Idea and Motive

As a student, your primary motive for writing essays is usually mercenary: you write to fulfill an assignment
by a given deadline. Desire for success may motivate you to write, but your reader must also be motivated to read.
Your essay, if it is to be interesting to others, needs a reason to be written. Establish a shared context with your
readers, something you all have in common beyond this class. Then you can state why we should all care your topic.
The motive is the situation that you define for your thesis—your central organizing idea. The motive
establishes why your readers should care. If your thesis statement is the sum of your original thinking on a topic,
then your statement of motive is your reason for thinking that others will be interested. The motive is your reason
for raising a question; it explains why that question needs answering. The thesis is your answer to that question.
An essay lacking a motive will often sound like an exercise you’ve been commanded to write. An essay with
a motive addresses the intellectual community at large. The motive is the writer’s guarantee that the essay is worth
reading. Typically, writers return to the motive in the conclusion of the essay to impress on the readers what the
significance of the essay’s idea has been.
Why should your idea interest a reader? Why won’t it seem obvious to anyone to looks at the same text
(poem, story, painting, advertisement, etc.)? Perhaps:

1. The truth isn’t what one would expect, or what it might appear to be on first reading.
2. There is an interesting wrinkle in the matter, a complexity that appears on closer examination.
3. Something that seems simple or common or obvious has more implications or explains more than it may seem.
4. There is a contradiction, mystery or tension that needs investigation.
5. There is an ambiguity, something unclear that could mean two or more things.
6. We can learn about a larger phenomenon by studying this smaller one.
7. A seemingly tangential or insignificant matter is actually important or interesting.
8. There is something implicit that needs to made explicit.

Motivations for a research paper could also include:

9. The standard opinion of a text or a certain published view needs challenging or qualifying.
10. Published views of the matter conflict.

What question does your essay raise? The essay raises the question of how gender stereotypes in advertisements impact
consumer behavior, exploring the manifestations of these stereotypes in advertising, the influence of these portrayals on
consumers' perceptions of themselves and others

What is the shared context between you and your readers that suggests your question should interest them?

We all have in common: The prevalence of gender stereotypes in advertisements and the potential impact on societal
norms and expectations. The role of advertising in shaping consumer behavior and attitudes.

Your thesis statement (your answer to the question you raise):

The portrayal of gender stereotypes in advertisements can reinforce traditional gender roles and influence
consumer behavior

Your statement of motive (your answer to the question, “Why should your readers care?”):

This research matters because it can provide insights into the potential consequences of gender stereotypes
in advertisements
Adapted from “Thesis and Motive,” UWS Instructors Resources, Brandeis U. See also: Williams & Bizup. Style, Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 7: “Motivation.”
 Asking an Analytical Question (Kerry Walk)
Adapted by Doug Kirshen

An important step in writing academic essays is to ask a good analytical question, one that poses a challenging way
to address the central text(s) you will write about. Establishing that question won’t be your first step—you’ll need
to do some observing and annotating, and even some interpreting, as a way of developing the question itself. But
focusing on what that question might be early in your analysis helps you approach your essay with something to
explore, an idea to discover (that will inform your thesis) for both you and your readers.

Think of the question as something you’re truly interested in exploring as you read, an exploration you want to
guide your reader through, since not everyone reading the text will come away with the same impressions and
interpretations you do. (One of the truisms of writing: if you’re not discovering something in the writing of your
essay, your readers probably aren’t either.)

A good analytical question:

(1) speaks to a genuine dilemma in the text. In other words, the question focuses on a real confusion, ambiguity or
grey area of the text, about which readers will conceivably have different reactions, opinions, or interpretations.
(2) yields an answer that is not obvious. In a question such as [“Why did Romeo flee to Mantua”]1 there’s nothing to
explore; it’s too specific and can be answered too easily: [Because the Capulets wanted to kill him].
(3) suggests an answer complex enough to require a whole essay’s worth of argument. If the question is too vague,
[for example, “Why do the same kinds of people always appear in advertisements?”] 2 it won’t suggest a line of
argument. The question should elicit analysis and argument rather than summary or description.
(4) can be answered by the text, rather than by generalizations or by copious external research. [For example, “How
did common Elizabethan attitudes toward mental illness affect Shakespeare’s depiction of madness?” would
require significant historical research.]3

Tips to keep in mind:

• “How” and “why” questions generally require more analysis than “who/ what/when/where.”
• Good analytical questions can highlight patterns/connections, or contradictions/dilemmas/
problems.
• Good analytical questions can also ask about some implications or consequences of your
analysis.

Thus the question should be answerable, given the available evidence, but not immediately, and not in the same
way by all readers. Your thesis should give at least a provisional answer to the question, an answer that needs to be
defended and developed. Your goal is to help readers understand why this question is worth answering, why this
feature of the text is problematic, and to send them back to the text with a new perspective or a different focus.

1 Walk’s example is “Why did Hamlet leave Denmark?”

2 It
seems to me that Walk’s example (“Why are there so many references to acting in the play?”) could be refined and
developed so that it would suggest a line of argument.
3 Walk’s example is “Why did Shakespeare depict marriage in the way that he did?”