature/genre/discipline to which they belong. Paul Ricoeur has shown that there is a ‘relation of text to text’ which, ‘engenders the quasi world of texts or literature.’ Identifying the literature to which the text is related and belongs is the first step. This further confirms if the text is central to our research project and gives us evidence for why they are central to our work.

The second step has to do with what the text is all about. The question we are trying to answer is – what does the text say? What Problem is the text addressing? – Identifythe theme and debateaddressed in the text. Follow the direction of the text to discover the imaginary world entailed by it. Ricoeur claims that ‘the text seeks to place us in its meaning, that is...in the same direction.’Ricoeur argues that‘[T]he intended meaning of the text is not essentially the presumed intention of the author, the lived experience of the writer, but rather what the text means for whoever complies with its injunction’.Thus, finding the central argument or the ‘injunction’ of the text of at the heart of committed reading. This involves considering the development of the argument and the ability to represent the text faithfully. 

The third step is to critique the text that we have just represented. ‘Every reading of a text is also a ‘critical commentary’. Peter Kivy has wisely declared.‘It appears we will have to accept that we “hear in the head” not only a storytelling but a storytelling cum critical commentary on the story being told’. We carefully note down the critical commentary our mind is offering even as we read the text. We can compare and contrast with the other texts we have read. We can analyse its weaknesses and note its strengths. 

The final step is to note the self-disclosure the text has brought to us, the reader. What I mean by this is that the text has not only said ‘something about something’, but it has also revealed something about us. This revelation brings about a unique understanding of oneself. Ricoeur says that ‘the culmination of “understanding of a text” is in ‘self-understanding’ and that ‘self-understanding passes through the detour of understanding the cultural signs in which the self documents and forms itself’. To understand the text is also to come to an understanding of oneself and so there is a fusion of textual interpretation with self-interpretation. I will end this short discourse on committed reading with these beautiful lines from Ricoeur, ‘the interpretation of a text culminates in the self-interpretation of a subject who thenceforth understands himself better, understands himself differently, or simply begins to understand himself’.

I will end by sharing six key strategies for committed reading that every Harvard undergraduate is taught. They are (a) previewing the text or reading around the text to get a sense of it, (b) annotating or taking precise notes while reading the text to identify the main points made in the text. (c)outlining, summarizing, and analyzing the entire text to re-present the main thrust of the text analytically. (d) Looking for repetitions and patterns in the text and (e) contextualizing the debate that is in the text. Finally, (f)compare and contrast this text with other texts in order to identify its unique contribution.

Once we have used the technique of committed reading and read through the key texts of the critical bibliography we had put together on the thematic, we are ready to move to the next step which would be to write out a critical literature review, at the end of which we hope to have found the gap in the literature and our central research question. Let’s look at that in the next issue.

Dr Brainerd Prince is the Associate Professor of Practice, and Director, Centre for Thinking, Language and Communication, Plaksha University.