2- Summary
on the one hand, put yourself in their shoes
To write a really good summary, you must be able to suspend your own beliefs for a time and put yourself in the shoes of someone else. This means playing what the writing theorist Peter Elbow calls the “believing game,” in which you try to inhabit the worldview of those whose conversation you are joining—and whom you are perhaps even disagreeing with—and try to see their argument from their perspective. This ability to temporarily suspend one’s own convictions is a hallmark of good actors, who must convincingly “become” characters whom in real life they may detest. As a writer, when you play the believing game well, readers should not be able to tell whether you agree or disagree with the ideas you are summarizing. If, as a writer, you cannot or will not suspend your own beliefs in this way, you are likely to produce summaries that are so obviously biased that they undermine your credibility with readers. Consider the following summary.
David Zinczenko’s article, “Don’t Blame the Eater,” is nothing more than an angry rant in which he accuses the fast-food companies of an evil conspiracy to make people fat. I disagree because these companies have to make money. . . . If you review what Zinczenko actually says (pp. 241–43), you should immediately see that this summary amounts to an unfair distortion. While Zinczenko does argue that the practices of the fast-food industry have the effect of making people fat, his tone is never “angry,” and he never goes so far as to suggest that the fast-food industry conspires to make people fat with deliberately evil intent.
Another tell-tale sign of this writer’s failure to give Zinczenko a fair hearing is the hasty way he abandons the summary after only one sentence and rushes on to his own response. So eager is this writer to disagree that he not only caricatures what Zinczenko says but also gives the article a hasty, superficial reading. Granted, there are many writing situations in which, because of matters of proportion, a one- or two-sentence summary is precisely what you want. Indeed, as writing professor Karen Lunsford (whose own research focuses on argument theory) points out, it is standard in the natural and social sciences to summarize the work of others quickly, in one pithy sentence or phrase, as in the following example.
Several studies (Crackle, 2012; Pop, 2007; Snap, 2006) suggest that these policies are harmless; moreover, other studies (Dick, 2011; Harry, 2007; Tom, 2005) argue that they even have benefits.
But if your assignment is to respond in writing to a single author like Zinczenko, you will need to tell your readers enough about his or her argument so they can assess its merits on their own, independent of you.
When a writer fails to provide enough summary or to engage in a rigorous or serious enough summary, he or she often falls prey to what we call “the closest cliché syndrome,” in which what gets summarized is not the view the author in question has actually expressed but a familiar cliché that the writer mistakes for the author’s view (sometimes because the writer believes it and mistakenly assumes the author must too). So, for example, Martin Luther King Jr.’s passionate defense of civil disobedience in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” might be summarized not as the defense of political protest that it actually is but as a plea for everyone to “just get along.” Similarly, Zinczenko’s critique of the fast-food industry might be summarized as a call for overweight people to take responsibility for their weight. Whenever you enter into a conversation with others in your writing, then, it is extremely important that you go back to what those others have said, that you study it very closely, and that you not confuse it with something you already believe. A writer who fails to do this ends up essentially conversing with imaginary others who are really only the products of his or her own biases and preconceptions.
ON THE OTHER HAND, KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING
Even as writing an effective summary requires you to temporarily adopt the worldview of another, it does not mean ignoring your own view altogether. Paradoxically, at the same time that summarizing another text requires you to represent fairly what it says, it also requires that your own response exert a quiet influence. A good summary, in other words, has a focus or spin that allows the summary to fit with your own agenda while still being true to the text you are summarizing. Thus if you are writing in response to the essay by Zinczenko, you should be able to see that an essay on the fast-food industry in general will call for a very different summary than will an essay on parenting, corporate regulation, or warning labels. If you want your essay to encompass all three topics, you’ll need to subordinate these three issues to one of Zinczenko’s general claims and then make sure this general claim directly sets up your own argument.
For example, suppose you want to argue that it is parents, not fast-food companies, who are to blame for children’s obesity. To set up this argument, you will probably want to compose a summary that highlights what Zinczenko says about the fastfood industry and parents. Consider this sample.
In his article “Don’t Blame the Eater,” David Zinczenko blames the fast-food industry for fueling today’s so-called obesity epidemic, not only by failing to provide adequate warning labels on its high-calorie foods but also by filling the nutritional void in children’s lives left by their overtaxed working parents. With many parents working long hours and unable to supervise what their children eat, Zinczenko claims, children today are easily victimized by the low-cost, calorie-laden foods that the fast-food chains are all too eager to supply. When he was a young boy, for instance, and his single mother was away at work, he ate at Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and other chains on a regular basis, and ended up overweight. Zinczenko’s hope is that with the new spate of lawsuits against the food industry, other children with working parents will have healthier choices available to them, and that they will not, like him, become obese. In my view, however, it is the parents, and not the food chains, who are responsible for their children’s obesity. While it is true that many of today’s parents work long hours, there are still several things that parents can do to guarantee that their children eat healthy foods. . . .
The summary in the first paragraph succeeds because it points in two directions at once—both toward Zinczenko’s own text and toward the second paragraph, where the writer begins to establish her own argument. The opening sentence gives a sense of Zinczenko’s general argument (that the fast-food chains are to blame for obesity), including his two main supporting claims (about warning labels and parents), but it ends with an emphasis on the writer’s main concern: parental responsibility. In this way, the summary does justice to Zinczenko’s arguments while also setting up the ensuing critique.
This advice—to summarize authors in light of your own arguments—may seem painfully obvious. But writers often summarize a given author on one issue even though their text actually focuses on another. To avoid this problem, you need to make sure that your “they say” and “I say” are well matched. In fact, aligning what they say with what you say is a good thing to work on when revising what you’ve written.
Often writers who summarize without regard to their own interests fall prey to what might be called “list summaries,” summaries that simply inventory the original author’s various points but fail to focus those points around any larger overall claim. If you’ve ever heard a talk in which the points were connected only by words like “and then,” “also,” and “in addition,” you know how such lists can put listeners to sleep—as shown in the figure above. A typical list summary sounds like this. The author says many different things about his subject. First he says. . . .
Then he makes the point that. . . . In addition he says. . . . And then he writes. . . . Also he shows that. . . . And then he says. . . .
It may be boring list summaries like this that give summaries in general a bad name and even prompt some instructors to discourage their students from summarizing at all. In conclusion, writing a good summary means not just representing an author’s view accurately, but doing so in a way that fits your own composition’s larger agenda. On the one hand, it means playing Peter Elbow’s believing game and doing justice to the source; if the summary ignores or misrepresents the source, its bias and unfairness will show. On the other hand, even as it does justice to the source, a summary has to have a slant or spin that prepares the way for your own claims. Once a summary enters your text, you should think of it as joint property—reflecting both the source you are summarizing and your own views.
SUMMARIZING SATIRICALLY
Thus far in this chapter we have argued that, as a general rule, good summaries require a balance between what someone else has said and your own interests as a writer. Now, however, we want to address one exception to this rule: the satiric summary, in which a writer deliberately gives his or her own spin to someone else’s argument in order to reveal a glaring shortcoming in it. Despite our previous comments that well-crafted summaries generally strike a balance between heeding what someone else has said and your own independent interests, the satiric mode can at times be a very effective form of critique because it lets the summarized argument condemn itself without overt editorializing by you, the writer. If you’ve ever watched The Daily Show, you’ll recall that it often merely summarizes silly things political leaders have said or done, letting their words or actions undermine themselves.
Consider another example. In September 2001, thenPresident George W. Bush in a speech to Congress urged the nation’s “continued participation and confidence in the American economy” as a means of recovering from the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The journalist Allan Sloan criticized this proposal simply by summarizing it, observing that the president had equated “patriotism with shopping. Maxing out your credit cards at the mall wasn’t self indulgence, it was a way to get back at Osama bin Laden.” Sloan’s summary leaves no doubt where he stands—he considers Bush’s proposal ridiculous, or at least too simple.
USE SIGNAL VERBS THAT FIT THE ACTION
In introducing summaries, try to avoid bland formulas like “she says,” or “they believe.” Though language like this is sometimes serviceable enough, it often fails to reflect accurately what’s been said. In some cases, “he says” may even drain the passion out of the ideas you’re summarizing.
We suspect that the habit of ignoring the action in what we summarize stems from the mistaken belief we mentioned earlier that writing is about playing it safe and not making waves, a matter of piling up truths and bits of knowledge rather than a dynamic process of doing things to and with other people. People who wouldn’t hesitate to say “X totally misrepresented,” “attacked,” or “loved” something when chatting with friends will in their writing often opt for far tamer and even less accurate phrases like “X said.”
But the authors you summarize at the college level seldom simply “say” or “discuss” things; they “urge,” “emphasize,” and “complain about” them. David Zinczenko, for example, doesn’t just say that fast-food companies contribute to obesity; he complains or protests that they do; he challenges, chastises, and indicts those companies. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t just talk about the treatment of the colonies by the British; it protests against it. To do justice to the authors you cite, we recommend that when summarizing—or when introducing a quotation—you use vivid and precise signal verbs as often as possible. Though “he says” or “she believes” will sometimes be the most appropriate language for the occasion, your text will often be more accurate and lively if you tailor your verbs to suit the precise actions you’re describing.
templates for introducing summaries and quotations
· She advocates a radical revision of the juvenile justice system.
· They celebrate the fact that
· , he admits.
VERBS FOR INTRODUCING SUMMARIES AND QUOTATIONS
VERBS FOR MAKING A CLAIM
argue
insist assert
observe
believe
remind us
claim
report
emphasize
suggest
VERBS FOR EXPRESSING AGREEMENT
acknowledge
endorse
admire
extol
agree
praise
VERBS FOR EXPRESSING AGREEMENT
celebrate the fact that
reaffirm
corroborate
support
do not deny
verify
VERBS FOR QUESTIONING OR DISAGREEING
complain
qualify
complicate
question
contend
refute
contradict
reject
deny
renounce deplore the tendency to
repudiate
VERBS FOR MAKING RECOMMENDATIONS
Advocate
Implore
call for
plead
demand
recommend
encourage
urge
exhort
warn