critical summary paper

WHY JOHNNY HAS DIFFICULTY MAKING HIS POINT: GENERAL SEMANTICS^ CRITICAL

THINKING^ AND STUDENT WRITING TIM LYONS*

MOST WHO READ this publication probably either know from experience or haveheard through the semantic grapevine that we can develop more precision in our evaluations if we apply the principles of general semantics. And many of us who teach attempt to help our students do just that. But what does student writing actually look like, and how might we use general semantics principles to help our students improve both their writing and their evaluating?

For the past ten years or so in my university writing courses. I have used some straightforward refutation assignments that demand verbal mapping and analysis to encourage students to develop an awareness of the problems they create when they write and think (as so many of them do habitually) in high-level abstractions. I ask my students to refute a short definition argument. I tell them that the reader has never read this essay, so if they wish to refute, they must first summarize - or, we might say, map the territory. In that territory (the assigned essay), the author offers a definition of a key tenn and then applies that definition to some situation or area of concern. I generally start with Marie Winn's "Television Addiction," an often-anthologized chapter from Ms Winn's The Plug-In Drug, (1) in which Winn attempts to show that television watching is or can be addictive. [ suggest that, after summarizing, students take as their thesis that Winn has not given us a convincing argument.

Now, one might begin summarizing by telling the reader what Winn has done - what she says, argues, contends, claims, or tries to demonstrate. In other words, students could summarize Winn's argument by keeping things on a low-level of

* Tim Lyons has taught writing and rhetoric at the University of Colorado ai Boulder for almost iwenly years. Quest Books published his Astrology BeyonJEgo in 1986, and he lias written a monthly column for American Astrology magazine since 1988. His articles, interviews, and book reviews have appeared in East-West, The Vajradhatu Sim (now TheShamhhala Sun), Bodhi, Chtysalis, Maryknoll, The Mountain Astrologer, Welcome to Planet Earth, and other publications.

126

WHY JOHNNY HAS DIFFICULTY MAKING HIS POINT 127

abstraction: Winn offers a definition; she then applies that definition to television watching. More particularly, in her definition, she claims that addicts do X, Y, and Z; (2) then, in her application, she tries to show that television watchers also do X, Y, and Z. From thai, she concludes that they must "be addicts." (Let's put aside the logical problems here. That Joe does A, B, and C and that addicts also do A, B, and C does not make Joe an addict. (3)) In critiquing Winn's argument, students can ask three simple, operational questions: Has Winn failed to do something she should do? Has she done something she shouldn't do? Has she left some significant matters unclear? (4) These questions encourage operational answers, answers written in what 1 call "agent prose" (5), a kind of prose in which we have an agent as subject: Winn failed to do X (e.g. failed to include a crucial criterion); and/or she did Y without justification (e.g. she included a criterion she shouldn't include); and/or she failed to clarify Z. And we see these matters as important, even crucial, to her argument. If the student proceeds in this way. he will have verbs that describe actions, not noun-laden sentences that otïer categories. This approach allows the student to look clearly at the territory (Winn's argument).

And yet students seem to go to great lengths to avoid this kind of prose. Consider this section from a student's essay:

[Marie Winn's] entire argument fails to convince the reader that watching television is along the same lines as gambling or using heroin in that it creates a highly addictive experience.

We might at first want to substitute "argumenf for "entire argument," but we'd probably do better to choose Winn herself, saying simply that Winn has failed to convince. But has she failed to convince us that television can 'create an addicting experience' or 'be along the same lines' as gambling? What does "watching television is along the same lines as gambling" mean? And can television 'create an addictive experience'? (And should we categorize experiences as addictive?)

The student's prose lacks agency: we don't know who does what. The student should probably ditch the abstractions and tell the reader that Winn (agent #1 ) has failed to convince us that a person (agent #2) can develop an addiction to television in the same way that a person (agent #3) can develop an addiction to gambling or heroin. (6) Once we get that far, we can ask questions about Winn's failure. We can note, for instance, that she has done something she shouldn't have done, having included a criterion she shouldn't have included: that addicts lead damaged lives. (Many addicts don't. I've asked as many coffee drinkers and cigarette smokers as 1 could corner.) In addition, she has failed to do something she should have done: she's failed to convince us that television watchers lead these "damaged lives." (See below.)

When students abandon agent-driven prose for this kind of abstraction-

128 £ : r c - A P R I L 2008

obstructed sentences, they not only block their ability to say what they want to say; they also obstruct their own thinking. Another student claims:

...television is an addictive process which can be equated with the use of powerfiil and well-known addictive substances, such as alcohol or heroin.

In this sentence, television becomes a process, and the process "can be equated" with the use of addictive substances. But how can television "be" a process? And even if it can, would we "equate" that process with heroin use? Again, an agent- driven version would clarify the matter: Like heroin users, television watchers do A. B. and C. We can test such an assertion: Do heroin users do A, B, C? All heroin users? Do television watchers do A, B, C? All television watchers?

Now, as we have seen (7), even if Winn shows that television watchers "do the same things" as heroin users (and, as we have seen, she doesn't really show that), she has not thereby shown that we should put the two groups into the same category. The abstraction-laden version hides this problem; the agent-driven construction illuminates it. The writer (and reader) has an easier time seeing it: Winn has failed to provide the characteristic (presumably something having to do with physiological dependency) that distinguishes what she calls "serious addictions" (such as to heroin) from what she calls non-serious ones (such as to reading mystery books or eating cookies). (8)

Another student, working on the same assignment, writes:

Rather, she asserts that TV addiction should be classified as a destructive behavior similar to those of drug and alcohol addiction...Winn presents three criteria which she believes define an addiction: pursuit of pleasure, repetition of the experience, and distinctly destructive outcomes... A television viewer's experience is one of pleasure and passivity, she argues, a state of mind he desires to maintain at the cost of foregoing other activities. This leads to an imbalance in the viewer's life, distorting his sense of time and weakening his social relationships. The essay is interspersed with quotes from three people of various professions.... ,

The passage contains a number of what we might call technical difficulties, but let's put these aside for now, or see them as derivative, resuhing from the abstraction-driven constructions. To analyze these constructions, let's break the passage into four sections.

The student begins by saying that Winn "asserts that TV addiction should be classified as a destructive behavior similar to those of drug and alcohol addiction." The student starts otTwith an agent: Marie Winn. who asserts and presents. Right after that, though, we find abstractions doing the work that agents do better: we find that "television addiction" becomes a "behavior" (instead, presumably, of a

WHY JOHNNY HAS DIFFICULTY MAKING HIS POINT 129

group of behaviors (9)) and that this behavior is similar to *those of drug and alcohol addiction" (as if addictions do any behaving).

The student ihen says, "Winn presents three criteria which she believes define an addiction: pursuit of pleasure, repetition of the experience, and distinctly destructive outcomes." Here, the criteria do the defining, which we might accept if not for the confusion that follows. First, the writer doesn't phrase his criteria as criteria but as abstractions: as "pursuit of pleasure, repetition of the experience, and distinctly destructive outcomes." If we rephrase them as criteria, we'll find ourselves re-introducing the agent, presumably an addict, because Winn wants to define addiction. We might have something like this: Winn [agent #1] claims that an addict [agent #2] continually pursues pleasure, repeats the experience [or, perhaps, repeatedly takes the addictive substance (10)], and lives (as Winn puts it) a damaged life. Using these agent-driven constructions, we can more easily critique Winn's argument. We can ask whether addicts really act in these ways. Does every addict lead a damaged life? Does every addict have difficulty holding a job, for example? (Cigarette smokers please speak up!) Then we can ask whether, in applying her definition. Winn shows that television watchers also lead such lives. (II)

The student then says:

A television viewer's experience is one of pleasure and passivity, she argues, a state of mind he desires to maintain at the cost of foregoing other activities. This leads to an imbalance in the viewer's life, distorting his sense of time and weakening his social relationships.

Here the writer starts with the viewer's experience (not the viewer himself) as the subject. The experience "is one of passivity." Then the experience becomes a state of mind (12) that he wishes to maintain "at the cost of forgoing...activities." But what here leads to the "imbalance in the viewer's life?" The experience apparently leads to an imbalance and distorts the sense of time. But can we really distinguish between the distorted sense of time and the experience (and, perhaps, the imbalance, whatever that might mean)? We have separated in language that which does not arise separately in experience: experience: state of mind; feeling of imbalance; a sense of time. We can ask, quite simply, what leads to what? One abstraetion leads to another? '• '

If we replace the abstractions with agents, we would begin by saying that when watching television, the television watcher loses track of time and weakens his relationships. Once we put the matter that way, we can critique. Does Winn provide evidence that television watchers weaken their relationships by watching

130 £:rc • APRIL 2008

television? Do we have good reason to doubt that they do? (13) Finally, the writer says, "The essay is interspersed with quotes from three

people of various professions." The statement seems partly true ("partly" beeause the quotations in question come together at the end of the essay (14)), but an agent driven eonstmction would prove more helpful: ¡n order to show that television watchers lead damaged lives and thus qualify as addicts. Winn offers testimonials from three heavy watchers: a college English instructor, a nursery school teacher, and a film-producer. Once we put the matter this way, we can see quite clearly that Winn [an agent] has failed to show that television watchers [agents] lead damaged lives: the people giving the testimonials [agents all] all have good jobs and Winn provides no evidence of the kinds of damage she associates with addiction.

I don't see these problems as the idle concerns of an overly sequestered rhetoric instructor Rather, I see them as symptomatic, and not only of student writing. Though I would say that at least ninety-nine out of a hundred of my students write similarly, I would also say that when I get my head out of my students' papers long enough to read government pronouncements, 1 often see similar constructions. We might note the similarity in structure between "A television viewer's experience is one of pleasure and passivity" and Colin Powell's "When the terrorists struck on September 11, their target was not just the United States, but also the values that the American people share with men and women all over the world who believe in the sanctity of human life and cherish freedom." (15) In the student sentence, a viewer's experience is such and such abstraction (pleasure and passivity); in Powell's pronouncement, someone's target was such and such abstraction (a set of values). Abstraction X is abstraction Y. These abstractions suggest that the speaker hasn't engaged his issue very well.

If we eliminate the "to be" form in Powell's statement and introduce an agent, we might have something like this, "The people who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center do not have or profess the same values as we do; they don't believe in the sanctity of human life and don't cherish freedom." Such a remark invites investigation; the investigation would probably begin with an attempt to ascertain whether these people had made any statements about these matters. Perhaps we could find some people involved in that or similar actions and ask them whether they value "freedom," etc. (And we might remember, as we do, that people made similar remarks about Ho Chi Minh, despite his many statements expressing admiration for the Declaration of Independence.) If we use agents instead of abstractions, we can investigate (do what many writing texts call "inquiry") and analyze (do what those texts call "critical thinking").

When the student-writer uses non-agent constructions, he not only ends up

JOHNNY H.AS DIFFICULTY MAKING HIS POINT \ 31

with somewhat mangled prose, he also undermines his own critical abilities. If he uses abstractions, he will generally not speak operationally; if he doesn't speak operationally, he won't have in view any actions about which to ask useful questions. If he can't ask useful questions, he may end up thinking that he can't analyze - or that analysis "is too difficult!"

If we wish to analyze in a world that apparently consists of operations (not only at Korzybski's event level., but to a large extent at his object level as well) if, for example, we wonder whether to categorize someone as an addict, a terrorist, or a decent short of chap and good friend to all - we first want to know who has done or said what to whom, and then we want to say something about those actions. If we write in high-level abstractions, we will have difficulty analyzing partly because we have no actions in view, and partly because the high-level abstractions purport to stand for the completion of the analysis, for when we say that X is a Y, we categorize: we come to a conclusion about a particular matter.

I won't say that if students speak and write operationally - if they seek agents for sentence-subjects - that "all will be well," but only that if they do so, they will gain insight into themselves, the rhetorical world around them, and their own writing. They will perhaps stop saying, as so many do, that they "are bad writers," and say, instead, that, Ihus far, they have encountered some (theoretically) surmountable obstacles.

Notes

Marie Winn, "Television Addiction," The Plug-In Drug. New York: Viking Penguin, 1977. For example, addicts 'search for a high that normal life cannot supply,' become dependent on a "certain experience,' and lead damaged lives. We may say that all carrots are orange (though one can find white carrots, a matter we will ignore for now), pointed, and have a distinctive smell: and we may note that my hat is also orange, pointed, and has a distinctive smell, but that doesn't mean we should classify my hat as a carrot. None of these characteristics distinguishes carrots from other orange, pointed, and odiferous items (including, but not limited to, my hat). We might want to include this third question in the second: Has Winn failed to do something (e.g. to elarif}' something)? However, 1 prefer to keep it separate. Then the writer can choose between saying that Winn fails to mention physiological dependence and saying that Winn leaves this matter too vague (for Winn does talk about dependency, though without distinguishing between physiological dependence and what we some will call 'psychological

132 £ T C ' A P R I L 2008

dependence,' whatever that phrase might mean). Further, we might want to distinguish between Winn's having left out a criterion and Winn's failing to clarify what she means by some of her abstractions (for she speaks of "a damaged life," of developing "in human ways," etc.).

5. I borrowed this term from another writer, but when I went back to the department library to find the source, I could not locate it, and haven't to this day. I am tempted to say that "it's lost," but the general semanticist inside me urges me to say simply that I haven't yet located it.

6. Let's put aside our objections to the curious parallel between gambling and heroin-use. . • r

7. See note #2 8. We might prefer to categorize these "addictions" as "compulsions," but let

that, too, pass. . . ' • , , , • 9. And perhaps not even that. Would we categorize an addiction as a behavior, or

should we consider the behavior as a symptom of the addiction? Perhaps we can see the addictive process in physiological reactions (Korzybski's "event level"?) that we should probably not categorize as "behaviors" (object level).

10. Because we don't repeat experiences. Some will say, though, that we might repeatedly have the same experience, or at least have similar experiences. Or we might repeat an action, such as hot-dog eating, that has in the past led to experiences we remember as pleasurable. But even if we could have identical experiences, we would not repeat the experience itself; we would repeat the action that led to the experience.

11. If we want the student to write a research paper, we can have him ask whether television watchers lead such lives; if we ask the student only to refute, he need ask only whether Winn shows that they do. ' '

12. And we would probably categorize this state of mind as "an experience," for the word "experience" does suggest an inner event. Even when we say that we 'had quite an experience,' we realize that if we did have an experience, we have an awareness (something inner) about it. The events themselves do not constitute the experience. So, here, the experience becomes an experience.

13. Again, if we want the student to write a research paper, we can have him find out whether this actually happens. If we want him to write a refutation, he need ask only whether Winn shows that this happens - and, perhaps, to suggest that we have good reason to think that it doesn't.

14. In other words, by using "interspersed," the student offers an inaccurate map of the territory. We do not categorize quotations as "interspersed" if they all come together in one section of the essay. We might also have a problem with

WHY JOHNNY HAS DIFFICULTY MAKING Hts POINT 133

"three people of various professions," but let's bypass that one. 15. "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001." United States Department of State, May

2002.

©iStockphoto.com/giles angel

• ! t