In Gardiner Rhoderick's essay "Yes, It's Graffiti. But Is It Art?" the author presents a researched claim about the regulation of graffiti.
Go to your university's library and conduct a search using not a general purpose search engine like Google, but rather, an academic subscription-based electronic index service like Cambridge Scientific Abstracts that presents recent academic and articles on social science related subjects from across the globe. Look for links to search Sociological Abstracts and/or Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts.
Your initial keyword search term might be "graffiti," and you might elect to limit your search to articles within the last two or three years. You might select the option to show both a citation and an abstract.
Read three of the abstracts and consider:
- How might the research presented in these articles affect your interpretation of Rhoderick's essay?
- What types of logical and emotional evidence are presented in support of the claim?
- What kind of audience is likely to read the article in its entirety?
- Is the article in the holdings of your university library, or can you access the full text online. If you can't tell, consult your library's electronic catalog and search by journal title, then see if the periodical is available either in print or electronically. You may need to consult a librarian.
- What other subject area keywords appear repeatedly in the abstracts that contain the term "graffiti?" Make a list of at least five.
- Conduct at least one search for one of the above related terms about which you are curious. Read for at least one related research topic or approach that interests you, and then summarize it.
Be sure to record the URL of any web-based information you might want to incorporate into your own writing later.
Research can be enjoyable, and it's often revealing to see how "way leads on to way" in the published conversations in which journal articles participate. Draft a short research assignment for yourself in an area of study that you discovered through your research into graffiti.
