Conducting Sound Research The Cuyamaca Way Assignment

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1. Identify two ideas from each of the following that demonstrate your thoughts and/or what you've learned, appreciated, or have questions about.

  • They Say/I Say
    • Chapters 9-10

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Determining If a Source Is Sound for Academic Work Types of sources to use in academics The types of sources you’ll use in your academic work will vary depending on the assignment (e.g., a critique of popular culture or a study of the respiratory system of an ant), the academic discipline (e.g., psychology or chemistry), and the level of scholarship at which you are working (e.g., freshman composition or graduate-level physics). Ø Regardless of the assignment, all sources must be “sound,” meaning they pass the CRAAP test (they must be current, relevant, authoritative, accurate, and written with a clear and appropriate purpose), and they must be used in an accurate and responsible way. Ø In addition to being sound, instructors will often ask you to use “scholarly” sources. Scholarly sources As you progress in college, the expectation will increase that you use “scholarly” sources to support your assertions. Scholarly sources are also referred to as “peer-reviewed” or “refereed” sources and are written by experts in a particular field to present the most recent research and findings and typically defend particular conclusions they’ve drawn. Scholarly sources are rigorously evaluated by disciplines and are therefore (often) the most authoritative sources in a field. Scholarly sources will therefore often provide the most substantial information for your research papers. What is peer-review? When a source has been peer-reviewed it has undergone the review and scrutiny of a review board of colleagues in the author’s field. Professional peers evaluate this source as part of the body of research for a particular discipline and make recommendations regarding its publication in a journal, revisions prior to publication, or, in some cases, reject its publication. Why use scholarly (peer-reviewed) sources? The authority and credibility evident in scholarly sources will improve the quality of your paper or research project. Use of scholarly sources is an expected attribute of most academic work. Where can I find scholarly sources? Scholarly Books Scholarly books are typically published by academic presses and can be found by searching library catalogs. Scholarly Articles Scholarly articles are typically published by disciplinary journals (e.g. American Philosophical Quarterly, Journal of Popular Culture, American Journal of Emergency Medicine, American Behavioral Scientist). You can find scholarly journals and articles in college and university library databases. In some college library databases, you can filter to find peer-reviewed sources. NOTE: Research universities like UC San Diego and SDSU provide access to the most databases, making relevant, timely sources easier to find. Because two-year colleges have much more limited funding, they provide access to fewer databases, so you have to be more diligent and modify your topics and claims to ensure they are supported by scholarly evidence when it is required. It gets easier at the four-year level. J 1 Sound sources Depending on your assignment, not all sources need to be scholarly but ALL sources need to be SOUND. The CRAAP Test can help you evaluate sources. For each potential source, ask the following critical questions to evaluate whether sources are sound and/or scholarly. CRAAP Criteria Ask o Currency o o o Relevance o o o o o o o o o Authority o o o o Accuracy o o o o o o o o o o Purpose o o o o When was the information published or posted? Is the date of publication evident? Has the information been revised or updated? Does your topic require current information, or will older sources work as well? Are the links functional? When was the information published or posted? Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question? Who is the intended audience of this source? Is the information at an appropriate level (i.e. not too elementary or advanced for your needs)? Have you looked at a variety of sources before determining this is one you will use? Who is the author/publisher/source/sponsor? Are their names provided? What are the author's credentials or organizational affiliations? Is the author qualified to write on the topic? Who is the publisher of the information? Is there contact information, such as a publisher or email address? Is the publisher an academic institution, scholarly, or professional organization? Does the URL reveal anything about the author or source (e.g., .com .edu .gov .org .com .net)? Is their purpose for publishing this information evident? Would you be comfortable citing this source in your research paper? Where does the information come from? Are conclusions based on evidence provided? Are research claims documented? Are sources cited? Are there charts, graphs, tables, and bibliographies included? Can you verify any of the information in another source or from personal knowledge? Has the information been reviewed or refereed? Does the language or tone seem unbiased and free of emotion? Are there spelling, grammar or typographical errors? Why is the information being provided? What is the purpose of the information? Is it to inform, teach, sell, entertain or persuade? Do the authors/sponsors make their intentions or purpose clear? Is the information fact, opinion or propaganda? Does the point of view appear objective and impartial? Are there political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional or personal biases? Information provided in this table, adapted from “Evaluating Information – Applying the CRAAP Test,” CSU, Chico, Miriam Library, https://www.csuchico.edu/lins/handouts/eval_websites.pdf 2 Sound and scholarly sources by source type When evaluating each of the following types of sources for soundness and/or scholarship, ask the following questions. Source Type Ask Publisher o Who is the publisher? Books published by a university press, professional organizations, and the US Government Printing Office are likely to be scholarly and are typically sound. Books Book Reviews o What do the book reviews say? Book reviews published by authoritative sources can provide clues about whether a source is sound and/or scholarly and highlight the intended audience. Authoritative book reviews include those from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly and from journals, for example. Amazon customer reviews are not necessarily sound and not the type of book review referred to here. o o Articles o o o Webpages o o o o Is the journal respected in that field? Test: Is it included in college library databases? When googling, “Top Disciplinary Journals” is the journal listed on a reputable website? Who is the publisher? Respected journals are often published by university presses or professional organizations. Are the author’s professional affiliations provided? How many and what kinds of advertisements are present? For example, is the advertising clearly geared towards readers in a specific discipline or occupation or is does it refer to lowering mortgages, get-rich-quick schemes, or celebrity weight gain? What is the domain of the page (e.g., .edu, .gov, .com)? Use websites and pages with extreme caution. Rely on .edu and .gov sites. Who is publishing or sponsoring the page? Is contact information for the author/publisher provided? How recently was the page updated? Is the information biased? o TIP: Understand the reputation and bias of the site. Read the “About” page and google the organization to learn if it is an advocacy site with a bias. Typically, appropriate sources for academic work will not have evidence of bias. o NOTE: Wikipedia is not an academic source. Continued à 3 Unsound sources The following sources are not sound for academic work. Source Problem o o o A common Wikipedia lapse in judgment: o Students sometimes rely on Wikipedia but don’t cite it. Your instructors can easily catch this, as can plagiarism detection software. This is plagiarism and subject to assignment failure and progressive discipline. o Sound techniques: o Learn a new term, definition, or theory in Wikipedia and then search for expert information about it. o Look for expert sources that Wikipedia links to and then evaluate that source for soundness. o Advocacy sites have reached conclusions on topics and often present one-sided information that supports only their position(s). They typically reflect clear bias. If they are faith-based, we can’t debate their assertions based on evidence. While there is more to human life and experience than can be defended with evidence, in academics, we focus on evidence-based assertions, so anyone with access to the facts can debate their use and interpretation. There are other essential institutions and forums in which advocacy can be pursued and questions faith can be discussed. To determine if a site is advocacy-based or faith-based, google it. Reputable sources will likely have commented on the group. Wikipedia o o Advocacy & Faith-Based Sites & Sources Non-Expert Sources o o EXCEPTION: You may use advocacy sources to discuss and critique existing perspectives on a topic – in other words, to provide a sense of “What’s out there? What are people saying?” You may agree or disagree with these perspectives, but they will only form part of your evidence. Your primary evidence must come from sound sources. NOTE: Relying on biased sources can undermine your credibility, so use them with caution. o A physicist is an expert in physics, not in family planning. A rapper is an expert in rap as may be a professor in popular culture. Depending on your assignment, you must assess and use the most credible sources. Do not use non-experts to weigh in on a topic. Check their credentials and name their expertise in your paper when introducing them. For most topics you’ll explore in college, there will be expert, research-reliant scholars studying your field. These, then, would be the most appropriate sources o o o Breitbart Blogs & Popular Media Wikipedia can be a useful source for gathering general information before conducting sound research. However, it is NOT an appropriate source to rely on because its accuracy isn’t necessarily or consistently verified by experts. o Founding board member Steve Bannon is recorded as having said their website does not seek to take multiple sides into account when arriving at conclusions or writing their articles. Instead, he says, they opt for “swagger.” They are not, he says, like NPR [National Public Radio] which he acknowledges works to understand and reflect both sides.* In academics, we must be truthseeking, not swagger-seeking. Our political future depends upon strong conservative, liberal, and moderate voices. Opponents (the people we really need to persuade) will only trust us if we keep our biases in check and are truth-seeking. o REPUTABLE CONSERVATIVE PUBLICATIONS: National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Affairs, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Conservative, Washington Times o EXCEPTION: As is true for advocacy sites, you may use Breitbart to discuss and critique existing perspectives on a topic. You may agree or disagree with them, but they will only form part of your evidence. Your primary evidence must come from sound sources that meet the CRAAP Test. o Often, blogs and popular media are not written/created by experts and should not be used. You must research the qualifications of authors of blogs and popular media sites before using them. o EXCEPTION: If you are studying popular circulating ideas, they may be used, but you must analyze them using reputable sources and your sound judgment. You must not rely on these sources for their conclusions, but rather because they represent a particular point of view that you will then critique. It’s okay to agree with their conclusions, but additional evidence from nonbiased sources should be emphasized and more prominent in your essays. 4 Timeliness exception Sometimes articles or books remain significant in a given field for years or decades because – Ø Ø they provide a basis for current theory or practice –orbecause they once held significant influence but are being questioned at the time of your research. Depending on your assignment, it is often perfectly appropriate to use these. As you learn more about your field, you’ll come to recognize its seminal writings. If, when researching, you find other authors frequently referencing an older work this is likely a seminal writing in your field. What is bias? US media (and all media globally) are influenced by spoken and unspoken assumptions and biases. Assumptions and biases are not inherently bad. They are formed by the times in which we live, our experiences, our socioeconomic circumstances, our education, our training, our culture(s), available knowledge, and, in short, all significant influences in our lives. Across locations and experiences, we share many common assumptions and biases (that we should be good to each other, for example). So, when we question an author’s or our own assumptions, we’re not accusing them or ourselves for doing something “bad.” In this class, I assume you want to learn and grow and my bias is that writing classes play a big role in helping you to do that. The course reflects that assumption and bias. If I assumed you wanted to use this information to hurt people or to, heaven forbid, steal my cat, the course would look and feel different. Although biases are not bad, as scholars, it is our responsibility to be critical and reflective about our own thinking to remove as much bias as possible in our research and writing. We do this by maintaining an open mind, questioning our own assumptions, going where the evidence leads, and being responsible in our use of sources. In this class, we have fairly limited evidence to work from (we can only read so much in a short time). As you advance in your field, however, the depth of evidence before you will be great. You’ll work with more complexity and disagreement. Build the basic foundation now to be prepared to meet those challenges in a responsible, rewarding, and professionally helpful way. Newspapers of record In the US, there are what we refer to as “newspapers of record.” They are recognized to be authoritative because they work to eliminate bias by gathering facts through large newsgathering networks and to maintain the professional standards associated with strong journalism. This is not to say that don’t reflect bias in their editorial choices, content, and perspective, or that they don’t breach their ethical obligations at times. When evaluating any source, again, it’s our job to step back and critically analyze the information and go where the bulk of available evidence leads us. Newspapers of record include – Ø Ø Ø Ø The New York Times Los Angeles Times The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal Use this as a guideline when searching for journalistic sources. 5 Selecting the best information source: a menu This table can help you determine which sources are best for finding the type of information you need for your research project. Source Newspapers General Magazines Professional / Trade Magazines Scholarly / Academic Journals Books Websites Best For o Daily local, national, and international news, events, and editorial coverage o Statistics and photojournalism o Record of events and quotes from experts, officials, and witnesses o Current information o Short, easy to understand articles (including analysis, interviews, and opinions, for example) o Photographs and illustrations o Current information o Specialized articles related to a particular discipline or profession (including context and analysis) o Recent research on a topic o Focused, peerreviewed articles written by experts o Data, statistics, charts, and graphs o Bibliographies of other sources o Comprehensive overview of topic o Background and historical context o Bibliographies of other sources o News o Government information o Company information o Alternate points of view Intended Audience Watch For/ Consider Use o Authors usually not experts o If a story is breaking, corrections to initial reports are likely o Editorial bias of a publication o Newspapers of Record: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Washington Post General audience or those with specific interests. o Authors usually not experts o Sources not always cited o Editorial bias of a publication o Use with caution. Sources like Scientific American or Rolling Stone are sound sources in their fields, for example. Professional organizations or professionals / scholars with similar interests o Articles vary between short and easy to lengthy and highly specific o Sources not always cited o Has characteristics in common with both popular magazines and scholarly journals General audience Scholars, researchers, professionals, and university students in a particular field Varies, general audience through scholars Varies, general audience through scholars o Terminology and/or data may be difficult for novices to understand o Authoritative, current professional sources o Use whenever possible o Dated information o Bias (dependent on author, publisher, etc.) o Authoritative, current sources o Credibility and accuracy cannot always be assured o Bias (dependent on author, publisher, etc.) o Sources not always cited o Use with extreme caution. Rely on .edu and .gov sites. o Understand the reputation and bias of the site. o Read the “About” page and google the organization to learn if it is an advocacy site with a bias. o Wikipedia is not an academic source. Except as noted, document adapted from “Determine if a Source is Scholarly” and “Select the Best Information Source” U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/howdoi/scholarly/ * For the Steve Bannon interview, see “The Beginning of Now.” This American Life. Natl. Public Radio. WNYC, New York. 28 April 2017. Radio. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/615/the-beginning-of-now 6 “Consider the Source” A Resource Guide to Liberal, Conservative and Nonpartisan Periodicals 30 East Lake Street ∙ Chicago, IL 60601 HWC Library – Room 501 312.553.5760 E ver heard the saying “consider the source” in response to something that was questioned? Well, the same advice applies to what you read – consider the source. When conducting research, bear in mind that periodicals (journals, magazines, newspapers) may have varying points-of-view, biases, and/or political leanings. Here are some questions to ask when considering using a periodical source:    Is there a bias in the publication or is it non-partisan? Who is the sponsor (publisher or benefactor) of the publication? What is the agenda of the sponsor – to simply share information or to influence social or political change? Some publications have specific political perspectives and outright state what they are, as in Dissent Magazine (self-described as “a magazine of the left”) or National Review’s boost of, “we give you the right view and back it up.” Still, there are other publications that do not clearly state their political leanings; but over time have been deemed as left- or right-leaning based on such factors as the pointsof-view of their opinion columnists, the make-up of their editorial staff, and/or their endorsements of politicians. Many newspapers fall into this rather opaque category. A good rule of thumb to use in determining whether a publication is liberal or conservative has been provided by Media Research Center’s L. Brent Bozell III: “if the paper never met a conservative cause it didn’t like, it’s conservative, and if it never met a liberal cause it didn’t like, it’s liberal.” Outlined in the following pages is an annotated listing of publications that have been categorized as conservative, liberal, non-partisan and religious. Some of the terms used to describe these publications will contain the following:  Magazine – a periodical for general reading containing articles, photographs and stories on a variety of subjects.  Peer Reviewed – this descriptor indicates that manuscripts submitted to a magazine or articles submitted to a journal publication are examined by the editor and one or more specialists (peers) in the specific field before approval is given to publish the information. The term “refereed” is used interchangeably with “peer reviewed.”  Scholarly Journal – a periodical (usually academic) containing articles or research information written by scholars and/or experts in a particular subject field. As always, if you have questions or need assistance with your research projects, please ask a librarian. Prepared by HWC Reference Librarians Last Updated: January 2011 1 JOURNALS Left Right (Liberal) (Conservative) Non-Partisan Religious Perspective Economy and Society Cato Journal Foreign Affairs Al-Tawhid A scholarly, peer-reviewed journal focused on progressive political, economic, and social issues in Europe, North America, Australia and the Pacific. This libertarian-leaning journal covers public policy issues on Social Security, monetary, natural resources, and military spending. http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/ A refereed scholarly journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations (a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization) provides serious discussion of American foreign policy and international affairs. (Islamic) A quarterly journal of Islamic thought and culture published by The Foundation of Islamic Thought. http://www.al-islam.org/altawhid/ The National Interest (TNI) Public Opinion Quarterly New Politics A 200-page semi-annual that is an independent socialist forum for dialogue and debate on the left, which “insists on the centrality of democracy to socialism and on the need to rely on mass movements from below for progressive social transformation.” www.newpolitics.mayfirst.org Politics and Society Through a Marxist/ post-Marxist perspective, this journal focuses on issues of state, class analysis, politics of gender, and the future of capitalism and socialism. http://pas.sagepub.com/ Science and Society The longest continuously published Marxist scholarly journal in the world, Science and Society focuses on social and political theory, economics, philosophy, and the serious analysis of con-temporary societies. Telos: A Quarterly Journal of Critical Thoughts A journal of international discussions on political, social, academic, religious and cultural change in Europe and the U. S., and the state of US-European relations. http://journal.telospress.com/ This journal contains strong conservative and libertarian writings on American foreign policy and politics. http://www.nationalinterest.org/ Policy Review This journal presents articles of serious thinking on the American condition, the workings of government, and political and economic systems. http://www.hoover.org/publication s/policyreview The Public Interest (PI) A self-described neoconservative journal that spotlights articles on domestic policy regarding education, welfare, housing, poverty, politics and culture. Publication ceased in April, 2005, however, it’s complete archives are available online via this website: http://www.nationalaffairs.com/arc hive /public_interest/default.asp A peer-reviewed academic journal that is among the most frequently cited journals of its kind. Most beneficial to academicians and all social science researchers, it provides articles analyzing trends and problems in public opinion research. The Washington Quarterly (TWQ) Worldwide contributors to this journal reflect diverse political, regional, and professional perspectives on topics of the U.S. role in the world, reducing terrorism, emerging great powers and the implications of global political change. http://www.twq.com/ Wilson Quarterly (WQ) Though self-described as a magazine, this publication has the tone and characteristics of a journal that provides a nonpartisan, non-ideological focus on issues in politics and policy, culture, religion, science, and other fields that impact public life. http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ind ex.cfm?fuseaction=wq.welcome Prepared by HWC Reference Librarians Last Updated: January 2011 Commonweal (Catholic) Self-described as, “the oldest independent lay Catholic journal of opinion in the United States,” Commonweal covers issues on religion, politics, public affairs, literature, the arts, and social and cultural issues. http://www.commonwealmagazi ne.org/ Modern Judaism (Jewish) Published by Oxford University Press, topics pertinent to the understanding of Jewish life today are discussed through distinctive, interdisciplinary forums. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mo dern_judaism/ 2 MAGAZINES Left Right (Liberal) (Conservative) Non-Partisan News & Opinion Religious Perspective The American Prospect The American Conservative (TAC) Business Week America A magazine for the general reader, that presents a moderate left-wing view on liberal philosophy, politics and public life. www.prospect.org This monthly right-wing opinion magazine, founded in part by Patrick J. Buchanan, represents a paleoconservative (traditionalist, anti-federalism, religious) and at times libertarian voice on domestic and international political issues. http://www.amconmag.com/ Considered a market leader, this news magazine focuses on industries, companies, political issues, legal issues, information technology and international business. www.businessweek.com (Catholic) A weekly magazine intended “for thinking Catholics and those who want to know what Catholics are thinking,” covers religious, political, ethical and social issues from the Jesuit Catholic perspective. www.americamagazine.org The Economist (British) Christianity Today An easy-to-read, British perspective weekly news-paper (that looks like a magazine), The Economist contains wellrespected and authoritative information on 16 news categories, including world politics, global business, finance and economics, science and technology, and the arts. www.economist.com (Christian) A monthly magazine that provides insight and analysis from a Christian perspective, on relevant news, trends, and events of the day. www.christianitytoday.com Dissent A quarterly magazine of the left that covers politics and culture, Dissent contains well-written articles of leftliberal and social-democratic opinions. It is a magazine of independent minds and strong opinions. www.dissentmagazine.org Monthly Review This scholarly, independent socialist magazine covers issues against U.S. imperialism, including workers and labor organizers against class exploitation and racial and sexual oppressions. www.monthlyreview.org The American Spectator This libertarian-conservative magazine provides articles on current issues regarding politics, the government, the economy and military activities. www.spectator.org Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture This monthly, ultra-conservative opinion magazine makes defending Western Christian civilization, local sovereignty and political, cultural, and economic autonomy its central themes. www.chroniclesmagazine.org Maclean’s (Canadian) Proclaiming itself, “Canada’s only national weekly current affairs magazine,” Maclean’s provides investigative reporting on international and social issues, national politics, business, and culture. http://www2.macleans.ca The Humanist (Non-Theistic) A bimonthly magazine published by the American Humanist Association, The Humanist takes a non-theistic, secular and naturalistic approach to topics on the environment, civil liberties, human rights, international relations and other contemporary social concerns. www.thehumanist.org Tikkun Mother Jones National Review New Republic (TNR) An independent nonprofit progressive publication focused on coverage of social justice, anticorporate and environmental issues. www.motherjones.com In addition to pointedly right-wing editorials, this bi-monthly conservative magazine features short articles on current interest issues, a longer feature article, and reviews of the arts. www.nationalreview.com A nonpartisan, inside-the-Beltway publication that provides evenhanded coverage of current issues regarding U. S. politics, foreign policy and culture. www.tnr.com Prepared by HWC Reference Librarians Last Updated: January 2011 (Jewish) A bimonthly magazine focused on social theory, religion/spirituality, social change, contemporary American and global politics and economics, ecology, culture, psychology, and Israel/ Palestine. www.tikkun.org 3 Magazines Continued: (Left / Liberal) (Right / Conservative) (Non-Partisan) The Nation The New American Newsweek An openly left-wing publication that covers a wide range of current issues via concise articles and multiple short editorials. www.thenation.com Self-described as, “an essential news source for freedom-loving Americans,” this bi-monthly John Birch Society publication presents news and commentary from a decidedly right-wing, fundamentalist Christian perspective. Its primary goal is to expose the behind-the-scenes activities shaping American politics and culture. www.thenewamerican.com One of three major newsweeklies in the United States (Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report), this magazine covers current events and issues in the U. S. and world. www.newsweek.com New Statesman (British) A weekly magazine focused primarily on news and politics of greatest interest in the United Kingdom, where the content is roughly divided 60% news and 40% politics. www.newstatesman.com The Progressive This monthly magazine is considered a journalistic voice for peace, social and economic justice, civil rights and liberties, human rights and the environment. www.progressive.org The Weekly Standard This weekly magazine provides right-wing articles on Washington, D.C. politics and government topics in America and around the world. www.weeklystandard.com Time One of the standard newsweeklies in the United States, this magazine covers current events and issues in the U.S. and world. www.time.com U. S. News & World Report One of the three major newsweeklies in the United States (and considered a bit more conservative than Time and Newsweek), this magazine provides serious reporting on current events and issues in the U.S. and the world. www.usnews.com Prepared by HWC Reference Librarians Last Updated: January 2011 4 NEWSPAPERS (Editorial Stance) Left Right (Liberal) (Conservative) Non-Partisan Religious Perspective The Boston Globe Human Events Christian Science Monitor Islam Online Provides global coverage focused on news and events of the Greater Boston area. This award winning daily offers in-depth coverage of news, business, sports, arts & entertainment, and provocative columns. www.BostonGlobe.com “The bible of the right,” is how the Wall Street Journal describes this Washington, D.C.-based weekly that has a strong partisan focus on national and international political and legislative news. www.humanevents.com For over a century, this multiple award-winning weekly, with eight U.S. offices and eight foreign bureaus, has provided nonpartisan, in-depth coverage of news and feature stories from every corner of the globe. www.csmonitor.com Los Angeles Times New York Post Chronicle of Higher Education The largest metropolitan daily newspaper in the U.S., the LA Times covers news and events of Southern California, global news and extensive coverage of the arts and entertainment and how they affect society. www.latimes.com News Corporation owns the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Fox Broadcasting. Best known for its comprehensive sports section and gossip columns, this daily also provides global coverage of world news and events. www.nypost.com New York Times Wall Street Journal The New York Times Company owns The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers and more than 50 websites. This Pulitzer-Prize winning daily reports on national and world events, major political speeches, current events, arts reviews and lifestyle matters. Regular opinion columnists include Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman and David Brooks. www.nytimes.com Owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal is written primarily for people who follow the money and investment markets. With a pro-business news bent, it covers global events from finance to general news. www.online.wsj.com This Washington, D.C.-based weekly is the number one source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators. The Chronicle has more than 70 fulltime writers and editors, as well as 17 foreign correspondents around the world. Although intended for academe, its content is relevant for researchers, students, legislators and government policy makers. www.chronicle.com (Islamic) Based in Dubai, IslamOnline is the original Internet portal and leading source for Islamic content in the Islamic world. With a stated objective, “of portraying a positive and accurate picture of Islam to the world and to provide support for Muslims,” its coverage includes news reports on political, financial and economic events as they affect Muslims of the Middle East and America. www.islamonline.com Washington Post Washington Times The Washington Post Company, owns the Washington Post. This award-winning newspaper provides global news, reports, and analysis on federal politics at the national and international levels. Regular opinion columnists include Eugene Robinson, Jonathan Capehart, and E. J. Dionne www.washingtonpost.com Published by The Washington Times LLC, the Washington Times newspaper is a full-service, general interest daily headquartered in the nation's capital, that provides thorough coverage of politics and policy. Regular opinion columnists include Cal Thomas, Michelle Malkin, and Tony Blankley. www.washingtontimes.com Prepared by HWC Reference Librarians Last Updated: January 2011 Jewish Telegraphic Agency (Jewish) Headquartered in New York City, and with correspondents around the globe, JTA is able to provide in-depth coverage of political, economic and social developments affecting Jews in North and South America, Israel, Europe, Africa and Australia. www.jta.org 5 BIBLIOGRAPHY Both Sides of the Story. University of North Florida. UNF Thomas G. Carpenter Library, Mar. 2008. Web. 03 Nov. 2009. . Conservative Links. Politics1.com. Ron Gunzburger, n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2009. . Guide to Progressive Publications for Democratic Socialists. Young Democratic Socialists USA. Young Democratic Socialists, n.d. Web. 11 Nov. 2009. . Hagin, Mr. “Political Links and Debate Resources.” Kennesaw State University. English 1101, 2001. Web. 18 Nov. 2009. . Johnson, Carolyn. Point of View in Periodicals. Northwest Missouri State University. Northwest B. D. Owens Library, 13 Feb. 2009. Web. 20 Nov. 2009. . Liberal Links. Politics1.com. Ron Gunzburger, n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2009. . Vroman, Ashley K. “Slandering the News: How Labelers Cleverly Undermine the Reliability and Validity of Newspapers.” University of Wisconsin Parkside. Dear Habermas, 05 May 1999. Web. 20 Nov. 2009. . Prepared by HWC Reference Librarians Last Updated: January 2011 6 Essay Four Immigration: An Argumentative Research Essay PROMPT: Essay Four will build on Essay Three, relying on the readings from Essay Three and FOUR sources you’ve discovered through sound research for Essay Four. ONE of the Essay Four sources must be a JOURNAL article. Essay Four, will then be a researched argumentative essay focused on a main claim that relies on sources you’ve analyzed (taken apart to study) and synthesized (put together) to back each subclaim supporting the main claim. The essay will include at least one significant counterargument/rebuttal and will demonstrate the essential skills for effective academic papers. Essay Four, will be an 8-10 page, MLA formatted paper, including MLA in-text citations, and an MLA-formatted Works Cited list. Argumentative Research Essay Components I. Four Precis, Due Sunday, May 5 ASSIGNMENT STEPS: 1. Conduct research to find four sound sources that relate to the main claim you plan to argue. (Don’t worry if you feel you need to adjust your main claim as you conduct research. Our claims often evolve as we learn new things. In the end, we must be able to defend our arguments through the research we conduct.) 2. Write a precis for each source, ONE of which must be a JOURNAL ARTICLE. 3. Write a separate Works Cited page that will get you started on your Essay Four final submission. To create this, refer to our Canvas page on creating Works Citied lists where you’ll find instructions and the “Works Cited List Sample” document. Your Essay Four Works Cited list only needs to include outside sources, not those which I provided. (In a standard academic essay, you would include a Works Cited entry for all sources cited in the paper. In this case, you may not have enough information to complete that for those I’ve found for you.) 4. TO EXCEED THE B CONTRACT: Include a precis and Works Cited entry for an additional source. II. Main Claim, Introduction, Outline, Revised Works Cited, Due Sunday, May 12 ASSIGNMENT DETAILS: This assignment will include – 1. Your revised main claim. 2. A draft of an effective introduction. 3. A bulleted outline (not written in paragraph form), including 8-10 subclaims, at least two pieces of evidence to support each subclaim with an accurate MLA in-text citation, a counterargument from an actual source, a rebuttal, and a concluding idea. 4. A revised version of your Works Cited page. 5. TO EXCEED THE B CONTRACT: Produce an exceptionally effective assignment with attention to detail. Larson – ENGL 124-0582 - Spring 2019 – Essay Four Assignment Sheet 1 III. Essay Four Draft, Due Sunday, May 19 ASSIGNMENT DETAILS: Essay Four builds on Essay Three and is an MLA-formatted, 8-10 argumentative research essay on a focused aspect of U.S. immigration. Your argumentative research essay will bring your ideas together with source ideas to support a focused and debatable main claim. It will demonstrate the essential skills for writing academic essays that we’ve practiced this semester. SOURCES: Essay Four will rely on Readings One-Six from Weeks Nine-Eleven that you’ve analyzed and produced rhetorical precis for and on the discussion readings assigned for Roll Call Posts during Weeks Ten-Twelve. This was our work for Essay Three. In addition, Essay Four will rely on an additional FOUR sources, one of which will be from a JOURNAL ARTICLE. Your Argumentative Research Essay will include An effective introduction that provides necessary context and logically leads to the main claim. Body paragraphs that – o begin with subclaims (key supporting points) o include related evidence from our source texts and your explanation o relate back to the main claim At least one counterargument from an actual source and your rebuttal. A conclusion that logically relates to the essay, but that adds an idea or suggestion for further action or thought that leaves your reader with something to ponder. Your essay will Be submitted to NetTutor for review. Remain focused on one primary idea throughout the essay. Use sound evidence and reasoning. Allow your voice to speak first, last, and loudest. Rely on at least FIVE sources provided by me and researched by you. In EACH body paragraph, include embedded quotations/paraphrases/summaries from these sources that each include a signal phrase, accurate citation, and explanation afterward. FOUR embedded sources must be direct quotations. Include accurate in-text citations Include a separate Works Cited page as the last page of the essay. Not include instances of “you.” Be clear and logical, overall. TO EXCEED THE B CONTRACT: Draft NINE full, effective pages. IV. Essay Four Peer Review, Due Wednesday, May 22 ASSIGNMENT DETAILS: This will be an extended peer review of TWO peers’ Essay Four drafts. 1. Identify at least one area of strength and three specific areas for improvement, citing from the draft and including suggestions for revision, in a minimum of 100 words for each aspect. Consider the required elements of the essay, as shown on this sheet, when choosing the aspects you will review. 2. TO EXCEED THE B CONTRACT: Provide a review for an additional peer. Larson – ENGL 124-0582 - Spring 2019 – Essay Four Assignment Sheet 2 V. Essay Four Final Draft, Due Sunday, May 31 ASSIGNMENT DETAILS: 1. Meaningfully revise your draft relying on your own judgment and your instructor’s and peers’, and NetTutor comments. 2. SENTENCE REVISION USING TEMPLATES: Revise two sentences or groups of sentences using templates from They Say/I Say. • Underline these passages in your essay. • At the end of the essay, before the Works Cited page, include the original and revised passages. • For each revised passage, show the original passage first and the revised passage after. 3. REVISION REFLECTION: Below the They Say/I Say revision, before the Works Cited page, write one paragraph that reflects on the revisions you made and why you focused on these. 4. THE FINAL PAGE OF YOUR ESSAY WILL BE THE WORKS CITED PAGE. This should be on its own page. Skills We’ll Practice Brainstorming, Summarizing, and Synthesizing Ideas Drafting and Revising a Longer Essay Interpreting Texts Writing with a Focus MLA Paper Formatting, In-Text Citations, and Works Cited Entries Supporting Main Claims with Subclaims, Evidence, and Explanation Properly Embedding Source Material with Signal Phrases, Citations, and Explanation Writing Logically, Clearly, and Fully Care for Your Readers’ Understanding and Reading Experience Eliminating Instances of “You” Larson – ENGL 124-0582 - Spring 2019 – Essay Four Assignment Sheet 3 FOURTH EDITION “THEY SAY I SAY” The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing H GERALD GRAFF CATHY BIRKENSTEIN both of the University of Illinois at Chicago B w. w. norton & company new york | london 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 participate 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 participate in these conversations remains a formidable challenge. This book aims to meet that challenge. Its goal is to demystify academic writing by isolating its basic moves, explaining them clearly, and representing them in the form of templates. xiii PR E FAC E In this way, we hope to help students become active participants in the important conversations of the academic world and the wider public sphere. highlights •  Shows that writing well means entering a conversation, summarizing 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. •  Shows that reading is a way of entering a conversation—not just 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 conversations 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 such mystification can be overcome. Second, xiv Demystifying Academic Conversation 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 counter­argument, 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 classroom 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 that . j This is not to say that . xv , others contend PR E FAC E 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 culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-commondenominator 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. xvi Demystifying Academic Conversation 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 questioning: 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 comprehension as well. Since reading and writing are deeply reciprocal 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. xvii PR E FAC E the usefulness of templates Our templates also have a generative quality, prompting students to make moves in their writing that they might not otherwise 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 template 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 that , I still maintain that . Although I concede . 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 students’ 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: summarizing 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. xviii Demystifying Academic Conversation “ok—but templates?” We are aware, of course, that some instructors may have reservations 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 represent. 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 rhetorical 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 Renaissance studied rhetorical topoi or “commonplaces,” model passages and formulas that represented the different strategies available xix PR E FAC E 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 postdoctoral 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 making 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 xx Demystifying Academic Conversation 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 arguments? 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 various circumlocutions—“it will here be argued,” “the evidence suggests,” “the truth is”—and these may be useful for avoiding 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 xxi PR E FAC E “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 coherence; 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 templates to revise a text. Part 4 offers guidance for entering conversations in specific academic contexts, with chapters on entering class discussions, writing online, reading, and writing in literature courses, the sciences, and social sciences. Finally, we provide five 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 xxii Demystifying Academic Conversation doesn’t. In our view, people learn more about arguing from 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 xxiii introduction Entering the Conversation H Think about an activity that you do particularly well: cooking, playing the piano, shooting a basketball, even something 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 realizing it, accomplished writers routinely rely on a stock of established 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 1 INTRODUCTION writing. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this book is its pre­sentation 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, organized ways. 2 Entering the Conversation 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 writing 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 underlying feature: it is deeply engaged in some way with other people’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 conversation 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 someone has said or done something (or perhaps not said or done 3 INTRODUCTION 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 argument 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 consistent. 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? Furthermore, 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 saying 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 4 Entering the Conversation 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”: 5 INTRODUCTION 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 characters “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 contrast 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 otherwise?” 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?” questions. 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 6 Entering the Conversation 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 7 INTRODUCTION 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 unqualiSee Chapter 4 for more fied opposition. By agreeing and disagreeing with her on agreeing, daughter, Pollitt enacts what we call the “yes and no” but with a difference. 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 8 Entering the Conversation but instead allow the reader to infer them. See, for instance, if you can identify the implied or unnamed “they say” that the following claim is responding to. I like to think I have a certain advantage as a teacher of literature because when I was growing up I disliked and feared books. Gerald Graff, “Disliking Books at an Early Age” In case you haven’t figured it out already, the phantom “they say” here is the common belief that in order to be a good teacher of literature, one must have grown up liking and enjoying books. court controversy, but . . . As you can see from these examples, many writers use the “they say / I say” format to challenge standard ways of thinking and thus to stir up controversy. This point may come as a shock to you if you have always had the impression that in order to succeed academically you need to play it safe and avoid controversy in your writing, making statements that nobody can possibly disagree with. Though this view of writing may appear logical, it is actually a recipe for flat, lifeless writing and for writing that fails to answer what we call the “so what?” and “who cares?” questions. “William Shakespeare wrote many famous plays and sonnets” may be a perfectly true statement, but precisely because nobody is likely to disagree with it, it goes without saying and thus would seem pointless if said. But just because controversy is important doesn’t mean you have to become an attack dog who automatically disagrees with 9 INTRODUCTION everything others say. We think this is an important point to underscore because some who are not familiar with this book have gotten the impression from the title that our goal is to train writers simply to disparage whatever “they say.” disagreeing without being disagreeable There certainly are occasions when strong critique is needed. It’s hard to live in a deeply polarized society like our current one and not feel the need at times to criticize what others think. But even the most justified critiques fall flat, we submit, unless we really listen to and understand the views we are criticizing: j While I understand the impulse to is , my own view . Even the most sympathetic audiences, after all, tend to feel manipulated by arguments that scapegoat and caricature the other side. Furthermore, genuinely listening to views we disagree with can have the salutary effect of helping us see that beliefs we’d initially disdained may not be as thoroughly reprehensible as we’d imagined. Thus the type of “they say / I say” argument that we promote in this book can take the form of agreeing up to a point or, as the Pollitt example above illustrates, of both agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously, as in: j While I agree with X that , I cannot accept her over- all conclusion that j While X argues . , and I argue we’re both right. 10 , in a way Entering the Conversation Agreement cannot be ruled out, however: j I agree with that . the template of templates There are many ways, then, to enter a conversation and respond to what “they say.” But our discussion of ways to do so would be incomplete were we not to mention the most comprehensive way that writers enter conversations, which incorporates all the major moves discussed in this book: j In recent discussions of , a controversial issue has been whether that . On the one hand, some argue . From this perspective, . On the other hand, however, others argue that . In the words of , one of this view’s main proponents, “ According to this view, whether  . In sum, then, the issue is or . My own view is that . Though I concede that , I still maintain that . For example, . Although some might object that reply that .” . The issue is important because , I would . This “template of templates,” as we like to call it, represents the internal DNA of countless articles and even entire books. Writers commonly use a version of it not only to stake out their “they say” and “I say” at the start of their manuscript, but—just as important—to form the overarching blueprint that structures what they write over the entire length of their text. 11 INTRODUCTION Taking it line by line, this master template first helps you open your text by identifying an issue in some ongoing conversation or debate (“In recent discussions of , a controversial issue has been ”), and then to map some of the voices in this controversy (by using the “on the one hand / on the other hand” structure). The template then helps you introduce a quotation (“In the words of ”), to explain the quotation in your own words (“According to this view”), and—in a new paragraph—to state your own argument (“My own view is that”), to qualify your argument (“Though I concede that”), and then to support your argument with evidence (“For example”). In addition, the template helps you make one of the most crucial moves in argumentative writing, what we call “planting a naysayer in your text,” in which you summarize and then answer a likely objection to your own central claim (“Although it might be objected that , I reply ”). Finally, this template helps you shift between general, over-arching claims (“In sum, then”) and smaller-scale, supporting claims (“For example”). Again, none of us is born knowing these moves, especially when it comes to academic writing. Hence the need for this book. but isn’t this plagiarism? “But isn’t this plagiarism?” at least one student each year will usually ask. “Well, is it?” we respond, turning the question around into one the entire class can profit from. “We are, after all, asking you to use language in your writing that isn’t your 12 Entering the Conversation own—language that you ‘borrow’ or, to put it less delicately, steal from other writers.” Often, a lively discussion ensues that raises important questions about authorial ownership and helps everyone better understand the frequently confusing line between plagiarism and the legitimate use of what others say and how they say it. Students are quick to see that no one person owns a conventional formula like “on the one hand . . . on the other hand. . . .” Phrases like “a controversial issue” are so commonly used and recycled that they are generic— community property that can be freely used without fear of committing plagiarism. It is plagiarism, however, if the words used to fill in the blanks of such formulas are borrowed from others without proper acknowledgment. In sum, then, while it is not plagiarism to recycle conventionally used formulas, it is a serious academic offense to take the substantive content from others’ texts without citing the author and giving him or her proper credit. “ok—but templates?” Nevertheless, if you are like some of our students, your initial response to templates may be skepticism. At first, many of our students complain that using templates will take away their originality and creativity and make them all sound the same. “They’ll turn us into writing robots,” one of our students insisted. “I’m in college now,” another student asserted; “this is third-grade-level stuff.” In our view, however, the templates in this book, far from being “third-grade-level stuff,” represent the stock-in-trade of 13 INTRODUCTION sophisticated thinking and writing, and they often require a great deal of practice and instruction to use successfully. As for the belief that pre-established forms undermine creativity, we think it rests on a very limited vision of what creativity is all about. In our view, the templates in this book will actually help your writing become more original and creative, not less. After all, even the most creative forms of expression depend on established patterns and structures. Most songwriters, for instance, rely on a time-honored verse-chorus-verse pattern, and few people would call Shakespeare uncreative because he didn’t invent the sonnet or the dramatic forms that he used to such dazzling effect. Even the most avant-garde, cutting-edge artists like improvisational jazz musicians need to master the basic forms that their work improvises on, departs from, and goes beyond, or else their work will come across as uneducated child’s play. Ultimately, then, creativity and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms but in the imaginative use of them. Furthermore, these templates do not dictate the content of what you say, which can be as original as you can make it, but only suggest a way of formatting how you say it. In addition, once you begin to feel comfortable with the templates in this book, you will be able to improvise creatively on them to fit new situations and purposes and find others in your reading. In other words, the templates offered here are learning tools to get you started, not structures set in stone. Once you get used to using them, you can even dispense with them altogether, for the rhetorical moves they model will be at your fingertips in an unconscious, instinctive way. But if you still need proof that writing templates need not make you sound stiff and artificial, consider the following opening to an essay on the fast-food industry that we’ve included at the back of this book. 14 Entering the Conversation If ever there were a newspaper headline custom-made for Jay Leno’s monologue, this was it. Kids taking on McDonald’s this week, suing the company for making them fat. Isn’t that like middle-aged men suing Porsche for making them get speeding tickets? Whatever happened to personal responsibility? I tend to sympathize with these portly fast-food patrons, though. Maybe that’s because I used to be one of them. David Zinczenko, “Don’t Blame the Eater” Although Zinczenko relies on a version of the “they say / I say” formula, his writing is anything but dry, robotic, or uncreative. While Zinczenko does not explicitly use the words “they say” and “I say,” the template still gives the passage its underlying structure: “They say that kids suing fast-food companies for making them fat is a joke; but I say such lawsuits are justified.” putting in your oar Though the immediate goal of this book is to help you become a better writer, at a deeper level it invites you to become a certain type of person: a critical, intellectual thinker who, instead of sitting passively on the sidelines, can participate in the debates and conversations of your world in an active and empowered way. Ultimately, this book invites you to become a critical thinker who can enter the types of conversations described eloquently by the philosopher Kenneth Burke in the following widely cited passage. Likening the world of intellectual exchange to a neverending conversation at a party, Burke writes: You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated 15 INTRODUCTION for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. . . . You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you. . . . The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form What we like about this passage is its suggestion that stating an argument (putting in your oar) can only be done in conversation with others; that entering the dynamic world of ideas must be done not as isolated individuals but as social beings deeply connected to others. This ability to enter complex, many-sided conversations has taken on a special urgency in today’s polarized, Red State / Blue State America, where the future for all of us may depend on our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of those who think very differently from us. The central piece of advice in this book—that we listen carefully to others, including those who disagree with us, and then engage with them thoughtfully and respectfully—can help us see beyond our own pet beliefs, which may not be shared by everyone. The mere act of crafting a sentence that begins “Of course, someone might object that ” may not seem like a way to change the world; but it does have the potential to jog us out of our comfort zones, to get us thinking critically about our own beliefs, and even to change minds, our own included. Exercises 1. Write a short essay in which you first summarize our rationale for the templates in this book and then articulate your own 16 Entering the Conversation position in response. If you want, you can use the template below to organize your paragraphs, expanding and modifying it as necessary to fit what you want to say. In the Introduction to “They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein provide templates designed to . Specifically, Graff and Birkenstein argue that the types of writing templates they offer the authors themselves put it, “ believe , Graff and Birkenstein insist that In sum, then, their view is that  . As .” Although some people . . I [agree/disagree/have mixed feelings]. In my view, the types of templates that the authors recommend instance, . In addition, of course, on the grounds that that . Yet I would argue . Overall, then, I believe point to make given . For . Some might object, —an important . 2. Read the following paragraph from an essay by Emily Poe, a student at Furman University. Disregarding for the moment what Poe says, focus your attention on the phrases she uses to structure what she says (italicized here). Then write a new paragraph using Poe’s as a model but replacing her topic, vegetarianism, with one of your own. The term “vegetarian” tends to be synonymous with “tree-hugger” in many people’s minds. They see vegetarianism as a cult that brainwashes its followers into eliminating an essential part of their daily diets for an abstract goal of “animal welfare.” However, few vegetarians choose their lifestyle just to follow the crowd. On the contrary, many of these supposedly brainwashed people are actually independent thinkers, concerned citizens, and compassionate human beings. For the truth is that there are many very good reasons 17 INTRODUCTION for giving up meat. Perhaps the best reasons are to improve the environment, to encourage humane treatment of livestock, or to enhance one’s own health. In this essay, then, closely examining a vegetarian diet as compared to a meat-eater’s diet will show that vegetarianism is clearly the better option for sustaining the Earth and all its inhabitants. 18 ONE “they say” Starting with What Others Are Saying H Not long ago we attended a talk at an academic conference where the speaker’s central claim seemed to be that a certain sociologist—call him Dr. X—had done very good work in a number of areas of the discipline. The speaker proceeded to illustrate his thesis by referring extensively and in great detail to various books and articles by Dr. X and by quoting long passages from them. The speaker was obviously both learned and impassioned, but as we listened to his talk we found ourselves somewhat puzzled: the argument—that Dr. X’s work was very important—was clear enough, but why did the speaker need to make it in the first place? Did anyone dispute it? Were there commentators in the field who had argued against X’s work or challenged its value? Was the speaker’s interpretation of what X had done somehow novel or revolutionary? Since the speaker gave no hint of an answer to any of these questions, we could only wonder why he was going on and on about X. It The hypo­ thetical was only after the speaker finished and took questions audience in from the ­audience that we got a clue: in response to the figure on p. 5 reacts one questioner, he referred to several critics who had similarly. 19 one “ T H E Y S AY ” vigorously questioned Dr. X’s ideas and convinced many sociologists that Dr. X’s work was unsound. This story illustrates an important lesson: that to give writing the most important thing of all—namely, a point—a writer needs to indicate clearly not only what his or her thesis is, but also what larger conversation that thesis is responding to. Because our speaker failed to mention what others had said about Dr. X’s work, he left his audience unsure about why he felt the need to say what he was saying. Perhaps the point was clear to other sociologists in the audience who were more familiar with the debates over Dr. X’s work than we were. But even they, we bet, would have understood the speaker’s point better if he’d sketched in some of the larger conversation his own claims were a part of and reminded the audience about what “they say.” This story also illustrates an important lesson about the order in which things are said: to keep an audience engaged, a writer needs to explain what he or she is responding to—either before offering that response or, at least, very early in the discussion. Delaying this explanation for more than one or two paragraphs in a very short essay or blog entry, three or four pages in a longer work, or more than ten or so pages in a book reverses the natural order in which readers process material—and in which writers think and develop ideas. After all, it seems very unlikely that our conference speaker first developed his defense of Dr. X and only later came across Dr. X’s critics. As someone knowledgeable in his field, the speaker surely encountered the criticisms first and only then was compelled to respond and, as he saw it, set the record straight. Therefore, when it comes to constructing an argument (whether orally or in writing), we offer you the following advice: remember that you are entering a conversation and therefore need to start with “what others are saying,” as the 20 Starting with What Others Are Saying title of this chapter recommends, and then introduce your own ideas as a response. Specifically, we suggest that you summarize what “they say” as soon as you can in your text, and remind readers of it at strategic points as your text unfolds. Though it’s true that not all texts follow this practice, we think it’s important for all writers to master it before they depart from it. This is not to say that you must start with a detailed list of everyone who has written on your subject before you offer your own ideas. Had our conference speaker gone to the opposite extreme and spent most of his talk summarizing Dr. X’s critics with no hint of what he himself had to say, the audience probably would have had the same frustrated “why-is-he-going-on-likethis?” reaction. What we suggest, then, is that as soon as possible you state your own position and the one it’s responding to together, and that you think of the two as a unit. It is generally best to summarize the ideas you’re responding to briefly, at the start of your text, and to delay detailed elaboration until later. The point is to give your readers a quick preview of what is motivating your argument, not to drown them in details right away. Starting with a summary of others’ views may seem to contradict the common advice that writers should lead with their own thesis or claim. Although we agree that you shouldn’t keep readers in suspense too long about your central argument, we also believe that you need to present that argument as part of some larger conversation, indicating something about the arguments of others that you are supporting, opposing, amending, complicating, or qualifying. One added benefit of summarizing others’ views as soon as you can: you let those others do some of the work of framing and clarifying the issue you’re writing about. Consider, for example, how George Orwell starts his famous essay “Politics and the English Language” with what others are saying. 21 one “ T H E Y S AY ” Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. . . . [But] the process is reversible. Modern English . . . is full of bad habits . . . which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” Orwell is basically saying, “Most people assume that we cannot do anything about the bad state of the English language. But I say we can.” Of course, there are many other powerful ways to begin. Instead of opening with someone else’s views, you could start with an illustrative quotation, a revealing fact or statistic, or— as we do in this chapter—a relevant anecdote. If you choose one of these formats, however, be sure that it in some way illustrates the view you’re addressing or leads you to that view directly, with a minimum of steps. In opening this chapter, for example, we devote the first paragraph to an anecdote about the conference speaker and then move quickly at the start of the second paragraph to the misconception about writing exemplified by the speaker. In the following opening, from an opinion piece in the New York Times Book Review, Christina Nehring also moves quickly from an anecdote illustrating something she dislikes to her own claim—that book lovers think too highly of themselves. “I’m a reader!” announced the yellow button. “How about you?” I looked at its bearer, a strapping young guy stalking my town’s Festival of Books. “I’ll bet you’re a reader,” he volunteered, as though we were 22 Starting with What Others Are Saying two geniuses well met. “No,” I replied. “Absolutely not,” I wanted to yell, and fling my Barnes & Noble bag at his feet. Instead, I mumbled something apologetic and melted into the crowd. There’s a new piety in the air: the self-congratulation of book lovers. Christina Nehring, “Books Make You a Boring Person” Nehring’s anecdote is really a kind of “they say”: book lovers keep telling themselves how great they are. templates for introducing what “they say” There are lots of conventional ways to introduce what others are saying. Here are some standard templates that we would have recommended to our conference speaker. j A number of sociologists have recently suggested that X’s work has several fundamental problems. j It has become common today to dismiss . j In their recent work, Y and Z have offered harsh critiques of for . templates for introducing “standard views” The following templates can help you make what we call the “standard view” move, in which you introduce a view that has become so widely accepted that by now it is essentially the conventional way of thinking about a topic. 23 one “ T H E Y S AY ” j  Americans have always believed that individual effort can triumph over circumstances. j Conventional wisdom has it that . j Common sense seems to dictate that . j The standard way of thinking about topic X has it that j It is often said that . j My whole life I have heard it said that j You would think that . . . j Many people assume that . These templates are popular because they provide a quick and efficient way to perform one of the most common moves that writers make: challenging widely accepted beliefs, placing them on the examining table, and analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. templates for making what “they say” something you say Another way to introduce the views you’re responding to is to present them as your own. That is, the “they say” that you respond to need not be a view held by others; it can be one that you yourself once held or one that you are ambivalent about. j I’ve always believed that museums are boring. j When I was a child, I used to think that 24 . Starting with What Others Are Saying j Although I should know better by now, I cannot help thinking that . j  At the same time that I believe , I also believe . templates for introducing something implied or assumed Another sophisticated move a writer can make is to summarize a point that is not directly stated in what “they say” but is implied or assumed. j Although none of them have ever said so directly, my teachers have often given me the impression that education will open doors. j One implication of X’s treatment of is that . j Although X does not say so directly, she apparently assumes that . j  While they rarely admit as much, granted that often take for . These are templates that can help you think analytically—to look beyond what others say explicitly and to consider their unstated assumptions, as well as the implications of their views. templates for introducing an ongoing debate Sometimes you’ll want to open by summarizing a debate that presents two or more views. This kind of opening 25 one “ T H E Y S AY ” demonstrates your awareness that there are conflicting ways to look at your subject, the clear mark of someone who knows the subject and therefore is likely to be a reliable, trustworthy guide. Furthermore, opening with a summary of a debate can help you explore the issue you are writing about before declaring your own view. In this way, you can use the writing process itself to help you discover where you stand instead of having to commit to a position before you are ready to do so. Here is a basic template for opening with a debate. j In discussions of X, one controversial issue has been On the one hand, hand, argues . . On the other contends . Others even maintain . My own view is . The cognitive scientist Mark Aronoff uses this kind of template in an essay on the workings of the human brain. Theories of how the mind/brain works have been dominated for centuries by two opposing views. One, rationalism, sees the human mind as coming into this world more or less fully formed— preprogrammed, in modern terms. The other, empiricism, sees the mind of the newborn as largely unstructured, a blank slate. Mark Aronoff, “Washington Sleeped Here” A student writer, Michaela Cullington, uses a version of this template near the beginning of an essay to frame a debate over online writing abbreviations like “LOL” (“laughing out loud”) and to indicate her own position in this debate. Some people believe that using these abbreviations is hindering the writing abilities of students, and others argue that texting is 26 Starting with What Others Are Saying actually having a positive effect on writing. In fact, it seems likely that texting has no significant effect on student writing. Michaela Cullington, “Does Texting Affect Writing?” Another way to open with a debate involves starting with a proposition many p...
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