Search terms

Have a list of keywords / search terms ready!

Before your start searching--whether for books, articles, or reliable content on the open web--make sure you're clear about what exactly you hope to find. Look closely at your assignment topic or research question, and create a list of words and concepts that are useful for searching--then keep adding to it!

For this assignment, you must find three peer reviewed journal articles relevant to the central social, political, cultural, or economic issue at the center of your chosen text published in the last five years.

First, think of the novel you chose and the literary theory you will apply to it. What information would be helpful to make your point? For our example, applying feminist theory to The Stand by Stephen King, I have the following question:

What are the perceptions of women in leadership roles in Christianity?

The main concepts in this question include the words: women, leadership, Christianity. Since we're interested in the context of the United States (where this novel is set), we may want to add United States as a concept.

For each main concept, create a list of synonyms, related terms, and alternate spellings. Often a thesaurus can be helpful with this step.

Examples of search terms useful for this question:

women: woman, female
Also--you can focus on a sub-division of society that relates to the novel you've chosen...
women, feminism; Black, African-American; Latinx, Latino, Chicano; Asian-American, Korean;
teenagers, adolescents, youth; etc
leadership: authority
For this question, it may be useful to get more specific about the type of leadership, i.e.:
preacher, minister, deacon, missionary
Christianity: church, religion
United States: America

You'll need to experiment with different combinations of search terms to see what terms gain the most useful results. It helps to have a few options to start with--not just the words first mentioned in the assignment topic or research question.