Dissertation Woes

It's been a while since you got a dissertation update, hasn't it? Well, in the words-on-paper sense, I have a zero draft of the whole thing. 206 pages of something. I'm so lost and confused with the theory I'm using (too many conceptual tools to choose from, nothing that seems to lend itself to a systematic application, etc.) that for chapters 3 and 5, I decided simply to write the chapters saying what I wanted to say about the "Where are the women?" case, then add the theory in later once I know WTF I'm doing with it. I know that's a pretty wack approach to scholarship, but hey, by hook or by crook, right?

My biggest problem is that I'm frustrated with the whole. I would love to be able to have this tight, coherent dissertation with a sequential, step-by-step analytical structure that a reader can anticipate and follow easily, a dissertation that would make sense even if all one saw was the table of contents. I had a good friend in my master's program at Tennessee, Shauna Bryant, whose thesis was like that. Observe the lovely flow:

Chapter One: Introduction_______________________________________________1
A Definition of Technical Communication______________________________________1
A Definition of Ethics________________________________________________________8
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature_____________________________________12
The Social Contingency of Communication____________________________________12
Foundational Ethical Theories_______________________________________________30
Nonfoundational Ethical Theories____________________________________________33
Chapter Three: Foundational Ethics ______________________________________39
Universal Values __________________________________________________________42
Utilitarianism_____________________________________________________________48
Kantian Ethics____________________________________________________________55
Problems with Foundational Ethical Theories__________________________________59
The Need for Nonfoundational Considerations in Foundational Ethics______________69
Chapter Four: Nonfoundational Ethics____________________________________70
Dialogic Ethics____________________________________________________________76
Professional Ethics_________________________________________________________85
Problems with Nonfoundational Ethical Theories_______________________________94
The Need for Foundational Considerations in Nonfoundational Ethics_____________102
Chapter Five: Contextual Foundational Ethics_____________________________103
Markel’s (Contextual Foundational) Ethic____________________________________104
Examining Contextual Foundational Ethics___________________________________109
Alleviating Nonfoundational Ethics’ Lack of Emphasis on the Individual __________113
Alleviating Foundational Ethics’ Over-reliance on the Individual_________________120
Alleviating Foundational Ethics’ Dependence on Ends__________________________125
Alleviating Nonfoundational Ethics’ Impracticality_____________________________132
Conclusion______________________________________________________________140

Bradley Dilger's dissertation is the same way. How I envy their ordered minds:

1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Why Ease? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Upon Further Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 THE CONCEPT OF EASE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.1 Overwhelmed? The Answer is Easy! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2 Historicizing and Defining Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.2.1 Historical and Popular Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.2.2 Reforming Education in England, 1680–1740 . . . . . . . 25
2.2.3 Bringing Ease Home in America, 1880–1930 . . . . . . . 31
2.2.4 Humanizing Technology, 1939–1958 . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.2.5 Computing Made Easy, 1984–present . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.3 The Role of Ease Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3 EVALUATING EASE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.1 Is Ease Good or Bad? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.1.1 Technology and Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.1.2 The Ideology of Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.2 Critical Evaluation of Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2.1 Benefits of Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2.2 Problems Caused by Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.3 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4 MAKING WRITING EASY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.1.1 The English Roots of Ease in Writing . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.1.2 Transforming Philosophy to Pedagogy: Major Figures . . 87
4.1.3 Caveat Facilitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.1.4 Four Assumptions About Ease and Writing . . . . . . . . 96
4.2 Students Should Find Writing Easy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.2.1 Early Exemplars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
4.2.2 Strategies for Making Writing Easy . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.2.3 Emotional Needs: Comfort and Familiarity . . . . . . . . 111
4.2.4 It’s Just That Easy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
4.2.5 A Mixed Bag of Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.2.6 The Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
4.3 Students Should Write Easy-To-Read Prose . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.3.1 Clarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
4.3.2 Brevity and Conciseness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.3.3 Simplicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.4 Teaching Writing is Easy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
4.4.1 Textbooks and Other Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
4.4.2 The Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.4.3 Composition and the Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4.5 Writing as Gatekeeper to a “Life of Ease” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
4.5.1 Ease, Vulgarity, and Gentility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
4.5.2 Writing and Upward Mobility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5 BEYOND EASE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.1 The Endurance of Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.2 The Transitional Apparatus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
5.2.1 The Principles of New Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
5.2.2 Supplementing the essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
5.2.3 The Logic of Conduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
5.3 Supplementing Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.3.1 Translucence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.3.2 The Complex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
5.3.3 Repetition and Iteration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Are there any techniques that you know of for whipping a dissertation into shape? Everybody told me that I should just jump in and write, then worry about structure later. The result? I have 206 pages of writing, but I'm no longer convinced that I have a research question. Or a method, theoretical framework, argument, so-what, contribution, etc. Times like these, I'm highly skeptical of the leap-of-faith "just finish it" advice.