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Research Guides

Spanish 303: Advanced Spanish: Keywords

Finding scholarly literary and film criticism in Spanish

Understanding Keywords

Keywords are the essential elements that describe complex ideas and topics; the important, descriptive nouns and verbs. Do not try to search phrases or sentences—find keywords.

Focus on the concepts at the heart of your question first. Using these core concepts you will generate several relevant keywords that will better focus your search results.

Sample Search: Paco Yunque

Brainstorm Keywords (start with main concepts from your research question, and then add synonyms and related terms):

Research Question: En Paco Yunque cómo se trata el tema de raza?

cesar vallejo

paco yunque

raza

children's literature

vallejo

 

race

cuento

 

 

indígena

literatura infantil

 

 

indigenous

 

    indigen*  
    racism  

Sample Keywords - La lengua de las mariposas

Brainstorm Keywords (start with main concepts from your research question, and then add synonyms and related terms):

Literary Topic/Research Question: ¿Como se trata la tema de infancia en La lengua de las mariposas?

Manuel Rivas lengua de las mariposas infancia cuento
José Luis Cuerda qué me quieres, amor childhood short story
  butterfly infan* pelicula
  butterfly’s tongue child* film
    coming-of-age  
    niño  

Historical Topic: treatment of teachers during the Spanish Civil War

maestros repression guerra civil Franquismo
school teachers   Spanish civil war Franco
teachers      
education OR educación      
educa*      
primary teachers      

 

Sample search: UW Libraries Search

Searching as Strategic Exploration

5 Steps to Generating Keywords

  1. Have a well-formed research question
  2. Extract core terms from this research question
  3. Brainstorm a list of alternative terms or phrases for each core term
  4. Organize the list of terms and phrases by creating a hierarchy, indicating broader and narrower terms for each core term
  5. Identify which terms you would combine to conduct a search

Hot Search Tips

* = truncation symbol, your friend

Two searches: 1 in English, one in Spanish