1911 idiot scratch prevention tool template

what they’re saying about “they say / i say”

“The best book that’s happened to teaching composition— ever!” —Karen Gaffney, Raritan Valley Community College

“This book demystifies rhetorical moves, tricks of the trade that many students are unsure about. It’s reasonable, helpful, nicely written . . . and hey, it’s true. I would have found it immensely helpful myself in high school and college.”

—Mike Rose, University of California, Los Angeles

“The argument of this book is important—that there are ‘moves’ to academic writing . . . and that knowledge of them can be generative. The template format is a good way to teach and demystify the moves that matter. I like this book a lot.”

—David Bartholomae, University of Pittsburgh

“My students are from diverse backgrounds and the topics in this book help them to empathize with others who are differ- ent from them.”

—Steven Bailey, Central Michigan University

“A beautifully lucid way to approach argument—different from any rhetoric I’ve ever seen.”

—Anne-Marie Thomas, Austin Community College, Riverside

“Students need to walk a fine line between their work and that of others, and this book helps them walk that line, providing specific methods and techniques for introducing, explaining, and integrating other voices with their own ideas.”

—Libby Miles, University of Vermont

“‘They Say’ with Readings is different from other rhetorics and readers in that it really engages students in the act of writing throughout the book. It’s less a ‘here’s how’ book and more of a ‘do this with me’ kind of book.”

—Kelly Ritter, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

“It offers students the formulas we, as academic writers, all carry in our heads.” —Karen Gardiner, University of Alabama

“Many students say that it is the first book they’ve found that actually helps them with writing in all disciplines.”

—Laura Sonderman, Marshall University

“As a WPA, I’m constantly thinking about how I can help instructors teach their students to make specific rhetorical moves on the page. This book offers a powerful way of teach- ing students to do just that.” —Joseph Bizup, Boston University

“The best tribute to ‘They Say / I Say’ I’ve heard is this, from a student: ‘This is one book I’m not selling back to the bookstore.’ Nods all around the room. The students love this book.”

—Christine Ross, Quinnipiac University

“My students love this book. They tell me that the idea of ‘entering a conversation’ really makes sense to them in a way that academic writing hasn’t before.”

—Karen Henderson, Helena College University of Montana

“A concise and practical text at a great price; students love it.” —Jeff Pruchnic, Wayne State University

“ ‘They Say’ contains the best collection of articles I have found. Students respond very well to the readings.”

—Julia Ruengert, Pensacola State College

“It’s the anti-composition text: Fun, creative, humorous, bril- liant, effective.”

—Perry Cumbie, Durham Technical Community College

“A brilliant book. . . . It’s like a membership card in the aca- demic club.” —Eileen Seifert, DePaul University

“The ability to engage with the thoughts of others is one of the most important skills taught in any college-level writing course, and this book does as good a job teaching that skill as any text I have ever encountered.” —William Smith, Weatherford College

F O U R T H E D I T I O N

“THEY SAY !I SAY” The Move s Tha t Ma t t e r

i n Academ i c Wr i t i n g

WITH READINGS

H GERALD GRAFF

CATHY BIRKENSTEIN both of the University of Illinois at Chicago

RUSSEL DURST University of Cincinnati

B w . w . n o r t o n & c o m p a n y

n e w y o r k | l o n d o n

To the great rhetorician Wayne Booth, who cared deeply

about the democratic art of listening closely to what others say.

v i i

contents

preface to the fourth edition xi

preface: Demystifying Academic Conversation xvii

introduction: Entering the Conversation 1

PART 1 . “THEY SAY” 1 “they say”: Starting with What Others Are Saying 19 2 “her point is”: The Art of Summarizing 30 3 “as he himself puts it”: The Art of Quoting 43

PART 2. “ I SAY”

4 “yes / no / okay, but”: Three Ways to Respond 53 5 “and yet”: Distinguishing What You Say

from What They Say 67 6 “skeptics may object”:

Planting a Naysayer in Your Text 77 7 “so what? who cares?”: Saying Why It Matters 91

PART 3. TYING IT ALL TOGETHER

8 “as a result”: Connecting the Parts 101 9 “you mean i can just say it that way?”:

Academic Writing Doesn’t Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice 117

10 “but don’t get me wrong”: The Art of Metacommentary 131

11 “he says contends”: Using the Templates to Revise 141

PART 4 . IN SPECIFIC ACADEMIC CONTEXTS

12 “i take your point”: Entering Class Discussions 162 13 don’t make them scroll up:

Entering Online Conversations 166

v i i i

14 what’s motivating this writer?: Reading for the Conversation 176

15 “analyze this”: Writing in the Social Sciences 187

readings

16 HOW CAN WE BRIDGE THE DIFFERENCES THAT DIVIDE US? 209

sean blanda, The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb 212

danah boyd, Why America Is Self-Segregating 219

michelle alexander, The New Jim Crow 230

j. d. vance, Hillbilly Elegy 251

gabriela moro, Minority Student Clubs: Segregation or Integration? 269

robert leonard, Why Rural America Voted for Trump 279

joseph e. stiglitz, A Tax System Stacked against the 99 Percent 286

barack obama, Howard University Commencement Speech 296

17 IS COLLEGE THE BEST OPTION? 315

stephanie owen and isabel sawhill, Should Everyone Go to College? 318

sanford j. ungar, The New Liberal Arts 336

charles murray, Are Too Many People Going to College? 344

liz addison, Two Years Are Better Than Four 365

gerald graff, Hidden Intellectualism 369

mike rose, Blue-Collar Brilliance 377

ben casselman, Shut Up about Harvard 390

steve kolowich, On the Front Lines of a New Culture War 398

C O N T E N T S

i x

18 ARE WE IN A RACE AGAINST THE MACHINE? 421

nicholas carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid? 424

clive thompson, Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better 441

michaela cullington, Does Texting Affect Writing? 462

jenna wortham, How I Learned to Love Snapchat 474

carole cadwalladr, Google, Democracy, and the Truth about Internet Search 480

kenneth goldsmith, Go Ahead: Waste Time on the Internet 500

sherry turkle, No Need to Call 505

zeynep tufekci, Does a Protest’s Size Matter? 525

19 WHAT’S GENDER GOT TO DO WITH IT? 531

anne-marie slaughter, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All 534

richard dorment, Why Men Still Can’t Have It All 555

raynard kington, I’m Gay and African American. As a Dad, I Still Have It Easier Than Working Moms. 576

laurie frankel, From He to She in First Grade 583

andrew reiner, Teaching Men to Be Emotionally Honest 589

stephen mays, What about Gender Roles in Same-Sex Relationships? 596

kate crawford, Artificial Intelligence’s White Guy Problem 599

nicholas eberstadt, Men without Work 605

20 WHAT’S THERE TO EAT? 621

michael pollan, Escape from the Western Diet 624

olga khazan, Why Don’t Convenience Stores Sell Better Food? 632

Contents

x

mary maxfield, Food as Thought: Resisting the Moralization of Eating 641

david zinczenko, Don’t Blame the Eater 647

radley balko, What You Eat Is Your Business 651

michael moss, The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food 656

david h. freedman, How Junk Food Can End Obesity 681

sara goldrick-rab, katharine broton, emily brunjes colo, Expanding the National School Lunch Program to Higher Education 713

credits 731

acknowledgments 737

index of templates 751

index of authors and titles 767

C O N T E N T S

x i

preface to the fourth edition

H

When we first set out to write this book, our goal was simple: to offer a version of “They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing with an anthology of readings that would demonstrate the rhetorical moves “that matter.” And because “They Say” teaches students that academic writ- ing is a means of entering a conversation, we looked for read- ings on topics that would engage students and inspire them to respond—and to enter the conversations. Our purpose in writing “They Say” has always been to offer students a user-friendly model of writing that will help them put into practice the important principle that writing is a social activity. Proceeding from the premise that effec- tive writers enter conversations of other writers and speakers, this book encourages students to engage with those around them—including those who disagree with them—instead of just expressing their ideas “logically.” We believe it’s a model more necessary than ever in today’s increasingly diverse—and some might say divided—society. In this spirit, we have added a new chapter, “How Can We Bridge the Differences That Divide Us?,” with readings that represent different perspectives on those divides—and what we might do to overcome them. Our own experience teaching first-year writing students has led us to believe that to be persuasive, arguments need not only supporting evidence but also motivation and exigency,

x i

and that the surest way to achieve this motivation and exigency is to generate one’s own arguments as a response to those of others—to something “they say.” To help students write their way into the often daunting conversations of academia and the wider public sphere, the book provides templates to help them make sophisticated rhetorical moves that they might otherwise not think of attempting. And of course learning to make these rhetorical moves in writing also helps students become better readers of argument. The two versions of “They Say / I Say” are now being taught at more than 1,500 schools, which suggests that there is a wide- spread desire for explicit instruction that is understandable but not oversimplified, to help writers negotiate the basic moves necessary to “enter the conversation.” Instructors have told us how much this book helps their students learn how to write academic discourse, and some students have written to us saying that it’s helped them to “crack the code,” as one student put it. This fourth edition of “They Say / I Say” with Readings includes forty readings—half of them new—on five compel- ling and controversial issues. The selections provide a glimpse into some important conversations taking place today—and will, we hope, provoke students to respond and thus to join in those conversations.

highlights

Forty readings that will prompt students to think—and write. Taken from a wide variety of sources, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, medium.com, best-selling books, policy reports, student-run journals, celebrated speeches, and more,

P R E FA C E T O T H E F O U R T H E D I T I O N

x i i

http://medium.com
the readings represent a range of perspectives on five important issues:

How Can We Bridge the Differences That Divide Us? Is College the Best Option? Are We in a Race against the Machine? What’s Gender Got to Do with It? What’s There to Eat?

The readings can function as sources for students’ own writing, and the study questions that follow each reading focus students’ attention on how each author uses the key rhetorical moves taught in the book. Additionally, one question invites students to write, and often to respond with their own views.

Two books in one, with a rhetoric up front and readings in the back. The two parts are linked by cross-references in the margins, leading from the rhetoric to specific examples in the readings and from the readings to the corresponding writ- ing instruction. Teachers can therefore begin with either the rhetoric or the readings, and the links will facilitate movement between one section and the other.

A chapter on reading (Chapter 14) encourages students to think of reading as an act of entering conversations. Instead of teaching students merely to identify the author’s argument, this chapter shows them how to read with an eye for what arguments the author is responding to—in other words, to think carefully about why the writer is making the argument in the first place, and thus to recognize (and ultimately become a part of) the larger conversation that gives meaning to read- ing the text.

Preface to the Fourth Edition

x i i i

x i v

P R E FA C E T O T H E F O U R T H E D I T I O N

what’s new

A new chapter, “How Can We Bridge the Differences That Divide Us?,” brings together diverse perspectives on some of the issues that have been a source of division in our country, with readings that offer possible ways to overcome those divi- sions—from Sean Blanda’s “The Other Side Is Not Dumb” to J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.

Half of the readings are new, with at least one documented piece and one student essay in each chapter, added in response to requests from many teachers who wanted more complex and documented writing. In the technology and gender chapters, half of the readings are new, with essays on fake news, wasting time online (and why that’s a good thing), and men without work, among others. The education chapter now includes an essay on problematic elitism in some circles of higher education and another on one college’s quest to foster tolerance among its diverse student body. Finally, the food chapter now asks a slightly different question: what (if anything) is there to eat?

An updated chapter on academic language (now called “You Mean I Can Just Say It That Way?”) underscores the need to bridge spheres that are too often kept separate: everyday lan- guage and academic writing.

A new chapter on entering online conversations further underscores the importance of including a “they say” when responding to others on blogs, class discussion boards, and the like, showing how the rhetorical moves taught in this book can help students contribute clearly and respectfully to conversa- tions in digital spaces.

x v

New examples—15 in total—appear throughout the rhetoric, from Deborah Tannen and Charles Murray to Nicholas Carr and Michelle Alexander.

An updated chapter on writing in the social sciences reflects a broader range of writing assignments with examples from aca- demic publications in sociology, psychology, and political science.

what’s online

Online tutorials give students hands-on practice recognizing and using the rhetorical moves taught in this book both as readers and writers. Each tutorial helps students read a full essay with an eye on these moves and then respond to a writing prompt using templates from the book.

They Say / I Blog. Updated monthly, this blog provides up-to- the-minute readings on the issues covered in the book, along with questions that prompt students to literally join the con- versation. Check it out at theysayiblog.com.

Instructor’s Guide. Now available in print, the guide includes expanded in-class activities, sample syllabi, summaries of each chapter and reading, and a chapter on using the online resources, including They Say / I Blog.

Ebook. Searchable, portable, and interactive. The complete textbook for a fraction of the price. Students can interact with the text—take notes, bookmark, search, and highlight. The ebook can be viewed on—and synced between—all computers and mobile devices.

Preface to the Fourth Edition

http://theysayiblog.com
x v i

InQuizitive for Writers. Adaptive, game-like exercises help students practice editing, focusing especially on the errors that matter.

Coursepack. Norton resources you can add to your online, hybrid, or lecture course—all at no cost. Norton Coursepacks work within your existing learning management system; there’s no new system to learn, and access is free and easy. Customizable resources include assignable writing prompts from theysayiblog .com, quizzes on grammar and documentation, documentation guides, model student essays, and more.

Find it all at digital.wwnorton.com/theysayreadings4 or contact your Norton representative for more information.

We hope that this new edition of “They Say / I Say” with Read- ings will spark students’ interest in some of the most pressing conversations of our day and provide them with some of the tools they need to engage in those conversations with dexterity and confidence. Gerald Graff Cathy Birkenstein Russel Durst

P R E FA C E T O T H E F O U R T H E D I T I O N

http://theysayiblog.com
http://theysayiblog.com
http://digital.wwnorton.com/theysayreadings4
x v i i

preface

Demystifying Academic Conversation

H

Experienced writing instructors have long recognized that writing well means entering into conversation with others. Academic writing in particular calls upon writers not simply to express their own ideas, but to do so as a response to what others have said. The first-year writing program at our own university, according to its mission statement, asks “students to partici- pate in ongoing conversations about vitally important academic and public issues.” A similar statement by another program holds that “intellectual writing is almost always composed in response to others’ texts.” These statements echo the ideas of rhetorical theorists like Kenneth Burke, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Wayne Booth as well as recent composition scholars like David Bartholomae, John Bean, Patricia Bizzell, Irene Clark, Greg Colomb, Lisa Ede, Peter Elbow, Joseph Harris, Andrea Lunsford, Elaine Maimon, Gary Olson, Mike Rose, John Swales and Christine Feak, Tilly Warnock, and others who argue that writing well means engaging the voices of others and letting them in turn engage us. Yet despite this growing consensus that writing is a social, conversational act, helping student writers actually partici- pate in these conversations remains a formidable challenge. This book aims to meet that challenge. Its goal is to demys- tify academic writing by isolating its basic moves, explaining

P R E FA C E

x v i i i

them clearly, and representing them in the form of templates. In this way, we hope to help students become active partici- pants in the important conversations of the academic world and the wider public sphere.

highlights

Shows that writing well means entering a conversation, sum- marizing others (“they say”) to set up one’s own argument (“I say”).

Demystifies academic writing, showing students “the moves that matter” in language they can readily apply.

Provides user-friendly templates to help writers make those moves in their own writing.

Includes a chapter on reading, showing students how the authors they read are part of a conversation that they them- selves can enter—and thus to see reading as a matter not of passively absorbing information but of understanding and actively entering dialogues and debates.

how this book came to be

The original idea for this book grew out of our shared interest in democratizing academic culture. First, it grew out of arguments that Gerald Graff has been making throughout his career that schools and colleges need to invite students into the conversa- tions and debates that surround them. More specifically, it is a practical, hands-on companion to his recent book, Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind, in which he looks at academic conversations from the perspective of those who find them mysterious and proposes ways in which

Demystifying Academic Conversation

x i x

such mystification can be overcome. Second, this book grew out of writing templates that Cathy Birkenstein developed in the 1990s, for use in writing and literature courses she was teaching. Many students, she found, could readily grasp what it meant to support a thesis with evidence, to entertain a counter- argument, to identify a textual contradiction, and ultimately to summarize and respond to challenging arguments, but they often had trouble putting these concepts into practice in their own writing. When Cathy sketched out templates on the board, however, giving her students some of the language and patterns that these sophisticated moves require, their writing—and even their quality of thought—significantly improved. This book began, then, when we put our ideas together and realized that these templates might have the potential to open up and clarify academic conversation. We proceeded from the premise that all writers rely on certain stock formulas that they themselves didn’t invent—and that many of these formulas are so commonly used that they can be represented in model templates that students can use to structure and even generate what they want to say. As we developed a working draft of this book, we began using it in first-year writing courses that we teach at UIC. In class- room exercises and writing assignments, we found that students who otherwise struggled to organize their thoughts, or even to think of something to say, did much better when we provided them with templates like the following.

j In discussions of , a controversial issue is whether

. While some argue that , others contend

that .

j This is not to say that .

P R E FA C E

x x

One virtue of such templates, we found, is that they focus writers’ attention not just on what is being said, but on the forms that structure what is being said. In other words, they make students more conscious of the rhetorical patterns that are key to academic success but often pass under the classroom radar.

the centrality of “they say / i say”

The central rhetorical move that we focus on in this book is the “they say / I say” template that gives our book its title. In our view, this template represents the deep, underlying structure, the internal DNA as it were, of all effective argument. Effective persuasive writers do more than make well-supported claims (“I say”); they also map those claims relative to the claims of others (“they say”). Here, for example, the “they say / I say” pattern structures a passage from an essay by the media and technology critic Steven Johnson.

For decades, we’ve worked under the assumption that mass cul- ture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common- denominator standards, presumably because the “masses” want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But . . . the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less.

Steven Johnson, “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”

In generating his own argument from something “they say,” Johnson suggests why he needs to say what he is saying: to correct a popular misconception.

Demystifying Academic Conversation

x x i

Even when writers do not explicitly identify the views they are responding to, as Johnson does, an implicit “they say” can often be discerned, as in the following passage by Zora Neale Hurston.

I remember the day I became colored. Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me”

In order to grasp Hurston’s point here, we need to be able to reconstruct the implicit view she is responding to and question- ing: that racial identity is an innate quality we are simply born with. On the contrary, Hurston suggests, our race is imposed on us by society—something we “become” by virtue of how we are treated. As these examples suggest, the “they say / I say” model can improve not just student writing, but student reading compre- hension as well. Since reading and writing are deeply recipro- cal activities, students who learn to make the rhetorical moves represented by the templates in this book figure to become more adept at identifying these same moves in the texts they read. And if we are right that effective arguments are always in dialogue with other arguments, then it follows that in order to understand the types of challenging texts assigned in college, students need to identify the views to which those texts are responding. Working with the “they say / I say” model can also help with invention, finding something to say. In our experience, students best discover what they want to say not by thinking about a subject in an isolation booth, but by reading texts, listening closely to what other writers say, and looking for an opening through which they can enter the conversation. In other words, listening closely to others and summarizing what they have to say can help writers generate their own ideas.

P R E FA C E

x x i i

the usefulness of templates

Our templates also have a generative quality, prompting stu- dents to make moves in their writing that they might not oth- erwise make or even know they should make. The templates in this book can be particularly helpful for students who are unsure about what to say, or who have trouble finding enough to say, often because they consider their own beliefs so self-evident that they need not be argued for. Students like this are often helped, we’ve found, when we give them a simple tem- plate like the following one for entertaining a counterargument (or planting a naysayer, as we call it in Chapter 6).

j Of course some might object that . Although I concede

that , I still maintain that .

What this particular template helps students do is make the seemingly counterintuitive move of questioning their own beliefs, of looking at them from the perspective of those who disagree. In so doing, templates can bring out aspects of stu- dents’ thoughts that, as they themselves sometimes remark, they didn’t even realize were there. Other templates in this book help students make a host of sophisticated moves that they might not otherwise make: sum- marizing what someone else says, framing a quotation in one’s own words, indicating the view that the writer is responding to, marking the shift from a source’s view to the writer’s own view, offering evidence for that view, entertaining and answering counterarguments, and explaining what is at stake in the first place. In showing students how to make such moves, templates do more than organize students’ ideas; they help bring those ideas into existence.

Demystifying Academic Conversation

x x i i i

“ok—but templates?”

We are aware, of course, that some instructors may have res- ervations about templates. Some, for instance, may object that such formulaic devices represent a return to prescriptive forms of instruction that encourage passive learning or lead students to put their writing on automatic pilot. This is an understandable reaction, we think, to kinds of rote instruction that have indeed encouraged passivity and drained writing of its creativity and dynamic relation to the social world. The trouble is that many students will never learn on their own to make the key intellectual moves that our templates repre- sent. While seasoned writers pick up these moves unconsciously through their reading, many students do not. Consequently, we believe, students need to see these moves represented in the explicit ways that the templates provide. The aim of the templates, then, is not to stifle critical thinking but to be direct with students about the key rhetori- cal moves that it comprises. Since we encourage students to modify and adapt the templates to the particularities of the arguments they are making, using such prefabricated formulas as learning tools need not result in writing and thinking that are themselves formulaic. Admittedly, no teaching tool can guarantee that students will engage in hard, rigorous thought. Our templates do, however, provide concrete prompts that can stimulate and shape such thought: What do “they say” about my topic? What would a naysayer say about my argument? What is my evidence? Do I need to qualify my point? Who cares? In fact, templates have a long and rich history. Public orators from ancient Greece and Rome through the European Renais- sance studied rhetorical topoi or “commonplaces,” model passages and formulas that represented the different strategies available

P R E FA C E

x x i v

to public speakers. In many respects, our templates echo this classical rhetorical tradition of imitating established models. The journal Nature requires aspiring contributors to follow a guideline that is like a template on the opening page of their manuscript: “Two or three sentences explaining what the main result [of their study] reveals in direct comparison with what was thought to be the case previously, or how the main result adds to previous knowledge.” In the field of education, a form designed by the education theorist Howard Gardner asks postdoctoral fellowship applicants to complete the following template: “Most scholars in the field believe . As a result of my study,

.” That these two examples are geared toward post- doctoral fellows and veteran researchers shows that it is not only struggling undergraduates who can use help making these key rhetorical moves, but experienced academics as well. Templates have even been used in the teaching of personal narrative. The literary and educational theorist Jane Tompkins devised the following template to help student writers make the often difficult move from telling a story to explaining what it means: “X tells a story about to make the point that

. My own experience with yields a point that is similar/different/both similar and different. What I take away from my own experience with is . As a result, I conclude .” We especially like this template because it suggests that “they say / I say” argument need not be mechanical, impersonal, or dry, and that telling a story and mak- ing an argument are more compatible activities than many think.

why it’s okay to use “i”

But wait—doesn’t the “I” part of “they say/ I say” flagrantly encourage the use of the first-person pronoun? Aren’t we aware

Demystifying Academic Conversation

x x v

that some teachers prohibit students from using “I” or “we,” on the grounds that these pronouns encourage ill-considered, subjective opinions rather than objective and reasoned argu- ments? Yes, we are aware of this first-person prohibition, but we think it has serious flaws. First, expressing ill-considered, subjective opinions is not necessarily the worst sin beginning writers can commit; it might be a starting point from which they can move on to more reasoned, less self-indulgent perspectives. Second, prohibiting students from using “I” is simply not an effective way of curbing students’ subjectivity, since one can offer poorly argued, ill-supported opinions just as easily without it. Third and most important, prohibiting the first person tends to hamper students’ ability not only to take strong positions but to differentiate their own positions from those of others, as we point out in Chapter 5. To be sure, writers can resort to vari- ous circumlocutions—“it will here be argued,” “the evidence suggests,” “the truth is”—and these may be useful for avoid- ing a monotonous series of “I believe” sentences. But except for avoiding such monotony, we see no good reason why “I” should be set aside in persuasive writing. Rather than prohibit “I,” then, we think a better tactic is to give students practice at using it well and learning its use, both by supporting their claims with evidence and by attending closely to alternative perspectives—to what “they” are saying.

how this book is organized

Because of its centrality, we have allowed the “they say / I say” format to dictate the structure of this book. So while Part 1 addresses the art of listening to others, Part 2 addresses how to offer one’s own response. Part 1 opens with a chapter on

P R E FA C E

x x v i

“Starting with What Others Are Saying” that explains why it is generally advisable to begin a text by citing others rather than plunging directly into one’s own views. Subsequent chapters take up the arts of summarizing and quoting what these others have to say. Part 2 begins with a chapter on different ways of responding, followed by chapters on marking the shift between what “they say” and what “I say,” on introducing and answering objections, and on answering the all-important questions: “so what?” and “who cares?” Part 3 offers strategies for “Tying It All Together,” beginning with a chapter on connection and coher- ence; followed by a chapter on academic language, encouraging students to draw on their everyday voice as a tool for writing; and including chapters on the art of metacommentary and using the templates to revise a text. Part 4 offers guidance for enter- ing conversations in specific academic contexts, with chapters on entering class discussions, writing online, and reading and writing in the social sciences. Finally, we provide forty readings and an index of templates.

what this book doesn’t do

There are some things that this book does not try to do. We do not, for instance, cover logical principles of argument such as syllogisms, warrants, logical fallacies, or the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. Although such concepts can be useful, we believe most of us learn the ins and outs of argumentative writing not by studying logical principles in the abstract, but by plunging into actual discussions and debates, trying out different patterns of response, and in this way getting a sense of what works to persuade different audiences and what doesn’t. In our view, people learn more about arguing from

Demystifying Academic Conversation

x x v i i

hearing someone say, “You miss my point. What I’m saying is not , but ,” or “I agree with you that

, and would even add that ,” than they do from studying the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. Such formulas give students an immediate sense of what it feels like to enter a public conversation in a way that studying abstract warrants and logical fallacies does not.

engaging with the ideas of others

One central goal of this book is to demystify academic writing by returning it to its social and conversational roots. Although writing may require some degree of quiet and solitude, the “they say/ I say” model shows students that they can best develop their arguments not just by looking inward but by doing what they often do in a good conversation with friends and family—by listening carefully to what others are saying and engaging with other views. This approach to writing therefore has an ethical dimension, since it asks writers not simply to keep proving and reasserting what they already believe, but to stretch what they believe by putting it up against beliefs that differ, sometimes radically, from their own. In an increasingly diverse, global society, this ability to engage with the ideas of others is especially crucial to democratic citizenship. Gerald Graff Cathy Birkenstein

1

introduction

Entering the Conversation

H

Think about an activity that you do particularly well: cooking, playing the piano, shooting a basketball, even some- thing as basic as driving a car. If you reflect on this activity, you’ll realize that once you mastered it you no longer had to give much conscious thought to the various moves that go into doing it. Performing this activity, in other words, depends on your having learned a series of complicated moves—moves that may seem mysterious or difficult to those who haven’t yet learned them. The same applies to writing. Often without consciously real- izing it, accomplished writers routinely rely on a stock of estab- lished moves that are crucial for communicating sophisticated ideas. What makes writers masters of their trade is not only their ability to express interesting thoughts but their mastery of an inventory of basic moves that they probably picked up by reading a wide range of other accomplished writers. Less experienced writers, by contrast, are often unfamiliar with these basic moves and unsure how to make them in their own writing. Hence this book, which is intended as a short, user-friendly guide to the basic moves of academic writing. One of our key premises is that these basic moves are so common that they can be represented in templates that you can use right away to structure and even generate your own

I N T R O D U C T I O N

2

writing. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this book is its pre sentation of many such templates, designed to help you successfully enter not only the world of academic thinking and writing, but also the wider worlds of civic discourse and work. Instead of focusing solely on abstract principles of writing, then, this book offers model templates that help you put those principles directly into practice. Working with these templates will give you an immediate sense of how to engage in the kinds of critical thinking you are required to do at the college level and in the vocational and public spheres beyond. Some of these templates represent simple but crucial moves like those used to summarize some widely held belief.

j Many Americans assume that .

Others are more complicated.

j On the one hand, . On the other hand, .

j Author X contradicts herself. At the same time that she argues

, she also implies .

j I agree that .

j This is not to say that .

It is true, of course, that critical thinking and writing go deeper than any set of linguistic formulas, requiring that you question assumptions, develop strong claims, offer supporting reasons and evidence, consider opposing arguments, and so on. But these deeper habits of thought cannot be put into practice unless you have a language for expressing them in clear, orga- nized ways.

Entering the Conversation

3

state your own ideas as a response to others

The single most important template that we focus on in this book is the “they say ; I say ” formula that gives our book its title. If there is any one point that we hope you will take away from this book, it is the importance not only of expressing your ideas (“I say”) but of presenting those ideas as a response to some other person or group (“they say”). For us, the underlying structure of effective academic writing—and of responsible public discourse—resides not just in stating our own ideas but in listening closely to others around us, summarizing their views in a way that they will recognize, and responding with our own ideas in kind. Broadly speaking, academic writ- ing is argumentative writing, and we believe that to argue well you need to do more than assert your own position. You need to enter a conversation, using what others say (or might say) as a launching pad or sounding board for your own views. For this reason, one of the main pieces of advice in this book is to write the voices of others into your text. In our view, then, the best academic writing has one under- lying feature: it is deeply engaged in some way with other peo- ple’s views. Too often, however, academic writing is taught as a process of saying “true” or “smart” things in a vacuum, as if it were possible to argue effectively without being in conver- sation with someone else. If you have been taught to write a traditional five-paragraph essay, for example, you have learned how to develop a thesis and support it with evidence. This is good advice as far as it goes, but it leaves out the important fact that in the real world we don’t make arguments without being provoked. Instead, we make arguments because some- one has said or done something (or perhaps not said or done

I N T R O D U C T I O N

4

something) and we need to respond: “I can’t see why you like the Lakers so much”; “I agree: it was a great film”; “That argu- ment is contradictory.” If it weren’t for other people and our need to challenge, agree with, or otherwise respond to them, there would be no reason to argue at all.

“why are you telling me this?”

To make an impact as a writer, then, you need to do more than make statements that are logical, well supported, and consis- tent. You must also find a way of entering into conversation with the views of others, with something “they say.” The easiest and most common way writers do this is by summarizing what others say and then using it to set up what they want to say. “But why,” as a student of ours once asked, “do I always need to summarize the views of others to set up my own view? Why can’t I just state my own view and be done with it?” Why indeed? After all, “they,” whoever they may be, will have already had their say, so why do you have to repeat it? Further- more, if they had their say in print, can’t readers just go and read what was said themselves? The answer is that if you don’t identify the “they say” you’re responding to, your own argument probably won’t have a point. Readers will wonder what prompted you to say what you’re say- ing and therefore motivated you to write. As the figure on the following page suggests, without a “they say,” what you are saying may be clear to your audience, but why you are saying it won’t be. Even if we don’t know what film he’s referring to, it’s easy to grasp what the speaker means here when he says that its characters are very complex. But it’s hard to see why the speaker feels the need to say what he is saying. “Why,” as one member

Entering the Conversation

5

of his imagined audience wonders, “is he telling us this?” So the characters are complex—so what? Now look at what happens to the same proposition when it is presented as a response to something “they say”:

I N T R O D U C T I O N

6

We hope you agree that the same claim—“the characters in the film are very complex”—becomes much stronger when presented as a response to a contrary view: that the film’s char- acters “are sexist stereotypes.” Unlike the speaker in the first cartoon, the speaker in the second has a clear goal or mission: to correct what he sees as a mistaken characterization.

the as-opposed-to-what factor

To put our point another way, framing your “I say” as a response to something “they say” gives your writing an element of con- trast without which it won’t make sense. It may be helpful to think of this crucial element as an “as-opposed-to-what factor” and, as you write, to continually ask yourself, “Who says oth- erwise?” and “Does anyone dispute it?” Behind the audience’s “Yeah, so?” and “Why is he telling us this?” in the first cartoon above lie precisely these types of “As opposed to what?” ques- tions. The speaker in the second cartoon, we think, is more satisfying because he answers these questions, helping us see his point that the film presents complex characters rather than simple sexist stereotypes.

how it’s done

Many accomplished writers make explicit “they say” moves to set up and motivate their own arguments. One famous example is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which consists almost entirely of King’s eloquent responses to a public statement by eight clergymen deploring the civil rights protests

Entering the Conversation

7

he was leading. The letter—which was written in 1963, while King was in prison for leading a demonstration against racial injustice in Birmingham—is structured almost entirely around a framework of summary and response, in which King summarizes and then answers their criticisms. In one typical passage, King writes as follows.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.

Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

King goes on to agree with his critics that “It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham,” yet he hastens to add that “it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.” King’s letter is so thoroughly conversational, in fact, that it could be rewritten in the form of a dialogue or play.

King’s critics: King’s response: Critics: Response:

Clearly, King would not have written his famous letter were it not for his critics, whose views he treats not as objections to his already-formed arguments but as the motivating source of those arguments, their central reason for being. He quotes not only what his critics have said (“Some have asked: ‘Why didn’t you give the new city administration time to act?’ ”), but also things they might have said (“One may well ask: ‘How can

I N T R O D U C T I O N

8

you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ ”)—all to set the stage for what he himself wants to say. A similar “they say / I say” exchange opens an essay about American patriotism by the social critic Katha Pollitt, who uses her own daughter’s comment to represent the patriotic national fervor after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the former World Trade Center, thinks we should fly the American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: the flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. She tells me I’m wrong—the flag means standing together and honoring the dead and saying no to terrorism. In a way we’re both right. . . .

Katha Pollitt, “Put Out No Flags”

As Pollitt’s example shows, the “they” you respond to in crafting an argument need not be a famous author or someone known to your audience. It can be a family member like Pollitt’s daughter, or a friend or classmate who has made a provocative claim. It can even be something an individual or a group might say—or a side of yourself, something you once believed but no longer do, or something you partly believe but also doubt. The important thing is that the “they” (or “you” or “she”) represent some wider group with which readers might identify—in Pollitt’s case, those who patriotically believe in flying the flag. Pollitt’s example also shows that responding to

the views of others need not always involve unquali- fied opposition. By agreeing and disagreeing with her daughter, Pollitt enacts what we call the “yes and no” response, reconciling apparently incompatible views.

While King and Pollitt both identify the views they are responding to, some authors do not explicitly state their views

See Chapter 4 for more