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Writing Analytically

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iii

Writing Analytically

FIFTH EDITION

David Rosenwasser

Muhlenberg College

Jill Stephen

Muhlenberg College

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Writing Analytically, Fifth Edition David Rosenwasser

Jill Stephen

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v

UNIT I THE ANALYTICAL FRAME OF MIND: INTRODUCTION TO ANALYTICAL METHODS 1

CHAPTER 1 Analysis: What It Is and What It Does 3

CHAPTER 2 Counterproductive Habits of Mind 17

CHAPTER 3 A Toolkit of Analytical Methods 31

CHAPTER 4 Interpretation: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and How to Do It 49

CHAPTER 5 Analyzing Arguments 73

CHAPTER 6 Topics and Modes of Analysis 93

UNIT II WRITING THE ANALYTICAL ESSAY 107

CHAPTER 7 What Evidence Is and How It Works 109

CHAPTER 8 Using Evidence to Build a Paper: 10 on 1 versus 1 on 10 123

CHAPTER 9 Making a Thesis Evolve 139

CHAPTER 10 Structuring the Paper: Forms and Formats 159

CHAPTER 11 Introductions and Conclusions 179

CHAPTER 12 Recognizing and Fixing Weak Thesis Statements 193

BRIEF CONTENTS

UNIT III WRITING THE RESEARCHED PAPER 203

CHAPTER 13 Reading Analytically 205

CHAPTER 14 Using Sources Analytically: The Conversation Model 215

CHAPTER 15 Organizing and Revising the Research Paper: Two Sample Essays 227

CHAPTER 16 Finding, Citing, and Integrating Sources 241

UNIT IV GRAMMAR AND STYLE 269

CHAPTER 17 Style: Choosing Words for Precision, Accuracy, and Tone 271

CHAPTER 18 Style: Shaping Sentences for Precision and Emphasis 287

CHAPTER 19 Common Grammatical Errors and How to Fix Them 305

vi Brief Contents

vii

Preface xvii

UNIT I THE ANALYTICAL FRAME OF MIND: INTRODUCTION TO ANALYTICAL METHODS 1

CHAPTER 1 Analysis: What It Is and What It Does 3

First Principles 3

Analysis Defined 3

The Five Analytical Moves 4

Move 1: Suspend Judgment 5

Move 2: Define Significant Parts and How They’re Related 5

Move 3: Make the Implicit Explicit 6

Move 4: Look for Patterns 8

Move 5: Keep Reformulating Questions and Explanations 9

Analysis at Work: A Sample Paper 10

Distinguishing Analysis from Argument, Summary, and Expressive Writing 11

Applying the Five Analytical Moves: The Example of Whistler’s Mother 13

Analysis and Personal Associations 15

CHAPTER 2 Counterproductive Habits of Mind 17

Fear of Uncertainty 17

Prejudging 18

Blinded by Habit 19

The Judgment Reflex 20

Generalizing 21

Overpersonalizing (Naturalizing Our Assumptions) 23

Opinions (versus Ideas) 25

What It Means to Have an Idea 26

Rules of Thumb for Handling Complexity 28

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 3 A Toolkit of Analytical Methods 31

The Toolkit 32

Paraphrase ! 3 33

Notice and Focus (Ranking) 35

Prompts: Interesting and Strange 35

10 on 1 36

The Method: Working with Patterns of Repetition and Contrast 37

Thinking Recursively with Strands and Binaries 39

Generating Ideas with The Method: An Example 40

Doing The Method on a Poem: Our Analysis 40

A Procedure for Finding and Querying Binaries 43

Freewriting 44

Passage-Based Focused Freewriting 45

Writers’ Notebooks 46

Passage-Based Focused Freewriting: An Example 47

CHAPTER 4 Interpretation: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and How to Do It 49

Pushing Observations to Conclusions: Asking So What? 50

Asking So What?: An Example 51

Implications versus Hidden Meanings 54

The Limits on Interpretation 56

Plausible versus Implausible Interpretations 57

Interpretive Contexts and Multiple Meanings 58

Specifying an Interpretive Context: An Example 58

Intention as an Interpretive Context 59

What Is and Isn’t “Meant” to Be Analyzed 60

The Fortune Cookie School of Interpretation 61

The Anything Goes School of Interpretation 62

Seems to Be about X but Could Also Be (Is Really) about Y 63

Putting It All Together: Interpretation of a New Yorker Cover 65

Description of a New Yorker Cover, Dated October 9, 2000 65

Using The Method to Identify Patterns of Repetition and Contrast 67

viii Contents

Pushing Observations to Conclusions: Selecting an Interpretive Context 68

Making the Interpretation Plausible 69

Arriving at an Interpretive Conclusion: Making Choices 70

CHAPTER 5 Analyzing Arguments 73

The Role of Binaries in Argument 73

A Procedure for Reformulating Binaries in Argument 74

Strategy 1: Locate a Range of Opposing Categories 74

Strategy 2: Analyze and Define the Key Terms 74

Strategy 3: Question the Accuracy of the Binary 75

Strategy 4: Substitute “To What Extent?” for “Either/Or” 75

Uncovering Assumptions (Reasoning Back to Premises) 76

Uncovering Assumptions: A Brief Example 78

A Procedure for Uncovering Assumptions 78

Analyzing an Argument: The Example of “Playing by the Antioch Rules” 79

Strategies for Developing an Argument by Reasoning Back to Premises 82

The Problems with Debate-Style Argument 84

Seeing the Trees as Well as the Forest: Toulmin and the Rules of Argument 85

Refining Categorical Thinking: Two Examples 88

A Brief Glossary of Common Logical Errors 90

CHAPTER 6 Topics and Modes of Analysis 93

Rhetorical Analysis 93

Rhetorical Analysis of a Place: A Brief Example 94

Rhetorical Analysis of an Advertisement: A Student Paper 94

Summary 96

Strategies for Making Summaries More Analytical 96

Personal Response: The Reaction Paper 98

Strategies for Making Personal Responses More Analytical 98

Agree/Disagree 100

Comparison/Contrast 100

Strategies for Making Comparison/Contrast More Analytical 100

Contents ix

Definition 102

Strategies for Making Definition More Analytical 102

UNIT II WRITING THE ANALYTICAL ESSAY 107

CHAPTER 7 What Evidence Is and How It Works 109

The Function of Evidence 110

The Missing Connection: Linking Evidence and Claims 110

“Because I Say So”: Unsubstantiated Claims 111

Distinguishing Evidence from Claims 111

Giving Evidence a Point: Making Details Speak 112

How to Make Details Speak: A Brief Example 113

What Counts as Evidence? 114

Kinds of Evidence 116

Statistical Evidence 116

Anecdotal Evidence 117

Authorities as Evidence 117

Empirical Evidence 118

Experimental Evidence 118

Textual Evidence 118

Using What You Have 119

CHAPTER 8 Using Evidence to Build a Paper: 10 on 1 versus 1 on 10 123

Developing a Thesis Is More Than Repeating an Idea (1 on 10) 123

What’s Wrong with Five-Paragraph Form? 124

Analyzing Evidence in Depth: 10 on 1 127

Demonstrating the Representativeness of Your Example 128

10 on 1 and Disciplinary Conventions 128

Pan, Track, and Zoom: Using 10 on 1 to Build a Paper 128

Doing 10 on 1: A Brief Example (Tiananmen Square) 129

Converting 1 on 10 into 10 on 1: A Student Paper (Flood Stories) 131

Revising the Draft Using 10 on 1 and Difference within Similarity 133

Doing 10 on 1: A Student Paper (Good Bye Lenin!) 136

x Contents

Contents xi

A Template for Organizing Papers Using 10 on 1: An Alternative to Five- Paragraph Form 138

CHAPTER 9 Making a Thesis Evolve 139

What a Strong Thesis Does 139

Making a Thesis Evolve: A Brief Example (Tax Laws) 140

The Reciprocal Relationship between Thesis and Evidence: The Thesis as Lens 142

What a Good Thesis Statement Looks Like 143

Six Steps for Making a Thesis Evolve 144

Evolving a Thesis in an Exploratory Draft: A Student Draft on Las Meninas 145

Evolving a Thesis in a Later-Stage Draft: The Example of Educating Rita 153

Locating the Evolving Thesis in the Final Draft 156

CHAPTER 10 Structuring the Paper: Forms and Formats 159

Romantics versus Formalists 159

The Two Functions of Formats: Product and Process 160

Using Formats Heuristically: A Brief Example 161

Classical Forms and Formats 162

Writing Analytically’s Forms and Formats 162

Pan, Track, and Zoom: Using 10 on 1 to Build a Paper 163

Constellating 163

A Template for Organizing Papers Using 10 on 1 163

Six Steps for Making a Thesis Evolve 164

The Toolkit as Template 164

The Shaping Force of Thesis Statements 165

The Shaping Force of Transitions 166

The Shaping Force of Common Thought Patterns: Deduction and Induction 167

Thesis Slots 169

Negotiating Disciplinary Formats 169

Three Common Organizing Strategies 171

Climactic Order 171

xii Contents

Comparison/Contrast 172

Concessions and Refutations 173

Structuring the Paragraph 173

The Topic Sentence Controversy 174

Some Theories on Paragraph Structure 174

Finding the Skeleton of an Essay: An Example (September 11th: A National Tragedy?) 175

CHAPTER 11 Introductions and Conclusions 179

Introductions and Conclusions as Social Sites 179

What Introductions Do: “Why What I’m Saying Matters” 180

Putting an Issue or Question in Context 181

How Much to Introduce Up-Front: Typical Problems 182

Digression 182

Incoherence 183

Prejudgment 183

Using Procedural Openings 184

Good Ways to Begin 185

What Conclusions Do: The Final So What? 186

Solving Typical Problems in Conclusions 188

Redundancy 188

Raising a Totally New Point 188

Overstatement 189

Anticlimax 189

Introductions in the Sciences 189

Conclusions in the Sciences: The Discussion Section 191

CHAPTER 12 Recognizing and Fixing Weak Thesis Statements 193

Five Kinds of Weak Thesis Statements and How to Fix Them 193

Weak Thesis Type 1: The Thesis Makes No Claim 194

Weak Thesis Type 2: The Thesis Is Obviously True or Is a Statement of Fact 195

Weak Thesis Type 3: The Thesis Restates Conventional Wisdom 195

Weak Thesis Type 4: The Thesis Bases Its Claim on Personal Conviction 196

Weak Thesis Type 5: The Thesis Makes an Overly Broad Claim 198

Contents xiii

How to Rephrase Thesis Statements: Specify and Subordinate 199

Is It Okay to Phrase a Thesis as a Question? 201

UNIT III WRITING THE RESEARCHED PAPER 203

CHAPTER 13 Reading Analytically 205

How to Read: Words Matter 206

Becoming Conversant Instead of Reading for the Gist 207

Three Tools to Improve Your Reading: A Review 207

The Pitch, the Complaint, and the Moment 208

Uncovering the Assumptions in a Reading 209

Reading with and against the Grain 210

Using a Reading as a Model 212

Applying a Reading as a Lens 213

CHAPTER 14 Using Sources Analytically: The Conversation Model 215

Six Strategies for Analyzing Sources 215

“Source Anxiety” and What to Do about It 216

The Conversation Analogy 216

Ways to Use a Source as a Point of Departure 217

Six Strategies for Analyzing Sources 219

Make Your Sources Speak 219

Attend Carefully to the Language of Your Sources by Quoting or Paraphrasing 220

Supply Ongoing Analysis of Sources (Don’t Wait Until the End) 221

Use Your Sources to Ask Questions, Not Just to Provide Answers 221

Put Your Sources into Conversation with One Another 223

Find Your Own Role in the Conversation 225

CHAPTER 15 Organizing and Revising the Research Paper: Two Sample Essays 227

A Sample Research Paper and How to Revise It: The Flight from Teaching 227

Strategies for Writing and Revising Research Papers 230

Be Sure to Make Clear Who Is Talking 230

xiv Contents

Analyze as You Go Along Rather Than Saving Analysis for the End (Disciplinary Conventions Permitting) 230

Quote in Order to Analyze: Make Your Sources Speak 231

Try Converting Key Assertions in the Source into Questions 231

Get Your Sources to Converse with One Another, and Actively Referee the Conflicts among Them 232

A Good Sample Research Paper: Horizontal and Vertical Mergers within the Healthcare Industry 233

Guidelines for Writing the Researched Paper 238

CHAPTER 16 Finding, Citing, and Integrating Sources 241

Getting Started 242

Three Rules of Thumb for Getting Started 244

Electronic Research: Finding Quality on the Web 244

Understanding Domain Names 245

Print Corollaries 246

Web Classics 246

Wikipedia, Google, and Blogs 246

Asking the Right Questions 247

Subscriber-Only Databases 248

Indexes of Scholarly Journals 249

Who’s Behind That Website? 250

A Foolproof Recipe for Great Research—Every Time 252

Citation Guides on the Web 254

A Librarian’s Brief Guidelines to Successful Research 254

Plagiarism and the Logic of Citation 254

Why Does Plagiarism Matter? 255

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Plagiarism 256

How to Cite Sources 257

Single Author, MLA Style 258

Single Author, APA Style 259

How to Integrate Quotations into Your Paper 260

How to Prepare an Abstract 262

Guidelines for Finding, Citing, and Integrating Sources 264

Contents xv

UNIT IV GRAMMAR AND STYLE 269

CHAPTER 17 Style: Choosing Words for Precision, Accuracy, and Tone 271

Not Just Icing on the Cake: Style Is Meaning 272

How Style Shapes Thought: A Brief Example 273

Making Distinctions: Shades of Meaning 273

Word Histories and the OED 274

What’s Bad about “Good” and “Bad” 275

Concrete and Abstract Diction 276

Latinate Diction 277

Choosing Words: Some Rhetorical Considerations 278

Tone 278

Formal and Colloquial Styles: Who’s Writing to Whom, and Why Does It Matter? 279

The Person Question 281

The First Person Pronoun “I”: Pro and Con 281

The Second Person Pronoun “You”: Pro and Con 282

Using and Avoiding Jargon 283

CHAPTER 18 Style: Shaping Sentences for Precision and Emphasis 287

How to Recognize the Four Basic Sentence Types 287

The Simple Sentence 288

The Compound Sentence 288

The Complex Sentence 289

The Compound-Complex Sentence 289

So Why Do the Four Sentence Types Matter? 290

Coordination, Subordination, and Emphasis 290

Coordination 290

Reversing the Order of Coordinate Clauses for Emphasis 291

So Why Does the Order of Coordinate Clauses Matter? 291

Subordination 292

Reversing Main and Subordinate Clauses 292

So Why Does It Matter What Goes in the Subordinate Clause? 293

Parallel Structure 293

So Why Does Parallel Structure Matter? 295

xvi Contents

Periodic and Cumulative Sentences: Two Effective Sentence Shapes 295

The Periodic Sentence: Delaying Closure for Emphasis 295

The Cumulative Sentence: Starting Fast 297

So Why Do Periodic and Cumulative Sentences Matter? 298

Cutting the Fat 298

Expletive Constructions 299

Static versus Active Verbs: “To Be” or “Not to Be” 299

Active and Passive Voices: Doing and Being Done To 301

About Prescriptive Style Manuals 302

Experiment! 303

CHAPTER 19 Common Grammatical Errors and How to Fix Them 305

Why Correctness Matters 306

The Concept of Basic Writing Errors (BWEs) 306

What Punctuation Marks Say: A Quick-Hit Guide 307

Nine Basic Writing Errors and How to Fix Them 309

BWE 1: Sentence Fragments 309

A Further Note on Dashes and Colons 311

BWE 2: Comma Splices and Fused (or Run-On) Sentences 311

BWE 3: Errors in Subject–Verb Agreement 314

A Note on Nonstandard English 315

BWE 4: Shifts in Sentence Structure (Faulty Predication) 316

BWE 5: Errors in Pronoun Reference 316

Ambiguous Reference 317

A Note on Sexism and Pronoun Usage 319

BWE 6: Misplaced Modifiers and Dangling Participles 319

BWE 7: Errors in Using Possessive Apostrophes 320

BWE 8: Comma Errors 321

BWE 9: Spelling/Diction Errors That Interfere with Meaning 323

Glossary of Grammatical Terms 325

CHAPTER 19 APPENDIX Answer Key (with Discussion) 330

CREDITS 339

INDEX 341

xvii

Writing Analytically focuses on ways of using writing to discover and develop ideas. That is, the book treats writing as a tool of thought—a means of undertaking sus- tained acts of inquiry and reflection.

For some people, learning to write is associated less with thinking than with ar- ranging words, sentences, and ideas in clear and appropriate form. The achievement of good writing does, of course, require attention to form, but writing is also a mental activity. Through writing we figure out what things mean (which is our definition of analysis). The act of writing allows us to discover and, importantly, to interrogate what we think and believe.

All the editions of Writing Analytically have evolved from what we learned while establishing and directing a cross-curricular writing program at a four-year liberal arts college (a program we began in 1989 and continue to direct). The clearest con- sensus we’ve found among faculty is on the kind of writing that they say they want from their students: not issue-based argument, not personal reflection (the “reaction” paper), not passive summary, but analysis, with its patient and methodical inquiry into the meaning of information. Yet most books of writing instruction devote only a chapter, if that, to analysis.

The main discovery we made when we first wrote this book was that none of the reading we’d done about thesis statements seemed to match either our own practice as writers and teachers or the practice of published writers. Textbooks about writing tend to present thesis statements as the finished products of an act of thinking—as inert statements that writers should march through their papers from beginning to end. In practice, the relationship between thesis and evidence is far more fluid and dynamic.

In most good writing, the thesis grows and changes in response to evidence, even in final drafts. In other words, the relationship between thesis and evidence is recip- rocal: the thesis acts as a lens for focusing what we see in the evidence, but the evi- dence, in turn, creates pressure to refocus the lens. The root issue here is the writer’s attitude toward evidence. The ability of writers to discover ideas and improve on them in revision depends largely on their ability to use evidence as a means of testing and developing ideas rather than just supporting them.

By the time we came to writing the third edition, we had begun to focus on ob- servation skills. We recognized that students’ lack of these skills is as much a prob- lem as thought-strangling formats like five-paragraph form or a too-rigid notion of thesis. We began to understand that observation doesn’t come naturally; it needs to be taught. The book advocates locating observation as a separate phase of thinking before the writer becomes committed to a thesis. Much weak writing is prematurely and too narrowly thesis driven precisely because people try to formulate the thesis before they have done much (or any) analyzing.

PREFACE

The solution to this problem sounds easy to accomplish, but it isn’t. As writers and thinkers, we all need to slow down—to dwell longer in the open- ended, exploratory, information-gathering stage. This requires specific tasks that will reduce the anxiety for answers, impede the reflex move to judgments, and encourage a more hands-on engagement with materials. Writing Analytically supplies these tasks for each phase of the writing and idea-generating process: making observations, inferring implications, and making the leap to possible conclusions.

WHAT’S NEW IN THIS EDITION

This edition of Writing Analytically marks the fourth time we’ve had the chance to revisit the book’s initial thinking on writing. The difficult but also exciting thing about repeatedly revising the same book is that the writer must keep learning how to see the logic of the book as a whole, even as new thinking rises from earlier thinking and threatens to displace it. We believe that we have now succeeded at what we couldn’t quite manage to do in the fourth edition—to integrate the early versions of the book, oriented largely toward thesis and evidence, with the later editions of the book, oriented toward observation and interpretation.

Here in brief (and in boldface) are the suggestions and criticisms to which this extensively rewritten and reorganized version of the book responds:

• Put back the definition-of-analysis chapter containing the five analytical moves, which disappeared in the third edition. This edition starts with a revised version of the older chapter, now called Analysis: What It Is and What It Does.

• Make things easier to find! Make core ideas stand out more clearly. And so . . . :

1. We have organized the book into four units to make the book’s arguments and advice clearer and more clearly incremental. These units are:

I. The Analytical Frame of Mind: Introduction to Analytical Methods

II. Writing the Analytical Essay

III. Writing the Researched Paper

IV. Grammar and Style

2. We have created separate chapters on matters that were not adequately pulled together and foregrounded in previous editions.

• The book’s observational strategies, such as 10 on 1 and The Method, now appear prominently in a single chapter called A Toolkit of Analytical Methods (Chapter 3).

• A revised chapter called Interpretation: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and How to Do It (Chapter 4) reunites materials on interpretation that were split up in the fourth edition.

• The book’s advice on analyzing and producing arguments now appears in a single chapter called Analyzing Arguments (Chapter 5).

xviii Preface

• A new chapter called Topics and Modes of Analysis (Chapter 6) adds explicit discussion of rhetorical analysis, acknowledging it as an ongoing topic of the book, and restores attention to ways of making the traditional rhetorical modes, such as comparison and contrast, more analytical.

• The book’s advice on organizing papers is now pulled together in a largely new chapter on organization called Structuring the Paper: Forms and Formats (Chapter 10), which also includes a new section on para- graphing. Readers will now know where to look for alternatives to five- paragraph form. The chapter invites readers to think of organization in terms of movement of mind at both the paper and paragraph levels.

• Get rid of the overstuffed first chapter and restore the unexpurgated version of counterproductive habits of mind as a separate chapter. Done. We recognize that in the fourth edition we attempted to do what all writers, not just our stu- dents, too often do—pack everything into the opening. The parts of this opening chapter have now been broken up and redistributed more logically. We have also reorganized and rewritten our chapter on counterproductive habits of mind, which now appears as Chapter 2. We continue to believe, as the chapter argues, that it is hard to develop new thinking skills without first becoming aware of what’s wrong with our customary modes of response.

• Put the book’s advice on reading with the chapters on researched writing. A pared-down chapter called Reading Analytically (Chapter 13) now opens the book’s unit on research-based writing. In this chapter, we make it clear that all of the book’s strategies can be applied to reading, but we now foreground some that are particular to writing about reading—such as using a reading as a lens—in this revised reading chapter.

• Make the book shorter and less repetitive. We have tried to prune every sentence—in fact, every clause, phrase, and word—wherein we had succumbed to the temptation to say something twice when once would do. We think we have made the book more readable in both clarity and tone and lighter to carry.

We continue to believe that the book’s schematic way of describing the analytical thought process will make students more confident thinkers, better able to contend with complexity and to move beyond the simplistic agree/disagree response and pas- sive assembling of downloaded information. We have faith in the book’s various for- mulae and verbal prompts for their ability to spur more thoughtful writing and also for the role they can play in making the classroom a more genuinely engaging and collaborative space. When students and teachers can share the means of idea produc- tion, class discussion and writing become better connected, and students can more easily learn that good ideas don’t just happen—they’re made.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Writing Analytically is designed to be used in first-year writing courses or seminars, as well as in more advanced writing-intensive courses in a variety of subject areas.

Preface xix

Though the book’s chapters form a logical sequence, each can also stand alone and be used in different sequences.

We assume that most professors will want to supply their own subject matter for students to write about. The book does, however, contain writing exercises through- out that can be applied to a wide range of materials—print and visual, text-based (reading), and experiential (writing from direct observation). In the text itself we suggest using newspapers, magazines, films, primary texts (both fiction and nonfic- tion), academic articles, textbooks, television, historical documents, places, advertis- ing, photographs, political campaigns, and so on.

There is, by the way, an edition of this book that contains readings—Writing Analytically with Readings. It includes writing assignments that call on students to apply the skills in the original book to writing about the readings and to using the readings as lenses for analyzing other material.

The book’s writing exercises take two forms: end-of-chapter assignments that could produce papers and informal writing exercises called “Try This” that are em- bedded inside the chapters near the particular skills they employ. Many of the Try This exercises could generate papers, but usually they are more limited in scope, asking readers to experiment with various kinds of data-gathering and analysis.

The book acknowledges that various academic disciplines differ in their expecta- tions of student writing. Interspersed throughout the text are boxes labeled Voices from across the Curriculum. These were written for the book by professors in various disciplines who offer their disciplinary perspective on such matters as reasoning back to premises and determining what counts as evidence. Overall, however, the text concentrates on the many values and expectations that the disciplines share about writing.

THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONS

We have had the good fortune to interest others enough in our work to stimulate attack, much of it, we think, the result of misunderstanding. In an effort to clarify our own premises and origins, we offer the following disclosure of our influences and orientations.

The book is aligned with the thinking of Carl Rogers and others on the goal of making argument less combative, less inflected by a vocabulary of military strategiz- ing that discourages negotiation among competing points of view and the evolution of new ideas from the pressure of one idea against another.

The book is also heavily influenced by the early proponents of the process move- ment in writing pedagogy. Books such as Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers and Ken Macrorie’s Telling Writing were standard fare in graduate programs when we began to teach. We came of age, so to speak, accepting that writing instruction should focus on writers’ process and not just on ways of shaping finished products. As is now generally recognized, the inherent romanticism and expressivist bias of the process approach to writing limited its usefulness for people who were interested in teaching students how to write for academic audiences. Despite the social scientific approach that researchers such as Janet Emig, James Britton, and Linda Flower (to name a few) brought to the

xx Preface

understanding of students’ writing process, the process approach to writing instruction suffered a decline in status as trends in college writing programs took up other causes. (See, for example, the arguments of Patricia Bizzell, David Bartholomae, Charles Bazerman, and others, who reoriented compositionists toward discourse analysis and ethnographic research on the writing practices of other disciplines.)

We continue to believe that attention to process and attention to the stylistic and epistemological norms of writing in the disciplines can and should be brought into accord. We think, further, that a relatively straightforward and teachable set of strate- gies can go a long way toward achieving this goal. The process approach is not neces- sarily expressivist, at least not exclusively so. Analytical strategies with the power to enrich students’ writing process can be taught, and they shed light on the otherwise mysterious-seeming nature of individuals’ creativity as thinkers.

The book has drawn some interesting critiques, based on people’s assumptions about our connection to particular theoretical orientations. One such critique comes from people who think the book invites students to think in a “New Critical” vacuum— that it is uncritically aligned with an unreformed, unself-conscious and old-fashioned New Critical mind-set. The midcentury interpretive movement known as the New Criticism has come to be misunderstood as rigidly materialist, deriving meaning only from the physical details that one can see on the page, on the screen, on the sidewalk, and so on. This is not the place to take up a comprehensive assessment of the ideas and impact of the New Criticism, but, as the best of the New Critics clearly knew, things al- ways mean (as our book explicitly argues) in context. Interpretive contexts, which we dis- cuss extensively in Chapter 4 and elsewhere, are determined by the thing being observed; but, in turn, they also determine what the observer sees. Ideas are always the products of assumptions about how best to situate observations in a frame of reference. Only when these interpretive frames, these ways of seeing and their ideological underpinnings, are made clear do the details begin to meaningfully and plausibly “speak.”

We are aware that the language of binary oppositions, patterns of repetition, and organizing contrasts suggests not just the methods of the New Critics but those of their immediate successors, structuralists. Without embarking here on an extended foray into the evolution of theory in the latter half of the twentieth century, we will just say that the value assumptions of both the New Criticism (with its faith in irony, tension, and ambiguity) and structuralism (with its search for universal structures of mind and culture) do not automatically accompany their methods. Any approach to thinking and writing that values complexity will subscribe to some extent to the necessity of recognizing tension and irony and paradox and ambiguity. As for finding universal structures of mind and culture, we haven’t so grand a goal, but we do think that there is value in trying to state simply and clearly in nontechnical language some of the characteristic moves of mind that make some people better thinkers than others and better able to arrive at ideas.

Here are some other ways in which Writing Analytically might lend itself to mis- understandings. Its employment of verbal prompts like So what? and its recom- mendation of step-by-step procedures, such as the procedure for making a thesis evolve, should not be confused with prescriptive slot-filler formulae for writing. Our book does not prescribe a fill-in-the-blank grid for analyzing data, but it does try to

Preface xxi

describe systematically what good thinkers do—as acts of mind—when they are confronted with data.

Our focus on words has also attracted critique. The theoretical orientation that has come to be called performance theory has emphasized the idea that words alone don’t adequately account for the meanings we make of them. Words exist—their in- terpretations exist—in how and why they are spoken in particular circumstances, genres, and traditions. Our view is that this essential emphasis on the significance of context does not diminish the importance of attending to words. The situation is rather like the one we addressed earlier in reference to the New Criticism. Words mean in particular contexts. It is reductive to assume that attention to language means that only words matter or that words matter in some context-less vacuum. The methods we define in Writing Analytically can be applied to nonverbal and verbal data.

Interestingly, we were aware of, but had not actually studied, the work of John Dewey as we evolved our thinking for this book. Looking more closely at his writing now, we are struck by the number of key terms and assumptions our thinking shares with his. In his book How We Think, Dewey speaks, for example, of “systematic reflection” as a goal. He was interested, as are we, in what goes on in the production of actual thinking, rather than “setting forth the results of thinking” after the fact, in the manner of formal logic. On this subject Dewey writes, “When you are only seeking the truth and of neces- sity seeking somewhat blindly, you are in a radically different position from the one you are in when you are already in possession of the truth” (revised edition 1933, 74–75).

Dewey thought, as do we, that habits of mind can be trained, but first people have to be made more conscious of them. This is what Writing Analytically tries to accom- plish. It begins with some of the same premises that Dewey and others have offered:

• The importance of being able to dwell in and tolerate uncertainty • The importance of curiosity and knowing how to cultivate it • The importance of being conscious of language • The importance of observation

Dewey also said that people cannot make themselves have ideas. This we believe is not true. People can make themselves have ideas, and it is possible to describe the processes through which individuals enable themselves to make interpretive leaps. It is also possible (and necessary) for people to learn how to differentiate ideas from other things that are often mistaken for ideas, such as clichés and opinions—products of the deadening effect of habit (about which we have much to say in the book’s opening unit). Although the interpretive leaps from observation to idea can probably never be fully explained, we are not thus required to relegate the meaning-making process to the category of imponderable mystery.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen are Professors of English at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where they have co-directed a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program since 1987. They began teaching writing to college

xxii Preface

students in the 1970s—David at the University of Virginia and then at the College of William and Mary, and Jill at New York University and then at Hunter College (CUNY). Writing Analytically has grown out of their undergraduate teaching and the seminars on writing and writing instruction that they have offered to faculty at Muhlenberg and at other colleges and universities across the country.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Our greatest debt in this edition of the book is to Kenny Marotta, who helped us rethink the book. Like all great teachers, he let us see more clearly the shape and im- plications of our own thinking. Those of you unaware of his gifts as a fiction writer are missing a rare pleasure. Major thanks also go to developmental editor extraordinaire Mary Beth Walden for her tireless efforts on our behalf—her understanding of how we work; her ability to help us hide from distractions; her sound advice, patience, and good cheer. We are also very grateful to departing acquisitions editor Aron Keesbury for his frank talk and occasional flights of poetry.

We have over the years been fortunate to work with a range of talented and dedi- cated editors: Dickson Musslewhite, who saw us through the third and fourth edi- tions; Julie McBurney and John Meyers, who nurtured the book in its early days; and Michell Phifer and Karen R. Smith, who looked over our shoulders with acuity and wit. And we remain grateful to Karl Yambert, our original developmental editor, whose insight and patience first brought this book into being.

Christine Farris at Indiana University has been a great friend of the book since its early days; we heard her voice often in our heads as we revised this edition. She and her colleagues John Schilb and Ted Leahey gave us what every writer needs— a discerning audience. Similar thanks are due to Wendy Hesford and Eddie Singleton of Ohio State University, as well as their graduate students, whom we have had the pleasure of working with over the past few years. The book has enabled us to make many new friends just starting their college teaching careers in rhetoric and composition—Matthew Johnson and Matt Hollrah, to name two. Our friend Dean Ward at Calvin College has been a source of inspiration and good conversation on writing for many years. So have two old friends, Richard Louth and Lin Spence, who offer the benefit of their long experience with the National Writing Project. And we always learn something about writing whenever we run into Mary Ann Cain and George Kalamaras, inspiring teachers and writers both. We have also benefited from stimulating conversations about writing with Chidsey Dickson.

Among our colleagues at Muhlenberg College, we are especially grateful to reference librarian Kelly Cannon for his section on library and Internet research in Chapter 16. For writing the Voices from across the Curriculum boxes that appear throughout the book, thanks to Karen Dearborn, Laura Edelman, Jack Gambino, James Marshall, Rich Niesenbaum, Fred Norling, Mark Sciutto, Alan Tjeltveit, and Bruce Wightman. For their good counsel and their teaching materials, thanks to Anna Adams, Jim Bloom, Chris Borick, Ted Conner, Joseph Elliot, Barri Gold, Mary Lawlor, Jim Peck, Jeremy Teissere, and Alec Marsh, with whom we argue endlessly about writing. Carol Proctor in the English Department looks out for us. We also thank Muhlenberg

Preface xxiii

College, especially its provost, Marjorie Hass, for continuing to support our participa- tion at national conferences.

We are indebted to our students at Muhlenberg College, who have shared their writing and their thinking about writing with us. Chief among these (of late) are Sarah Kersh, Robbie Saenz di Viteri, Laura Sutherland, Andrew Brown, Meghan Sweeney, Jen Epting, Jessica Skrocki, and Jake McNamara. Thanks also go to the following students who have allowed us to use their writing in our book (most recently): Jen Axe, Wendy Eichler, Theresa Leinker, and Kim Schmidt.

Finally, thanks to our spouses (Deborah and Mark) and our children (Lizzie, Lesley, and Sarah) for their love and support during the many hours that we sit immobile at our computers.

We would also like to thank the many colleagues who reviewed the book; we are grate- ful for their insight: Diann Ainsworth, Weatherford College Jeanette Adkins, Tarrant County College Joan Anderson, California State University–San Marcos Candace Barrington, Central Connecticut State University Maria Bates, Pierce College Karin Becker, Fort Lewis College Laura Behling, Gustavus Adolphus College Stephanie Bennett, Monmouth University Tom Bowie, Regis University Roland Eric Boys, Oxnard College David Brantley, College of Southern Maryland Jessica Brown, City College of San Francisco Christine Bryant Cohen, University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign Alexandria Casey, Graceland University Anthony Cavaluzzi, Adirondack Community College Johnson Cheu, Michigan State University Jeff Cofer, Bellevue Community College Helen Connell, Barry University Cara Crandall, Emerson College Rose Day, Central New Mexico Community College Susan de Ghize, University of Denver Virginia Dumont-Poston, Lander University David Eggebrecht, Concordia University Karen Feldman, University of California Dan Ferguson, Amarillo College Gina Franco, Knox College Sue Frankson, College of DuPage Anne Friedman, Borough of Manhattan Community College Tessa Garcia, University of Texas–Pan American

xxiv Preface

Susan Garrett, Goucher College Edward Geisweidt, University of Alabama Nate Gordon, Kishwaukee College Glenn Hutchinson, University of North Carolina–Charlotte Habiba Ibrahim, University of Washington Charlene Keeler, California State University–Fullerton Douglas King, Gannon University Constance Koepfinger, Duquesne University Anne Langendorfer, The Ohio State University Kim Long, Shippensburg University Laine Lubar, Broome Community College Phoenix Lundstrom, Kapi`olani Community College Cynthia Martin, James Madison University Andrea Mason, Pacific Lutheran University Darin Merrill, Brigham Young University–Idaho Sarah Newlands, Portland State University Emmanuel Ngwang, Mississippi Valley State University Leslie Norris, Rappahannock Community College Ludwig Otto, Tarrant County College Adrienne Peek, Modesto Junior College Adrienne Redding, Andrews University Julie Rivera, California State University–Long Beach John Robinson, Diablo Valley College Pam Rooney, Western Michigan University Linda Rosekrans, The State University of New York–Cortland Becky Rudd, Citrus College Arthur Saltzman, Missouri Southern State University Vicki Schwab, Manatee Community College John Sullivan, Muhlenberg College Eleanor Swanson, Regis University Kimberly Thompson, Wittenberg University Kathleen Walton, Southwestern Oregon Community College James Ray Watkins, The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Online; Colorado Technical University, Online; and The Center for Talented Youth, Johns Hopkins University Lisa Weihman, West Virginia University Robert Williams, Radford University Nancy Wright, Syracuse University Robbin Zeff, George Washington University

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UNIT I

The Analytical Frame of Mind: Introduction to Analytical Methods

CHAPTER 1 Analysis: What It Is and What It Does

CHAPTER 2 Counterproductive Habits of Mind

CHAPTER 3 A Toolkit of Analytical Methods

CHAPTER 4 Interpretation: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and How to Do It

CHAPTER 5 Analyzing Arguments

CHAPTER 6 Topics and Modes of Analysis

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CHAPTER 1

Analysis: What It Is and What It Does

FIRST PRINCIPLES

Writing takes place now in more forms than ever before. Words flash by on our computer and cell phone screens and speak to us from iPods. PowerPoint bulleted lists are replacing the classroom blackboard, and downloadable entries from Wikipe- dia and Google offer instant reading on almost any subject. Despite the often-heard claim that we now inhabit a visual age—that the age of print is passing—we are, in fact, surrounded by a virtual sea of electronically accessible print. What does all this mean for writers and writing?

If what is meant by writing is the form in which written text appears on page or screen, then presumably the study of writing would focus on the new forms of orga- nization that characterize writing on the web. But what if we define writing as the act of recording our thoughts in search of understanding? In that case, the writing practices and mental habits that help us to think more clearly would be, as they have long been, at the center of what it means to learn to write.

This book is primarily about ways of using writing to discover and develop ideas. Its governing premise is that learning to write well means learning to use writing to think well. This does not mean that the book ignores such matters as sentence style, paragraphing, and organization, but that it treats these matters in the context of writing as a way of generating and shaping thinking.

Although it is true that authors of web pages and PowerPoint demonstrations display their finished products in forms unlike the traditional essay, people rarely arrive at their ideas in the form of PowerPoint lists and hypertext. Whatever form the thinking will finally take, first comes the stage of writing to understand—writing as a sustained act of reflection. Implicit throughout this book is an argument for the value of reflection in an age that seems increasingly to confuse sustained acts of thinking with information downloading and formatting.

ANALYSIS DEFINED

We have seized upon analysis as the book’s focus because it is the skill most commonly called for in college courses and beyond. The faculty with whom we work encour- age analytical writing because it offers alternatives both to oversimplified thinking of

3

4 Chapter 1 Analysis: What It Is and What It Does

the like/dislike, agree/disagree variety and to the cut-and-paste compilation of sheer information. It is the kind of writing that helps people not only to retain and assimi- late information, but to use information in the service of their own thinking about the world.

More than just a set of skills, analysis is a frame of mind, an attitude toward experience. It is a form of detective work that typically pursues something puzzling, something you are seeking to understand rather than something you are already sure you have the answers to. Analysis finds questions where there seemed not to be any, and it makes connections that might not have been evident at first.

Analyzing, however, is often the subject of attack. It is sometimes thought of as destructive—breaking things down into their component parts, or, to paraphrase a famous poet, murdering to dissect. Other detractors attack it as the rarefied province of intellectuals and scholars, beyond the reach of normal people. In fact, we all analyze all of the time, and we do so not simply to break things down but to construct our understandings of the world we inhabit.

If, for example, you find yourself being followed by a large dog, your first response, other than breaking into a cold sweat, will be to analyze the situation. What does being followed by a large dog mean for me, here, now? Does it mean the dog is vicious and about to attack? Does it mean the dog is curious and wants to play? Similarly, if you are losing a game of tennis, or you’ve just left a job interview, or you are looking at a painting of a woman with three noses, you will begin to analyze. How can I play differently to increase my chances of winning? Am I likely to get the job, and why (or why not)? Why did the artist give the woman three noses?

If we break things down as we analyze, we do so to search for meaningful patterns, or to uncover what we had not seen at first glance—or just to understand more closely how and why the separate parts work as they do.

As this book tries to show, analyzing is surprisingly formulaic. It consists of a fairly limited set of basic moves. People who think well have these moves at their disposal, whether they are aware of using them or not. Having good ideas is less a matter of luck than of practice, of learning how to make best use of the writing process. Sudden flashes of inspiration do, of course, occur; but those who write regularly know that inspirational moments can, in fact, be courted. The rest of this book offers you ways of courting and then realizing the full potential of your ideas.

Next we offer five basic “moves”—reliable ways of proceeding—for courting ideas analytically.

THE FIVE ANALYTICAL MOVES

Each of the five moves is developed in more detail in subsequent chapters; this is an overview. As we have suggested, most people already analyze all the time, but they often don’t realize that this is what they’re doing. A first step toward becoming a better analytical thinker and writer is to become more aware of your own thinking processes, building on skills that you already possess, and eliminating habits that get in the way. Each of the following moves serves the primary purpose of analysis: to figure out what something means, why it is as it is and does what it does.

The Five Analytical Moves 5

Move 1: Suspend Judgment

Suspending judgment is a necessary precursor to thinking analytically because our tendency to judge everything shuts down our ability to see and to think. It takes considerable effort to break the habit of responding to everything with likes and dislikes, with agreeing and disagreeing. Just listen in on a few conversations to be reminded of how pervasive this phenomenon really is. Even when you try to suppress them, judgments tend to come.

Judgments usually say more about the person doing the judging than they do about the subject being judged. The determination that something is boring is espe- cially revealing in this regard. Yet people typically roll their eyes and call things boring as if this assertion clearly said something about the thing they are reacting to but not about the mind of the beholder.

Consciously leading with the word interesting (as in, “What I find most interest- ing about this is. . . ”) tends to deflect the judgment response into a more exploratory state of mind, one that is motivated by curiosity and thus better able to steer clear of approval and disapproval. As a general rule, you should seek to understand the subject you are analyzing before deciding how you feel about it. (See the Judgment Reflex in Chapter 2, Counterproductive Habits of Mind, for more.)

Move 2: Define Significant Parts and How They’re Related

Whether you are analyzing an awkward social situation, an economic problem, a painting, a substance in a chemistry lab, or your chances of succeeding in a job inter- view, the process of analysis is the same:

• Divide the subject into its defining parts, its main elements or ingredients. • Consider how these parts are related, both to each other and to the subject as a

whole.

In the case of analyzing the large dog encountered earlier, you might notice that he’s dragging a leash, has a ball in his mouth, and is wearing a bright red scarf. Having broken your larger subject into these defining parts, you would try to see the connec- tions among them and determine what they mean, what they allow you to decide about the nature of the dog: apparently somebody’s lost pet, playful, probably not hostile, unlikely to bite me.

Analysis of the painting of the woman with three noses, a subject more like the kind you might be asked to write about in a college course, would proceed in the same way. Your result—ideas about the nature of the painting—would be determined, as with the dog, not only by your noticing its various parts, but also by your familiarity with the subject. If you knew little about art history, scrutiny of the painting’s parts would not tell you, for instance, that it is an example of the movement known as Cubism. Even without this context, however, you would still be able to draw some analytical conclusions—ideas about the meaning and nature of the subject. You might conclude, for example, that the artist is interested in perspective or in the way we see, as opposed to realistic depictions of the world.

6 Chapter 1 Analysis: What It Is and What It Does

One common denominator of all effective analytical writing is that it pays close attention to detail. We analyze because our global responses, to a play, for example, or to a speech or a social problem, are too general. If you comment on an entire football game, you’ll find yourself saying things like “great game,” which is a generic response, something you could say about almost anything. This “one-size-fits-all” kind of com- ment doesn’t tell us very much except that you probably liked the game. To say more, you would necessarily become more analytical—shifting your attention to the signifi- cance of some important aspect of the game, such as “they won because the offensive line was giving the quarterback all day to find his receivers” or “they lost because they couldn’t defend against the safety blitz.”

This move from generalization to analysis, from the larger subject to its key com- ponents, is characteristic of good thinking. To understand a subject, we need to get past our first, generic, evaluative response to discover what the subject is “made of,” the particulars that contribute most strongly to the character of the whole.

If all that analysis did, however, was to take subjects apart, leaving them broken and scattered, the activity would not be worth very much. The student who presents a draft of a paper to his or her professor with the words, “Go ahead, rip it apart,” reveals a dis- abling misconception about analysis—that, like dissecting a frog in a biology lab, analy- sis takes the life out of its subjects. Clearly, analysis means more than breaking a subject into its parts. When you analyze a subject you ask not just “What is it made of?” but also “How do these parts help me to understand the meaning of the subject as a whole?”

Move 3: Make the Implicit Explicit

One definition of what analytical writing does is that it makes explicit (overtly stated) what is implicit (suggested but not overtly stated), converting suggestions into direct statements. Some people fear that, like the emperor’s new clothes, implications aren’t really there, but are instead the phantasms of an overactive imagination. “Reading between the lines” is the common and telling phrase that expresses this anxiety. We will have more to say in Chapter 4 against the charge that analysis makes something out of nothing—the spaces between the lines—rather than out of what is there in black and white. Another version of this anxiety is implied by the term hidden meanings.

Implications are not hidden, but neither are they completely spelled out so that they can be simply extracted. The word implication comes from the Latin implicare, which means “to fold in.” The word explicit is in opposition to the idea of implication. It means “folded out.” This etymology of the two words, implicit and explicit, suggests that meanings aren’t actually hidden, but neither are they opened to full view. An act of mind is required to take what is folded in and fold it out for all to see.

The process of drawing out implications is also known as making inferences. Inference and implication are related but not synonymous terms, and the difference is essential to know. The term implication describes something suggested by the material itself; implications reside in the matter you are studying. The term inference describes your thinking process. In short, you infer what the subject implies.

Now, let’s move on to an example that suggests not only how the process of making the implicit explicit works, but also how often we do it in our every- day lives. Imagine that you are driving down the highway and find yourself

The Five Analytical Moves 7

analyzing a billboard advertisement for a brand of beer. Such an analysis might begin with your noticing what the billboard photo contains, its various parts—six young, athletic, and scantily clad men and women drinking beer while pushing kayaks into a fast-running river. At this point, you have produced not an analysis but a summary—a description of what the photo contains. If, however, you go on to consider what the particulars of the photo imply, your summary would become analytical.

You might infer, for example, that the photo implies that beer is the beverage of fash- ionable, healthy, active people. Thus, the advertisement’s meaning goes beyond its explicit contents. Your analysis would lead you to convert to direct statement meanings that are suggested but not overtly stated, such as the advertisement’s goal of attacking common stereotypes about its product (that only lazy, overweight men drink beer). By making the implicit explicit (inferring what the ad implies) you can better understand the nature of your subject. (See Chapter 4 for more on implications versus hidden meanings.)

Try this 1.1: Making Inferences

Locate any magazine ad that you find interesting. Ask yourself, “What is this a picture of?” Use our hypothetical beer ad as a model for rendering the implicit explicit. Don’t settle for just one answer. Keep answering the question in different ways, letting your answers grow in length as they identify and begin to interpret the significance of telling details. If you find yourself getting stuck, add to the question: “and why did the advertiser choose this particular image or set of images?”

Science as a Process of Argument I find it ironic that the discipline of science, which is so inherently analytical, is so difficult for students to think about analytically. Much of this comes from the prevailing view of society that science is somehow factual. Science students come to college to learn the facts. I think many find it comforting to think that everything they learn will be objective. None of the wishy-washy subjectivity that many perceive in other disciplines. There is no need to argue, synthesize, or even have a good idea. But this view is dead wrong.

Anyone who has ever done science knows that nothing could be further from the truth. Just like other academics, scientists spend endless hours pa- tiently arguing over evidence that seems obscure or irrelevant to laypeople. There is rarely an absolute consensus. In reality, science is an endless pro- cess of argument, obtaining evidence, analyzing evidence, and reformulating arguments. To be sure, we all accept gravity as a “fact.” To not do so would be intellectually bankrupt, because all reasonable people agree to the truth of gravity. But to Newton, gravity was an argument for which evidence needed to be produced, analyzed, and discussed. It’s important to remember that a significant fraction of his intellectual contemporaries were not swayed by his argument. Equally important is that many good scientific ideas of today will eventually be significantly modified or shown to be wrong.

—Bruce Wightman, Professor of Biology

VOICES FROM ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

8 Chapter 1 Analysis: What It Is and What It Does

Move 4: Look for Patterns

We have been defining analysis as the understanding of parts in relation to each other and to a whole, as well as the understanding of the whole in terms of the relationships among its parts. But how do you know which parts to attend to? What makes some details in the material you are studying more worthy of your attention than others? Here are three principles for selecting significant parts of the whole:

1. Look for a pattern of repetition or resemblance. In virtually all subjects, repetition is a sign of emphasis. In a symphony, for example, certain patterns of notes repeat throughout, announcing themselves as major themes. In a legal document, such as a warranty, a reader quickly becomes aware of words that are part of a particular idea or pattern of thinking: for instance, disclaimers of accountability.

The repetition may not be exact. In Shakespeare’s play King Lear, for exam- ple, references to seeing and eyes call attention to themselves through repetition. Let’s say you notice that these references often occur along with another strand of language having to do with the concept of proof. How might noticing this pattern lead to an idea? You might make a start by inferring from the pattern that the play is concerned with ways of knowing (proving) things—with seeing as opposed to other ways of knowing, such as faith or intuition.

2. Look for binary oppositions. Sometimes patterns of repetition that you begin to notice in a particular subject matter are significant because they are part of a contrast—a basic opposition—around which the subject matter is structured. A binary opposition is a pair of elements in which the two members of the pair are opposites; the word binary means “consisting of two.” Some examples of binary oppositions that we encounter frequently are nature/civilization, city/country, public/private, organic/inorganic, voluntary/involuntary. One advantage of detecting repetition is that it will lead you to discover binaries, which are central to locating issues and concerns. (For more on working with binary oppositions, see Chapters 3 and 5.)

3. Look for anomalies—things that seem unusual, seem not to fit. An anomaly (a ! not, nom ! name) is literally something that cannot be named, what the dictionary defines as deviation from the normal order. Along with looking for pattern, it is also fruitful to attend to anomalous details—those that seem not to fit the pattern. Anomalies help us to revise our stereotypical assumptions. A TV commercial, for example, advertises a baseball team by featuring its star reading a novel by Dostoyevsky in the dugout during a game. In this case, the anomaly, a baseball player who reads serious literature, is being used to subvert (question, unsettle) the stereotypical assumption that sports and intellectualism don’t belong together.

Just as people tend to leap to evaluative judgments, they also tend to avoid information that challenges (by not conforming to) opinions they already hold. Screening out anything that would ruffle the pattern they’ve begun to

The Five Analytical Moves 9

see, they ignore the evidence that might lead them to a better theory. (For more on this process of using anomalous evidence to evolve an essay’s main idea, see Chapter 9, Making a Thesis Evolve.) Anomalies are important because noticing them often leads to new and better ideas. Most advances in scientific thought, for example, have arisen when a scientist observes some phenomenon that does not fit with a prevailing theory.

Move 5: Keep Reformulating Questions and Explanations

Analysis, like all forms of writing, requires a lot of experimenting. Because the purpose of analytical writing is to figure something out, you shouldn’t expect to know at the start of your writing process exactly where you are going, how all of your subject’s parts fit together, and to what end. The key is to be patient and to know that there are procedures—in this case, questions—you can rely on to take you from uncertainty to understanding.

The following three groups of questions (organized according to the analytical moves they’re derived from) are typical of what goes on in an analytical writer’s head as he or she attempts to understand a subject. These questions work with almost anything that you want to think about. As you will see, the questions are geared toward helping you locate and try on explanations for the meaning of various patterns of details.

Which details seem significant? Why?

What does the detail mean?

What else might it mean?

(Moves: Define Significant Parts; Make the Implicit Explicit)

How do the details fit together? What do they have in common?

What does this pattern of details mean?

What else might this same pattern of details mean? How else could it be explained?

(Move: Look for Patterns)

What details don’t seem to fit? How might they be connected with other details to form a different pattern?

What does this new pattern mean? How might it cause me to read the meaning of individual details differently?

(Moves: Look for Anomalies and Keep Asking Questions)

The process of posing and answering such questions—the analytical process—is one of trial and error. Learning to write well is largely a matter of learning how to frame questions. One of the main things you acquire in the study of an academic discipline is knowledge of the kinds of questions that the discipline typically asks. For example, an economics professor and a sociology professor might observe the same phenomenon, such as a sharp decline in health benefits for the elderly, and analyze its causes and significance in different ways. The economist might consider how such

10 Chapter 1 Analysis: What It Is and What It Does

benefits are financed and how changes in government policy and the country’s popu- lation patterns might explain the declining supply of funds for the elderly. The soci- ologist might ask about attitudes toward the elderly and about the social structures that the elderly rely on for support.

ANALYSIS AT WORK: A SAMPLE PAPER

Examine the following excerpt from a draft of a paper about Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a collection of short mythological tales dating from ancient Rome. We have included annotations in blue to suggest how a writer’s ideas evolve as he or she looks for pattern, contrast, and anomaly, constantly remaining open to reformulation.

The draft actually begins with two loosely connected observations: that males dominate females, and that many characters in the stories lose the ability to speak and thus become submissive and dominated. In the excerpt, the writer begins to connect these two observations and speculate about what this connection means.

There are many other examples in Ovid’s Metamorphoses that show the dominance of man over woman through speech control. In the Daphne and Apollo story, Daphne becomes a tree to escape Apollo, but her ability to speak is destroyed. Likewise, in the Syrinx and Pan story, Syrinx becomes a marsh reed, also a life form that cannot talk, although Pan can make it talk by playing it. [The writer establishes a pattern of similar detail.] Pygmalion and Galatea is a story in which the male creates his rendition of the perfect female. The female does not speak once; she is completely silent. Also, Galatea is referred to as “she” and never given a real name. This lack of a name renders her identity more silent. [Here the writer begins to link the contrasts of speech/silence with the absence/presence of identity.]

Ocyrhoe is a female character who could tell the future but who was transformed into a mare so that she could not speak. One may explain this transformation by saying it was an attempt by the gods to keep the future unknown. [Notice how the writer’s thinking expands as she sustains her investigation of the overall pattern of men silencing women: here she tests her theory by adding another variable—prophecy.] However, there is a male character, Tiresias, who is also a seer of the future and is allowed to speak of his foreknowledge, thereby becoming a famous figure. (Interestingly, Tiresias during his lifetime has experienced being both a male and a female.) [Notice how the Ocyrhoe example has spawned a contrast based on gender in the Tiresias example. The pairing of the two examples demonstrates that the ability to tell the future is not the sole cause of silencing because male characters who can do it are not silenced—though the writer pauses to note that Tiresias is not entirely male.] Finally, in the story of Mercury and Herse, Herse’s sister, Aglauros, tries to prevent Mercury from marrying Herse. Mercury turns her into a statue; the male directly silences the female’s speech.

The woman silences the man in only two stories studied. [Here the writer searches out an anomaly— women silencing men—that grows in the rest of the paragraph into an organizing contrast.] In the first, “The Death of Orpheus,” the women make use of “clamorous shouting, Phrygian flutes with curving horns, tambourines, the beating of breasts, and Bacchic howlings” (246) to drown out the male’s songs, dominating his speech in terms of volume. In this way, the quality of power within speech is demonstrated: “for the first time, his words had no effect, and he failed to move them [the women] in any way by his voice” (247).

Distinguishing Analysis from Argument, Summary, and Expressive Writing 11

Next the women kill him, thereby rendering him silent. However, the male soon regains his temporar- ily destroyed power of expression: “the lyre uttered a plaintive melody and the lifeless tongue made a piteous murmur” (247). Even after death Orpheus is able to communicate. The women were not able to destroy his power completely, yet they were able to severely reduce his power of speech and expression. [The writer learns, among other things, that men are harder to silence; Orpheus’s lyre continues to sing after his death.]

The second story in which a woman silences a man is the story of Actaeon, in which the male sees Diana naked, and she transforms him into a stag so that he cannot speak of it: “he tried to say ‘Alas!’ but no words came” (79). This loss of speech leads to Actaeon’s inability to inform his own hunting team of his true identity; his loss of speech leads ultimately to his death. [This example reinforces the pattern that the writer had begun to notice in the Orpheus example.]

In some ways these four paragraphs of draft exemplify a writer in the process of discovering a workable idea. They begin with a list of similar examples, briefly noted. As the examples accumulate, the writer begins to make connections and formulate trial explanations. We have not included enough of this excerpt to get to the tentative thesis the draft is working toward, although that thesis is already beginning to emerge. What we want to emphasize here is the writer’s willingness to accumulate data and to locate it in various patterns of similarity and contrast.

Try this 1.2: Applying the Five Analytical Moves to a Speech

Speeches provide rich examples for analysis, and they are easily accessible on the Inter- net. We especially recommend a site called American Rhetoric (You can Google it for the URL). Locate any speech and then locate its patterns of repetition and contrast. On the basis of your results, formulate a few conclusions about the speech’s point of view and its way of presenting it. Try to get beyond the obvious and the general—what does applying the moves cause you to notice that you might not have noticed before?

DISTINGUISHING ANALYSIS FROM ARGUMENT, SUMMARY, AND EXPRESSIVE WRITING

How does analysis differ from other kinds of thinking and writing? A common way of answering this question is to think of communication as having three possible centers of emphasis—the writer, the subject, and the audience. Communication, of course, involves all three of these components, but some kinds of writing concentrate more on one than on the others. Autobiographical writing, for example, such as diaries or memoirs or stories about personal experience, centers on the writer and his or her desire for self-expression. Argument, in which the writer takes a stand on an issue, ad- vocating or arguing against a policy or attitude, is reader-centered; its goal is to bring about a change in its readers’ actions and beliefs. Analytical writing is more concerned with arriving at an understanding of a subject than it is with either self-expression or changing readers’ views. (See Figure 1.1.)

These three categories of writing are not mutually exclusive. So, for example, expressive (writer-centered) writing is also analytical in its attempts to define and explain a writer’s feelings, reactions, and experiences. And analysis is a form

12 Chapter 1 Analysis: What It Is and What It Does

of self-expression since it inevitably reflects the ways a writer’s experiences have taught him or her to think about the world. But even though expressive writing and analysis necessarily overlap, they also differ significantly in both method and aim. In expressive writing, your primary subject is your self, with other subjects serving as a means of evoking greater self-understanding. In analytical writing, your reasoning may derive from your personal experience, but it is your reasoning and not you or your experiences that matter. Analysis asks not just “What do I think?” but “How good is my thinking? How well does it fit the subject I am trying to explain?”

In its emphasis on logic and the dispassionate scrutiny of ideas (“What do I think about what I think?”), analysis is a close cousin of argument. But analysis and argu- ment are not the same. Analytical writers are frequently more concerned with per- suading themselves, with discovering what they believe about a subject, than they are with persuading others. And, while the writer of an argument often goes into the writing process with some certainty about the position he or she wishes to support, the writer of an analysis is more likely to begin with the details of a subject he or she wishes to better understand.

Accordingly, argument and analysis often differ in the kind of thesis statements they formulate. The thesis of an argument is usually some kind of should statement: readers should or shouldn’t vote for bans on smoking in public buildings, or they should or shouldn’t believe that gays can function effectively in the military. The thesis of an analysis is usually a tentative answer to a what, how, or why question; it seeks to explain why people watch professional wrestling, or what a rising number of sexual harassment cases might mean, or how certain features of government health care policy are designed to allay the fears of the middle class. The writer of an analysis is less concerned with convincing readers to approve or disapprove of professional wres- tling, or legal intervention into the sexual politics of the workplace, or government control of health care than with discovering how each of these complex subjects might be defined and explained. As should be obvious, though, the best arguments are built upon careful analysis: the better you understand a subject, the more likely you will be to find valid positions to argue about it.

writer-centered (expressive writing)

communication

reader-centered (argument)

subject-centered (summary and analysis)

FIGURE 1.1 Diagram of Communication Triangle

Distinguishing Analysis from Argument, Summary, and Expressive Writing 13

Applying the Five Analytical Moves: The Example of Whistler’s Mother

Summary differs from analysis because the aim of summary is to recount, in effect, to reproduce someone else’s ideas. But summary and analysis are also clearly related and usually operate together. Summary is important to analysis because you can’t analyze a subject without laying out its significant parts for your reader. Similarly, analysis is important to summary because summarizing is more than just copying someone else’s words. To write an accurate summary you have to ask analytical ques- tions, such as:

• Which of the ideas in the reading are most significant? Why? • How do these ideas fit together? What do the key passages in the reading

mean?

Like an analysis, an effective summary doesn’t assume that the subject matter can speak for itself: the writer needs to play an active role. A good summary provides perspective on the subject as a whole by explaining, as an analysis does, the mean- ing and function of each of that subject’s parts. Moreover, like an analysis, a good summary does not aim to approve or disapprove of its subject: the goal, in both kinds of writing, is to understand rather than to evaluate. (For more on summary, see Chapters 6 and 13.)