Because Essay #1 requires you to perform a literature review on your selected
food justice problem, the sources you select to summarize and synthesize in the
final essay will have the strongest impact on that essay's structure. It's
important, then, to think not just about what the sources say about your
essay, but how they present their arguments, and how (eventually, in Essay
#2) their content might be used in a more direct argument.
The Different Types of Evidence
Obviously, in terms of format, evidence will be presented to readers as either
direct quotes or paraphrases (and later in the term, visual evidence – but not for
this first essay cycle). However, to research and use your primary and secondary
sources effectively in an essay, it’s important to think about the different
purposes your evidence serves in order to decide how to integrate it into
the essay.
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Informative Data:
these are numerical, statistical, historical, and scientific forms of information
that support your claims. You can quote these from secondary sources, but
you should try to find the original, primary source information taken from.
Also, remember that numbers don’t make an argument themselves, so you
can interpret data differently than a secondary source (indeed, with all types
of evidence, it’s your analysis and explanation of the evidence that matters
most).
•
Anecdotes from reliable sources:
These are detailed descriptions of events or people’s activities that serve to
support your claims. Take, for example, the description of Jose Aguilar (the
banana farmer) and his efforts to save the banana. Koeppel describe his daily
activities to use to support the claim that traditional hybridization techniques
for bananas are slow, complicated, and difficult to pull off.
•
Verbal descriptions of people, events, or ideas:
As long as these are taken from reliable and authoritative sources, these
descriptions can support your claims as well. The "Food Sovereignty" essay
uses excerpts from interviews and community gatherings to provide evidence
for the attitudes and concerns of the citizens of the Chicago neighborhoods
they write about.
•
Defining terms or concepts:
If a reliable, influential, or otherwise authoritative source offers support for
how you’re using or understanding a key term or concept from your
enthymeme, that can be incorporated as evidence.
•
Comparable examples or situations:
Many secondary sources will provide you with data or information about a
comparable situation, but not the exact same context or setting as your
argument. However, within reason, you can draw comparison between a
source's situation and your own focus - as long as you can explain why
you've done so. For example, you may be writing about consumer attitudes
toward GMO labelling in the US, but you've found a good essay
aboutconsumer attitudes toward GMO labelling in Euope. You can draw
evidence from the different setting as long as you explain why you're
comparing the two contexts, and what similarities and differences exist
between them.
•
Claims from experts:
You can often use claims from authoritative sources to support your own
arguments. However, a claim isn’t factual data until it has been widely
accepted by the relevant communities (like climate change being caused by
human activity, or evolution’s role in creating life on earth), so you have to be
careful not to treat claims as data. To use claims of other writers as support,
you have to explain to the reader why they should trust the words of the
person you're quoting or paraphrasing. Why should your audience accept
these claims as credible?
Let Your Sources Help Structure Your
Essay
Although perhaps overused, the metaphor that writing a research essay is like
entering a conversation is helpful when thinking about how effectively use your
research to support your argument. Often, after days or weeks (or months!) of
research, you’ll end up with so many voices on your issue that it can be easy to
lose track of why you selected a source in the first place, or how it fits into the
larger context of your essay.
By organizing your sources into three tiers, you can start to plan body
paragraphs by focusing on what's going to be most useful for your
argument based on how important the source was to your own belief in
your argument's validity. This isn’t a perfect process, of course, but it can help
you figure out when, where, and how to draw your reader’s attention to your
research. Also keep in mind that as you go through the drafting process, sources
will often change tiers – that’s OK! It just means that you’re thinking critically
about your research at all stages of the writing process.
I’ve provided a basic rationale for each tier below, along with an example of a
source and my explanation for its ranking. Keep in mind that the field you’re
writing in will affect the ranking of your sources. For example, a literary analysis
(as these examples are taken from) of Walden will pay more direct attention to
the content of the text itself than Thoreau’s biography or a historical account of
what brought Thoreau to Walden Pond in the first place.
Tier One (Most Influential Sources): These are the primary and secondary
sources that have been most helpful in guiding your thinking on the issue,
whether as a major source of evidence, providing a theoretical framework, or
even as major counterarguments. Any sources you rank at this
level shouldappear in your Essay #1, as they have the biggest impact in
how you're understanding your own food justice problem. In the
conversation metaphor, these are the voices you’ve listened to the most, and
want to engage with directly and thoroughly in your essay. [Tip: As you research,
if you’re seeing a particular author or source being cited extensively by others,
it’s a sign that (a) you should seek out that source, and that (b) many readers in
your field will expect that source to be integrated into your argument in significant
ways]
Example 1: Walden, Henry David Thoreau – My essay deals heavily with the
“Higher Laws” chapter of Walden, which means I’ll be quoting extensively from it
throughout the essay.
Example 2: Language as Symbolic Action, Kenneth Burke. – I want to use
Burke’s idea of “terministic screens,” introduced in this text, to provide a new
reading of the anxieties Thoreau shares with the reader in “Higher Laws.” This is
my main theoretical framework.
Tier Two (Somewhat Influential Sources): These primary and secondary
sources provide important context, historical or biographical background, differing
perspectives that you may want to acknowledge in brief, or even a particular
salient quote or piece of data. Any sources you rank at this level may or may
not end up in Essay #1, and certainly shouldn't be the majority of sources
present in your literature review. However, these sources aren’t the primary
drivers of your argument; they add to the essay’s effectiveness, but they don’t
determine the thesis or major sub-arguments.
Example 1: “Kenneth Burke: Pioneer of Ecocriticism,” Laurence Coupe – Coupe
lays out evidence that Burke is the one of the first North American theorists to
pay careful attention to the ecological and environmental in his writing. Though
not direct evidence for any of my main claims, this helps me to draw useful
parallels between Burke and Thoreau. This will help justify my pairing of two
writers operating in different centuries.
Tier Three (Least Influential Sources): These primary, secondary, and
occasionally tertiary sources don’t seem immediately relevant to your thesis or
larger argument, but may offer information that could end up being useful as you
draft and revise the essay. Any sources you rank at this level should
likely notappear in your Essay #1, but you're saving them in case they
become more directly useful in Essay #2. These are sources that you suspect
may be useful, but you can’t be sure about until you have a more detailed outline
or rough draft of the argument.
Example 1: A Grammar of Motive, Kenneth Burke. This text was written before
Burke developed and introduced terministic screens, but it his focus on the
motives inherent in language choices could be useful to understand how/why
Burke ultimately felt the need to develop the terministic screen concept.
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