As you are preparing to do your literature review, you might be reading up on them. Most research methodology textbooks have a chapter or two on the literature review, as do the many guides you can find on writing your dissertation or thesis project.
Such texts can be useful in many ways, and when it comes to the literature review they will typically tell you a host of things. The literature review is where you demonstrate a sophisticated grasp of your field. The literature review is where you critically appraise prior research relevant to your topic. The literature review is where you identify common themes, patterns, and issues in the existing body of research. The literature review is where you assess previous findings in relation to methodological strengths and weaknesses. The literature review is where you define what has been done in your field and delineate what has not been done.
A good literature review will do all of these things. However, none of these things is its primary purpose. In your literature review, your main task is to establish why your research question needs to be asked. And this means your literature review is an argument.
So what is an argument? An argument is a claim that you justify with evidence. So in your literature review, your claim is that your research question needs to be asked, and the evidence you present for that claim comes from your assessment of previous research relevant to your topic. As you make this argument, you will be showing your knowledge of the field, evaluating prior research, identifying patterns, themes, and trends, showing what has and hasn't been done, and so forth. But you don't do these things for their own sake, as though the literature review were a proforma to complete or a set of tasks to tick off as done. You do these things in service of your argument, to establish why your field needs the answer to your research question.
Of course, it is one thing to say the literature review is an argument. But just how do you go about formulating that argument? This is a complex process, but here is one way to get started. Alongside your reading of how-to sources on literature reviews, take some time to read actual literature reviews to train yourself in this particular genre. If you were a creative writer and you wanted to know how to write great characters, you would read works of fiction with great characters to figure out how they are created. We can approach literature reviewing the same way.
Every journal article in any decent journal that reports on research will have a literature review. It may or may not be called that -- sometimes it is in the introduction, sometimes it is called the theoretical framework, and sometimes it is in a section labelled something like background. Whatever it is called, it will be the section of the article where the author or authors establish why their research needs to be done. You'll find that literature reviews tend to be structured in similar ways. They often start with some version of There have been many studies on X. And they typically end with some version of We therefore need a study that asks Y. In between these two points, the author or authors present their assessment of previous research in a series of logical steps that culminate in the need for their research.
Here are few common structures I have mapped out from reading many, many literature reviews in published articles over the years, and from writing my own.
Many studies have shown X (list references) ⇨ These studies have made a number of valuable contributions (give brief examples of these contributions with references to the studies they come from) ⇨ However, none of these studies focus on Y ⇨ Therefore, a study on Z is necessary and timely.
Many scholars
have taken an interest in A (list references) ⇨ The majority
of these studies argue either B (list references), or C (list references), or D
(list references). ⇨ Only a minority to date have
argued E (list references). ⇨ Of this minority, only 2 (give
the two references) have offered empirical evidence to back their claims. ⇨ In alignment
with these empirical investigations, this study offers an investigation of F.
Ever since X’s (give reference) pioneering study of Y, studies of this issue have proliferated (give references). The majority (list references) have taken a quantitative approach, which limits the focus to A (list references), B (list references), and C (list references). While the qualitative studies are fewer in number (list references), they open up some new directions, including A (list references) and B (list references). Thus, the time is ripe for additional qualitative work. Expanding on these qualitative contributions, this study explores Z.
Locate some journal articles and have a look at their literature reviews to see if you can trace out these or similar structures. Once you have a good working knowledge of how literature reviews make their case, you'll be in a better position to start building your own.
