LING 002: Taboo Terms and Slang (SC): Search Tips

Choose search terms that you expect to find in written documents about your topic.

Consider the language that scholars in your field might use to discuss the topic.  Also consider how individuals directly involved may discuss the topic.

Especially for contentious political or social issues, consider how individuals with differing opinions talk about the issue.  For example, using pro-life versus pro-choice versus anti-choice.

Here are some other ideas to consider:

• Synonyms
• Alternate or historical place names (e.g. Beijing / Peking)
• Maiden names
• Initials and full names
• British spellings
• Spellings and terms in use during the time period
• Preferred terms for self-identification
• Abbreviations vs. full words

Once you have found a few sources on your topic, take note of the language that is being used and run some searches with that language. 

For example, you may start searching for "systemic-functional grammar" and find some good sources.

But if you find a relevant document that discusses "scale and category grammar" or systemic grammar" try those terms as well. 

Find information more effectively and efficiently by using these strategies.  All of these strategies work in Tripod, and most work in search engines and databases as well.

Phrase searching:

Use this strategy when researching concepts that are phrases (e.g. language acquisition), or when searching for a specific book or article (i.e. where you already know the exact title - e.g. Endangered Languages).

• For example, language acquisition will search for the words language AND acquisition
  
• However, "language acquisition" in quotation marks will search for only this exact phrase. This increases the chance that the books listed will discuss what you're interested in.  (Phrase searching is particularly helpful if you're getting a lot of results that aren't specific enough.)
  
  
• Beyond Tripod: Phrase searching works in Google and most databases (e.g.  JSTOR, Proquest, LLBA, PsychInfo)
  
  

Synonym Searching:

Save time by searching for multiple synonyms at once.  This is sometimes called "nested searching" or "set searching."

• For example, (physician OR doctor) AND (woman OR female) will return results that match at least one term from each set of parentheses.  So in this case, you'd get results that contain either (or both) physician or doctor, and that also contain either (or both) woman or female.
• Try set searching in Tripod by using Tripod Advanced search.
  
  
• Beyond Tripod: Many catalogs or databases will have an "advanced search" option, which provides multiple search bars to facilitate nested searching. 
  
  

Truncation and Wildcards:

Most catalogs and databases enable users to search variations of keywords by using truncation (*) or wildcard (e.g., ?, $, !) symbols.  Consider using wildcard searching when there are multiple spellings of a word (e.g. globalization and the British spelling globalisation).

• For example, one could search for politic* to find poltic, politics, political, politicking, and so on. Or search for ethnograph* to find ethnography, ethnographic, ethnographies. (Google does this automatically.)
• Wildcard searching works similarly: a search for wom?n will return results for women and woman.  (Note: this does not work in Google)

Putting it all together:
Try combining these search strategies to improve your search results.

Example:  (physician* OR doctor* OR healer*) AND (wom?n OR female)