Narrative

The Norton Field Guide to Writing with readings and handbook

F I F T H E D I T I O N

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Richard Bullock WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY

Maureen Daly Goggin ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Francine Weinberg

The Norton

Field Guide to Writing

with readings and handbook

B W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

New York • London

F I F T H E D I T I O N

▲

◆

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W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars of Norton’s publishing program — trade books and college texts — were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today — with a staff of four hundred and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year — W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees.

Copyright © 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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Permission to use copyrighted material is included in the Acknowledgments section of this book, which begins on page A-1.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bullock, Richard H. (Richard Harvey) author. | Goggin, Maureen Daly, author. | Weinberg, Francine, author. Title: The Norton Field Guide to writing with readings and handbook / Richard

Bullock, Wright State University, Maureen Daly Goggin, Arizona State University, Francine Weinberg. Description: Fifth edition. | New York ; London : W. W. Norton & Company,

[2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018007983 | ISBN 9780393655803 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: English language—Rhetoric—Handbooks, manuals, etc. |

English language—Grammar—Handbooks, manuals, etc. | Report writing—Handbooks, manuals, etc. | College readers. Classification: LCC PE1408 .B883825 2019 | DDC 808/.042—dc23 LC record available at

https://lccn.loc.gov/2018007983

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle St., London W1D 3BS

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Cover design by Pete Garceau Cover art: (seagull) nadyaillyustrator/iStock/Getty Images Plus; (waves) artvea/ Digital Vision/Getty Images Plus. Back cover image: (phone) breakstock/Shutterstock

Preface

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The Norton Field Guide to Writing began as an attempt to offer the kind of writing guides found in the best rhetorics in a format as user-friendly as the best handbooks, and on top of that, to be as brief as could be. We wanted to create a handy guide to help college students with all their written work. Just as there are field guides for bird watchers, for gardeners, and for accountants, this would be one for writers. In its first four editions, the book has obviously touched a chord with many writing instructors, and it remains the best-selling college rhetoric — a success that leaves us humbled and grateful. Student success is now on everyone’s mind. As teachers, we want our students to succeed, and first-year writing courses offer one of the best opportunities to help them develop the skills and habits of mind they need to succeed, whatever their goals may be. Suc- cess, though, doesn’t end with first-year writing; students need to transfer their knowledge and skills to other courses and other writing tasks. To that end, we’ve added new chapters on reading and writing across fields of study and new guidance on writing literature reviews. We’ve also added “Taking Stock” questions to each Genre chapter to help students develop their metacognitive abilities by reflecting on their work.

The Norton Field Guide still aims to offer both the guidance new teach- ers and first-year writers need and the flexibility many experienced teachers want. In our own teaching we’ve seen how well explicit guides to writing work for students and novice teachers. But too often, writing textbooks provide far more information than students need or instruc- tors can assign and as a result are bigger and more expensive than they should be. So we’ve tried to provide enough structure without too much detail — to give the information college writers need to know while resist- ing the temptation to tell them everything there is to know.

Most of all, we’ve tried to make the book easy to use, with menus, directories, a glossary / index, and color-coded links to help students find what they’re looking for. The links are also the way we keep the book brief: chapters are short, but the links send students to pages elsewhere in the book if they need more detail.

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What’s in the Book

The Norton Field Guide covers 14 genres often assigned in college. Much of the book is in the form of guidelines, designed to help students consider the choices they have as writers. The book is organized into ten parts:

1. ACADEMIC LITERACIES. Chapters 1–4 focus on writing and reading in academic contexts, summarizing and responding, and developing aca- demic habits of mind.

2. rhetorical situations. Chapters 5–9 focus on purpose, audience, genre, stance, and media and design. In addition, almost every chapter includes tips to help students focus on their rhetorical situations.

3. genres. Chapters 10–23 cover 14 genres, 4 of them — literacy narrative, textual analysis, report, and argument — treated in greater detail.

4. fields. Chapters 24–26 cover the key features of major fields of study and give guidance on reading and writing in each of those fields.

5. processes. Chapters 27–34 offer advice for generating ideas and text, drafting, revising and rewriting, editing, proofreading, compiling a portfolio, collaborating with others, and writing as inquiry.

6. strategies. Chapters 35–46 cover ways of developing and organiz- ing text — writing effective beginnings and endings, titles and thesis statements, comparing, describing, taking essay exams, and so on.

7. research / documentation. Chapters 47–55 offer advice on how to do academic research; work with sources; quote, paraphrase, and summa- rize source materials; and document sources using MLA and APA styles. Chapter 54 presents the “official MLA style” introduced in 2016.

8. media / design. Chapters 56–60 give guidance on choosing the appro- priate print, digital, or spoken medium; designing text; using images and sound; giving spoken presentations; and writing online.

9. readings. Chapters 61–70 provide readings in 10 genres, plus one chap- ter of readings that mix genres. Discussion questions are color-coded to refer students to relevant details elsewhere in the book.

10. handbook. At the end of the book is a handbook to help students edit what they write, organized around the intuitive categories of sentences, language, and punctuation to make it easy to use.

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What’s Online for Students

Ebooks. All versions of The Norton Field Guide are available as ebooks and include all the readings and images found in the print books. Highlighted links are active in the ebook so students can quickly navigate to more detail as needed. The ebook is accessible from any computer, tablet, or mobile device and lets students highlight, annotate, or even listen to the text.

InQuizitive for Writers. With InQuizitive, students learn to edit sentences and practice working with sources to become better writers and research- ers. InQuizitive is adaptive: students receive additional practice on the areas where they need more help. Links to The Little Seagull Handbook and explanatory feedback give students advice, right when they need it. And it’s formative: by wagering points, students think about what they know and don’t know. Visit inquizitive.wwnorton.com.

Norton/write. Just a click away with no passcode required, find a library of model student papers; more than 1,000 online exercises and quizzes; research and plagiarism tutorials; documentation guidelines for MLA, APA, Chicago, and CSE styles; MLA citation drills — and more. All MLA materials reflect 2016 style. Access the site at wwnorton.com/write.

What’s Available for Instructors

A Guide to Teaching with The Norton Field Guides. Written by Richard Bullock and several other teachers, this is a comprehensive guide to teach- ing first-year writing, from developing a syllabus to facilitating group work, teaching multimodal writing to assessing student writing. Free of charge.

Coursepacks are available for free and in a variety of formats, including Blackboard, D2L, Moodle, Canvas, and Angel — and work within your existing learning management system, so there’s no new system to learn, and access is free and easy. The Field Guide Coursepack includes model student papers; reading comprehension quizzes; reading strategy exercises; quizzes and exercises on grammar and research; documentation guidelines; and author biographies. Coursepacks are ready to use, right from the start — but are also easy to customize, using the system you already know and understand. Access the Coursepack at wwnorton.com/instructors.

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PowerPoints. Ready-made PowerPoints feature genre organization flow- charts and documentation maps from the book to help you show examples during class. Download the PowerPoints at wwnorton.com/instructors.

Worksheets available in Word and PDF can be edited, downloaded, and printed with guidance on editing paragraphs, responding to a draft, and more. Download the worksheets at wwnorton.com/instructors.

Highlights

It’s easy to use. Menus, directories, and a glossary / index make it easy for students to find what they’re looking for. Color-coded templates and documentation maps even make MLA and APA documentation easy.

It has just enough detail, with short chapters that include color-coded links sending students to more detail if they need more.

It’s uniquely flexible for teachers. Short chapters can be assigned in any order — and color-coded links help draw from other chapters as need be.

A user-friendly handbook, with an intuitive organization around sen- tences, language, and punctuation to make it easy for students to find what they need. And we go easy on the grammatical terminology, with links to the glossary for students who need detailed definitions.

What’s New

A new part on fields of study with 3 new chapters on reading and writing in the disciplines (Part 4):

• A new chapter on the fields of study surveys the distinctions among the major discipline areas and includes an overview of why a general education matters. (Chapter 24)

• A new chapter on reading across fields of study includes short examples drawn from a variety of courses and genres, along with tips, techniques, and key terms specific to each. (Chapter 25)

• A new chapter on writing in academic fields includes summaries of the key features of writing in the major disciplines, along with descriptions and short examples of typical writing assignments in each. (Chapter 26)

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New advice on detecting “false news” and unreliable sources, including how to read sources with a critical eye and how to use the elements of a rhetorical situation to determine whether or not a potential source is genuine and reputable. (Chapter 49)

A new section on reviews of scholarly literature with advice on how to develop, organize, and write a literature review. This section also includes an overview of the key features of the genre, as well as a new student example. (Chapter 15)

New “Taking Stock of Your Work” questions: each Genre chapter now ends with a series of questions to help students develop their metacogni- tive abilities by thinking about their writing processes and products.

New guidelines for peer review with detailed advice on how to read and respond to peers’ drafts. (Chapter 32)

Expanded coverage of synthesizing ideas: a new sample essay that shows students how to synthesize multiple sources. (Chapter 50)

New advice on arguing with a hostile audience, including how to use Rogerian argument techniques to engage with audiences who may not share students’ perspectives or values. (Chapter 38)

12 new readings in the rhetoric: new essays in nearly every genre, includ- ing a literacy narrative on working in an auto repair shop, a report on pop- corn, a rhetorical analysis of a speech by former president Barack Obama, a profile of the modern-day plastic straw, and many more. In addition, there is a new APA research paper on the benefits of nurseries in women’s prisons.

21 new readings in the anthology: at least one new essay in every genre, including an illustrated literacy narrative, a text analysis about Disney princesses, a profile of a plastic cooler, a proposal for a playground, and many more.

Ways of Teaching with The Norton Field Guide to Writing

The Norton Field Guide is designed to give you both support and flex- ibility. It has clear assignment sequences if you want them, or you can create your own. If, for example, you assign a position paper, there’s a full chapter. If you want students to use sources, add the appropriate

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research chapters. If you want them to submit a topic proposal, add that chapter.

If you’re a new teacher, the Genre chapters offer explicit assignment sequences — and the color-coded links will remind you of detail you may want to bring in. The instructor’s manual offers advice on creating a syl- labus, responding to writing, and more.

If you focus on genres, there are complete chapters on all the genres

college students are often assigned. Color-coded links will help you bring in details about research or other writing strategies as you wish.

If you organize your course thematically, a Thematic Guide will lead you to readings on 23 themes. Chapter 29 on generating ideas can help get students thinking about a theme. You can also assign them to do research on the theme, starting with Chapter 48 on finding sources, or perhaps with Chapter 27 on writing as inquiry. If they then write in a particular genre, there will be a chapter to guide them.

If you want students to do research, there are 9 chapters on the research process, including guidelines and sample papers for MLA and APA styles.

If you focus on modes, you’ll find chapters on using narration, descrip- tion, and so on as strategies for many writing purposes, and links that lead students through the process of writing an essay organized around a particular mode.

If you teach a stretch, ALP, IRW, or dual credit course, the academic literacies chapters offer explicit guidelines to help students write and read in academic contexts, summarize and respond to what they read, and develop academic habits of mind that will help them succeed in college.

If you teach online, the book is available as an ebook — and a companion Coursepack includes exercises, quizzes, video tutorials, and more.

Acknowledgments

As we’ve traveled around the country and met many of the students, teachers, and WPAs who are using The Norton Field Guide, we’ve been grati- fied to hear that so many find it helpful, to the point that some students

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tell us that they aren’t going to sell it back to the bookstore when the term ends — the highest form of praise. As much as we like the positive response, though, we are especially grateful when we receive suggestions for ways the book might be improved. In this fifth edition, as we did in the fourth edition, we have tried to respond to the many good suggestions we’ve gotten from students, colleagues, reviewers, and editors. Thank you all, both for your kind words and for your good suggestions. Some people need to be singled out for thanks, especially Marilyn Moller, the guiding editorial spirit of the Field Guide through all five editions. When we presented Marilyn with the idea for this book, she encouraged us and helped us conceptualize it — and then taught us how to write a text- book. The quality of the Field Guide is due in large part to her knowledge of the field of composition, her formidable editing and writing skills, her sometimes uncanny ability to see the future of the teaching of writing — and her equally formidable, if not uncanny, stamina. Editor Sarah Touborg guided us through this new edition with good humor and better advice. Just as developmental editor John Elliott did with the third and fourth editions, Sarah shepherded this fifth edition through revisions and additions with a careful hand and a clear eye for appropriate content and language. Her painstaking editing shows throughout the book, and we’re grateful for her ability to make us appear to be better writers than we are. Many others have contributed, too. Thanks to project editor Christine D’Antonio for her energy, patience, and great skill in coordinating the tightly scheduled production process for the book. Claire Wallace brought her astute eye and keen judgment to all of the readings, while Maddy Rombes managed the extensive reviewing process and took great care of the man- uscript at every stage. The Norton Field Guide is more than just a print book, and we thank Erica Wnek, Samantha Held, Kim Yi, Ava Bramson, and Cooper Wilhelm for creating and producing the superb ebook and instruc- tors’ site. Anna Palchik designed the award-winning, user-friendly, and attractive interior, Pete Garceau created the beautiful new cover design, and Debra Morton Hoyt and Tiani Kennedy further enhanced the design and coordinated it all, inside and out. Liz Marotta transformed a scribbled- over manuscript into a finished product with extraordinary speed and pre- cision, while Jude Grant copyedited. Megan Schindel and Bethany Salminen cleared text permissions, coping efficiently with ongoing changes, and

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Catherine Abelman cleared permission for the images found by Dena Digilio Betz. Steve Dunn, Lib Triplett, Elizabeth Pieslor, and Doug Day helped us all keep our eyes on the market. Thanks to all, and to Roby Harrington, Drake McFeely, and Julia Reidhead for supporting this project in the first place. Rich has many, many people at Wright State University to thank for their support and assistance. Jane Blakelock taught Rich most of what he knows about electronic text and writing on and for the web and assembled an impressive list of useful links for the book’s website. Adrienne Cassel (now at Sinclair Community College) and Catherine Crowley read and com- mented on many drafts. Peggy Lindsey (now at Georgia Southern University) shared her students’ work and the idea of using charts to show how various genres might be organized. Brady Allen, Debbie Bertsch (now at Columbus State Community College), Vicki Burke, Melissa Carrion, Jimmy Chesire, Carol Cornett, Mary Doyle, Byron Crews, Deborah Crusan, Sally DeThomas, Stephanie Dickey, Scott Geisel, Karen Hayes, Chuck Holmes, Beth Klaisner (now at Colorado State University), Nancy Mack, Marty Maner, Cynthia Marshall, Sarah McGinley, Kristie McKiernan, Michelle Metzner, Kristie Rowe, Bobby Rubin, Cathy Sayer, David Seitz, Caroline Simmons, Tracy Smith, Rick Strader, Mary Van Loveren, and A. J. Williams responded to drafts, submitted good models of student writing, contributed to the instruc- tor’s manual, tested the Field Guide in their classes, provided support, and shared with Rich some of their best teaching ideas. Henry Limouze and then Carol Loranger, chairs of the English Department, gave him room to work on this project with patience and good humor. Sandy Trimboli, Becky Traxler, and Lynn Morgan, the secretaries to the writing programs, kept him anchored. And he thanks especially the more than 300 graduate teaching assistants and 10,000 first-year students who class-tested various editions of the Field Guide and whose experiences helped — and continue to help — to shape it. At Arizona State, Maureen wants to acknowledge the unwavering sup- port of Neal A. Lester, Vice President of Humanities and Arts and former chair of the English Department, and the assistance of Jason Diller, her former graduate research assistant, and Judy Holiday, her former graduate men- tee, for their reading suggestions. She thanks her colleagues, all exemplary teachers and mentors, for creating a supportive intellectual environment, especially Patricia Boyd, Peter Goggin, Mark Hannah, Kathleen Lamp, Elenore

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Long, Paul Matsuda, Keith Miller, Ersula Ore, Alice Robison, Shirley Rose, and Doris Warriner. Thanks also go to ASU instructors and first-year students who have used the Field Guide and have offered good suggestions. Finally, Maureen wants to pay tribute to her students, who are themselves among her best teachers. Thanks to the teachers across the country who reviewed the fourth edition of the Field Guide and helped shape this fifth edition: Elizabeth Acosta, El Paso Community College; Thomas Barber, City College of New York; Keri Behre, Marylhurst University; David Bell, University of North Georgia; Dean Blumberg, Horry–Georgetown Technical College; Abdallah Boumarate, Valencia College; Tabitha Bozeman, Gadsden State Commu- nity College; Laurie E. Buchanan, Clark State Community College; Ashley Buzzard, Midlands Technical College; Emma Carlton, University of New Orleans; Danielle Carr, City College of New York; Toni I. Carter, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana; Carla Chwat, University of North Georgia; Marie Coffey, Northeast Lakeview College; Stephanie Conner, College of Coastal Georgia; Robert Derr, Danville Community College; Cheryl Divine, Columbia College; Amber Duncan, Northwest Vista College; Gloria Estrada, El Paso Community College; Kevin Ferns, Woodland Community College; Dianne Flickinger, Cowley County Community College; Michael Flood, Horry–Georgetown Technical College; Dan Fuller, Hinds Community College–Utica; Robert Galin, University of New Mexico–Gallup; Jennifer P. Gray, College of Coastal Georgia; Julie Groesch, San Jacinto College; Elizabeth Hair, Trident Technical College; Mark Hankerson, Albany State University; Pamela Hardman, Cuyahoga Community College; Michael Hedges, Horry–Georgetown Technical College; Michael Hill, Henry Ford College; Lorraine M. Howland, New Hampshire Technical Institute, Con- cord’s Community College; Alyssa Johnson, Horry–Georgetown Technical College; Luke Johnson, Mesabi Range College; Elaine M. Jolayemi, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana; George Kanieski, Cuyahoga Community College; Elizabeth Kuehne, Wayland Baptist University; Matt Laferty, Cuyahoga Community College; Robin Latham, Nash Community College; Adam Lee, Concordia University Irvine; Bronwen Llewellyn, Daytona State College; Chelsea Lonsdale, Henry Ford College; Jeffery D. Mack, Albany State University; Devona Mallory, Albany State University; Katheryn McCoskey, Butler Community College; Jenny McHenry, Tallahassee Com-

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munity College; James McWard, Johnson County Community College; Eileen E. Medeiros, Johnson & Wales University; Kristina Meehan, Spar- tanburg Community College; Cathryn Meyer, Tallahassee Community Col- lege; Josephine Mills, Arapahoe Community College; James Minor, South Piedmont Community College; Erin O’Keefe, Allen Community College– Burlingame; Jeff Owens, Lassen Community College; Anthony Guy Patricia, Concord University; Brenda Reid, Tallahassee Community College; Emily Riser, Mississippi Delta Community College; Emily Rosenblatt, City College of New York; Kent Ross, Northeastern Junior College; Jessica Schreyer, University of Dubuque; Sunita Sharma, Mississippi Delta Community Col- lege; Taten Sheridan, Kodiak College; Ann Spurlock, Mississippi State Uni- versity; Derrick Stewart, Midlands Technical College; Pamela Stovall, University of New Mexico–Gallup; James D. Suderman, Northwest Florida State College; Harun K. Thomas, Daytona State College; Alison Van Nyhuis, Fayetteville State University; Anna Voisard; City College of New York; Elisabeth von Uhl, City College of New York; Ellen Wayland-Smith, Uni- versity of Southern California; James Williams, Soka University; Michael Williams, Horry–Georgetown Technical College; Mark W. Wilson, South- western Oregon Community College; and Michelle Zollars, Patrick Henry Community College. Thanks also to those instructors who reviewed the Field Guide resources, helping us improve them for the fifth edition: Jessica Adams, Clark State Community College; Megan Anderson, Limestone College; Jamee Atkinson, Texas State Technical College; David Bach, Northwest Vista College; Ryan Baechle, University of Toledo; Aaron Barrell, Everett Community College; Soky Barrenechea, Penn State Abington; Lauren Baugus, Pensacola State College; Kristina Baumli, University of the Arts; Kay Berry, Dixie High School; Marie Bischoff, Sierra Community College; Matt Bloom, Hawkeye Community College; Allison Brady, Toccoa Falls College; Hannah Bingham Brunner, Oklahoma Christian University; Sybil Canon, Northwest MS Com- munity College; Marie Coffey, Northeast Lakeview College; Susan Cowart, Texas State Technical College; Kennette Crockett, Harold Washington College; Anthony D’Ariea, Regis College; Mary Rutledge-Davis, North Lake College; Courtney Doi, Alamance Community College; Zona Douthit, Roger Williams University; Amber Duncan, Northwest Vista College; Michelle Ellwood, Keuka College; Michael Esquivel, Tarrant County College; Julie

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Felux, Northwest Vista College; Monika Fleming, Edgecombe Community College; Dianne Flickinger, Cowley County Community College; Barbara Z. Flinn, Youngstown State University; P. Foster, Alabama State Univer- sity; Darius Frasure, Mountain View College; Robert Galin, University of New Mexico; Chanda Gilmore, Immaculata University; William Godbey, Tarrant County College; Deborah Goodwyn, Virginia State University; Ben Graydon, Daytona State College; Lamarr Green, Northwest Vista College; Marie Green, Northern VA Community College; Ricardo Guzman, North- west Vista College; Lori Hicks, Ivy Tech Community College; Lana Highfill, Ivy Tech Community College; Lorraine M. Howland, NHTI, Concord’s Community College; N. Luanne J. Hurst, Pasco Hernando State College; Judith Isakson, Daytona State College; Jeanine Jewell, Southeast Com- munity College; Lori Johnson, Rappahannock Community College; Randy Johnson, Capital Community College; Wesley Johnson, Pasco-Hernando State College; Kelsea Jones, Treasure Valley Community College; Lisa Jones, Pasco-Hernando State College; Erin Kalish, Bridgewater State Uni- versity; Amber Kovach, Boise State University; Julie Kratt, Cowley College; Robin Latham, Nash Community College; Stephanie Legarreta, El Paso Community College; Amy Ludwig, College of the Canyons; Carol Luvert, Hawkeye Community College; Barbara Lyras, Youngstown State University; Crystal Manboard, Northwest Vista College; Margaret Marangione, Blue Ridge Community College; Kristen Marangoni, Tulsa Community College; Christina McCleanhan, Maysville Community and Technical College; Sara McDonald, Saint Cloud Technical and Community College and Saint Cloud State University; Kelly McDonough, Clarendon College; Shannon McGregor, Des Moines Area Community College; Lisa McHarry, West Hills College, Coalinga; Craig McLuckie, Okanagan College; James McWard, Johnson County Community College; Eileen Medeiros, Pasco-Hernando State College; Kristy Meehan, Spartanburg Community College; Jason Melton, Sacramento State University; John Miller, Ivy Tech Community College; Erik Moellering, Asheville Buncombe Technical Community Col- lege; Michael Murray, Columbus State Community College; Briana Murrell, Fayetteville State University; Anthony Nelson, El Paso Community College; Andrew Nye, Minnesota State University Mankato; Alison Van Nyhuis, Fayetteville State University; Oluwatosin Ogunnika, Virginia State Uni- versity; Judith Oster, Valley Community College; Deb Paczynski, Central

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New Mexico Community College; Susan Passmore, Colquitt County High School; Diane Paul, Southeast Community College; Patricia Penn, Cowley College; Mike Peterson, Dixie State University; Larissa L. Pierce, Eastfield College; David Pittard, Fossil Ridge High School; Robert Ramos, City Col- lege; Cynthia Fox Richardson, Clark State Community College; Alice Waits- Richardson, Southern State Community College; Maurisa Riley, Tarrant County College NW; Stephanie Roberts, Georgia Military College; Adrian Rosa, Jackson College; Erin Mahoney-Ross, Tarrant County College North- west Campus; Jennifer Royal, Santa Rosa Junior College; Julia Ruengert, Pensacola State College; Shirley Rutter, Johnson & Wales University; Eli Ryder, Antelope Valley College; Jessica Schreyer, University of Dubuque; Jennifer Scowron, Youngstown State University; Claudia Skutar, Univer- sity of Cincinnati Blue Ash College; Jennifer Smith, Pepperdine University; Michael Stewart, University of Alabama; Michelle Sufridge, Madison-Plains High School; Harun Karim Thomas, Daytona State College; Zainah Usman, Tarrant County College; Jennifer Vega, El Paso Community College; Ashley Waterman, Community College of Aurora; Ann Henson Webb, Moraine Valley Community College; Maggie M. Werner, Hobart and William Smith College; Kaci L. West, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College; Cassandra Wettlaufer, Tarrant County College; Holly White, Cuyahoga County Com- munity College; Casey Wiley, Penn State University; Karen Wilson, Hawk- eye Community College; Sabine Winter, Eastfield College; Jonathan Wood, College of Western Idaho; and Marilyn S. Yamin, Pellissippi State Com- munity College. The Norton Field Guide has also benefited from the good advice and conversations we’ve had with writing teachers across the country, includ- ing (among many others) Maureen Mathison, Susan Miller, Tom Huckin, Gae Lyn Henderson, and Sundy Watanabe at the University of Utah; Christa Albrecht-Crane, Doug Downs, and Brian Whaley at Utah Valley State College; Anne Dvorak and Anya Morrissey at Longview Community University; Jeff Andelora at Mesa Community College; Robin Calitri at Merced College; Lori Gallinger, Rose Hawkins, Jennifer Nelson, Georgia Standish, and John Ziebell at the Community College of Southern Nevada; Stuart Blythe at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne; Janice Kelly at Arizona State University; Jeanne McDonald at Waubonsee Com- munity College; Web Newbold, Mary Clark-Upchurch, Megan Auffart, Matt

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xviiPreface

Balk, Edward James Chambers, Sarah Chavez, Desiree Dighton, Ashley Ellison, Theresa Evans, Keith Heller, Ellie Isenhart, Angela Jackson-Brown, Naoko Kato, Yuanyuan Liao, Claire Lutkewitte, Yeno Matuki, Casey McArdle, Tibor Munkacsi, Dani Nier-Weber, Karen Neubauer, Craig O’Hara, Martha Payne, Sarah Sandman, and Kellie Weiss at Ball State University; Patrick Tompkins at Tyler Community College; George Kanieski and Pamela Hardman at Cuyahoga Community College; Daniela Regusa, Jeff Partridge, and Lydia Vine at Capital Community College; Elizabeth Woodworth, Auburn University–Montgomery; Stephanie Eason at Enter- prise Community College; Kate Geiselman at Sinclair Community College; Ronda Leathers Dively at Southern Illinois University; Debra Knutson at Shawnee State University; Guy Shebat and Amy Flick at Youngstown State University; Martha Tolleson, Toni McMillen, and Patricia Gerecci at Collin College; Sylva Miller at Pikes Peak Community College; Dharma Hernandez at Los Angeles Unified School District; Ann Spurlock at Mississippi State University; Luke Niiler at the University of Alabama; and Jeff Tix at Wharton County Junior College. We wouldn’t have met most of these people without the help of the Nor- ton travelers, the representatives who spend their days visiting faculty, show- ing and discussing the Field Guide and Norton’s many other fine textbooks. Thanks to Kathy Carlsen, Scott Cook, Marilyn Rayner, Peter Wentz, Krista Azer, Sarah Wolf, Mary Helen Willett, Susyn Dietz, and all the other Nor- ton travelers. Thanks also to regional sales managers Paul Ducham, Dennis Fernandes, Deirdre Hall, Dan Horton, Katie Incorvia, Jordan Mendez, Annie Stewart, Amber Watkins, and Natasha Zabohonski. And we’d especially like to thank Mike Wright and Doug Day for promoting this book so enthusiasti- cally and professionally. It’s customary to conclude by expressing gratitude to one’s spouse and family, and for good reason. Writing and revising The Norton Field Guide over the past several years, we have enjoyed the loving and unconditional support of our spouses, Barb, Peter, and Larry, who provide the foundation for all we do. Thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you.

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How to Use This Book

There’s no one way to do anything, and writing is no exception. Some people need to do a lot of planning on paper; others write entire drafts in their heads. Some writers compose quickly and loosely, going back later to revise; others work on one sentence until they’re satisfied with it, then move on to the next. And writers’ needs vary from task to task, too: sometimes you know what you’re going to write about and why, but need to figure out how to do it; other times your first job is to come up with a topic. The Norton Field Guide is designed to allow you to chart your own course as a writer, offering guidelines that suit your writing needs. It is organized in ten parts:

1. academic literacies : The chapters in this part will help you know what’s expected in the reading and writing you do for academic pur- poses, and in summarizing and responding to what you read. One chapter even provides tips for developing habits of mind that will help you succeed in college, whatever your goals.

2. rhetorical situations : No matter what you’re writing, it will always have some purpose, audience, genre, stance, and medium and design. This part will help you consider each of these elements, as well as the par- ticular kinds of rhetorical situations created by academic assignments.

3. genres : Use these chapters for help with specific kinds of writing, from abstracts to lab reports to memoirs and more. You’ll find more detailed guidance for four especially common assignments: literacy narratives, textual analyses, reports, and arguments.

4. fields: The chapters in this part will help you apply what you’re learn- ing in this book to your other general education courses or courses in your major.

xix

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xx

5. processes : These chapters offer general advice for all writing situa- tions — from generating ideas and text to drafting, revising and rewrit- ing, compiling a portfolio — and more.

6. strategies : Use the advice in this part to develop and organize your writing — to write effective beginnings and endings, to guide readers through your text, and to use comparison, description, dialogue, and other strategies as appropriate.

7. research / documentation : Use this section for advice on how to do research, work with sources, and compose and document research- based texts using MLA and APA styles.

8. media / design : This section offers guidance in designing your work and using visuals and sound, and in deciding whether and how to deliver what you write on paper, on screen, or in person.

9. readings : This section includes readings in 10 genres, and one chap- ter of texts that mix genres — 42 readings in all that provide good examples of the kinds of writing you yourself may be assigned to do.

10. handbook : Look here for help with sentence-level editing.

Ways into the Book

The Norton Field Guide gives you the writing advice you need, along with the flexibility to write in the way that works best for you. Here are some of the ways you can find what you need in the book.

Brief menus. Inside the front cover you’ll find a list of all the chapters; start here if you are looking for a chapter on a certain kind of writing or a general writing issue. Inside the back cover is a menu of all the topics covered in the handbook .

Complete contents. Pages xxiii–xlv contain a detailed table of contents. Look here if you need to find a reading or a specific section in a chapter.

Guides to writing. If you know the kind of writing you need to do, you’ll find guides to writing 14 common genres in Part 3. These guides are designed to help you through all the decisions you have to make — from coming up with a topic to editing and proofreading your final draft.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

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xxi

Color-coding. The parts of this book are color-coded for easy reference: light blue for academic literacies , red for rhetorical situations , green for genres , pink for fields , lavender for processes , orange for strategies , blue for research / documentation , gold for media / design , apple green for the readings , and yellow for the handbook . You’ll find a key to the colors on the front cover flap and also at the foot of each left-hand page. When you see a word highlighted in a color, that tells you where you can find additional detail on the topic.

Glossary / index. At the back of the book is a combined glossary and index, where you’ll find full definitions of key terms and topics, along with a list of the pages where everything is covered in detail.

Directories to MLA and APA documentation. A brief directory inside the back cover will lead you to guidelines on citing sources and composing a list of references or works cited. The documentation models are color- coded so you can easily see the key details.

Ways of Getting Started

If you know your genre, simply turn to the appropriate genre chapter. There you’ll find model readings, a description of the genre’s Key Fea- tures, and a Guide to Writing that will help you come up with a topic, generate text, organize and write a draft, get response, revise, edit, and proofread. The genre chapters also point out places where you might need to do research, use certain writing strategies, design your text a certain way — and direct you to the exact pages in the book where you can find help doing so.

If you know your topic, you might start with some of the activities in Chapter 29, Generating Ideas and Text. From there, you might turn to Chapter 48, for help Finding Sources on the topic. When it comes time to narrow your topic and come up with a thesis statement, Chapter 36 can help. If you get stuck at any point, you might turn to Chapter 27, Writing as Inquiry; it provides tips that can get you beyond what you already know about your topic. If your assignment or your thesis defines your genre, turn to that chapter; if not, consult Chapter 27 for help determining the appropriate genre, and then turn to that genre chapter.

How to Use This Book

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xxii RHETORICAL SITUATIONS

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Part 1 Academic Literacies 1

1 Writing in Academic Contexts 3 What’s expected of academic writing 3 What’s expected of college writers: The WPA outcomes 7

2 Reading in Academic Contexts 10 Taking stock of your reading 10 Reading strategically 11 Thinking about what you want to learn 12 Previewing the text 12 Adjusting your reading speed to different texts 13 Looking for organizational cues 13 Thinking about your initial response 14 Dealing with difficult texts 15 Annotating 16 Coding 17 Summarizing 20 Reading critically 20 Believing and doubting 20 Thinking about how the text works: what it says, what it does 21 Identifying patterns 23 Reading rhetorically 25 Considering the rhetorical situation 25 Analyzing the argument 26

Preface v

How to Use This Book xix

Thematic Guide to the Readings xlvii

Contents

xxiii

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xxiv CONTENTS

Considering the larger context 27 Reading visual texts 28 Reading onscreen 31

3 Summarizing and Responding: Where Reading Meets Writing 33 Summarizing 33 Responding 36 Writing a summary / response essay 40 Jacob MacLeod, Guns and Cars Are Different 40

KEY FEATURES 42

Clearly identified author and title / Concise summary / Explicit

response / Support

4 Developing Academic Habits of Mind 45 Engage 45 Be curious 47 Be open to new ideas 48 Be flexible 48 Be creative 49 Persist 50 Reflect 51 Take responsibility 52

Part 2 Rhetorical Situations 53

5 Purpose 55 Identifying your purpose 56 Thinking about purpose 56

6 Audience 57 Identifying your audience 58 Thinking about audience 59

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7 Genre 61 Choosing the appropriate genre 62 Dealing with ambiguous assignments 64 Thinking about genre 65

8 Stance 66 Identifying your stance 67 Thinking about stance 68

9 Media / Design 69 Identifying your media and design needs 70 Thinking about media 70 Thinking about design 71

Part 3 Genres 73

10 Writing a Literacy Narrative 75 Emily Vallowe, Write or Wrong Identity 75 Daniel Felsenfeld, Rebel Music 81 Ana-Jamileh Kassfy, Automotive Literacy 84

KEY FEATURES 87

A well-told story / Vivid detail / Clear significance

A GUIDE TO WRITING 88

Choosing a topic 88 Considering the rhetorical situation 89 Generating ideas and text 89 Organizing 91 Writing out a draft 93 Considering matters of design 94 Getting response and revising 95 Editing and proofreading 96 Taking stock of your work 96

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11 Analyzing Texts 98 Hannah Berry, The Fashion Industry: Free to Be an Individual 99 Danielle Allen, Our Declaration 102 Roy Peter Clark, Why It Worked: A Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s

Speech on Race 107

KEY FEATURES 114

A summary of the text / Attention to the context / A clear interpretation /

Support for your conclusions

A GUIDE TO WRITING 115

Choosing a text to analyze 115 Considering the rhetorical situation 115 Generating ideas and text 116 Coming up with a thesis 125 Organizing 125 Writing out a draft 127 Considering matters of design 128 Getting response and revising 129 Editing and proofreading 129 Taking stock of your work 130

12 Reporting Information 131 Michaela Cullington, Does Texting Affect Writing? 131 Frankie Schembri, Edible Magic 139 Jon Marcus, The Reason College Costs More than You Think 143

KEY FEATURES 146

A tightly focused topic / Well-researched information / Synthesis of ideas /

Various writing strategies / Clear definitions / Appropriate design

A GUIDE TO WRITING 148

Choosing a topic 148 Considering the rhetorical situation 149

CONTENTS

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Generating ideas and text 149 Organizing 151 Writing out a draft 152 Considering matters of design 154 Getting response and revising 154 Editing and proofreading 155 Taking stock of your work 156

13 Arguing a Position 157 Joanna MacKay, Organ Sales Will Save Lives 157 Nicholas Kristof, Our Blind Spot about Guns 162 Molly Worthen, U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This 165

KEY FEATURES 170

A clear and arguable position / Background information /

Good reasons / Convincing evidence / Appeals to readers /

A trustworthy tone / Consideration of other positions

A GUIDE TO WRITING 172

Choosing a topic 172 Considering the rhetorical situation 174 Generating ideas and text 174 Organizing 178 Writing out a draft 180 Considering matters of design 182 Getting response and revising 182 Editing and proofreading 183 Taking stock of your work 184

14 Abstracts 185 INFORMATIVE ABSTRACTS 185

PROPOSAL ABSTRACTS 186

Contents

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KEY FEATURES 187

A summary of basic information / Objective description / Brevity

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING 187

Considering the rhetorical situation 187 Generating ideas and text 188 Organizing 188 Taking stock of your work 189

15 Annotated Bibliographies and Reviews of Scholarly Literature 190 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES 190

Michael Benton, Mark Dolan, Rebecca Zisch, Teen Film$ 190 Kelly Green, Researching Hunger and Poverty 192

KEY FEATURES OF ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES 193

A clear scope / Complete bibliographic information / A concise description of

the work / Relevant commentary / Consistent presentation

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES 194

Considering the rhetorical situation 194 Generating ideas and text 195 Organizing 197 Taking stock of your work 198

REVIEWS OF SCHOLARLY LITERATURE 198

Cameron Carroll, Zombie Film Scholarship: A Review of the Literature 198

KEY FEATURES OF REVIEWS OF SCHOLARLY LITERATURE 200

Thorough research / Objective summaries of the literature /

Critical evaluation / Synthesis / A clear focus

Taking stock of your work 201

CONTENTS

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16 Evaluations 202 William Thorne, Movie Review: The Circle 203

KEY FEATURES 205

A concise description of the subject / Clearly defined criteria /

A knowledgeable discussion / A balanced and fair assessment /

Well-supported reasons

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING 207

Choosing something to evaluate 207 Considering the rhetorical situation 207 Generating ideas and text 207 Organizing 209 Taking stock of your work 210

17 Literary Analyses 211 Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken 211 Matthew Miller, Frost’s Broken Roads 212

KEY FEATURES 216

An arguable thesis / Careful attention to the language of the text / Attention

to patterns or themes / A clear interpretation / MLA style

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING 217

Considering the rhetorical situation 217 Generating ideas and text 218 Organizing 222 Taking stock of your work 223

18 Memoirs 224 Rick Bragg, All Over but the Shoutin’ 224

KEY FEATURES 228

A good story / Vivid details / Clear significance

Contents

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING 229

Choosing an event to write about 229 Considering the rhetorical situation 229 Generating ideas and text 230 Organizing 231 Taking stock of your work 231

19 Profiles 233 Ernie Smith, A Brief History of the Modern-Day Straw, the World’s Most

Wasteful Commodity 233

KEY FEATURES 239

An interesting subject / Background information / An interesting angle /

A firsthand account / Engaging details

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING 241

Choosing a suitable subject 241 Considering the rhetorical situation 241 Generating ideas and text 243 Organizing 244 Taking stock of your work 244

20 Proposals 246 Michael Granof, Course Requirement: Extortion 246

KEY FEATURES 249

A well-defined problem / A recommended solution / A convincing argument

for your solution / Possible questions / A call to action / An appropriate tone

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING 251

Deciding on a topic 251 Considering the rhetorical situation 251 Generating ideas and text 251 Organizing 252 Taking stock of your work 253

CONTENTS

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TOPIC PROPOSALS 253

Catherine Thoms, Social Media and Data Privacy 254

KEY FEATURES 255

A concise discussion of the subject / A statement of your intended focus /

A rationale for the topic / Mention of resources

21 Reflections 256 Edan Lepucki, Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them 256

KEY FEATURES 259

A topic that intrigues you / Some kind of structure / Specific details /

A questioning, speculative tone

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING 261

Deciding on a topic 261 Considering the rhetorical situation 261 Generating ideas and text 262 Organizing 262 Taking stock of your work 263

22 Résumés and Job Letters 264 Understanding your audiences 264 Social media and job hunting 266

RÉSUMÉS 266

KEY FEATURES 268

Structure that suits your goals and experience / Succinct /

A design that highlights key information

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING RÉSUMÉS 269

Considering the rhetorical situation 269 Generating ideas and text 269 Organizing 272

Contents

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xxxii

APPLICATION AND THANK-YOU LETTERS 273

KEY FEATURES 276

A succinct indication of your qualifications / A reasonable and

pleasing tone / A conventional, businesslike format

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING JOB LETTERS 276

Generating ideas and text 276 Organizing 278 Taking stock of your work 278

23 Mixing Genres 280 Anna Quindlen, Write for Your Life 280

KEY FEATURES 282

One primary genre / A clear focus / Careful organization / Clear transitions

Some typical ways of mixing genres 283

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING 284

Considering the rhetorical situation 284 Generating ideas and text 285 Multigenre projects 286 Taking stock of your work 287

Part 4 Fields 289

24 Fields of Study 291 Academic fields and general education 291 Studying, reading, and writing in academic fields 292 Thinking about reading and writing in the fields 293

CONTENTS

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xxxiii

25 Reading across Fields of Study 294 Considering the rhetorical situation 294 Advice for reading across fields of study 295 Tips for reading in various fields of study 300 Humanities / Social sciences / Sciences / A note on career-focused fields

26 Writing in Academic Fields of Study 305 Considering the rhetorical situation 305 Writing in academic fields of study 307 Arts and humanities / Science and mathematics / Social sciences / Business /

Education / Engineering and technology / Health sciences and nursing

Part 5 Processes 321

27 Writing as Inquiry 323 Starting with questions 323 Keeping a journal 326 Keeping a blog 326

28 Collaborating 327 Some ground rules for face-to-face group work 327 Online collaboration 328 Writing conferences 328 Group writing projects 329

29 Generating Ideas and Text 331 Freewriting 331 Looping 332 Listing 332 Clustering or mapping ideas 333

Contents

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Cubing 334 Questioning 334 Using genre features 335 Outlining 335 Letter writing 337 Keeping a journal 337 Discovery drafting 338

30 Drafting 340 Establishing a schedule with deadlines 340 Getting comfortable 340 Starting to write 341 Dealing with writer’s block 342

31 Assessing Your Own Writing 343 Considering the rhetorical situation 343 Examining the text itself 344 For focus / Argument / Organization / Clarity

Thinking about your process 347 Assessing a body of your work 347

32 Getting Response and Revising 348 Giving and getting peer response 348 Getting effective response 349 Revising 350 Rewriting 353

33 Editing and Proofreading 356 Editing 356 Proofreading 359

CONTENTS

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34 Compiling a Portfolio 361 Considering the rhetorical situation 361

A WRITING PORTFOLIO 362

What to include 362 Organizing 363 Paper portfolios / Electronic portfolios

Assessing your portfolio 365

A LITERACY PORTFOLIO 369

What to include 369 Organizing 370 Reflecting on your portfolio 370

Part 6 Strategies 371

35 Beginning and Ending 373 Beginning 373 Ending 380 Considering the rhetorical situation 384

36 Guiding Your Reader 386 Titles 386 Thesis statements 387 Topic sentences 389 Transitions 391

37 Analyzing Causes and Effects 392

Determining plausible causes and effects 392 Arguing for causes or effects 393 Organizing 394 Considering the rhetorical situation 395

Contents

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38 Arguing 397 Reasons for arguing 397 Arguing logically 398 Claims / Reasons / Evidence

Arguing with a hostile audience 409 Convincing readers you’re trustworthy 410 Appealing to readers’ emotions 413 Checking for fallacies 415 Considering the rhetorical situation 416

39 Classifying and Dividing 418 Classifying 418 Dividing 419 Creating clear and distinct categories 420 Considering the rhetorical situation 422

40 Comparing and Contrasting 424 Two ways of comparing and contrasting 425 The block method / The point-by-point method

Using graphs and images 427 Using figurative language 429 Considering the rhetorical situation 431

41 Defining 432 Formal definitions 432 Extended definitions 434 Stipulative definitions 440 Considering the rhetorical situation 442

CONTENTS

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42 Describing 443 Detail 443 Objectivity and subjectivity 446 Vantage point 447 Dominant impression 448 Organizing 450 Considering the rhetorical situation 450

43 Dialogue 452 Why add dialogue? 452 Integrating dialogue into your writing 453 Interviews 454 Considering the rhetorical situation 455

44 Explaining Processes 457 Explaining clearly 457 Explaining how something is done 457 Explaining how to do something 458 Explaining visually 459 Considering the rhetorical situation 461

45 Narrating 462 Sequencing 462 Including pertinent detail 466 Opening and closing with narratives 468 Considering the rhetorical situation 470

46 Taking Essay Exams 471 Considering the rhetorical situation 471 Analyzing essay questions 472 Some guidelines for taking essay exams 474

Contents

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xxxviii CONTENTS

Part 7 Doing Research 477

47 Getting a Start on Research 479 Establishing a schedule and getting started 479 Considering the rhetorical situation 480 Coming up with a topic 481 Consulting with librarians and doing preliminary research 482 Coming up with a research question 483 Drafting a tentative thesis 484 Creating a rough outline 485 Keeping a working bibliography 485 Keeping track of your sources 487

48 Finding Sources 489 Kinds of sources 489 Searching in academic libraries 493 Searching effectively using keywords 495 Reference works 498 Books / searching the library catalog 500 Ebooks / finding books online 501 Periodicals / searching indexes and databases 502 Images, sound, and more 504 Searching the web 505 Doing field research 506 Interviews / Observation / Questionnaires and surveys

49 Evaluating Sources 511 Considering whether a source might be useful 511 Reading sources with a critical eye 513 Comparing sources 514 A note of caution: false news 515

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50 Synthesizing Ideas 519 Reading for patterns and connections 519 Synthesizing ideas using notes 523 Synthesizing information to support your own ideas 525 Entering the conversation 525

51 Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing 526 Taking notes 526 Deciding whether to quote, paraphrase, or summarize 528 Quoting 528 Paraphrasing 531 Summarizing 534 Introducing source materials using signal phrases 535

52 Acknowledging Sources, Avoiding Plagiarism 539 Acknowledging sources 539 Avoiding plagiarism 542

53 Documentation 544 Understanding documentation styles 544 MLA style 546 APA style 546

54 MLA Style 548 A DIRECTORY TO MLA STYLE 548

MLA in-text documentation 551 Notes 557 MLA list of works cited 558

Documentation Maps

Article in a print journal 564 / Article in an online magazine 567 / Article

accessed through a database 568 / Print book 572 / Work on a website 578

Formatting a research paper 586 Sample research paper, MLA style 587

Contents

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xl CONTENTS

55 APA Style 597 A DIRECTORY TO APA STYLE 597

APA in-text documentation 600 Notes 605 APA reference list 605

Documentation Maps

Print book 607 / Work from a website 615 / Article in a journal with

DOI 617 / Article accessed through a database with DOI 618

Formatting a paper 624 Sample research paper, APA style 626

Part 8 Media / Design 637

56 Choosing Media 639 Print 640 Digital 640 Spoken 640 Multimedia 641 Considering the rhetorical situation 642

57 Designing Text 644 Considering the rhetorical situation 644 Some basic principles of design 645 Consistency / Simplicity / Balance / Color and contrast / Templates

Some elements of design 648 Font / Layout / Headings / White space

Evaluating a design 652

58 Using Visuals, Incorporating Sound 653 Considering the rhetorical situation 654 Using visuals 654 Incorporating sound 660

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xli

Adding links 661 Editing carefully — and ethically 662

59 Writing Online 664 Online genres 664 Email / Texts / Social media / Websites / Blogs / Wikis Managing online course work 669 Finding basic course information 670 Using learning management systems 670

60 Giving Presentations 673 Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address 673 Judy Davis, Ours Was a Dad . . . 674

KEY FEATURES 676

A clear structure / Signpost language / A suitable tone / Repetition and

parallel structure / Slides and other media

Considering the rhetorical situation 677

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING 678

Delivering a presentation 683

Part 9 Readings 685

61 Literacy Narratives 687 Matt de la PeÑa, Sometimes the “Tough Teen” Is Quietly Writing

Stories 688 Tanya Maria Barrientos, Se Habla Español 693 Amy Tan, Mother Tongue 697 Nicole Miles, Formation of a Caribbean Illustrator 704

Contents

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xlii

62 Textual Analyses 714 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women

Seldom Make History 715 Diana George, Changing the Face of Poverty 726 Isabelle Gill, Representation of Disney Princesses in the Media 738 William Safire, A Spirit Reborn 753

63 Reports 756 Jason Hasler, An Ancient Remedy Reexamined 757 Eleanor J. Bader, Homeless on Campus 764 Jonathan Kozol, Fremont High School 770 Alina Tugend, Multitasking Can Make You Lose . . .

Um . . . Focus 779

64 Arguments 784 Alex Weiss, Should Gamers Be Prosecuted for Virtual Stealing? 785 Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid? 789 Eva Derzic, In Defense of Writing Letters 804 Sarah Dzubay, An Outbreak of the Irrational 808

65 Evaluations 815 danah boyd, Wikipedia as a Site of Knowledge Production 816 Adrienne Green, The Boldness of Roxane Gay’s Hunger 823 Natalie Standiford, The Tenacity of Hope 828 Ashley Foster, Polyvore.com: An Evaluation of How Fashion Is

Consumed Online 832

66 Literary Analyses 837 Bailey Basinger, Tension, Contradiction, and Ambiguity: Gender Roles in

“A Rose for Emily” 838 Liz Moore, Abuse of an Unnamed Wife: Is She Familiar? 845

CONTENTS

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An Album of Literature William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily 851 Rita Dove, The First Book 861 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper 862 Langston Hughes, Theme for English B 879 Emily Dickinson, A word is dead 881

67 Memoirs 882 David Sedaris, Us and Them 883 Andre Dubus III, My Father Was a Writer 891 Malala Yousafzai, Who Is Malala? 900 Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman 906

68 Profiles 914 James Hamblin, Living Simply in a Dumpster 915 Ana Pacheco, Street Vendors: Harvest of Dreams 923 Steven Kurutz, Can a $300 Cooler Unite America? 928 Tatiana Schlossberg, At This Academy, the Curriculum Is Garbage 933

69 Proposals 939 Michael Chabon, Kids’ Stuff 940 Dennis Baron, Don’t Make English Official — Ban It Instead 949 Johnna S. Keller, The Politics of Stairs 953 Andreas Ghabrial, Alana hardy, and Playground Committee,

Proposal for Ogden Playground Project 959

70 Reflections 969 Dave Barry, Guys vs. Men 970 Geeta Kothari, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? 977 Vann R. Newkirk II, When Picture-Day Combs Don’t Actually

Comb 983 Beth Nguyen, American Stories Are Refugee Stories 987

Contents

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71 Texts That Mix Genres 991 Lynda Barry, Lost and Found 992 Anu Partanen, Finland’s School Success: What Americans

Keep Ignoring 999 Jeremy Dowsett, What My Bike Has Taught Me about White Privilege 1007 Sneha Saha, The Wedding Carriage 1013

Part 10 Handbook HB-1

Sentences HB-3 S-1 Elements of a Sentence HB-4 S-2 Sentence Fragments HB-7 S-3 Comma Splices, Fused Sentences HB-10 S-4 Verbs HB-12 S-5 Subject-Verb Agreement HB-24 S-6 Pronouns HB-29 S-7 Parallelism HB-35 S-8 Coordination, Subordination HB-37 S-9 Shifts HB-39

Language HB-41 L-1 Appropriate Words HB-42 L-2 Precise Words HB-44 L-3 Idioms HB-46 L-4 Words Often Confused HB-51 L-5 Prepositions HB-56 L-6 Unnecessary Words HB-58 L-7 Adjectives and Adverbs HB-60 L-8 Articles HB-63 L-9 Words for Building Common Ground HB-66 L-10 Englishes HB-68

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Punctuation / Mechanics HB-77 P-1 Commas HB-78 P-2 Semicolons HB-84 P-3 End Punctuation HB-85 P-4 Quotation Marks HB-87 P-5 Apostrophes HB-91 P-6 Other Punctuation HB-95 P-7 Hyphens HB-98 P-8 Capitalization HB-100 P-9 Italics HB-103 P-10 Abbreviations HB-105 P-11 Numbers HB-107

Acknowledgments A-1

Glossary / Index G / I-1

Revision Symbols

Directory to MLA Style

Directory to APA Style

Menu of Readings

Handbook Menu

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Advertising

Hannah Berry, The Fashion Industry: Free to Be an Individual 99 Ashley Foster, Polyvore.com: An Evaluation of How Fashion Is Consumed Online 832 Steven Kurutz, Can a $300 Cooler Unite America? 928

Business and Economics

Eleanor J. Bader, Homeless on Campus 764 Michael Chabon, Kids’ Stuff 940 Ashley Foster, Polyvore.com: An Evaluation of How Fashion Is Consumed Online 832 Diana George, Changing the Face of Poverty 726 James Hamblin, Living Simply in a Dumpster 915 Jonathan Kozol, Fremont High School 770 Steven Kurutz, Can a $300 Cooler Unite America? 928 Vann R. Newkirk II, When Picture-Day Combs Don’t Actually Comb 983 Ana Pacheco, Street Vendors: Harvest of Dreams 923 Anu Partanen, Finland’s School Success: What Americans Keep Ignoring 999 Tatiana Schlossberg, At This Academy, the Curriculum Is Garbage 933 Ernie Smith, A Brief History of the Modern-Day Straw, the World’s Most Wasteful Commodity 233

Childhood Memories

Tanya Maria Barrientos, Se Habla Español 693 Lynda Barry, Lost and Found 992 Rick Bragg, All Over but the Shoutin’ 224 Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman 906 Andre Dubus III, My Father Was a Writer 891

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Daniel Felsenfeld, Rebel Music 81 Ana-Jamileh Kassfy, Automotive Literacy 84 Geeta Kothari, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? 977 Edan Lepucki, Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them 256 Nicole Miles, Formation of a Caribbean Illustrator 704 Matt de la Peña, Sometimes the “Tough Teen” Is Quietly Writing Stories 688 David Sedaris, Us and Them 883 Amy Tan, Mother Tongue 697 Emily Vallowe, Write or Wrong Identity 75 Malala Yousafzai, Who Is Malala? 900

Class Issues

Eleanor J. Bader, Homeless on Campus 764 Bailey Basinger, Tension, Contradiction, and Ambiguity: Gender Roles in “A Rose for Emily” 838 Roy Peter Clark, Why It Worked: A Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech on Race 107 Diana George, Changing the Face of Poverty 726 Kelly Green, Researching Hunger and Poverty 192 Analisa Johnson, The Benefits of Prison Nursery Programs 627 Jonathan Kozol, Fremont High School 770 Ana Pacheco, Street Vendors: Harvest of Dreams 923

Creative Play and Gaming

Lynda Barry, Lost and Found 992 Michael Chabon, Kids’ Stuff 940 Daniel Felsenfeld, Rebel Music 81 Anu Partanen, Finland’s School Success: What Americans Keep Ignoring 999 Alex Weiss, Should Gamers Be Prosecuted for Stealing Virtual Objects? 785

Crime and Justice

Analisa Johnson, The Benefits of Prison Nursery Programs 627 Nicholas Kristof, Our Blind Spot about Guns 162 Alex Weiss, Should Gamers Be Prosecuted for Stealing Virtual Objects? 785

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Death and Dying

Rick Bragg, All Over but the Shoutin’ 224 Judy Davis, Ours Was a Dad . . . 674 Sneha Saha, The Wedding Carriage 1013 Natalie Standiford, The Tenacity of Hope 828

Digital and Social Media

danah boyd, Wikipedia as a Site of Knowledge Production 816 Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid? 789 Michaela Cullington, Does Texting Affect Writing? 131 Eva Derzic, In Defense of Writing Letters 804 Ashley Foster, Polyvore.com: An Evaluation of How Fashion Is Consumed Online 832 Alina Tugend, Multitasking Can Make You Lose . . . Um . . . Focus 779 Alex Weiss, Should Gamers Be Prosecuted for Stealing Virtual Objects? 785 Molly Worthen, U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This 165

Education and Schooling

Lynda Barry, Lost and Found 992 danah boyd, Wikipedia as a Site of Knowledge Production 816 Michaela Cullington, Does Texting Affect Writing? 131 Daniel Felsenfeld, Rebel Music 81 Andreas Ghabrial, Alana Hardy, and Playground Committee, Proposal for Ogden Playground Project 959 Michael Granof, Course Requirement: Extortion 246 Jonathan Kozol, Fremont High School 770 Anu Partanen, Finland’s School Success: What Americans Keep Ignoring 999 Matt de la Peña, Sometimes the “Tough Teen” Is Quietly Writing Stories 688 Anna Quindlen, Write for Your Life 280 Tatiana Schlossberg, At This Academy, the Curriculum Is Garbage 933 Emily Vallowe, Write or Wrong Identity 75 Molly Worthen, U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This 165

Thematic Guide to the Readings

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Entertainment and the Arts

Lynda Barry, Lost and Found 992 Bailey Basinger, Tension, Contradiction, and Ambiguity: Gender Roles in “A Rose for Emily” 838 Michael Benton, Mark Dolan, Rebecca Zisch, Teen Film$ 190 Cameron Carroll, Zombie Film Scholarship: A Review of the Literature 198 Michael Chabon, Kids’ Stuff 940 Andre Dubus III, My Father Was a Writer 891 Daniel Felsenfeld, Rebel Music 81 Diana George, Changing the Face of Poverty 726 Isabelle Gill, Representation of Disney Princesses in the Media 738 Michael Granof, Course Requirement: Extortion 246 Matthew Miller, Frost’s Broken Roads 212 Liz Moore, Abuse of an Unnamed Wife: Is She Familiar? 845 Anu Partanen, Finland’s School Success: What Americans Keep Ignoring 999 Anna Quindlen, Write for Your Life 280 Natalie Standiford, The Tenacity of Hope 828 William Thorne, Movie Review: The Circle 203 Alex Weiss, Should Gamers Be Prosecuted for Stealing Virtual Objects? 785

Ethics

Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman 906 Jeremy Dowsett, What My Bike Has Taught Me about White Privilege 1007 Sarah Dzubay, An Outbreak of the Irrational 808 Diana George, Changing the Face of Poverty 726 James Hamblin, Living Simply in a Dumpster 915 Johnna S. Keller, The Politics of Stairs 953 Jonathan Kozol, Fremont High School 770 Nicholas Kristof, Our Blind Spot about Guns 162 Joanna MacKay, Organ Sales Will Save Lives 157 Liz Moore, Abuse of an Unnamed Wife: Is She Familiar? 845 David Sedaris, Us and Them 883 Alex Weiss, Should Gamers Be Prosecuted for Stealing Virtual Objects? 785 Molly Worthen, U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This 165

THEMATIC GUIDE TO THE READINGS

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Food

Geeta Kothari, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? 977 Frankie Schembri, Edible Magic 139 Ernie Smith, A Brief History of the Modern-Day Straw, the World’s Most Wasteful Commodity 233

Gender

Dave Barry, Guys vs. Men 970 Bailey Basinger, Tension, Contradiction, and Ambiguity: Gender Roles in “A Rose for Emily” 838 Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman 906 Andre Dubus III, My Father Was a Writer 891 Isabelle Gill, Representation of Disney Princesses in the Media 738 Edan Lepucki, Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them 256 Matt de la Peña, Sometimes the “Tough Teen” Is Quietly Writing Stories 688 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History 715 Malala Yousafzai, Who Is Malala? 900

Government and Politics

Danielle Allen, Our Declaration 102 Roy Peter Clark, Why It Worked: A Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech on Race 107 Sarah Dzubay, An Outbreak of the Irrational 808 Andreas Ghabrial, Alana Hardy, and Playground Committee, Proposal for Ogden Playground Project 959 Jonathan Kozol, Fremont High School 770 Beth Nguyen, American Stories Are Refugee Stories 987 William Safire, A Spirit Reborn 753 Tatiana Schlossberg, At This Academy, the Curriculum Is Garbage 933

History

Danielle Allen, Our Declaration 102 Michael Chabon, Kids’ Stuff 940 Roy Peter Clark, Why It Worked: A Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech on Race 107

Thematic Guide to the Readings

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Andre Dubus III, My Father Was a Writer 891 Daniel Felsenfeld, Rebel Music 81 William Safire, A Spirit Reborn 753 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History 715

Home and Family

Tanya Maria Barrientos, Se Habla Español 693 Lynda Barry, Lost and Found 992 Rick Bragg, All Over but the Shoutin’ 224 Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman 906 Andre Dubus III, My Father Was a Writer 891 James Hamblin, Living Simply in a Dumpster 915 Ana-Jamileh Kassfy, Automotive Literacy 84 Geeta Kothari, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? 977 Edan Lepucki, Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them 256 Matt de la Peña, Sometimes the “Tough Teen” Is Quietly Writing Stories 688 Sneha Saha, The Wedding Carriage 1013 David Sedaris, Us and Them 883 Amy Tan, Mother Tongue 697 Malala Yousafzai, Who Is Malala? 900

Humor and Satire

Dennis Baron, Don’t Make English Official — Ban It Instead 949 Dave Barry, Guys vs. Men 970 Lynda Barry, Lost and Found 992 Michael Chabon, Kids’ Stuff 940 William Safire, A Spirit Reborn 753 David Sedaris, Us and Them 883

Identity

Tanya Maria Barrientos, Se Habla Español 693 Dave Barry, Guys vs. Men 970 Lynda Barry, Lost and Found 992 Bailey Basinger, Tension, Contradiction, and Ambiguity: Gender Roles in “A Rose for Emily” 838

THEMATIC GUIDE TO THE READINGS

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Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman 906 Jeremy Dowsett, What My Bike Has Taught Me about White Privilege 1007 Andre Dubus III, My Father Was a Writer 891 Daniel Felsenfeld, Rebel Music 81 Ana-Jamileh Kassfy, Automotive Literacy 84 Geeta Kothari, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? 977 Edan Lepucki, Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them 256 Nicole Miles, Formation of a Caribbean Illustrator 704 Vann R. Newkirk II, When Picture-Day Combs Don’t Actually Comb 983 Beth Nguyen, American Stories Are Refugee Stories 987 Ana Pacheco, Street Vendors: Harvest of Dreams 923 Matt de la Peña, Sometimes the “Tough Teen” Is Quietly Writing Stories 688 Tatiana Schlossberg, At This Academy, the Curriculum Is Garbage 933 Amy Tan, Mother Tongue 697 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History 715 Emily Vallowe, Write or Wrong Identity 75 Malala Yousafzai, Who Is Malala? 900

Immigration

Tanya Maria Barrientos, Se Habla Español 693 Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman 906 Geeta Kothari, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? 977 Beth Nguyen, American Stories Are Refugee Stories 987 Ana Pacheco, Street Vendors: Harvest of Dreams 923 Amy Tan, Mother Tongue 697

Language and Literacy

Dennis Baron, Don’t Make English Official — Ban It Instead 949 Tanya Maria Barrientos, Se Habla Español 693 Lynda Barry, Lost and Found 992 Rick Bragg, All Over but the Shoutin’ 224 Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid? 789 Roy Peter Clark, Why It Worked: A Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech on Race 107 Michaela Cullington, Does Texting Affect Writing? 131

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Eva Derzic, In Defense of Writing Letters 804 Andre Dubus III, My Father Was a Writer 891 Ana-Jamileh Kassfy, Automotive Literacy 84 Johnna S. Keller, The Politics of Stairs 953 Nicole Miles, Formation of a Caribbean Illustrator 704 Matt de la Peña, Sometimes the “Tough Teen” Is Quietly Writing Stories 688 Anna Quindlen, Write for Your Life 280 William Safire, A Spirit Reborn 753 Natalie Standiford, The Tenacity of Hope 828 Amy Tan, Mother Tongue 697 Emily Vallowe, Write or Wrong Identity 75 Molly Worthen, U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This 165

Nature and the Environment

James Hamblin, Living Simply in a Dumpster 915 Jason Hasler, An Ancient Remedy Reexamined 757 Ernie Smith, A Brief History of the Modern-Day Straw, the World’s Most Wasteful Commodity 233

Race and Ethnicity

Tanya Maria Barrientos, Se Habla Español 693 Roy Peter Clark, Why It Worked: A Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech on Race 107 Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman 906 Jeremy Dowsett, What My Bike Has Taught Me about White Privilege 1007 Geeta Kothari, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? 977 Jonathan Kozol, Fremont High School 770 Nicole Miles, Formation of a Caribbean Illustrator 704 Vann R. Newkirk II, When Picture-Day Combs Don’t Actually Comb 983 Beth Nguyen, American Stories Are Refugee Stories 987 Ana Pacheco, Street Vendors: Harvest of Dreams 923 Amy Tan, Mother Tongue 697 Malala Yousafzai, Who Is Malala? 900 Molly Worthen, U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This 165

THEMATIC GUIDE TO THE READINGS

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Science and Technology

Nicholas Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid? 789 Michaela Cullington, Does Texting Affect Writing? 131 Sarah Dzubay, An Outbreak of the Irrational 808 Jason Hasler, An Ancient Remedy Reexamined 757 Johnna S. Keller, The Politics of Stairs 953 Joanna MacKay, Organ Sales Will Save Lives 157 Frankie Schembri, Edible Magic 139 Alina Tugend, Multitasking Can Make You Lose . . . Um . . . Focus 779 Alex Weiss, Should Gamers Be Prosecuted for Stealing Virtual Objects? 785

Work

Andre Dubus III, My Father Was a Writer 891 Ana-Jamileh Kassfy, Automotive Literacy 84 Anu Partanen, Finland’s School Success: What Americans Keep Ignoring 999 Sneha Saha, The Wedding Carriage 1013 Tatiana Schlossberg, At This Academy, the Curriculum Is Garbage 933 Molly Worthen, U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This 165

World Cultures and Global Issues

Geeta Kothari, If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I? 977 Joanna MacKay, Organ Sales Will Save Lives 157 Ana Pacheco, Street Vendors: Harvest of Dreams 923 Anu Partanen, Finland’s School Success: What Americans Keep Ignoring 999 Malala Yousafzai, Who Is Malala? 900

Thematic Guide to the Readings

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part 1part 1

Academic Literacies

Whenever we enter a new community — start a new

job, move to a new town, join a new club — there are

certain things we need to learn. The same is true upon

entering the academic world. We need to be able to

READ and WRITE in certain ways. We’re routinely called on to SUMMARIZE something we’ve heard or

read and to RESPOND in some way. And to succeed, we need to develop certain HABITS OF MIND — everyday

things such as asking questions and being persistent.

The following chapters provide guidelines to help you

develop these fundamental academic literacies — and

know what’s expected of you in academic communities.

1

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2 READING IN ACADEMIC CONTEXTS 10

3 SUMMARIZING AND RESPONDING 33

4 DEVELOPING ACADEMIC HABITS OF MIND 45

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Writing in Academic Contexts

Write an essay arguing whether genes or environment do more to deter- mine people’s intelligence. Research and write a report on the environmen- tal effects of electricity-generating windmills. Work with a team to write a proposal and create a multimedia presentation for a sales campaign. Whatever you’re studying, you’re surely going to be doing a lot of writing, in classes from various disciplines — the above assignments, for example, are from psychology, environmental science, and marketing. Academic writing can serve a number of different purposes — to argue for what you think about a topic and why, to report on what’s known about an issue, to propose a solution for some problem, and so on. Whatever your topics or purposes, all academic writing follows certain conventions, ones you’ll need to master in order to join the conversations going on across campus. This chapter describes what’s expected of academic writing — and of academic writers.

What’s Expected of Academic Writing

Evidence that you’ve considered the subject thoughtfully. Whether you’re composing a report, an argument, or some other kind of writing, you need to demonstrate that you’ve thought seriously about the topic and done any necessary research. You can use various ways to show that you’ve considered the subject carefully, from citing authoritative sources to incorporating information you learned in class to pointing out connec- tions among ideas.

▲ 157–84 131–56

246–55

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ACADEMIC LITERACIES4

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An indication of why your topic matters. You need to help your read- ers understand why your topic is worth exploring and why your writing is worth reading. Even if you are writing in response to an assigned topic, you can better make your point and achieve your purpose by showing your readers why your topic is important and why they should care about it. For example, in the prologue to Our Declaration, political philosopher Danielle Allen explains why her topic, the Declaration of Independence, is worth writing about:

The Declaration of Independence matters because it helps us see that we cannot have freedom without equality. It is out of an egalitarian com- mitment that a people grows — a people that is capable of protecting us all collectively, and each of us individually, from domination. If the Declaration can stake a claim to freedom, it is only because it is so clear- eyed about the fact that the people’s strength resides in its equality. The Declaration also conveys another lesson of paramount impor- tance. It is this: language is one of the most potent resources each of us has for achieving our own political empowerment. The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence grasped the power of words. This reveals itself in the laborious processes by which they brought the Declaration, and their revolution, into being. It shows itself forcefully, of course, in the text’s own eloquence.

By explaining that the topic matters because freedom and equality matter — and language gives us the means for empowering ourselves — Allen gives readers reason to read her careful analysis.

A response to what others have said. Whatever your topic, it’s unlikely that you’ll be the first one to write about it. And if, as this chapter assumes, all academic writing is part of a larger conversation, you are in a way add- ing your own voice to that conversation. One good way of doing that is to present your ideas as a response to what others have said about your topic — to begin by quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing what others have said and then to agree, disagree, or both. For example, in an essay arguing that organ sales will save lives, MIT student Joanna MacKay says, “Some agree with Pope John Paul II that the selling of organs is morally wrong and violates ‘the dignity of the human

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1 / Writing in Academic Contexts 5

person.’ ” But she then responds — and disagrees, arguing that “the morals we hold are not absolute truths” and that “peasants of third-world coun- tries” might not agree with the pope.

A clear, appropriately qualified thesis. When you write in an academic context, you’re expected to state your main point explicitly, often in a thesis statement. Joanna MacKay states her thesis clearly in her essay “Organ Sales Will Save Lives”: “Governments should not ban the sale of human organs; they should regulate it.” Often you’ll need to qualify your thesis statement to acknowledge that the subject is complicated and there may be more than one way of seeing it or exceptions to the generalization you’re making about it. Here, for example, is a qualified thesis, from an essay evaluating the movie Juno by Ali Heinekamp, a student at Wright State University: “Although the situations Juno’s characters find themselves in and their dialogue may be criticized as unrealistic, the film, written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman, successfully portrays the emo- tions of a teen being shoved into maturity way too fast.” Heinekamp makes a claim that Juno achieves its main goal, while acknowledging at the begin- ning of the sentence that the film may be flawed.

Good reasons supported by evidence. You need to provide good reasons for your thesis and evidence to support those reasons. For example, Joanna MacKay offers several reasons why sales of human kidneys should be legalized: there is a surplus of kidneys, the risk to the donor is not great, and legalization would allow the trade in kidneys to be regulated. Evidence to support your reasons sometimes comes from your own experience but more often from published research and scholarship, research you do your- self, or firsthand accounts by others. Compared with other kinds of writing, academic writing is generally expected to be more objective and less emotional. You may find Romeo and Juliet deeply moving or cry when you watch The Fault in Our Stars — but when you write about the play or the film for a class, you must do so using evidence from the text to support your thesis. You may find someone’s ideas deeply offensive, but you should respond to them with reason rather than with emotional appeals or personal attacks.

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Acknowledgment of multiple perspectives. Debates and arguments in popular media are often framed in “pro/con” terms, as if there were only two sides to any given issue. Once you begin seriously studying a topic, though, you’re likely to find that there are several sides and that each of them deserves serious consideration. In your academic writing, you need to represent fairly the range of perspectives on your topic — to explore three, four, or more positions on it as you research and write. In her report, “Does Texting Affect Writing?,” Marywood University student Michaela Cullington, for example, examines texting from several points of view: teachers’ impressions of the influence of texting on student writ- ing, the results of several research studies, and her own survey research.

A confident, authoritative stance. If one goal of academic writing is to contribute to a larger conversation, your tone should convey confidence and establish your authority to write about your subject. Ways to achieve such a tone include using active verbs (“X claims” rather than “it seems”), avoiding such phrases as “in my opinion” and “I think,” and writing in a straightforward, direct style. Your writing should send the message that you’ve done the research, analysis, and thinking and know what you’re talking about. For example, here is the final paragraph of Michaela Cul- lington’s essay on texting and writing:

On the basis of my own research, expert research, and personal obser- vations, I can confidently state that texting is not interfering with students’ use of standard written English and has no effect on their writing abilities in general. It is interesting to look at the dynamics of the arguments over these issues. Teachers and parents who claim that they are seeing a decline in the writing abilities of their students and children mainly support the negative-impact argument. Other teach- ers and researchers suggest that texting provides a way for teens to practice writing in a casual setting and thus helps prepare them to write formally. Experts and students themselves, however, report that they see no effect, positive or negative. Anecdotal experiences should not overshadow the actual evidence.

Cullington’s use of simple, declarative sentences (“Other teachers and researchers suggest . . .”; “Anecdotal experiences should not overshadow . . .”)

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and her straightforward summary of the arguments surrounding texting, along with her strong, unequivocal ending (“texting is not interfering with students’ use of standard written English”), lend her writing a confident tone. Her stance sends the message that she’s done the research and knows what she’s talking about.

Carefully documented sources. Clearly acknowledging sources and doc- umenting them carefully and correctly is a basic requirement of academic writing. When you use the words or ideas of others — including visuals, video, or audio — those sources must be documented in the text and in a works-cited or references list at the end. (If you’re writing something that will appear online, you may also refer readers to your sources by using hyperlinks in the text; ask your instructor if you need to include a list of references or works cited as well.)

Careful attention to correctness. Whether you’re writing something for- mal or informal, in an essay or an email, you should always write in com- plete sentences, use appropriate capitalization and punctuation, and check that your spelling is correct. In general, academic writing is no place for colloquial language, slang, or texting abbreviations. If you’re quoting some- one, you can reproduce that person’s writing or speech exactly, but in your own writing you try hard to be correct — and always proofread carefully.

What’s Expected of College Writers: The WPA Outcomes

Writing is not a multiple-choice test; it doesn’t have right and wrong answers that are easily graded. Instead, your readers, whether they’re teachers or anyone else, are likely to read your writing with various ques- tions in mind: does it make sense, does it meet the demands of the assign- ment, is the grammar correct, to name just a few of the things readers may look for. Different readers may notice different things, so sometimes it may seem to you that their response — and your grade — is unpredictable. It should be good to know, then, that writing teachers across the nation have come to some agreement on certain “outcomes,” what college stu-

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dents should know and be able to do by the time they finish a first-year writing course. These outcomes have been defined by the National Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA). Here’s a brief summary of these outcomes and how The Norton Field Guide can help you meet them:

Knowledge of Rhetoric

• Understand the rhetorical situation of texts that you read and write. See Chapters 5–9 and the many prompts for Considering the Rhetorical Situation throughout the book.

• Read and write texts in a number of different genres, and understand how your purpose may influence your writing. See Chapters 10–22 for guide- lines on writing in thirteen genres and Chapter 23 on mixing genres.

• Adjust your voice, tone, level of formality, design, and medium as is neces- sary and appropriate. See Chapter 8 on stance and tone and Chapter 9 for help thinking about medium and design.

• Choose the media that will best suit your audience, purpose, and the rest of your rhetorical situation. See Chapters 9 and 56.

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing

• Read and write to inquire, learn, think critically, and communicate. See Chapters 1 and 2 on academic writing and reading, and Chapter 27 on writing as inquiry. Chapters 10–23 provide genre-specific prompts to help you think critically about a draft.

• Read for content, argumentative strategies, and rhetorical effectiveness. Chapter 7 provides guidance on reading texts with a critical eye, Chap- ter 11 teaches how to analyze a text, and Chapter 49 shows how to evaluate sources.

• Find and evaluate popular and scholarly sources. Chapter 48 teaches how to use databases and other methods to find sources, and Chapter 49 shows how to evaluate the sources you find.

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• Use sources in various ways to support your ideas. Chapter 38 suggests strategies for supporting your ideas, and Chapter 51 shows how to incor- porate ideas from sources into your writing to support your ideas.

Processes

• Use writing processes to compose texts and explore ideas in various media. Part 5 covers all stages of the processes writers use, from generating ideas and text to drafting, getting response and revising, and editing and proofreading. Each of the thirteen genre chapters (10–22) includes a guide that leads you through the process of writing in that genre.

• Collaborate with others on your own writing and on group tasks. Chapter 28 offers guidelines for working with others, Chapter 32 provides general prompts for getting and giving response , and Chapters 10–23 provide genre-specific prompts for reading a draft with a critical eye.

• Reflect on your own writing processes. Chapters 10–23 provide genre- specific questions to help you take stock of your work, and Chapter 31 offers guidance in thinking about your own writing process. Chapter 34 provides prompts to help you reflect on a writing portfolio.

Knowledge of Conventions

• Use correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Chapter 33 provides tips to help you edit and proofread for your writing. Chapters 10–23 offer genre-specific advice for editing and proofreading.

• Understand and use genre conventions and formats in your writing. Chap- ter 7 provides an overview of genres and how to think about them. Part 3 covers thirteen genres, describing the key features and conven- tions of each one.

• Understand intellectual property and document sources appropriately. Chapter 52 offers guidance on the ethical use of sources, Chapter 53 provides an overview of documentation styles, and Chapters 54 and 55 provide templates for documenting in MLA and APA styles.

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Reading in Academic Contexts

We read newspapers to know about the events of the day. We read text- books to learn about history, chemistry, and other academic topics — and other academic sources to do research and develop arguments. We read tweets and blogs to follow (and participate in) conversations about issues that interest us. And as writers, we read our own writing to make sure it says what we mean it to say and proofread our final drafts to make sure they say it correctly. In other words, we read many kinds of texts for many different purposes. This chapter offers a number of strategies for various kinds of reading you do in academic contexts.

TAKING STOCK OF YOUR READING

One way to become a better reader is to understand your reading process; if you know what you do when you read, you’re in a position to decide what you need to change or improve. Consider the answers to the fol- lowing questions:

• What do you read for pleasure? for work? for school? Consider all the sorts of reading you do: books, magazines, and newspapers, websites, Facebook, texts, blogs, product instructions.

• When you’re facing a reading assignment, what do you do? Do you do certain things to get comfortable? Do you play music or seek quiet? Do you plan your reading time or set reading goals for yourself? Do you flip through or skim the text before settling down to read it, or do you start at the beginning and work through it?

• When you begin to read something for an assignment, do you make sure you understand the purpose of the assignment — why you must

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read this text? Do you ever ask your instructor (or whoever else assigned the reading) what its purpose is?

• How do you motivate yourself to read material you don’t have any interest in? How do you deal with boredom while reading?

• Does your mind wander? If you realize that you haven’t been paying attention and don’t know what you just read, what do you do?

• Do you ever highlight, underline, or annotate text as you read? Do you take notes? If so, what do you mark or write down? Why?

• When you read text you don’t understand, what do you do?

• As you anticipate and read an assigned text, what attitudes or feelings do you typically have? If they differ from reading to reading, why do they?

• What do you do when you’ve finished reading an assigned text? Write out notes? Think about what you’ve just read? Move on to the next task? Something else?

• How well do your reading processes work for you, both in school and otherwise? What would you like to change? What can you do to change?

The rest of this chapter offers advice and strategies that you may find helpful as you work to improve your reading skills.

READING STRATEGICALLY

Academic reading is challenging because it makes several demands on you at once. Textbooks present new vocabulary and new concepts, and picking out the main ideas can be difficult. Scholarly articles present content and arguments you need to understand, but they often assume that readers already know key concepts and vocabulary and so don’t generally provide background information. As you read more texts in an academic field and begin to participate in its conversations, the reading will become easier, but in the meantime you can develop strategies that will help you read effectively.

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Thinking about What You Want to Learn

To learn anything, we need to place new information into the context of what we already know. For example, to understand photosynthesis, we need to already know something about plants, energy, and oxygen, among other things. To learn a new language, we draw on similarities and differ- ences between it and any other languages we know. A method of bringing to conscious attention our current knowledge on a topic and of helping us articulate our purposes for reading is a list-making process called KWL+. To use it, create a table with three columns:

Before you begin reading a text, list in the “K” column what you already know about the topic. Brainstorm ideas, and list terms or phrases that come to mind. Then group them into categories. Also before reading, or after reading the first few paragraphs, list in the “W” column questions you have that you expect, want, or hope to be answered as you read. Number or reorder the questions by their importance to you. Then, as you read the text or afterward, list in the “L” column what you learned from the text. Compare your “L” list with your “W” list to see what you still want or need to know (the “+”) — and what you learned that you didn’t expect.

Previewing the Text

It’s usually a good idea to start by skimming a text — read the title and subtitle, any headings, the first and last paragraphs, the first sentences

K: What I Know W: What I Want to Know L: What I Learned

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of all the other paragraphs. Study any illustrations and other visuals. Your goal is to get a sense of where the text is heading. At this point, don’t stop to look up unfamiliar words; just mark them in some way to look up later.

Adjusting Your Reading Speed to Different Texts

Different texts require different kinds of effort. Some that are simple and straightforward can be skimmed fairly quickly. With academic texts, though, you usually need to read more slowly and carefully, matching the pace of your reading to the difficulty of the text. You’ll likely need to skim the text for an overview of the basic ideas and then go back to read it closely. And then you may need to read it yet again. (But do try always to read quickly enough to focus on the meanings of sentences and paragraphs, not just individual words.) With visual texts, too, you’ll often need to look at them several times, moving from gaining an overall impression to closely examining the structure, layout, and other visual features — and exploring how those features relate to any accompanying verbal text.

Looking for Organizational Cues

As you read, look for cues that signal the way the text’s ideas are organized and how each part relates to the ones around it.

The introductory paragraph and thesis often offer a preview of the topics to be discussed and the order in which they will be addressed. Here, for example, is a typical thesis statement for a report: Types of prisons in the United States include minimum and medium security, close security, maximum security, and supermax. The report that follows should explain each type of prison in the order stated in the thesis.

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Transitions help guide readers in following the direction of the writer’s thinking from idea to idea. For example, “however” indicates an idea that contradicts or limits what has just been said, while “furthermore” indicates one that adds to or supports it.

Headings identify a text’s major and minor sections, by means of both the headings’ content and their design.

Thinking about Your Initial Response

Some readers find it helps to make brief notes about their first response to a text, noting their reaction and thinking a little about why they reacted as they did.

What are your initial reactions? Describe both your intellectual reaction and any emotional reaction, and identify places in the text that caused you to react as you did. An intellectual reaction might consist of an evalu- ation (“I disagree with this position because . . .”), a connection (“This idea reminds me of . . .”), or an elaboration (“Another example of this point is . . .”). An emotional reaction could include approval or disapproval (“YES! This is exactly right!” “NO! This is so wrong!”), an expression of feeling (“This passage makes me so sad”), or one of appreciation (“This is said so beautifully”). If you had no particular reaction, note that, too.

What accounts for your reactions? Are they rooted in personal experi- ences? aspects of your personality? positions you hold on an issue? As much as possible, you want to keep your opinions from interfering with your understanding of what you’re reading, so it’s important to try to identify those opinions up front.

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Dealing with Difficult Texts

Let’s face it: some texts are difficult. You may have no interest in the subject matter, or lack background knowledge or vocabulary necessary for understanding the text, or simply not have a clear sense of why you have to read the text at all. Whatever the reason, reading such texts can be a challenge. Here are some tips for dealing with them:

Look for something familiar. Texts often seem difficult or boring because we don’t know enough about the topic or about the larger conversation surrounding it to read them effectively. By skimming the headings, the abstract or introduction, and the conclusion, you may find something that relates to something you already know or are at least interested in — and being aware of that prior knowledge can help you see how this new mate- rial relates to it.

Look for “landmarks.” Reading a challenging academic text the first time through can be like driving to an unfamiliar destination on roads you’ve never traveled: you don’t know where you’re headed, you don’t recognize anything along the way, and you’re not sure how long getting there will take. As you drive the route again, though, you see landmarks along the way that help you know where you’re going. The same goes for reading a difficult text: sometimes you need to get through it once just to get some idea of what it’s about. On the second reading, now that you have “driven the route,” look for the ways that the parts of the text relate to one another, to other texts or course information, or to other knowledge you have.

Monitor your understanding. You may have had the experience of read- ing a text and suddenly realizing that you have no idea what you just read. Being able to monitor your reading — to sense when you aren’t understand-

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ing the text and need to reread, focus your attention, look up unfamiliar terms, take some notes, or take a break — can make you a more efficient and better reader. Keep these questions in mind as you read: What is my purpose for reading this text? Am I understanding it? Does it make sense? Should I slow down, reread, annotate? skim ahead and then come back? pause to reflect?

Be persistent. Research shows that many students respond to difficult texts by assuming they’re “too dumb to get it” — and quit reading. Success- ful students, on the other hand, report that if they keep at a text, they will come to understand it. Some of them even see difficult texts as challenges: “I’m going to keep working on this until I make sense of it.” Remember that reading is an active process, and the more you work at it the more successful you will be.

Annotating

Many readers find it helps to annotate as they read: highlighting keywords, phrases, sentences; connecting ideas with lines or symbols; writing com- ments or questions in the margin or on sticky notes; circling new words so you can look up the definitions later; noting anything that seems note- worthy or questionable. Annotating forces you to read for more than just the surface meaning. Especially when you are going to be writing about or responding to a text, annotating creates a record of things you may want to refer to. Annotate as if you’re having a conversation with the author, someone you take seriously but whose words you do not accept without question. Put your part of the conversation in the margin, asking questions, talking back: “What’s this mean?” “So what?” “Says who?” “Where’s evidence?” “Yes!” “Whoa!” or even A or K or texting shorthand like LOL or INTRSTN. If you’re reading a text online, you may be able to copy it and annotate it electronically. If so, make your annotations a different color from the text itself.

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What you annotate depends on your purpose , or what you’re most interested in. If you’re analyzing a text that makes an explicit argu- ment, you would probably underline the thesis statement and then the reasons and evidence that support that statement. It might help to restate those ideas in your own words in the margins — in order to under- stand them, you need to put them in your own words! If you are trying to identify patterns , you might highlight each pattern in a different color or mark it with a sticky note and write any questions or notes about it in that color. You might annotate a visual text by circling and identifying important parts of the image. There are some texts that you cannot annotate, of course — library books, some materials you read on the web, and so on. Then you will need to use sticky notes or make notes elsewhere, and you might find it useful to keep a reading log for this purpose.

Coding

You may also find it useful to record your thoughts as you read by using a coding system — for example, using “X” to indicate passages that con- tradict your assumptions, or “?” for ones that puzzle you. You can make up your own coding system, of course, but you could start with this one*:

✔ Confirms what you thought

X Contradicts what you thought

? Puzzles you

?? Confuses you

! Surprises you

✩ Strikes you as important

➔ Is new or interesting to you You might also circle new words that you’ll want to look up later and highlight or underline key phrases.

55–56

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400–401

401–8

23–25

*Adapted from Harvey Daniels and Steven Zemelman, Subjects Matter: Every Teacher’s Guide to Content-Area Reading.

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A Sample Annotated Text

Here is an excerpt from Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, a book by Har- vard professor Michael J. Sandel, annotated by a writer who was doing research for a report on the awarding of military medals:

What Wounds Deserve the Purple Heart?

On some issues, questions of virtue and honor are too obvious to deny. Consider the recent debate over who should qualify for the Purple Heart. Since 1932, the U.S. military has awarded the medal to soldiers wounded or killed in battle by enemy action. In addition to the honor, the medal entitles recipients to special privileges in veterans’ hospitals. Since the beginning of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, growing numbers of veterans have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and treated for the condition. Symptoms include recur- ring nightmares, severe depression, and suicide. At least three hundred thousand veterans reportedly suffer from traumatic stress or major depression. Advocates for these veterans have proposed that they, too, should qualify for the Purple Heart. Since psychological injuries can be at least as debilitating as physical ones, they argue, soldiers who suffer these wounds should receive the medal. After a Pentagon advisory group studied the question, the Penta- gon announced, in 2009, that the Purple Heart would be reserved for soldiers with physical injuries. Veterans suffering from mental disorders and psychological trauma would not be eligible, even though they qualify for government-supported medical treatment and disability payments. The Pentagon offered two reasons for its decision: traumatic stress disorders are not intentionally caused by enemy action, and they are difficult to diagnose objectively. Did the Pentagon make the right decision? Taken by themselves, its reasons are unconvincing. In the Iraq War, one of the most com- mon injuries recognized with the Purple Heart has been a punctured eardrum, caused by explosions at close range. But unlike bullets and bombs, such explosions are not a deliberate enemy tactic intended to injure or kill; they are (like traumatic stress) a damaging side effect of battlefield action. And while traumatic disorders may be more difficult

•✔

PTSD increasingly common among veterans.

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Argument: Vets with PTSD should be eligible for PH because psych. injuries are as serious as physical.

• No PH for PTSD vets? Seems unfair!

• Argument: PTSD is like punctured eardrums, which do get the PH.

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to diagnose than a broken limb, the injury they inflict can be more severe and long-lasting. As the wider debate about the Purple Heart revealed, the real issue is about the meaning of the medal and the virtues it honors. What, then, are the relevant virtues? Unlike other military medals, the Purple Heart honors sacrifice, not bravery. It requires no heroic act, only an injury inflicted by the enemy. The question is what kind of injury should count. A veteran’s group called the Military Order of the Purple Heart opposed awarding the medal for psychological injuries, claiming that doing so would “debase” the honor. A spokesman for the group stated that “shedding blood” should be an essential qualification. He didn’t explain why bloodless injuries shouldn’t count. But Tyler E. Boudreau, a former Marine captain who favors including psychological injuries, offers a compelling analysis of the dispute. He attributes the opposition to a deep-seated attitude in the military that views post-traumatic stress as a kind of weakness. “The same culture that demands tough-mindedness also encourages skepticism toward the suggestion that the violence of war can hurt the healthiest of minds . . . Sadly, as long as our military culture bears at least a quiet contempt for the psychological wounds of war, it is unlikely those veterans will ever see a Purple Heart.” So the debate over  the Purple Heart is more than a medical or clinical dispute about how to determine the veracity of injury. At the heart of the disagreement are rival conceptions of moral character and military valor. Those who insist that only bleeding wounds should count believe that post-traumatic stress reflects a weakness of charac- ter unworthy of honor. Those who believe that psychological wounds should qualify argue that veterans suffering long-term trauma and severe depression have sacrificed for their country as surely, and as honorably, as those who’ve lost a limb. The dispute over the Purple Heart illustrates the moral logic of Aristotle’s theory of justice. We can’t determine who deserves a military medal without asking what virtues the medal properly honors. And to answer that question, we have to assess competing conceptions of character and sacrifice.

— Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?

•

PH “honors sacrifice, not bravery.” Injury enough. So what kind of injury?

• Wow: one vet’s group insists that for PH, soldier must bleed!

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Argument based on different ideas about what counts as a military virtue.

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Summarizing

Writing a summary, boiling down a text to its main ideas, can help you understand it. To do so, you need to identify which ideas in the text are crucial to its meaning. Then you put those crucial ideas into your own words, creating a brief version that accurately sums up the text. Here, for example, is a summary of Sandel’s analysis of the Purple Heart debate:

In “What Wounds Deserve the Purple Heart?,” Harvard professor Michael J. Sandel explores the debate over eligibility for the Purple Heart, the medal given to soldiers who die or are wounded in battle. Some argue that soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder should qualify for the medal because psychological injuries are as seri- ous as physical ones. However, the military disagrees, since PTSD injuries are not “intentionally caused by enemy action” and are hard to diag- nose. Sandel observes that the dispute centers on how “character” and “sacrifice” are defined. Those who insist that soldiers must have had physical wounds to be eligible for the Purple Heart see psychological wounds as reflecting “weakness of character,” while others argue that veterans with PTSD and other psychological traumas have sacrificed honorably for their country.

READING CRITICALLY

When we read critically, we apply our analytical skills in order to engage with a text to determine not only what a text says but also what it means and how it works. The following strategies can help you read texts critically.

Believing and Doubting

One way to develop a response to a text is to play the believing and doubting game, sometimes called reading with and against the grain. Your goal is to list or freewrite notes as you read, writing out as many 332–33

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reasons as you can think of for believing what the writer says (reading with the grain) and then as many as you can for doubting it (reading against the grain). First, try to look at the world through the writer’s perspective. Try to understand their reasons for arguing as they do, even if you strongly disagree. Then reread the text, trying to doubt everything in it: try to find every flaw in the argument, every possible way it can be refuted — even if you totally agree with it. Developed by writing theo- rist Peter Elbow, the believing and doubting game helps you consider new ideas and question ideas you already have — and at the same time see where you stand in relation to the ideas in the text you’re reading.

Thinking about How the Text Works: What It Says, What It Does

Sometimes you’ll need to think about how a text works, how its parts fit together. You may be assigned to analyze a text, or you may just need to make sense of a difficult text, to think about how the ideas all relate to one another. Whatever your purpose, a good way to think about a text structure is by outlining it, paragraph by paragraph. If you’re interested in analyzing its ideas, look at what each paragraph says; if, on the other hand, you’re concerned with how the ideas are presented, pay attention to what each paragraph does.

What it says. Write a sentence that identifies what each paragraph says. Once you’ve done that for the whole text, look for patterns in the topics the writer addresses. Pay attention to the order in which the topics are pre- sented. Also look for gaps, ideas the writer has left unsaid. Such paragraph- by-paragraph outlining of the content can help you see how the writer has arranged ideas and how that arrangement builds an argument or devel- ops a topic. Here, for example, is an outline of Michael Granof’s proposal,

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“Course Requirement: Extortion”; the essay may be found on pages 246–49. The numbers in the left column refer to the essay’s paragraphs.

1 College textbooks cost several times more than other books.

2 However, a proposed solution to the cost problem would only make things worse.

3 This proposal, to promote sales of used textbooks, would actu- ally cause textbook costs to rise, because the sale of used books is a main reason new texts cost so much.

4 There is another way to lower costs.

5 Used textbooks are already being marketed and sold very efficiently.

6 Because of this, most new textbook sales take place in the first semester after they’re published, forcing publishers to raise prices before used books take over the market.

7 In response, textbooks are revised every few years, whether or not the content is outdated, and the texts are “bundled” with other materials that can’t be used again.

8–9 A better solution would be to consider textbooks to be like computer software and issue “site licenses” to universities. Once instructors choose textbooks, the university would pay publishers fees per student for their use.

10 Publishers would earn money for the use of the textbooks, and students’ costs would be much lower.

11 Students could use an electronic text or buy a print copy for additional money. The print copies would cost less because the publisher would make most of its profits on the site license fees.

12 This arrangement would have no impact on teaching, unlike other proposals that focus on using electronic materials or using “no frills” textbooks and that might negatively affect students’ learning.

13 This proposal would reduce the cost of attending college and help students and their families.

What it does. Identify the function of each paragraph. Starting with the first paragraph, ask, What does this paragraph do? Does it introduce a topic? provide background for a topic to come? describe something? define some-

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thing? entice me to read further? something else? What does the second paragraph do? the third? As you go through the text, you may identify groups of paragraphs that have a single purpose. Here is a functional outline of Granof’s essay (again, the numbers on the left refer to the paragraphs):

1 Introduces the topic by defining a problem

2 Introduces a flawed solution

3 Explains the flawed solution and the problem with it

4 Introduces a better solution

5–7 Describes the current situation and the dynamics of the problem

8 Outlines the author’s proposed solution

9–10 Explains the proposed solution

11–12 Describes the benefits and effects of the proposed solution

13 Concludes

Identifying Patterns

Look for notable patterns in the text — recurring words and their syn- onyms, as well as repeated phrases, metaphors and other images, and types of sentences. Some readers find it helps to highlight patterns in various colors. Does the author repeatedly rely on any particular writing strategies: narration ? comparison ? Something else? Another kind of pattern that might be important to consider is the kind of evidence the text provides. Is it more opinion than facts? nothing but statistics? If many sources are cited, is the information presented in any patterns — as quotations ? paraphrases ? summaries ? Are there repeated references to certain experts or sources? In visual texts, look for patterns of color, shape, and line. What’s in the foreground, and what’s in the background? What’s completely visible, partly visible, or hidden? In both verbal and visual texts, look for omissions and anomalies: What isn’t there that you would expect to find? Is there anything that doesn’t really fit in? If you discover patterns, then you need to consider what, if anything, they mean in terms of what the writer is saying. What do they reveal about the writer’s underlying premises and beliefs? What do they tell you about

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the writer’s strategies for persuading readers to accept the truth of what they are saying? See how color-coding an essay by New York Times columnist William Safire on the meaning of the Gettysburg Address reveals several patterns in the language Safire uses. In this excerpt from the essay, which was published just before the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001, ter- rorist attacks, Safire develops his analysis through several patterns. Reli- gious references are colored yellow ; references to a “national spirit,” green ; references to life, death, and rebirth, blue ; and places where Safire directly addresses the reader, gray .

But the selection of this poetic political sermon as the oratorical cen- terpiece of our observance need not be only an exercise. . . . Now, as then, a national spirit rose from the ashes of destruction. Here is how to listen to Lincoln’s all-too-familiar speech with new ears. In those 266 words, you will hear the word dedicate five times. . . . Those five pillars of dedication rested on a fundament of religious metaphor. From a president not known for his piety — indeed, often criticized for his supposed lack of faith — came a speech rooted in the theme of national resurrection . The speech is grounded in conception , birth, death, and rebirth . Consider the barrage of images of birth in the opening sentence. . . . Finally, the nation’s spirit rises from this scene of death : “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Conception , birth, death, rebirth . The nation, purified in this fiery trial of war, is resurrected . Through the sacrifice of its sons, the sundered nation would be reborn as one. . . . Do not listen on Sept. 11 only to Lincoln’s famous words and comforting cadences. Think about how Lincoln’s message encompasses but goes beyond paying “fitting and proper” respect to the dead and the bereaved . His sermon at Gettysburg reminds “us the living” of our “unfinished work” and “the great task remaining before us” — to resolve that this generation’s response to the deaths of thousands of our people leads to “a new birth of freedom.”

The color coding helps us to see patterns in Safire’s language, just as Safire reveals patterns in Lincoln’s words. He offers an interpretation of

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Lincoln’s address as a “poetic political sermon,” and the words he uses throughout support that interpretation. At the end, he repeats the asser- tion that Lincoln’s address is a sermon, inviting us to consider it differ- ently. Safire’s repeated commands (“Consider,” “Do not listen,” “Think about”) offer additional insight into how he wishes to position himself in relation to his readers.

READING RHETORICALLY

To read academic texts effectively, you need to look beyond the words on the page or screen to the rhetorical context of the text and the argument it makes. Academic texts — both the ones you read and the ones you write — are parts of ongoing scholarly conversations, in which writers respond to the ideas and assertions of others in order to advance knowledge. To enter those conversations, you must first read carefully and critically to understand the rhetorical situation, the larger context within which a writer wrote, and the argument the text makes.

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

As a reader, you need to think about the message that the writer wants to articulate, including the intended audience and the writer’s attitude toward that audience and the topic, as well as about the genre, medium, and design of the text.

purpose What is the writer’s purpose? To entertain? inform? per- suade readers to think something or take some action? What is your purpose for reading this text?

audience Who is the intended audience? Are you a member of that group? If not, should you expect that you’ll need to look up unfamiliar terms or concepts or that you’ll run into assumptions you don’t necessarily share? How is the writer addressing the audience — as an expert addressing those less knowledgeable? an outsider addressing insiders?

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genre What is the genre? Is it a report? an argument? an analy- sis? something else? Knowing the genre can help you to anticipate certain key features.

stance Who is the writer, and what is their stance? Critical? Curious? Opinionated? Objective? Passionate? Indiffer- ent? Something else? Knowing the stance affects the way you understand a text, whether you’re inclined to agree or disagree with it, to take it seriously, and so on.

media / design What is the medium, and how does it affect the way you read? If it’s a print text, what do you know about the pub- lisher? If it’s on the web, who sponsors the site, and when was it last updated? Are there any headings, summaries, or other elements that highlight key parts of the text?

Analyzing the Argument

All texts make some kind of argument, claiming something and then offer- ing reasons and evidence as support for any claim. As a critical reader, you need to look closely at the argument a text makes — to recognize all the claims it makes, consider the support it offers for those claims, and decide how you want to respond. What do you think, and why? Here are some questions to consider when analyzing an argument:

• What claim is the text making? What is the writer’s main point? Is it stated as a thesis or only implied? Is it limited or qualified some- how? If not, should it have been?

• How is the claim supported? What reasons does the writer provide for the claim, and what evidence is given for the reasons? What kind of evidence is it? Facts? Statistics? Examples? Expert opinions? Images? How convincing do you find the reasons and evidence? Is there enough evidence?

• What appeals besides logical ones are used? Does the writer appeal to readers’ emotions ? try to establish common ground ? demonstrate

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their credibility as trustworthy and knowledgeable? How successful are these appeals?

• Are any counterarguments acknowledged? If so, are they presented accurately and respectfully? Does the writer concede any value to them or try to refute them? How successfully does the writer deal with them?

• What outside sources of information does the writer cite? What kinds of sources are they, and how credible do they seem? Are they current and authoritative? How well do they support the argument?

• Do you detect any fallacies ? Fallacies are arguments that involve faulty reasoning. Because they often seem plausible, they can be per- suasive. It is important, therefore, that you question the legitimacy of such reasoning when you run across it.

Considering the Larger Context

All texts are part of ongoing conversations with other texts that have dealt with the topic of the text. An essay arguing for an assault-weapons ban is part of an ongoing conversation on gun legislation, which is itself part of a conversation on individual rights and responsibilities. Academic texts document their sources in part to show their relationship to the ongoing scholarly conversation on a particular topic. In fact, any time you’re read- ing to learn, you’re probably reading for some larger context. Whatever your reading goals, being aware of that larger context can help you better understand what you’re reading. Here are some specific aspects of the text to pay attention to:

Who else cares about this topic? Especially when you’re reading in order to learn about a topic, the texts you read will often reveal which people or groups are part of the conversation — and might be sources of further reading. For example, an essay describing the formation of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky could be of interest to geologists, cave explorers, travel writers, or tourists. If you’re reading such an essay while doing research on the cave, you should consider how the audience to whom the writer is writing

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determines the nature of the information provided — and its suitability as a source for your research.

What conversations is this text part of? Does the text refer to any concepts or ideas that give you some sense that it’s part of a larger conversation? An argument on airport security measures, for example, is part of larger conversations about government response to terrorism, the limits of freedom in a democracy, and the possibilities of using technology to detect weapons and explosives, among others.

What terms does the writer use? Do any terms or specialized language reflect the writer’s allegiance to a particular group or academic discipline? If you run across words like false consciousness, ideology, and hegemony, for example, you might guess that the text was written by a Marxist scholar.

What other writers or sources does the writer cite? Do the other writers have a particular academic specialty, belong to an identifiable intellectual school, share similar political leanings? If an article on politics cites Paul Krugman and Gail Collins in support of its argument, you might assume that the writer holds liberal opinions; if it cites Ross Douthat and Jennifer Rubin, the writer is likely a conservative.

READING VISUAL TEXTS

Photos, drawings, graphs, diagrams, and charts are frequently used to help convey important information and often make powerful arguments themselves. So learning to read and interpret visual texts is just as neces- sary as it is for written texts.

Taking visuals seriously. Remember that visuals are texts themselves, not just decoration. When they appear as part of a written text, they may introduce information not discussed elsewhere in the text. Or they might illustrate concepts hard to grasp from words alone. In either case, it’s important to pay close attention to any visuals in a written text.

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Looking at any title, caption, or other written text that’s part of a visual will help you understand its main idea. It might also help to think about its purpose: Why did the writer include it? What information does it add or emphasize? What argument is it making? See, for example, how a psychology textbook uses visuals to help explain two ways that informa- tion can be represented:

Analogical and Symbolic Representations

When we think about information, we use two basic types of internal representations: analogical and symbolic. Analogical representations usually correspond to images. They have some characteristics of actual objects. Therefore, they are analo- gous to actual objects. For example, maps correspond to geographical layouts. Family trees depict branching relationships between relatives. A clock corresponds directly to the passage of time. Figure 2.1a is a drawing of a violin from a particular perspective. This drawing is an analogical representation.

By contrast, symbolic representations are abstract. These represen- tations usually consist of words or ideas. They do not have relationships to physical qualities of objects in the world. The word hamburger is a symbolic representation that usually represents a cooked patty of beef served on a bun. The word violin stands for a musical instrument (Figure 2.1b). — Sarah Grison, Todd Heatherton, and Michael Gazzaniga, Psychology in Your Life

Figure 2.1 Analogical Versus Symbolic Representations

(a) Analogical representations, such as this picture of a violin, have some characteristics of the objects they represent. (b) Symbolic representations, such as the word violin, are abstract and do not have relationships to the physical qualities of objects.

Violin

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The headings tell you the topic: analogical and symbolic representations. The paragraphs define the two types of representation, and the illustra- tions present a visual example of each type. The visuals make the informa- tion in the written text easier to understand by illustrating the differences between the two.

Reading charts and graphs. To read the information in charts and graphs, you need to look for different things depending on what type of chart or graph you’re considering. A line graph, for example, usually con- tains certain elements: title, legend, x axis, y axis, and source information. Figure 2.2 shows one such graph taken from a sociology textbook. Other types of charts and graphs include some of these same ele- ments. But the specific elements vary according to the different kinds of

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Title: Indicates the topic.

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x axis: Defines the dependent vari- able (something that changes, depending on other factors).

y axis: Defines the independent variable (something that doesn’t change depending on other factors).

Source: The origin of the data.

Figure 2.2 Mean Earnings by Educational Attainment, 1975–2012

SOURCE U.S. Bureau of the Census 2013

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information being presented, and some charts and graphs can be challeng- ing to read. For example, the chart in Figure 2.3, from the same textbook, includes elements of both bar and line graphs to depict two trends at once: the red line shows the percentage of women in the United States who were in the labor force over a sixty-five-year period, and the blue bars show the percentage of U.S. workers who were women during that same period. Both trends are shown in two-year increments. To make sense of this chart, you need to read the title, the y-axis labels, and the labels and their definitions carefully.

Reading Onscreen

Research shows that we tend to read differently onscreen than we do when we read print texts: we skim and sample, often reading a sentence or two and then jumping to another site, another text. If we need to scroll

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SOURCE U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014

*Women in the labor force as a percent of all civilian women age sixteen and over.

†Women in the labor force as a percent of the total labor force (both men and women) age sixteen and over.

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the page to continue, we often don’t bother. In general, we don’t read as carefully as we do when reading print texts, and we’re less likely to reread or take other steps if we find that we don’t understand something. Fol- lowing are some strategies that might help you read effectively onscreen.

Adjust your reading speed and effort to your purpose. Many students use the web to get an overview of a topic and find potential sources. In that case, skimming and browsing are sensible and appropriate tactics. If you’re reading to evaluate a source or find specific information on a topic, though, you probably need to read more slowly and carefully.

Keep your purpose in mind as you read. Clicking on hyperlinks and jumping from site to site can be tempting. Resist the temptation! Making a list of specific questions you’re seeking to answer can help you stay focused and on task.

Print out longer texts. Some people find reading online to be harder on their eyes than reading pages of print, and many find that they compre- hend and remember information in longer texts better if they read them in print. Reading a long text is similar to walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood: we form a mental map of the text as we read and then associate the information with its location in the text, making remem- bering easier. Since forming such a map is more difficult when reading an electronic text, printing out texts you need to read carefully may be a good strategy.

IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See Chapter 49, EVALUATING SOURCES , for questions to help you analyze a text’s rhetorical situation. See also Chapter 29 on GENERATING IDEAS AND TEXT ; you can adapt those methods as ways of looking at texts, especially clustering and cub-

ing. And see also Chapter 31 on ASSESSING YOUR OWN WRITING , Chapter 32 on GETTING RESPONSE AND REVISING , and Chapter 33 on EDITING AND PROOF- READING if you need advice for reading your own writing.

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Summarizing a text helps us to see and understand its main points and to think about what it says. Responding to that text then prompts us to think about — and say — what we think. Together, summarizing and responding to texts is one way that we engage with the ideas of others. In a history course, you might summarize and respond to an essay arguing that Civil War photographers did not accurately capture the realities of the battle- field. In a philosophy course, you might summarize Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and respond to its portrayal of knowledge as shadows on a wall. And in much of the writing that you do, you’ll need to cite the ideas of others, both as context for your own thinking and as evidence to support your arguments. In fact, unless you’re Adam, there’s probably no topic you’ll write about that someone else hasn’t already written about — and one way of introducing what you have to say is as a response to something others have said about your topic. A good way of doing that is by summa- rizing what they’ve said, using the summary as a launching pad for what you say. This chapter offers advice for summarizing and responding, writ- ing tasks you’ll have occasion to do in many of your college classes — and provides a short guide to writing a summary/response essay, a common assignment in composition classes.

SUMMARIZING

In many of your college courses, you’ll likely be asked to summarize what someone else has said. Boiling down a text to its basic ideas helps you focus on the text, figure out what the writer has said, and understand (and remember) what you’re reading. In fact, summarizing is an essential

Summarizing and Responding: Where Reading Meets Writing

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academic skill, a way to incorporate the ideas of others into your own writing. Following are some guidelines for summarizing effectively:

Read the text carefully. To write a good summary, you need to read the original text carefully to capture the writer’s intended meaning as clearly and evenhandedly as you can. Start by skimming the text to get a general sense of what it’s saying. If some parts don’t make sense, don’t worry; at this point, you’re reading just to get the gist. Then reread the text more slowly, annotating it paragraph by paragraph. If there’s an explicit thesis stating the main point, highlight it in some way. Then try to capture the main idea of each paragraph in a single sentence.

State the main points concisely and accurately. Summaries of a com- plete text are generally between 100 and 250 words in length, so you need to choose your words carefully and to focus only on the text’s main ideas. Leave out supporting evidence, anecdotes, and counterarguments unless they’re crucial to understanding the text. For instance, in summarizing “A Brief History of the Modern-Day Straw, the World’s Most Wasteful Com- modity” (see p. 233), Ernie Smith’s essay explaining why drinking straws are wasteful, you would omit its description of the invention of the rye straw in the nineteenth century.

Describe the text accurately and fairly — and using neutral language. Present the author’s ideas evenhandedly and fairly; a summary isn’t the place to share your opinion of what the text says. Use neutral verbs such as states, asserts, or concludes, not verbs that imply praise or criticism like proves or complains.

Use signal phrases to distinguish what the author says from what you say. Introducing a statement with phrases such as “he says” or “the essay concludes” indicates explicitly that you’re summarizing what the author said. When first introducing an author, you may need to say something about their credentials. For example:

In “Our Declaration,” political philosopher Danielle Allen analyzes the language of the Declaration of Independence.

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Daniel Felsenfeld, a music composer who also writes about music, describes how he developed a passion for twentieth-century classical music in “Rebel Music.”

Later in the text, you may need to refer to the author again as you sum- marize specific parts of the text. These signal phrases are typically briefer: In Felsenfeld’s view . . . , Allen then argues . . .

Use quotations sparingly, if at all. You may need to quote keywords or memorable phrases, but most or all of a summary should be written in your own words, using your own sentence structures. document any text you summarize in a works-cited or refer- ences list. A summary of a lengthy work should include in-text documentation noting the pages summarized; they aren’t needed with a brief text like the one summarized below (see p. 143).

An Example Summary

In “The Reason College Costs More than You Think,” Jon Marcus, a higher-education editor at the Hechinger Report, reports that a major reason why college educations are so expensive is the amount of time students stay in college. Although almost all first-year students and their families assume that earning a bachelor’s degree will take four years, the reality is that more than half of all students take longer, with many taking six years or more. This delay happens for many rea- sons, including students changing majors, having to take developmen- tal courses, taking fewer courses per term than they could have, and being unable to register for required courses. As a result, their expenses are much greater — financial aid seldom covers a fifth or sixth year, so students must borrow money to finish — and the additional time they spend in college is time they aren’t working, leading to significant losses in wages.

This summary begins with a signal phrase stating the author’s name and cre- dentials and the title of the text being summarized. The summary includes only the main ideas, in the summary writer’s own words.

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RESPONDING

When you summarize a text, you show that you understand its main ideas; responding to a text pushes you to engage with those ideas — and gives you the opportunity to contribute your ideas to a larger conversation. You can respond in various ways, for instance, by taking a position on the text’s argument, by analyzing the text in some way, or by reflecting on what it says.

Deciding How to Respond

You may be assigned to write a specific kind of response — an argument or analysis, for instance — but more often than not, the nature of your response is left largely up to you. If so, you’ll need to read closely and critically to understand what the text says, to get a sense of how — and how well — it does so, and to think about your own reaction to it. Only then can you decide how to respond. You can respond to what the text says (its ideas), to how it says it (the way it’s written), or to where it leads your own thinking (your own personal reaction). Or you might write a response that mixes those ways of responding. You might, for example, combine a personal reaction with an examination of how the writing caused that reaction.

If you’re responding to what a text says, you might agree or disagree with the author’s argument, supporting your position with good reasons and evidence for your response. You might agree with parts of the argu- ment and disagree with others. You might find that the author has ignored or downplayed some important aspect of the topic that needs to be dis- cussed or at least acknowledged. Here are some questions to consider that can help you think about what a text says:

• What does the writer claim?

• What reasons and evidence does the writer provide to support that claim?

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• What parts of the text do you agree with? Is there anything you dis- agree with — and if so, why?

• Does the writer represent any views other than their own? If not, what other perspectives should be considered?

• Are there any aspects of the topic that the writer overlooks or ignores?

• If you’re responding to a visual text, how do the design and any images contribute to your understanding of what the text “says”?

Here is a brief response to Jon Marcus’s “The Reason College Costs More than You Think,” one that responds to his argument:

It’s true that one reason college costs so much more is that students take longer than four years to finish their degrees, but Jon Marcus’s argument in “The Reason College Costs More than You Think” is flawed in several ways. He ignores the fact that over the past years state gov- ernments have reduced their subsidies to state-supported colleges and universities, forcing higher tuition, and that federal scholarship aid has declined as well, forcing students to pay a greater share of the costs. He doesn’t mention the increased number of administrators or the costs of fancy athletic facilities and dormitories. Ultimately, his argument places most of the blame for higher college costs on students, who, he asserts, make poor choices by changing majors and “taking fewer courses per term than they could.” College is supposed to present opportunities to explore many possible career paths, so changing majors should be considered a form of growth and education. Furthermore, many of us are working full-time to pay the high costs of college, leaving us with little extra time to study for four or five courses at once and sometimes forcing us to take fewer classes per term because that’s all we can afford. Marcus is partly right — but he gets much of the problem wrong.

If you’re focusing on the way a text is written, you’ll consider what elements the writer uses to convey their message — facts, stories, images, and so on. You’ll likely pay attention to the writer’s word choices and look for any patterns that lead you to understand the text in a particular way. To think about the way a text is written, you might find some of these questions helpful:

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• What is the writer’s message? Is there an explicit statement of that message?

• How well has the writer communicated the message?

• How does the writer support what they say: by citing facts or statis- tics? by quoting experts? by noting personal experiences? Are you persuaded?

• Are there any words, phrases, or sentences that you find notable and that contribute to the text’s overall effect?

• How does the text’s design affect your response to it? If it’s a visual text — a photo or ad, for example — how do the various parts of the text contribute to its message?

Here is a brief response to Marcus’s essay that analyzes the various ways it makes its argument:

In “The Reason College Costs More than You Think,” Time magazine writer Jon Marcus argues that although several factors contribute to high college costs, the main one is how long it takes students to gradu- ate. Marcus introduces this topic by briefly profiling a student who is in his fifth year of school and has run out of financial aid because he “changed majors and took courses he ended up not needing.” This profile gives a human face to the topic, which Marcus then develops with statistics about college costs and the numbers of students who take more than four years to finish. Marcus’s purpose is twofold: to inform readers that the assumption that most students finish college in four years is wrong and to persuade them that poor choices like those this student made are the primary reason college takes so long and costs so much. He acknowledges that the extra costs are “hidden” and “not entirely the student’s fault” and suggests that poor high school preparation and unavailable required courses play a role, as do limits on financial aid. However, his final paragraph quotes the student as saying of the extra years, “That’s time you’re wasting that you could be out making money.” As the essay’s final statement, this assertion that spending more time in school is time wasted and that the implicit goal of college is career preparation reinforces Marcus’s argument that college should take only four years and that students who take longer are financially irresponsible.

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If you’re reflecting on your own reaction to a text, you might focus on how your personal experiences or beliefs influenced the way you under- stood the text or on how it reinforced or prompted you to reassess some of those beliefs. You could also focus on how it led you to see the topic in new ways — or note questions that it’s led you to wonder about. Some questions that may help you reflect on your own reaction to a text include:

• How did the text affect you personally?

• Is there anything in the text that really got your attention? If so, what?

• Do any parts of the text provoke an emotional reaction — make you laugh or cry, make you uneasy? What prompted that response?

• Does the text bring to mind any memories or past experiences? Can you see anything related to you and your life in the text?

• Does the text remind you of any other texts?

• Does the text support (or challenge) any of your beliefs? How?

• Has reading this text given you any new ideas or insight?

Here is a brief response to Jon Marcus’s essay that reflects on an important personal issue:

Jon Marcus’s “Why College Costs More than You Think” made me think hard about my own educational plans. Because I’m working to pay for as much of my education as I can, I’m taking a full load of courses so I can graduate in four years, but truth be told I’m starting to question the major I’ve chosen. That’s one aspect of going to college that Marcus fails to discuss: how your major affects your future career choices and earnings — and whether or not some majors that don’t lead immedi- ately to a career are another way of “wasting” your time. After taking several courses in English and philosophy, I find myself fascinated by the study of literature and ideas. If I decide to major in one or both of those subjects, am I being impractical? Or am I “following my heart,” as Steve Jobs said in his Stanford commencement speech? Jobs did as he told those graduates to do, and it worked out well for him, so maybe majoring in something “practical” is less practical than it seems. If I graduate in four years and am “out making money” but doing something I don’t enjoy, I might be worse off than if I take longer in college but find a path that is satisfying and enriching.

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WRITING A SUMMARY / RESPONSE ESSAY

You may be assigned to write a full essay that summarizes and responds to something you’ve read. Following is one such essay. It was written by Jacob MacLeod, a student at Wright State University, and responds to a New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof, “Our Blind Spot about Guns” (see p. 162).

JACOB MacLEOD

Guns and Cars Are Different

In “Our Blind Spot about Guns,” The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof compares guns to cars in order to argue for sensible gun regula- tion. Kristof suggests that gun regulations would dramatically decrease the number of deaths caused by gun use. To demonstrate this point, he shows that the regulations governments have instituted for cars have greatly decreased the number of deaths per million miles driven. Kristof then argues that guns should be regulated in the same way that cars are, that car regulation provides a model for gun regulation. I agree with Kristof that there should be more sensible gun regulation, but I have difficulty accepting that all of the regulations imposed on cars have made them safer, and I also believe that not all of the safety regulations he proposes for guns would necessarily have positive effects. Kristof is right that background checks for those who want to buy guns should be expanded. According to Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, state laws prohibiting firearm ownership by members of high-risk groups, such as perpetrators of domestic violence and the mentally ill, have been shown to reduce violence. Therefore, Webster argues, universal back- ground checks would significantly reduce the availability of guns to high-risk groups, as well as reducing the number of guns diverted to the illegal market by making it easier to prosecute gun traffickers. Kristof also argues that lowering the speed limit made cars safer. However, in 1987, forty states raised their top speed limit from 55 to 65 miles per hour. An analysis of this change by the University of California Transportation Center shows that after the increase, traffic fatality rates on interstate highways in those forty states decreased between 3.4 percent and 5.1 percent. After the higher limits went into effect, the study suggested, some drivers may have switched to safer interstates from other, more dangerous roads, and highway patrols

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may have focused less on enforcing interstate speed limits and more on activities yielding greater benefits in terms of safety (Lave and Elias 58–61). Although common sense might suggest that lowered speed limits would mean safer driving, research showed otherwise, and the same may be true for gun regulation. Gun control advocates argue that more guns mean more deaths. However, an article by gun rights advocates Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser argues that murder rates in many developed nations have bear no rela- tion to the rate of gun ownership (652). The authors cite data on firearms ownership in the United States and England that suggest that crime rates are lowest where the density of gun ownership is highest and highest where gun density is lowest (653) and that increased gun ownership has often coincided with significant reductions in violence. For example, in the United States in the 1990s, criminal violence decreased, even though gun ownership increased (656). However, the authors acknowledge that “the notion that more guns reduce crime is highly controversial” (659). All in all, then, Kristof is correct to suggest that sensible gun regu- lation is a good idea in general, but the available data suggest that some of the particular measures he proposes should not be instituted. I agree that expanding background checks would be a good way to regulate guns and that failure to require them would lead to more guns in the hands of criminals. While background checks are a good form of regulation, however, lower speed limits and trigger locks are not. The problem with this solution is that although it is based on commonsense thinking, the empirical data show that it may not work.

Works Cited Kates, Don B., and Gary Mauser. “Would Banning Firearms Reduce

Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domes- tic Evidence.” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, vol. 30, no. 2, Jan. 2007, pp. 649–94, www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/ jlpp/ Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf. Accessed 4 Oct. 2017.

Kristof, Nicholas. “Our Blind Spot about Guns.” The New York Times, 31 July 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/opinion/nicholas -kristof-our-blind-spot-about-guns.html. Accessed 4 Oct. 2017.

Lave, Charles, and Patrick Elias. “Did the 65 mph Speed Limit Save Lives?” Accident Analysis & Prevention, vol. 26, no. 1, Feb. 1994, pp. 49–62, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ pii/000145759490068X. Accessed 4 Oct. 2017.

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Webster, Daniel. “Why Expanding Background Checks Would, in Fact, Reduce Gun Crime.” Interview by Greg Sargent. The Washington Post, 3 Apr. 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ plum-line/wp/2013/04/03/why-expanding-background-checks -would-in-fact-reduce-gun-crime/. Accessed 5 Oct. 2017.

In his response, MacLeod both agrees and disagrees with Kristof’s argument, using several sources to support his argument that some of Kristof’s proposals may not work. MacLeod states his thesis at the end of the first paragraph, after his summary, and ends with a balanced assessment of Kristof’s proposals. He cites several sources, both in the text with signal phrases and in-text documentation and at the end in a works-cited section.

Key Features of Summary / Response Essays

A clearly identified author and title. Usually the author and title of the text being summarized are identified in a signal phrase in the first sen- tence. The author (or sometimes the title) may then be referred to in an abbreviated form if necessary in the rest of the essay: for example, “Kristof argues . . .” or “according to ‘Our Blind Spot about Guns’ . . .”

A concise summary of the text. The summary presents the main and supporting ideas in the text, usually in the order in which they appear. MacLeod, for example, reduces Kristof’s argument to four sentences that capture Kristof’s main points while leaving out his many examples.

An explicit response. Your essay should usually provide a concise state- ment (one sentence if possible) of your overall response to the text.

• If you’re responding to the argument, you’ll likely agree or disagree (or both), and so your response itself will constitute an argument, with an explicit thesis statement. For example, MacLeod first agrees with Kristof that “there should be more sensible gun regulation,” but then introduces a two-part thesis: that not all automobile regulations have made cars safer and that not all gun regulations would make guns safer.

• If you’re analyzing the text, you’ll likely need to explain what you think the author is saying and how the text goes about conveying that

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message. An analysis of Kristof’s text, for example, might focus on his comparison of automobile regulations with gun regulations.

• If you’re responding with a reflection, you might explore the ideas, emo- tions, or memories that the text evokes, the effects of its ideas on your own beliefs, or how your own personal experiences support or contradict the author’s position. One response to Kristof’s essay might begin by expressing surprise at the comparison of guns to cars and then explore the reasons you find that comparison surprising, leading to a new understanding of the ways regulations can work to save lives.

Support for your response. Whatever your response, you need to offer reasons and evidence to support what you say.

• If you’re responding to what the text says, you may offer facts, statistics, anecdotal evidence, and textual evidence, as MacLeod does. You’ll also need to consider — and acknowledge — any possible counterargu- ments, positions other than yours.

• If you’re responding to the way the text is written, you may identify certain patterns in the text that you think mean something, and you’ll need to cite evidence from the text itself. For example, Kristof twice invokes a popular slogan among gun rights advocates, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people,” changing “guns” to “cars” to advance his argument that regulating guns may make them safer, just as has happened with cars.

• If you’re reflecting on your own reaction to the text, you may connect its ideas with your own experiences or beliefs or explore how the text reinforced, challenged, or altered your beliefs. A staunch gun-rights advocate, for example, might find in Kristof’s essay a reasonable middle ground too often lacking in polarized debates like the one on gun control.

Ways of Organizing a Summary and Response Essay

You can organize a summary and response essay in various ways. You may want to use a simple, straightforward structure that starts out by

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IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See Chapter 30 for guidelines on DRAFTING and Chapter 36 for help writing a thesis and coming up with a title. See Chapter 31 on ASSESSING YOUR OWN WRITING , Chapter 32 on GETTING RESPONSE AND REVISING , and Chapter 33 on EDITING AND PROOFREADING . See Chapter 52 on ACKNOWLEDGING SOURCES, AVOIDING PLAGIARISM .

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summarizing the text and then gives the thesis of your response followed by details that develop the thesis.

[Summary, followed by response]

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Or you may want to start out with the thesis and then, depending on whether your response focuses on the text’s argument or its rhetorical choices, provide a paired summary of each main point or each aspect of the writing and a response to it.

[Introduction and thesis, followed by point-by-point summary and response]

Introduce the text and summarize it, usually in one paragraph.

State your thesis.

Respond to the text: • what it says • how it’s written • how you react.

Conclude by summing up your response and its implications.

Introduce the text and state your thesis.

Summarize the next point or another feature and respond to it.

Continue as needed.

Conclude by summing up your response and its implications.

Summarize the first point in the text or one of its rhetorical features and respond to it.

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4

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Developing Academic Habits of Mind

A little advice from Serena Williams: “Stick to it and work hard.” She wasn’t just talking about tennis, and her words resonate for all of us, for everything we set out to do. And here’s Michael Jordan, who tells us “Never quit!” and then goes on to issue a warning: “If you quit once, it becomes a habit.” Serena Williams and Michael Jordan may be two of the greatest athletes ever, but neither of them was born a champion. They became great by working hard, hanging in there, never giving up. They succeeded, in other words, by developing certain habits of mind that can serve us all well — and that are especially valuable when it comes to succeeding in school. This chapter is about developing academic habits of mind. Just as Serena Williams wasn’t born with her powerful serve, none of us was born knowing how to write academic papers or ace exams. But we too can learn and can develop the habits we need to succeed. This chapter offers advice for developing habits of mind that writing teachers nationwide have identified as essential for college success.

Engage

We all know people who see school as a series of hoops to jump through, who seem uninvolved — and even bored. We also know people who are passionate about something — a video game, a hobby, a profession — and who invest themselves, their time, and their emotions wholeheartedly in those activities. Successful students make that investment in school.

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In other words, they engage with what they’re studying, what they’re doing, and what they’re learning.

Think about your purpose for being in college. What are your goals? To get a degree? To qualify for a particular job or profession? To find intel- lectual stimulation? To explore life? Try to define why you are in school, both in larger terms (“to get a degree in accounting”) and in terms of the specific courses you are taking (“Learning to write better will help me be a better student in general and communicate effectively at work”).

Fight off boredom. Every job, including the job of being a student, involves some tasks that are dull but need to be done. When you encounter such a task, ask yourself how it helps you reach a larger goal. Shooting a hundred free throws for practice may not seem interesting, but it can help you win games. When you’re listening to a lecture or reading a textbook, take notes, highlight, and annotate; doing that forces you to pay attention and increases what you remember and learn. Trying to identify the main ideas as you listen to a lecture will help you stay focused. When you’re studying, try alternating between different tasks: reading, writing, doing problem sets, drawing, and so on.

If you get distracted, figure out ways to deal with it. It’s hard to engage with what you’re reading or studying when you’re thinking about something else — paying a tuition bill, the last episode of The Walking Dead, whatever. Try taking a few moments to write out what’s on your mind, in a journal or somewhere else. Sometimes that simple act frees your mind to think about your work, even if it doesn’t solve anything.

Raise your hand. When you think you know the answer to a teacher’s question (or when you yourself have a question), raise your hand. Most teachers appreciate students who take chances and who participate in class. At the same time, be polite: don’t monopolize discussion or interrupt others when they’re speaking.

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Get involved. Get to know other students; study with them; join a cam- pus organization. People who see themselves as part of something larger, even just a study group with three or four others, engage more in what they’re doing than those who try to go it alone.

Be Curious

When we’re young, we’re curious about everything, and we learn by ask- ing questions (why? why not?) and by exploring our surroundings (digging holes, cutting up magazines, investigating attics and basements). As we get older, though, we focus on things that interest us — and may as a result start to ignore other things or even to forget how to explore. In college, you’ll be asked to research, study, and write about many topics you know nothing about. Seize the opportunity. Be curious! And take a tip from Dr. Seuss: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. / The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

Ask questions. It’s tempting to stay within our comfort zones, thinking about things we know and like, listening to those whose views we tend to agree with — to say what we already believe rather than to stop and think. Resist that temptation! Take every opportunity to ask questions, to learn more about things you’re already interested in, and especially to learn about things you don’t (yet) know anything about. As marine biologist Sylvia Earle says, “The best scientists and explorers have the attributes of kids! They ask questions and have a sense of wonder. They have curiosity. Who, what, where, why, when, and how! They never stop asking questions, and I never stop asking questions, just like a five year old.”

Listen! Pay attention to what others say, including those who you don’t necessarily agree with. The words and ideas of others can challenge the way we think, prompt us to rethink what we think — and spark our curi- osity: Why does X think that? What do I think — and why? Why do my neighbors oppose the Common Core? What do educators think about it? Paying attention to all sides of an argument, doing research to find out

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what others have said about a topic, or searching social media to see the latest postings on a trending topic are all ways you can listen in on (and engage in) conversations on important issues of all kinds.

Be Open to New Ideas

No matter where you’re in school, you’re going to encounter ideas and concepts and even facts that challenge your own beliefs; you’re also likely to meet people whose backgrounds and ways of looking at life are very different from your own. Be open-minded, open to new ideas and to what others think and say. Consider the perspectives and arguments of others. Learning involves accepting new ideas, acknowledging the value of differ- ent perspectives, and coming to understand our own beliefs in new ways. Listen to what others say, and think before you respond.

• Treat the ideas of others with respect, whether you agree with them or not, and encourage others to do the same. We don’t open up if we don’t feel safe.

• Try to withhold judgment. Be willing to listen to the thoughts of others and to consider ideas that may at first seem alien or weird (or wrong). Remember that your weird is likely someone else’s normal — and the reverse.

• Look for common ground between your perspectives and those of others — places where you can agree, even in the midst of serious disagreement.

Be Flexible

Being flexible means being adaptable. In college, you’ll likely face novel situations and need to find new ways to address problems, such as juggling school, work, and family; adjusting to roommates and making new friends; and figuring out how to do unfamiliar new assignments and how to take tests. You’ll even have to do new kinds of writing: lab reports, reflections,

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4 / Developing Academic Habits of Mind 49

literacy narratives, and many, many more; if your school writing up until this point has usually (or always) called for a five-paragraph theme, that’s not going to be the case anymore.

Look for new ways to do things. As the saying goes, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Look for other tools to add to your toolbox: try solving math problems with words or by drawing, or starting a writing project by sketching out the parts.

Try not to see things as right or wrong, good or bad. Be willing to consider alternative points of view and to withhold judgment. Often ideas or actions can only be judged in context; they may be true in some cases or in part, and you often need to understand the larger situation or take into account various perspectives. For example, you may believe that lying is wrong, but is it excusable if telling the truth will cause someone pain? You find a required reading assignment boring and useless, but why, then, did your instructor assign it?

Approach academic assignments rhetorically. Analyze each assignment’s purpose, intended audience, and the rest of its rhetorical situation . Think about what’s required in terms of content and format — and also about what’s appropriate in terms of language and style. And what’s expected in the discipline: informal language, sentence fragments, and photographs without captions might be appropriate for a sociology blog, for example, whereas a research project for a history course might have different require- ments for how it’s organized, formatted, and documented.

Be Creative

If you think that creativity is something artists have (and are born with), think again. From the young man selling homemade granola at a local farm market to the woman who puts together an eye-catching outfit from thrift-store bins, many of us are at work expressing ourselves in distinctive

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ways. Psychologists tell us that acting creatively opens us up to becoming more creative — and it is safe to say that doing so will make your work more productive and very likely more fun.

• Play with ideas. Freewrite. Make lists. Try looping, clustering, and the other ways of generating ideas covered in this book. Take some time to think about the ideas you come up with.

• Don’t wait until the last minute. Some students say they do better under the pressure of a deadline. Don’t believe it! It’s always better to give yourself time to think, to explore ideas, to “sleep on” assignments that first stump you.

• Take risks! Explore questions and topics that you haven’t thought about before. Try out methods you haven’t used previously. Challenge yourself to come up with ten ideas. Or twenty.

• Ask questions. And remember that there’s no such thing as a dumb question.

Persist

Sometimes the key to success is simply sticking to the task at hand: ignor- ing distractions, hanging in there, forgetting frustration, getting the work done even in the face of setbacks and failures. Here’s some advice from actress and singer Julie Andrews: “Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.”

• Don’t quit. Assume that you can complete the task, and make up your mind to do it. If you’re reading a book that seems hopelessly confus- ing or over your head, for example, keep at it until it starts to make sense. Reread, outline chapters , summarize , annotate , and do whatever else you need to do to understand it.

• Remember that sometimes you’ll encounter setbacks — and that the goal (a passing grade, a degree, a job) is still reachable if you keep trying. Those who play video games know that failing is an inherent part of playing them; the same is true of many other things as well.

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• Make a plan and establish a schedule, and stick to them.

• Break large projects into smaller goals. Especially with assignments that call for a huge amount of work, approach it in stages: focus on getting through the next chapter, the next draft, the next whatever. It may be good to “keep your eyes on the prize,” but it’s usually best to take it one step at a time.

• When you’re working on several assignments, tackle the hardest ones first. Work on them when you’re fresh and your mind is clear.

• If you don’t understand something, ask for clarification. Better to admit to confusion than to act as if you know something when you don’t.

• Ask for help when you need it. Teachers are usually happy to help students during office hours or by appointment, before or after class, or over email. Get to know your teachers: they’re there to help you.

• Take advantage of whatever help is available at your school’s writing center or learning center and in class. An important part of being persistent is getting help when you need it.

Reflect

Pay attention to the ways you work and make decisions. Reflect on the ways you think and on how you think about the world. This kind of “meta- cognitive” thinking is one of the most important habits of mind, and it’s one that will continue to serve you well throughout your life.

• Figure out when you are most efficient and do your best work — and try to schedule your work accordingly.

• Pay attention to what you’re reading and how you’re doing it. Think about why you’re reading x, and use reading strategies appropriate to your purpose. If you lose the thread of an explanation or argument, figure out where you got lost and why.

• After completing an assignment, reflect in writing on what you did well, what problems you had, and how you solved them (or not). What would you do differently next time — or if you had more time? You’ll

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find prompts for “Taking Stock of Your Work” at the end of Chapters 10–23 that can help.

• Troubleshoot. Pay attention to bumps in the road as you encounter them. Try to understand what caused the problem, what you did to solve it, how successful you were and why.

• Try to focus on your achievements, what you can do, rather than on what you may not be able to do or to do as well as you’d like.

Take Responsibility

In one way or another, all the habits of mind discussed above involve taking responsibility for your own actions. It may be tempting to blame others or society or bad luck for problems in your academic life, but the more you take ownership of your own learning, the more control you have over the results. Some ways you can enhance your sense of responsibility and demonstrate it include these:

• Acknowledge that how much you learn and what grades you get depend mostly on you. Teachers often say that they don’t give grades, students earn grades — an important difference.

• Treat school as you do a job, one for which you must show up on time, perform tasks at a certain level of competence, and meet deadlines. In college, where your time is mostly unstructured, you have to become your own boss. So attend class regularly, follow instructions, and turn in assignments on time.

• Get organized. Maintain a calendar so you know what’s due when. Create a schedule for your day that includes time for class, studying, working, and personal activities. Develop a system for organizing your written work and notes for each course you’re taking. Learn where to find the materials you need to do your classwork.

• Use research sources responsibly. quote , paraphrase , and summarize the work of others accurately, and document it correctly. Give appro- priate credit to those whose ideas and words you are using.

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part 2

Rhetorical Situations

Whenever we write, whether it’s a text to a friend or

a toast for a wedding, an English essay or a résumé,

we face some kind of rhetorical situation. We have a

purpose, a certain audience, a particular stance, a genre,

and a medium to consider — and, as often as not, a design.

All are important elements that we need to think about

carefully. The following chapters offer brief discussions

of those elements of the rhetorical situation, along

with questions that can help you make the choices you

need to as you write. See also the genre chapters for

guidelines for considering your rhetorical situation in

each of these specific kinds of writing.

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7 GENRE 61

8 STANCE 66

9 MEDIA / DESIGN 69

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Purpose

All writing has a purpose. We write to explore our thoughts and emotions, to express ourselves, to entertain; we write to record words and events, to communicate with others, to try to persuade others to believe as we do or to behave in certain ways. In fact, we often have several purposes at the same time. We may write an essay in which we try to explain something to an audience, but at the same time we may be trying to persuade that audi- ence of something. Look, for example, at this passage from a 2012 New York Times op-ed essay by economist and editorial columnist Paul Krugman about social and economic trends among “the traditional working- class family” — declining rates of marriage and of male participation in the labor force and increasing numbers of out-of-wedlock births. Krugman asserts that the primary reason for those statistics is a “drastic reduction in the work opportunities available to less-educated men”:

Most of the numbers you see about income trends in America focus on households rather than individuals, which makes sense for some purposes. But when you see a modest rise in incomes for the lower tiers of the income distribution, you have to realize that all — yes, all — of this rise comes from the women, both because more women are in the paid labor force and because women’s wages aren’t as much below male wages as they used to be. For lower-education working men, however, it has been all neg- ative. Adjusted for inflation, entry-level wages of male high school graduates have fallen 23 percent since 1973. Meanwhile, employment benefits have collapsed. In 1980, 65 percent of recent high-school grad- uates working in the private sector had health benefits, but, by 2009, that was down to 29 percent. So we have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits.

— Paul Krugman, “Money and Morals”

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Krugman is reporting information here, outlining how the earnings and benefits of less-educated men have dropped over the last forty years. He is also making an argument, that these economic setbacks are a cause of the social ills among working-class Americans and not, as some would have it, the result of them. (Krugman, writing for a newspaper, is also using a style — including dashes, contractions, and other informal elements — that strives to be engaging while it informs and argues.) Even though our purposes may be many, knowing our primary reason for writing can help us shape that writing and understand how to proceed with it. Our purpose can determine the genre we choose, our audience, even the way we design what we write.

Identify your purpose. While a piece of writing often has many purposes, a writer usually focuses on one. When you get an assignment or see a need to write, ask yourself what the primary purpose of the writing task is: to entertain? to inform? to persuade? to demonstrate your knowledge or your writing ability? What are your own goals? What are your audience’s expec- tations, and do they affect the way you define your purpose?

Thinking about Purpose

• What do you want your audience to do, think, or feel? How will your readers use what you tell them?

• What does this writing task call on you to do? Do you need to show that you have mastered certain content or skills? Do you have an assign- ment that specifies a particular strategy or genre — to compare two things, perhaps, or to argue a position?

• What are the best ways to achieve your purpose? What stance should you take? Should you write in a particular genre? Do you have a choice of medium, and does your text require any special format or design elements?

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Audience

Who will read (or hear) what you are writing? A seemingly obvious but crucially important question. Your audience affects your writing in various ways. Consider a piece of writing as simple as a text from a mother to her son:

Pls. take chicken out to thaw and feed Annye. Remember Dr. Wong at 4.

On the surface, this brief note is a straightforward reminder to do three things. But in fact it is a complex message filled with compressed informa- tion for a specific audience. The writer (the mother) counts on the reader (her son) to know a lot that can be left unsaid. She expects that he knows that the chicken is in the freezer and needs to thaw in time to be cooked for dinner; she knows that he knows who Annye is (a pet?), what they are fed, and how much; she assumes that he knows who (and where) Dr. Wong is. She doesn’t need to spell out any of that because she knows what her son knows and what he needs to know — and in her text she can be brief. She understands her audience. Think how different such a reminder would be were it written to another audience — a babysitter, perhaps, or a friend helping out while Mom is out of town. What you write, how much you write, how you phrase it, even your choice of genre (memo, essay, email, text, speech) — all are influenced by the audience you envision. And your audience will interpret your writing according to their own expectations and experiences, not yours. When you are a student, your audience is most often your teachers, so you need to be aware of their expectations and know the conventions (rules, often unstated) for writing in specific academic fields. You may make statements that seem obvious to you, not realizing that your instruc- tors may consider them assertions that must be proved with evidence

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of one sort or another. Or you may write more or less formally than teach- ers expect. Understanding your audience’s expectations — by asking out- right, by reading materials in your field of study, by trial and error — is important to your success as a college writer. This point is worth dwelling on. You are probably reading this textbook for a writing course. As a student, you will be expected to produce essays with few or no errors. If you correspond with family, friends, or coworkers using email and texts, you may question such standards; after all, many of the messages you get in these contexts are not grammatically perfect. But in a writing class, the instructor needs to see your best work. Whatever the rhetorical situation, your writing must meet the expectations of your audience.

Identify your audience. Audiences may be defined as known, multiple, or unknown. Known audiences can include people with whom you’re familiar as well as people you don’t know personally but whose needs and expecta- tions you do know. You yourself are a known, familiar audience, and you write to and for yourself often. Class notes, to-do lists, reminders, and journals are all written primarily for an audience of one: you. For that reason, they are often in shorthand, full of references and code that you alone understand. Other known, familiar audiences include anyone you actually know — friends, relatives, teachers, classmates — and whose needs and expecta- tions you understand. You can also know what certain readers want and need, even if you’ve never met them personally, if you write for them within a specific shared context. Such a known audience might include PC gamers who read cheat codes that you have posted on the internet for beating a game; you don’t know those people, but you know roughly what they know about the game and what they need to know, and you know how to write about it in ways they will understand. You often have to write for multiple audiences. Business memos or reports may be written initially for a supervisor, who may pass them along to others. Grant proposals may be reviewed by four to six levels of readers — each, of course, with its own expectations and perspectives.

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Even writing for a class might involve multiple audiences: your instructor and your classmates. Unknown audiences can be the most difficult to address since you can’t be sure what they know, what they need to know, how they’ll react. Such an audience could be your downstairs neighbor, with whom you’ve chat- ted occasionally in the laundry room. How will she respond to your letter asking her to sponsor you in an upcoming charity walk? Another unknown audience — perhaps surprisingly — might be many of your instructors, who want — and expect! — you to write in ways that are new to you. While you can benefit from analyzing any audience, you need to think most carefully about those you don’t know.

Thinking about Audience

• Whom do you want to reach? To whom are you writing (or speaking)?

• What is your audience’s background — their education and life experiences? It may be important for you to know, for example, whether your read- ers attended college, fought in a war, or have young children.

• What are their interests? What do they like? What motivates them? What do they care about?

• Is there any demographic information that you should keep in mind? Consider whether race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, occu- pation, religious beliefs, economic status, and so on should affect what or how you write. For example, writers for Men’s Health, InStyle, and Out must consider the particular interests of each magazine’s readers.

• What political circumstances may affect their reading? What attitudes — opinions, special interests, biases — may affect the way your audience reads your piece? Are your readers conservative, liberal, or middle of the road? Politics may take many other forms as well — retirees on a fixed income may object to increased school taxes, so a letter arguing for such an increase would need to appeal to them differently than would a similar letter sent to parents of young children.

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• What does your audience already know — or believe — about your topic? What do you need to tell them? What is the best way to do so? Those retirees who oppose school taxes already know that taxes are a bur- den for them; they may need to know why schools are justified in asking for more money every few years. A good way to explain this may be with a bar graph showing how property values benefit from good schools with adequate funding. Consider which strategies will be effective — narrative, comparison, something else?

• What’s your relationship with your audience, and how should it affect your language and tone? Do you know them, or not? Are they friends? colleagues? mentors? adversaries? strangers? Will they likely share your stance? In general, you need to write more formally when you’re addressing readers you don’t know, and you may address friends and colleagues more informally than you would a boss.

• What does your audience need and expect from you? Your history pro- fessor, for example, may need to know how well you can discuss the economy of the late Middle Ages in order to assess your learning; he may expect you to write a carefully reasoned argument, drawing conclusions from various sources, with a readily identifiable thesis in the first paragraph. Your boss, on the other hand, may need an informal email that briefly lists your sales contacts for the day; she may expect that you list the contacts in the order in which you saw them, that you clearly identify each one, and that you briefly say how well each contact went. What genre is most appropriate?

• What kind of response do you want? Do you want readers to believe or do something? to accept as valid your information on a topic? to understand why an experience you once had matters to you?

• How can you best appeal to your audience? Is there a particular medium that will best reach them? Are there any design requirements? (Elderly readers may need larger type, for instance.)

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Genre

Genres are kinds of writing. Letters, profiles, reports, position papers, poems, blog posts, instructions, parodies — even jokes — are genres. For example, here is the beginning of a profile of a mechanic who repairs a specific kind of automobile:

Her business card reads Shirley Barnes, M.D., and she’s a doctor, all right — a Metropolitan Doctor. Her passion is the Nash Metropolitan, the little car produced by Austin of England for American Motors between 1954 and 1962. Barnes is a legend among southern California Met lovers — an icon, a beacon, and a font of useful knowledge and freely offered opinions.

A profile offers a written portrait of someone or something that informs and sometimes entertains, often examining its subject from a particular angle — in this case, as a female mechanic who fixes Nash Metropolitans. While the language in this example is informal and lively (“she’s a doc- tor, all right”), the focus is on the subject, Shirley Barnes, “M.D.” If this same excerpt were presented as a poem, however, the new genre would change our reading:

Her business card reads

Shirley Barnes, M.D.,

and she’s a doctor, all right

— a Metropolitan Doctor.

Her passion is the Nash Metropolitan,

the little car produced by Austin of England

for American Motors between 1954 and 1962.

Barnes is a legend

among southern California Met lovers

— an icon,

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a beacon,

and a font of useful knowledge and

freely offered opinions.

The content hasn’t changed, but the different presentation invites us to read not only to learn about Shirley Barnes but also to explore the signifi- cance of the words and phrases on each line, to read for deeper meaning and greater appreciation of language. The genre thus determines how we read and how we interpret what we read. Genres help us write by establishing features for conveying certain kinds of content. They give readers clues about what sort of information they’re likely to find and so help them figure out how to read (“This article begins with an abstract, so it’s probably a scholarly source” or “Thank good- ness! I found the instructions for editing videos on my phone”). At the same time, genres are flexible; writers often tweak the features or combine ele- ments of different genres to achieve a particular purpose or connect with an audience in a particular way. Genres also change as writers’ needs and available technologies change. For example, computers have enabled us to add audio and video content to texts that once could appear only on paper.

Choosing the Appropriate Genre

How do you know which genre you should choose? Often the words and phrases used in writing assignments can give you clues to the best choice. Here are typical terms used in assignments and the genres they usually call for.

literacy narrative If you’re assigned to explore your development as a writer or reader or to describe how you came to be interested in a par- ticular subject or career, you’ll likely need to write a literacy narrative or a variation on one. Some terms that might signal a literacy narrative: describe a learning experience, tell how you learned, trace your development, write a story.

textual analysis or literary analysis If your assignment calls on you to look at a nonfiction text to see not only what it says but how it works,

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you likely need to write a textual analysis. If the text is a short story, novel, poem, or play, you probably need to write a literary analysis. If you are analyzing a text or texts in multiple media, you might choose either genre or mix the two. Some terms that might signal that a textual or literary analysis is being asked for: analyze, examine, explicate, read closely, interpret.

report If your task is to research a topic and then tell your audience in a balanced, neutral way what you know about it, your goal is probably to write a report. Some terms that might signal that a report is being asked for: define, describe, explain, inform, observe, record, report, show.

position paper or argument Some terms that might signal that your instructor wants you to take a position or argue for or against something: agree or disagree, argue, claim, criticize, defend, justify, position paper, prove.

summary If your assignment is to reduce a text into a single paragraph or so, is called for. Some terms that might signal that a summary is expected: abridge, boil down, compress, condense, recap, summarize.

evaluation If your instructor asks you to say whether or not you like something or whether it’s a good or bad example of a category or better or worse than something else, an evaluation is likely being called for. Some terms that might signal that an evaluation is expected: assess, critique, evaluate, judge, recommend, review.

memoir If you’re asked to explore an important moment or event in your life, you’re probably being asked to write a memoir. Some terms that likely signal that a memoir is desired: autobiography, chronicle, narrate, a significant personal memory, a story drawn from your experience.

profile If your instructor assigns you the task of portraying a subject in a way that is both informative and entertaining, you’re likely being asked to write a profile. Some terms that might indicate that a profile is being asked for: angle, describe, dominant impression, interview, observe, report on.

proposal If you’re asked to offer a solution to a problem, to suggest some action — or to make a case for pursuing a certain project, a proposal

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is probably in order. Some terms that might indicate a proposal: argue for [a solution or action], propose, put forward, recommend.

reflection If your assignment calls on you to think in writing about something or to play with ideas, you are likely being asked to write a reflec- tion. Some terms that may mean that a reflection is called for: consider, explore, ponder, probe, reflect, speculate.

Dealing with Ambiguous Assignments

Sometimes even the key term in an assignment doesn’t indicate clearly which genre is wanted, so you need to read such an assignment especially carefully. A first step might be to consider whether it’s asking for a report or an argument. For example, here are two sample assignments:

Discuss ways in which the invention of gas and incandescent lighting significantly changed people’s daily lives in the nineteenth century.

Discuss why Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman is, or is not, a tragic hero.

Both assignments use the word discuss, but in very different ways. The first may be simply be requesting an informative, researched report: the thesis — new forms of lighting significantly changed people’s daily lives in various ways — is already given, and you may be simply expected to research and explain what some of these changes were. It’s also possible, though, that this assignment is asking you to make an argument about which of these changes were the most significant ones. In contrast, discuss in the second assignment is much more open- ended. It does not lead to a particular thesis but is more clearly asking you to present an argument: to choose a position (Willy Loman is a tragic hero; Willy Loman is not a tragic hero; even, possibly, Willy Loman both is and is not a tragic hero) and to marshal reasons and evidence from the play to support your position. A clue that an argument is being asked for lies in the way the assignment offers a choice of paths. Other potentially ambiguous words in assignments are show and explore, both of which could lead in many directions. If after a careful

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reading of the entire assignment you still aren’t sure what it’s asking for, ask your instructor to clarify the appropriate genre or genres.

Thinking about Genre

• How does your genre affect what content you can or should include? Objec- tive information? Researched source material? Your own opinions? Personal experience? A mix?

• Does your genre call for any specific strategies? Profiles, for example, usually include some narration; lab reports often explain a process.

• Does your genre require a certain organization? proposals, for instance, usually need to show a problem exists before offering a solution. Some genres leave room for choice. Business letters delivering good news might be organized differently than those making sales pitches.

• Does your genre affect your tone? An abstract of a scholarly paper calls for a different tone than a memoir. Should your words sound serious and scholarly? brisk and to the point? objective? opinionated? Some- times your genre affects the way you communicate your stance.

• Does the genre require formal (or informal) language? A letter to the mother of a friend asking for a summer job in her bookstore calls for more formal language than does an email to the friend thanking him for the lead.

• Do you have a choice of medium? Some genres call for print; others for an electronic medium. Sometimes you have a choice: a résumé, for instance, can be printed to bring to an interview, or it may be down- loaded or emailed. Some teachers want reports turned in on paper; others prefer that they be emailed or posted in the class course man- agement system. If you’re not sure what medium you can use, ask.

• Does your genre have any design requirements? Some genres call for para- graphs; others require lists. Some require certain kinds of fonts — you wouldn’t use impact for a personal narrative, nor would you likely use chiller for an invitation to Grandma’s sixty-fifth birthday party. Different genres call for different design elements.

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Whenever you write, you have a certain stance, an attitude toward your topic. The way you express that stance affects the way you come across to your audience as a writer and a person. This email from a college student to his father, for example, shows a thoughtful, reasonable stance for a carefully researched argument:

Hi Dad, I’ll get right to the point: I’d like to buy a car. I saved over $4,500 from working this summer, and I’ve found three different cars that I can get for under $3,000. That’ll leave me $1,400 to cover the insurance. I can park in Lot J, over behind Monte Hall, for $75 for both semesters. And I can earn gas and repair money by upping my hours at the cafeteria. It won’t cost you any more, and if I have a car, you won’t have to come and pick me up when I want to come home. May I buy it? Love, Michael

While such a stance can’t guarantee that Dad will give permission, it’s more likely to produce results than this version:

Hi Dad, I’m buying a car. A guy in my Western Civ course has a cool Nissan he wants to get rid of. I’ve got $4,500 saved from working this summer, it’s mine, and I’m going to use it to get some wheels. Mom said you’d freak if I did, but I want this car. OK? Michael

The writer of the first email respects his reader and offers reasoned arguments and evidence of research to convince him that buying a car is an action that will benefit them both. The writer of the second, by contrast, seems impulsive, ready to buy the first car that comes along, and defiant —

Stance

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he’s picking a fight. Each email reflects a certain stance that shows the writer as a certain kind of person dealing with a topic in a certain way and establishing a certain relationship with his audience.

Identify your stance. What is your attitude toward your topic? Objective? Critical? Curious? Opinionated? Passionate? Indifferent? Your stance may be affected by your relationship to your audience. How do you want them to see you? As a colleague sharing information? a good student showing what you can do? an advocate for a position? Often your stance is affected by your genre: for example, lab reports require an objective, unemotional stance that emphasizes the content and minimizes the writer’s own atti- tudes. Memoir, by comparison, allows you to reveal your feelings about your topic. Your stance is also affected by your purpose, as the two emails about cars show. Your stance in a piece written to entertain will likely dif- fer from the stance you’d adopt to persuade. You communicate (or downplay) your stance through your tone — through the words you use and other ways your text expresses an atti- tude toward your subject and audience. For example, in an academic essay you would state your position directly — “The Bachelor reflects the values of American society today” — using a confident, authoritative tone. In contrast, using qualifiers like “might” or “I think” can give your writing a wishy-washy, uncertain tone: “I think The Bachelor might reflect some of America’s values.” A sarcastic tone might be appropriate for a comment on a blog post but isn’t right for an academic essay: “The Bachelor’s star has all the personality of a bowling ball.” Like every other element of writing, your tone must be appropriate for your rhetorical situation. Just as you likely alter what you say depending on whether you’re speaking to a boss, an instructor, a parent, or a good friend, so you need to make similar adjustments as a writer. It’s a question of appropriate- ness: we behave in certain ways in various social situations, and writing is a social situation. You might sign an email to a friend with an XO, but in an email to your supervisor you’ll likely sign off with a “Many thanks” or “Sincerely.” To write well, you need to write with integrity, to say as much as possible what you wish to say; yet you also must understand

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that in writing, as in speaking, your stance and tone need to suit your purpose, your relationship to your audience, the way in which you wish your audience to perceive you, and your medium. In writing as in other aspects of life, the Golden Rule applies: “Do unto audiences as you would have them do unto you.” Address readers respectfully if you want them to respond to your words with respect.

Thinking about Stance

• What is your stance, and how does it relate to your purpose for writing? If you feel strongly about your topic and are writing an argument that tries to persuade your audience to feel the same way, your stance and your purpose fit naturally together. But suppose you are writing about the same topic with a different purpose — to demonstrate the depth of your knowledge about the topic, for example, or your ability to consider it in a detached, objective way. You will need to adjust your stance to meet the demands of this different purpose.

• How should your stance be reflected in your tone? Can your tone grow directly out of your stance, or do you need to “tone down” your atti- tude toward the topic or take a different tone altogether? Do you want to be seen as reasonable? angry? thoughtful? gentle? funny? ironic? If you’re writing about something you want to be seen as taking very seriously, be sure that your language and even your font reflect that seriousness. Check your writing for words that reflect the tone you want to convey — and for ones that do not (and revise as necessary).

• How is your stance likely to be received by your audience? Your tone and especially the attitude it projects toward your audience will affect how they react to the content of what you say.

• Should you openly discuss your stance? Do you want or need to announce your own perspective on your topic? Will doing so help you reach your audience, or would it be better not to say directly where you’re coming from?

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In its broadest sense, a medium is a go-between: a way for information to be conveyed from one person to another. We communicate through many media, verbal and nonverbal: our bodies (we catch someone’s eye, wave, nod); our voices (we whisper, talk, shout, groan); and various technolo- gies, including handwriting, print, telephone, radio, video, and computer. Each medium has unique characteristics that influence both what and how we communicate. As an example, consider this message: “I haven’t told you this before, but I love you.” Most of the time, we communicate such a message in person, using the medium of voice (with, presumably, help from eye contact and touch). A phone call will do, though most of us would think it a poor second choice, and a handwritten letter or note would be acceptable, if necessary. Few of us would break such news on a website, with a tweet, or during a radio call-in program. By contrast, imagine whispering the following sentence in a darkened room: “By the last decades of the nineteenth century, the territorial expansion of the United States had left almost all Indians confined to res- ervations.” That sentence starts a chapter in a history textbook, and it would be strange indeed to whisper it into someone’s ear. It is appropriate, how- ever, in the textbook, in print or in an e-book, or as a quotation in an oral presentation. As you can see, we can often choose among various media depending on our purpose and audience. In addition, we can often combine media to create multimedia texts. And different media allow us to use different ways or modes of expressing meaning, from words to images to sound to hyperlinks, that can be combined into multimodal formats. No matter the medium or media, a text’s design affects the way it is received and understood. A typed letter on official letterhead sends a different message than the same words handwritten on pastel stationery. Classic type

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sends a different message than flowery italics. Some genres and media (and audiences) demand photos, diagrams, or color. Some information is easier to explain — and read — in the form of a pie chart or a bar graph than in the form of a paragraph. Some reports and documents are so long and complex that they need to be divided into sections, which are then best labeled with headings. These are some of the elements to consider when you are thinking about how to design what you write.

Identify your media and design needs. Does your writing situation call for a certain medium and design? A printed essay? An oral report with visual aids? A blog? A podcast? Academic assignments often assume a particular medium and design, but if you’re unsure about your options or the degree of flexibility you have, check with your instructor.

Thinking about Media

• What medium are you using — print? spoken? electronic? a combina- tion? — and how does it affect the way you will create your text? A printed résumé is usually no more than one page long; an electronic résumé posted on an employer’s website has no length limits. An oral presentation should contain detailed information; accompany- ing slides should provide only an outline.

• How does your medium affect your organization and strategies? Long paragraphs are fine on paper but don’t work well on the web. On presentation slides, phrases or keywords work better than sentences. In print, you need to define unfamiliar terms; on the web, you can sometimes just add a link to a definition found elsewhere.

• How does your medium affect your language? Some print documents require a more formal voice than spoken media; email and texting often invite greater informality.

• How does your medium affect what modes of expression you use? Should your text include photos, graphics, audio or video files, or links? Do you need slides, handouts, or other visuals to accompany an oral presentation?

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Thinking about Design

• What’s the appropriate look for your rhetorical situation ? Should your text look serious? whimsical? personal? something else? What design elements will suit your audience, purpose, stance, genre, and medium?

• What elements need to be designed? Is there any information you would like to highlight by putting it in a box? Are there any key terms that should be boldfaced? Do you need navigation buttons? How should you indicate links?

• What font(s) are appropriate to your audience, purpose, stance, genre, and medium?

• Are you including any visuals? Should you? Will your audience expect or need any? Is there any information in your text that would be easier to understand as a chart or graph? If you need to include video or audio clips, how should the links be presented?

• Should you include headings? Would they help you organize your mate- rials and help readers follow the text? Does your genre or medium require them?

• Should you use a specific format? mla? apa?

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mla 548–96

apa 597–636

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Genres When we make a shopping list, we automatically

write each item we need in a single column. When

we email a friend, we begin with a salutation: “Hi,

Jordan.” Whether we are writing a letter, a résumé,

or a proposal, we know generally what it should

contain and what it should look like because we

are familiar with each of those genres. Genres

are kinds of writing, and texts in any given genre

share goals and features — a proposal, for instance,

generally starts out by identifying a problem and then

suggests a certain solution. The chapters in this part

provide guidelines for writing in thirteen common

academic genres. First come detailed chapters on four

genres often assigned in writing classes — literacy narratives, textual analyses, reports, and arguments —

followed by brief chapters on nine other genres and one on mixing genres.

part 3

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G en

re s

10 WRITING A LITERACY NARRATIVE 75

11 ANALYZING TEXTS 98

12 REPORTING INFORMATION 131

13 ARGUING A POSITION 157

14 ABSTRACTS 185

15 ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND REVIEWS OF SCHOLARLY LITERATURE 190

16 EVALUATIONS 202

17 LITERARY ANALYSES 211

18 MEMOIRS 224

19 PROFILES 233

20 PROPOSALS 246

21 REFLECTIONS 256

22 RÉSUMÉS AND JOB LETTERS 264

23 MIXING GENRES 280

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Narratives are stories, and we read and tell them for many different pur­ poses. Parents read their children bedtime stories as an evening ritual. College applicants write about significant moments in their lives. In psy- chology courses, you may write a personal narrative to illustrate how indi­ viduals’ stories inform the study of behavior. In education courses, you may share stories of your teaching experiences. And in computer science courses, you may write programming narratives to develop programming skills. This chapter provides detailed guidelines for writing a specific kind of nar­ rative: a literacy narrative. Writers of literacy narratives traditionally explore their experiences with reading or writing, but we’ll broaden the definition to include experiences with various literacies, which might include learning an academic skill, a sport, an artistic technique, or something else. For example, the third narrative in this chapter explores one writer’s realization that she needs “automotive literacy” to work in her parents’ car repair shop. Along with this essay, this chapter includes two additional good examples, the first annotated to point out the key features found in most literacy narratives.

EMILY VALLOWE

Write or Wrong Identity

Emily Vallowe wrote this literacy narrative for a writing class at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia. In it, she explores her lifelong identity as a writer — and her doubts about that identity.

I’m sitting in the woods with a bunch of Catholic people I just met yesterday. Suddenly, they ask me to name one of the talents God has given me. I panic for a split second and then breathe an internal sigh of relief. I tell them I’m a writer. As the group leaders move on to ques-

Attention-getting opening.

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Writing a Literacy Narrative

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tion someone else, I sit trying to mentally catch my breath. It will take a moment before the terror leaves my forearms, chest, and stomach, but I tell myself that I have nothing to fear. I am a writer. Yes, I most definitely am a writer. Now breathe, I tell myself . . . and suppress that horrifying suspicion that you are actually not a writer at all. The retreat that prepared me for my eighth-grade confirmation was not the first time I found myself pulling out the old “I’m a writer” card and wondering whether I was worthy enough to carry this sacred card in the wallet of my identity. Such things happen to people with identity crises.

In kindergarten I wrote about thirty books. They were each about five pages long, with one sentence and a picture on each page. They were held together with three staples on the left side or top and had con- struction paper covers with the book’s title and the phrase “by Emily Vallowe” written out in neat kindergarten-teacher handwriting. My mom still has all of these books in a box at the bottom of her closet. One day at the very end of the school year, my kindergarten teacher took me to meet my future first-grade teacher, Mrs. Meadows. I got to make a special trip to meet her because I had been absent on the day the rest of the kindergarteners had gone to meet their future teachers. Mrs. Meadows’s classroom was big and blue and different from the kindergarten class, complete with bigger, differ- ent kids (I think Mrs. Meadows had been teaching third or fourth graders that year, so her students were much older than I was). During this visit, Mrs. Meadows showed me a special writing desk, complete with a small, old-fashioned desk lamp (with a lamp shade and everything). I’m not sure if I understood why she was showing me this writing area. She may have said that she’d heard good things about me. This handful of images is all I can remember about the most significant event in my writing life. I’m not sure why I connect the memory of my kindergarten books with the image of me sitting in Mrs. Meadows’s old classroom (for by the time I had her she was in a room on the opposite side of the school). I guess I don’t even know exactly when this major event happened. Was it kindergarten? First grade? Somewhere in between? All I know is that some event occurred in early elementary school that made me want to be a writer. I don’t

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Clearly described details.

5•

Vallowe traces her identity as a writer through her life.

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even clearly remember what this event was, but it is something that has actively affected me for the fourteen years since then. I have wanted to be a writer my entire life — or at least that’s what I tell people. Looking back, I don’t know if I ever wanted to be a writer. The idea might never have even occurred to me. Yet somehow I was marked as a writer. My teachers must have seen something in my writing that impressed them and clued me in on it. Teachers like to recognize kids for their strengths, and at the age of five, I probably started to notice that different kids were good at different things: Bobby was good at t-ball; Sally was good at drawing; Jenny could run really fast. I was probably starting to panic at the thought that I might not be good at anything — and then a teacher came along and told me I was good at writing. Someone gave me a compliment, and I ran with it. I declared myself to be a writer and have clung to this writer identity ever since. There are certain drawbacks to clinging to one unchanging iden- tity since the age of five. Constant panic is one of these drawbacks. It is a strange feeling to grow up defining yourself as something when you don’t know if that something is actually true. By the time I got to middle school, I could no longer remember having become a writer; I had just always been one — and had been one without any proof that I deserved to be called one. By the age of ten, I was facing a seasoned writer’s terror of “am I any good?!” and this terror has followed me throughout my entire life since then. Every writing assignment I ever had was a test — a test to see if I was a real writer, to prove myself to teachers, to classmates, to myself. I approached every writing assign- ment thinking, “I am supposed to be good at this,” not “I am going to try to make this good,” and such an attitude is not a healthy way to approach anything. It doesn’t help that if I am a writer, I am a very slow one. I can’t sit down and instantly write something beautiful like some people I know can. I have been fortunate to go to school with some very smart classmates, some of whom can whip out a great piece of writing in minutes. I still find these people threatening. If they are faster than I am, does that make them better writers than I am? I thought I was supposed to be “the writer”! My obsession with being “the” writer stems from my under- standing of what it means to be “the” anything. My childhood was

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Ongoing discussion of the central issue: is she a writer or not?

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marked by a belief in many abstract absolutes that I am only now allowing to crumble. I was born in Chicago (and was thus the fourth generation of my family to live there), but I grew up in northern Virginia. I came to look down on my Virginia surroundings because I had been taught to view Chicago as this great Mecca — the world’s most amazing city to which I must someday return, and to which all other places on earth pale in comparison. Throughout my childhood, I gathered that Chicago is a real city in which average people live and which has an economy historically based in shipping and manufacturing; Washington, D.C., on the other hand, where my dad works, has a population that includes a bizarre mix of impoverished people and the most influential leaders and diplomats in the world — and so manufactures nothing but political power. People in Chicago know how to deal with snow; Virgin- ians panic at the possibility of snow. Chicago rests on soil that is so fertile it’s black; Virginia does not even have soil — it has reddish clay suitable for growing nothing except tobacco. Even Chicago’s tap water tastes amazing; D.C.’s tap water is poisoned with lead. I grew up thinking that every aspect of Chicago was perfect — so perfect that Chicago became glorious to the point of abstraction. No other city could compare, and after a while I forgot why no other city could compare. I just knew that Chicago was “the” city . . . and that if “the” city exists, there must also be an abstract “the” everything. I grew up with this and many other abstract ideals that I would defend against my friends’ attacks . . . until I learned that they were just abstractions — and so was I. My writing identity was just another ideal, an absolute that I clung to without any basis in fact. I used to use writing as an easy way to define myself on those over-simplistic surveys teachers always asked us to fill out in elementary and middle school — the surveys that assumed that someone could know all about me simply by finding out my favorite color, my favorite TV show, or my hobbies. I used to casually throw out the “I’m a writer” card just to get these silly surveys over with. “I’m a writer” was just an easy answer to the complicated question, “Who are you?” I always thought the surveys avoided asking this question, but maybe I was the one avoid- ing it. For years, I had been defining myself as “the writer” without really pondering what this writer identity meant. Is a writer simply someone who writes all the time? Well, I often went through long stretches in which I did not write anything, so this definition did not seem to suit me. Is a writer someone who is good at writing? Well, I’ve

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Vallowe examines the roots of her identity as a writer — and why she questions that identity.

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already mentioned that I’ve been having “am I any good?!” thoughts since elementary school, so this definition didn’t seem to fit me, either. I was identifying myself as “the writer” as an abstraction, without any just cause to do so. The funny thing is that I recognized my writing identity as an abstract ideal before I recognized any of the other ideals I was cling- ing to, but that didn’t make the situation any better. It is one thing to learn that dead people have been voting in Chicago elections for decades, and so perhaps Chicago isn’t the perfect city, but what hap- pens when the absolute ideal is you? More important, what would happen if this absolute were to crumble? It was terrifying to think that I might discover that I was not a writer because to not be a writer was to suddenly be nothing. If a writer was the only thing that I had ever been, what would happen if writing was a lie? I would vanish. Looking back, the logical part of my brain tells me that, if I am not a writer, I am still plenty of other things: I am a Catholic; I am a Vallowe; people tell me that I have other good qualities. But when facing these horrifying spells of writer’s doubt, my brain doesn’t see these other things. I am driven only by the fear of nothingness and the thought that I have to be a writer because I’m not good at anything else. Am I really not good at anything else? I used to blame this entire writer’s complex on whoever it was that told me I was a writer. If that person hadn’t channeled this burdensome identity into me, I might never have expected great literary things from myself, and life would have been easier. I had these thoughts until one day in high school I mentioned something to my mom about the fact that I’d been writing since I was five years old. My mom corrected me by saying that I’d been writing since I was three years old. At the age of three I couldn’t even physically form letters, but apparently I would dictate stories to my mom on a regular basis. My mom explained to me how I would run to her and say, “Mommy, Mommy, write my story for me!” This new information was both comforting and unsettling. On one hand, it was a great relief to know that I had been a writer all along — that I would have been a writer even if no one had told me that I was one. On the other hand, the knowledge that I had been a writer all along drove me into an entirely new realm of panic. I’ve been a writer my entire life? WHAT?!

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She continues to explore her iden- tity as a writer.

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I’ve been a writer since I was three? Three? Three years old: How is that even possible? I didn’t know it was possible to be anything at age three, let alone the thing that might define me for my entire life. I have been taught that each person has a vocation — a calling that he or she must use to spread God’s love to others. Yet I’ve also assumed that one must go on some sort of journey to figure out what this vocation is. If I found my vocation at the age of three, have I skipped this journey? And if I’ve skipped the journey, does that mean that the vocation isn’t real? Or am I just really lucky for having found my vocation so early? Was I really born a writer? Was I born to do one thing and will I do that one thing for my entire life? Can anything be that consistent? That simple? And if I am living out some divine vocation, is that any comfort at all? If I am channel- ing some divine being in my writing, and everything I write comes from some outside source, where does that leave me? Am I nothing even if I am a writer? This questioning has not led me to any comforting conclusions. I still wonder if my writer identity has been thrust upon me, and what it means to have someone else determine who I am. If I am a writer, then I am someone who passionately seeks originality — someone who gets pleasure from inventing entire fictional worlds. Yet if someone — either a teacher or a divine being — is channeling an identity into me, then I am no more original than the characters that I create in my fiction. If my identity is not original, then this identity is not real, and if I am not real . . . I can’t even finish this sentence. I don’t know if I really wrote thirty books in kindergarten. It might have been twenty — or fifteen — or ten — or five. I might have made up that part about the special writing desk in Mrs. Meadows’s old class- room. I don’t know if God predestined me to write masterpieces or if a teacher just casually mentioned that I wrote well and I completely overreacted to the compliment. Questioning my identity as “the writer” has led me to new levels of fear and uncertainty, but this questioning is not going to stop. Even if I one day sit, withered and gray, with a Nobel Prize for Literature proudly displayed on my desk as I try to crank out one last novel at the age of ninety-two, my thoughts will probably drift back to Mrs. Meadows and those books I wrote in kinder- garten. In my old age, I still might not understand my writer identity,

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Ending refers back to the opening anecdote.

• Conclusion is tentative (since the end of the story is decades in the future).

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but maybe by that point, I will have written a novel about a charac- ter with an identity crisis — and maybe the character will have come through all right.

In this literacy narrative, Vallowe reflects on the origins of her identity as a writer: her early teachers, her parents, God, herself. The significance of her story lies in her inability to settle on any one of these possibilities.

DANIEL FELSENFELD

Rebel Music

Daniel Felsenfeld is a composer of classical music, a writer of several books on music, and a contributor to NewMusicBox, a multimedia publication whose mission “is to support and promote new music created in the United States.” In this essay, which originally appeared in 2010 in Opinionator, a commentary blog of the New York Times, he explores his journey of becoming literate in classical music.

Music may be the universal language, but those of us who spend our lives with it are expected to know it in depth, from early on. Many composers, whether traditional or experimental, have been steeped in Western classical music from the cradle. That was not the case with me. My primal time was the middle of the ’80’s in Orange County, Calif. I was 17 years old. The O.C. was billed as the ideal suburban community, but when you are raised in a palm-tree lined Shangri-La as I was, it is hard to grasp what’s missing without that crucial glimpse beyond. Now I realize: even though we had enough water to keep the manicured lawns just so, I was experiencing a personal drought, an arid lack of culture of all kinds, especially music. I was by no means unmusical, though any talent I have remains a mystery, coming as I do from perhaps the least musical of families (who would be the first to admit this). To her credit, my mother signed me up for the de rigueur piano lessons. Each week I dazzled poor Ms. Shimizu with either an astonishing performance of a Mozart sonata or a heretofore unseen level of ill-preparedness. I slogged my way through

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Chopin Preludes, culminating my high school piano study with a mid- dling performance of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” sonata. Probably not unlike most kids’ first encounter with formal music study: uninspiring. Eventually I quit lessons, but had developed chops enough to work in both piano bars (an underage piano man, traveling with my own snifter) and community theater orchestra pits. The music was dull, or at least had a dulling effect on me — it didn’t sparkle, or ask questions. I took a lot of gigs, but at 17 I was already pretty detached. I was attracted to music for some reason I lacked vocabulary to explain, and neither Oklahoma! nor Annie offered answers. That might have been it — working my way through junior college playing in pits or at Nordstrom’s, settling into some career or other — a piano studio, weddings, writing songs for mild amusement. Thankfully, it was not. Some afternoons I would go to my friend Mike’s house at the end of my cul-de-sac to listen to tapes of bands a lot of my friends were listening to: General Public, Howard Jones, the Thompson Twins (or David Bowie, Bauhaus and The Clash in our edgier moments). One day, bored with the music, Mike flipped his double-decked cassette case over to reveal rows of hidden tapes in a concealed compartment. “Want to hear something really wild?” he said. “But of course.” At 17, rebellion was of course a staple in my life. The smartest kids I knew took the route of dolling themselves up in anti-establishment finery — goth, punk, straight edge — forming bands, going to clubs in Los Angeles, spouting manifestos. I had auditioned this mode, joining a band (whose name escapes me) and, in one of my great (mercifully unphotographed) late high school moments, taking a long, throbbing solo at a school assembly on one of those bygone over-the-shoulder keyboards. It seems implausible now, but the “something really wild” Mike held was not goth, metal, or punk. It was a neatly hand-labeled tape of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He put it on, and I listened. I think it was then I actually heard music for the first time. Was this the same Beethoven to whose sonata I had done such violence? It unrolled from the small speakers, this big, gorgeous, unruly beast of a thing, contemporary, horrifying, a juggernaut that moved from the dark to unbearable brightness, soaring and spitting, malin- gering and dancing wildly, the Most Beautiful Thing I Ever Heard. This

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“symphony” by this Beethoven had a drug-like effect on me. At my insistence we listened again. And again. I wished it would just keep going. Mike, who was just a kid in the neighborhood with odd — evolved? sophisticated? — taste, had dozens more tapes: Brahms, Mozart, Bach, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, Strauss. I may have known that this kind of music was called classical, but I certainly did not under- stand that it was considered “great” or that it was revered as the founda- tion of musical culture in the West. I just loved it more than anything I’d heard before, and I must have sensed it was also miles away from Orange County, exactly as far as my adolescent self longed to be. I dubbed Mike’s tapes, and listened to them in secret. Driving to school with Beethoven blaring, I’d switch to KROQ as I entered the parking lot, swerving into my spot believing I’d put one over on people again. My passion for this “other” kind of music felt like the height of rebellion: I was the lone Bolshevik in my army. I loved this new (to me) music, but loved my abstract role in it even more. Rebels sought to break the mold, to do something that was exclusively “theirs,” to be weird by way of self-expression. And since I was the only one I knew listening to symphonies and concerti, operas and string quartets, I felt I was the weirdest of them all; it served my adolescent need to be misunderstood. And so I decided, with little prior experience or interest, to become a composer. Little did I know, right? All too soon, I came to understand what hard work this was. I studied scores, read biographies, got a serious piano teacher and logged hours a day practicing, traded up Mike’s cassettes for the then- novel compact discs, and boarded the spaceship bound for planet New York once or twice (always returning, at least then, to warmer climes). After signing up for theory classes at Fullerton Junior College, I met my first living composers: Brent Pierce taught me counterpoint and harmony (one summer I wrote a daily fugue), and Lloyd Rodgers was my private teacher (who encouraged me to copy out the entire “Well Tempered Clavier” by hand). In the meantime, I heard my first examples of what is called “New Music,” that is, classical music written more recently than the 19th century. Of course, some of my illusions vanished as soon as I realized there were composers I could actually meet. I was no longer a rebellion of one, but this halcyon innocence was traded for the ability to interact

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with artists who were always taking on the obscene challenge of creat- ing music that was totally new, completely theirs. Now I live far from the O.C., in New York, having long ago colo- nized this distant planet and gone native, an active member of a com- munity I once admired from what seemed an impossible distance. And while there are moments I lament not having been raised in a musical family, or my late and clumsy start, I also strive to make my less-than- ideal origins an asset. I’ve learned I do my best work when I remove myself and try to return to that Age of Wonder when I first heard the gorgeous dissonances of pieces like Samuel Barber’s Hermit Songs or Prayers of Kierkegaard, Elliott Carter’s Second String Quartet, Michael Nyman’s The Kiss, George Crumb’s Black Angels, Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw, John Corigliano’s First Symphony, and Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, and took them to be the same dissonances, not contrasting sides of a sometimes- contentious or politicized art world. When I am composing, I try to return to that time and place of inexperience when I was knocked sideways by dangerous sounds. Why else write? Why else listen?

Felsenfeld portrays the significance of his narrative as a specific moment: when he first heard Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which marked a turning point in his life. To capture the evolution of his musical tastes and talent, he provides detailed lists of the musicians and musical pieces that influenced him as a composer and music lover.

ANA-JAMILEH KASSFY

Automotive Literacy

In the following literacy narrative, Ana-Jamileh Kassfy describes an experience that taught her that literacy takes many forms, as well as the importance of knowing what goes on in the family business, auto repair. She wrote this essay in a college writing class at the University of Texas at El Paso and posted it on her class blog.

My father runs a well-known family-owned auto shop here in El Paso, Texas. I come from a family of five, which consists of me, two older brothers, and my parents. My father manages the place, while one of

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my brothers works as a mechanic in charge of most of the heavy labor and the other spends all day standing by a state inspection machine making sure the cars can run safely on the streets of El Paso. My mother works as the shop’s secretary, answering the phone and handling all paperwork. I, on the other hand, was not given the option of being a part of the family business; my job is to graduate from college. And I’ll gladly accept going to school and learning in place of spending my days working on cars, even though I spent a lot of time at the shop throughout my childhood. Since I come from a family whose life revolves around cars, and since I practically lived at the auto shop until I was able to drive, you’d think that I’d understand most of the jargon a mechanic would use, right? Wrong. During my first sixteen years of life, I did manage to learn the difference between a flathead and a Torx screwdriver. I also learned what brake pads do and that a car uses many different colorful fuses. However, rather than paying attention to what was happening and what was being said around me, most of the time I chose to focus on the social aspect of the business. While everyone was running around ordering different pads, filters, and starters or explaining in precise detail why a customer needed a new engine, I preferred to sit and speak with customers and learn their life stories. Being social worked for me — until it didn’t. One day my mother couldn’t come to work and decided to have me fill in for her. That was fine with me. I thought to myself, “How hard could it be to answer a phone and say, ‘Good afternoon, M & J Service, how may I help you?’ or to greet customers and then turn them over to my dad?” My morning went by pretty smoothly. I thought I had my duties down to a science. I figured aside from the permanent ringing in my ear from the annoyingly loud air compressors, a few minor paper cuts, and the almost perpetual stench of gasoline and burnt oil, my day was going to fly by. Then, around lunchtime, my dad left to pick up a part at a car dealership and my brothers went out for lunch. A woman pulled up in a ‘01 Hyundai Elantra that was desperately in need of a new paint job and walked into the shop. The woman seemed to be in her late forties and was wearing professional clothing with green eye shadow and bright orange lipstick. Her copper-brown hair was feathered out and she wore extremely large gold earrings. And she was angry. She

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demanded I tell her why she was having a difficult time starting her car. As I began to dust off the file stored in my memory as “Automo- tive Terms I Will Never Use,” I attempted to calm her down, and then I made the mistake of asking her what the problem was. She said in a harsh tone, “My car doesn’t start, your dad just replaced the spark plugs and the motor head, and now my ‘blah blah blah’ is making noise! I took it to my friend who’s a mechanic and he told me your dad fixed the wrong part.” I took a few seconds and just stood there looking at her, trying to add up what I had learned in my life as a “mechanic” and recall what spark plugs were. But it was useless. After a few moments, I gave up. I told her that I couldn’t help her, but that she was more than welcome to wait for a mechanic to return. After giving me an unpleasant look, she proceeded to say, while waving her hands in front of me, “I want my money back! Here is my receipt. I’m taking my car elsewhere. Your dad screwed me over. I told him it was the ‘blah blah blah.’ Why did he take out the ‘blah blah blah’? WHY CAN’T YOU HELP ME? WHY ARE YOU HERE? BLAH BLAH BLAH!” I stood there, overwhelmed. I began to fidget and push my hair back nervously as I wished some knowledge would kick in. It seemed unbelievable, but despite growing up in a family that lived and breathed automobiles, there was nothing I could do to help her. And my sixteen years of socializing with customers hadn’t even paid off because I couldn’t calm her down. When I saw my dad walk in, I sighed with relief, explained the problem to him, and it was resolved. But standing in front of that woman like a deer caught in headlights was so embarrassing. Having somebody shout, “Why can’t you help me?” and “Why are you here?” made me feel so ignorant. Unfortunately, that was only the first of many occasions when people have automatically expected that I know how to take apart and rebuild an engine, or perform some other auto-related task. In reality, I know as much about cars as the next person. After that incident, it became clear to me that I could be literate on very different levels. I’m an expert at running social networks like my Twitter feed, and I can zip through and analyze an entire novel written in Spanish, but in other subjects, like automobiles, I am completely illiterate. And when I’m expected to know them, I feel anything but competent.

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A confrontation with an irate costumer forces Kassfy to realize that she could be very literate in some situations but almost illiterate in others, and that her lack of knowledge in a workplace context put her at a real disadvantage.

Key Features / Literacy Narratives

A well-told story. As with most narratives, those about literacy often set up some sort of situation that needs to be resolved. That need for resolu­ tion makes readers want to keep on reading. We want to know how Kassfy will deal with an irate customer. Some literacy narratives simply explore the role that developing literacy of some kind played at some time in some­ one’s life, as when Felsenfeld “was knocked sideways” by classical music. And some, like Vallowe’s, speculate on the origins of the writer’s literacy.

Vivid detail. Details can bring a narrative to life for readers by giving them vivid mental sensations of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of the world in which your story takes place. The details you use when describing something can help readers picture places, people, and events; dialogue can help them hear what is being said. We grasp the depth of Felsenfeld’s reaction to hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony from his description of it: “big, gorgeous, unruly beast of a thing, contemporary, horrifying, a juggernaut.” Similarly, we can picture and hear Vallowe as a little girl running to her mother and saying, “Mommy, Mommy, write my story for me!”

Some indication of the narrative’s significance. By definition, a literacy narrative tells something the writer remembers about learning to read, write, or gain competence in a specific area. In addition, the writer needs to make clear why the incident matters to them. You may reveal its sig­ nificance in various ways. Now a composer, Felsenfeld tries to “return to that Age of Wonder when [he] first heard” what he calls “dangerous sounds.” Kassfy comes to understand that to work in an auto repair shop, she needs to understand automotive repair terms. Vallowe’s narrative

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would be less effective if, instead of questioning her identity as a writer from several perspectives, she had simply said, “I became a writer at the age of three.”

A GUIDE TO WRITING LITERACY NARRATIVES

Choosing a Topic

In general, it’s a good idea to focus on a single event that took place dur­ ing a relatively brief period of time — though sometimes learning to do or understand something may take place over an extended period. In that case, several snapshots or important moments may be needed. Here are some suggestions for topics:

• any early memory about writing, reading, speaking, or another form of literacy that you recall vividly

• someone who taught you to read or write

• someone who helped you understand how to do something

• a book, video game, recording, or other text that has been significant for you in some way

• an event at school that was related to your literacy and that you found interesting, humorous, or embarrassing

• a literacy task that you found (or still find) especially difficult or chal­ lenging

• a memento that represents an important moment in your literacy development (perhaps the start of a literacy portfolio)

• the origins of your current attitudes about writing, reading, speaking, or doing something

• learning to text, learning to write email appropriately, creating and maintaining a Facebook page or blog

Make a list of possible topics, and then choose one that you think will be interesting to you and to others — and that you’re willing to share with others. If several seem promising, try them out on a friend or classmate.

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Or just choose one and see where it leads; you can switch to another if need be. If you have trouble coming up with a topic, try freewriting, listing, clustering, or looping.

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

purpose Why do you want to tell this story? To share a memory with others? To fulfill an assignment? To teach a lesson? To explore your past learning? Think about the reasons for your choice and how they will shape what you write.

audience Are your readers likely to have had similar experiences? Would they tell similar stories? How much explaining will you have to do to help them understand your narra­ tive? Can you assume that they will share your attitudes toward your story, or will you have to work at making them see your perspective? How much about your life are you willing to share with this audience?

stance What attitude do you want to project? Affectionate? Neutral? Critical? Do you wish to be sincere? serious? humorously detached? self­critical? self­effacing? some­ thing else? How do you want your readers to see you?

media / design Will your narrative be in print? presented orally? online? Should you use photos, tables, graphs, or video or audio clips? Is there a font that conveys the right tone? Do you need headings?

Generating Ideas and Text

Good literacy narratives share certain elements that make them interesting and compelling for readers. Remember that your goals are to tell the story as clearly and vividly as you can and to convey the meaning the incident has for you today. Start by thinking about what you already know about writing a literacy narrative. Then write out what you remember about the

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setting of your narrative and those involved, perhaps trying out some of the methods in the chapter on generating ideas and text. You may also want to interview a teacher or parent or other person who figures in your narrative.

Explore what you already know about writing a literacy narrative. Think about recent occasions when you’ve had to narrate a story, either orally or in writing, in school or out. Take a few moments to think about a couple of those occasions, especially ones involving your reading, writ­ ing, speaking, or learning to do something. Why and to whom were you telling these stories? How successful do you think your narratives were? What aspects of telling the story did you feel most confident about or do especially well? What could you have done better? What do you still need to learn about writing a literacy narrative?

Describe the setting. Where does your narrative take place? List the places where your story unfolds. For each place, write informally for a few minutes, describing what you remember:

• What do you see? If you’re inside, what color are the walls? What’s hanging on them? What can you see out any windows? What else do you see? Books? Lined paper? Red ink? Are there people? places to sit? a desk or a table?

• What do you hear? A radiator hissing? Leaves rustling? The wind howl­ ing? Rain? Someone reading aloud? Shouts? Cheers? Children playing? Music? The chime of a text arriving on your phone?

• What do you smell? Sweat? Perfume? Incense? Food cooking?

• How and what do you feel? Nervous? Happy? Cold? Hot? A scratchy wool sweater? Tight shoes? Rough wood on a bench?

• What do you taste? Gum? Mints? Graham crackers? Juice? Coffee?

Think about the key people. Narratives include people whose actions play an important role in the story. In your literacy narrative, you are

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probably one of those people. A good way to develop your understanding of the people in your narrative is to write about them:

• Describe each person in a paragraph or so. What do the people look like? How do they dress? How do they speak? Quickly? Slowly? With an accent? Do they speak clearly, or do they mumble? Do they use any distinctive words or phrases? You might begin by describing their movements, their posture, their bearing, their facial expressions. Do they have a distinctive scent?

• Recall (or imagine) some characteristic dialogue. A good way to bring people to life and move a story along is with dialogue, to let readers hear them rather than just hearing about them. Try writing six to ten lines of dialogue between two people in your narrative. If you can’t remember an actual conversation, make up one that could have happened. (After all, you are telling the story, and you get to decide how it is to be told.) Try to remember (and write down) some of the characteristic words or phrases that the people in your narrative used.

Write about “what happened.” At the heart of every good narrative is the answer to the question “What happened?” The action in a literacy narrative may be as dramatic as winning a spelling bee or as subtle as a conversation between two friends; both contain action, movement, or change that the narrative tries to capture for readers. A good story dra­ matizes the action. Try summarizing the action in your nar rative in a paragraph — try to capture what happened. Use active and specific verbs (pondered, shouted, laughed) to describe the action as vividly as possible.

Consider the significance of the narrative. You need to make clear the ways in which any event you are writing about is significant for you now. Write a page or so about the meaning it has for you. How did it change or otherwise affect you? What aspects of your life now can you trace to that event? How might your life have been different if this event had not happened or had turned out differently? Why does this story matter to you?

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Ways of Organizing a Literacy Narrative

Start by outlining the main events in your narrative. Then think about how you want to tell the story. Don’t assume that the only way to tell your story is just as it happened. That’s one way — starting at the beginning of the action and continuing to the end. But you could also start in the middle — or even at the end. Daniel Felsenfeld, for example, could have begun his narrative by discussing his influences as a composer and then gone back to the origins of his interest in music at seventeen. Several ways of organizing a narrative follow.

[Chronologically, from beginning to end]

Introduce the story.

Describe the setting and people.

Tell what happened.

Say how the story was resolved.

Say something about the significance.

[Beginning in the middle]

Start in the middle of the action, giving enough information to let readers know what was happening.

Fill in details: setting, people, specific actions.

Make clear how the situation was resolved.

Say something about the significance.

[Beginning at the end]

Start at the end of the story: tell how the story ends up, then introduce the subject.

Go back to the beginning of the story, telling what happens chronologically and describing the setting and people.

Conclude by saying something about the story’s significance.

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Writing Out a Draft

Once you have generated ideas and thought about how you want to orga­ nize your narrative, it’s time to begin drafting. Do this quickly — try to write a complete draft in one sitting, concentrating on getting the story on paper or screen and on putting in as much detail as you can. Some writers find it helpful to work on the beginning or ending first. Others write out the main event first and then draft the beginning and ending.

Draft a beginning. A good narrative grabs readers’ attention right from the start. Here are some ways of beginning:

• Create a question to be answered. Felsenfeld describes the typical com­ poser’s upbringing, but then states that his was not typical — so his narrative should describe his unique introduction to classical music.

• Describe the context. You may want to provide background informa­ tion at the start of your narrative, as Vallowe does with an anecdote exposing her fears that she may not be who she thinks she is.

• Describe the setting, especially if it’s important to the narrative. Kassfy begins by describing her family’s roles working in her father’s auto shop.

Draft an ending. Think about what you want readers to read last. An effective ending helps them understand the meaning of your narrative. Here are some possibilities:

• End where your story ends. It’s up to you to decide where a narrative ends. Vallowe ends far in the future, in her imagined old age.

• Say something about the significance of your narrative. Vallowe explores the meaning of her experience over several paragraphs, and Kassfy discusses her ignorance and resulting embarrassment. The trick is to touch on the narrative’s significance without stating it too directly.

• Refer back to the beginning. Vallowe refers back to her kindergarten writing, and Felsenfeld to his first encounter with classical music.

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Consider rewriting. If you have time and want to explore alternatives, you might try rewriting your draft to see if a different plan or approach might work better.

Come up with a title. A good title indicates something about the subject of your narrative — and makes readers want to take a look. Kassfy’s title joins two terms — “automotive” and “literacy” — that aren’t usually seen together. Vallowe uses word play — “Write or Wrong Identity”, to question whether she is actually a writer. Felsenfeld captures the irony in calling his secret love of classical music an act of rebellion with his title “Rebel Music.”

Considering Matters of Design

You’ll probably write your narrative in paragraph form, but think about the information you’re presenting and how you can design it to enhance your story and appeal to your audience.

• What would be an appropriate font? Something serious, like Times Roman? Something whimsical, like Comic Sans? Something else?

• Would it help your readers if you added headings in order to divide your narrative into shorter sections?

• Would photographs or other visuals show details better than you can describe them with words alone? If you’re writing about learn­ ing to read, for example, you might scan in an image of one of the first books you read. Or if your topic is learning to write, you could include something you wrote. You could even include a video or audio recording. Would your narrative best be conveyed as a mul­ timodal composition that combines written text, images, and video or audio?

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Getting Response and Revising

The following questions can help you study your draft with a critical eye. getting response from others is always good, and these questions can guide their reading, too. Make sure they know your purpose and audience.

• Do the title and first few sentences make readers want to read on? If not, how else might you begin?

• Is the sequence of events in the narrative clear? Does it flow, and are there effective transitions? Does the narrative get sidetracked at any point?

• Is anything confusing?

• Is there enough detail, and is it interesting? Will readers be able to imagine the setting? Can they picture the characters and sense what they’re like? Would it help to add some dialogue so that readers can “hear” them?

• Are visuals used effectively and integrated smoothly with the writ­ ten text? If there are no visuals, would using some strengthen the narrative?

• Have you made the narrative meaningful enough for readers so that they wonder and care about what will happen?

• Do you narrate any actions clearly? vividly? Does the action keep readers engaged?

• Is the significance of the narrative clear?

• Is the ending satisfying? What are readers left thinking?

The preceding questions should identify aspects of your narrative you need to work on. When it’s time to revise, make sure your text appeals to your audience and achieves your purpose as successfully as possible.

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Editing and Proofreading

Readers equate correctness with competence. Once you’ve revised your draft, follow these guidelines for editing a narrative:

• Make sure events are narrated in a clear order and include appro­ priate time markers, transitions, and summary phrases to link the parts and show the passing of time.

• Be careful that verb tenses are consistent throughout. If you start your narrative in the past tense (“he taught me how to use a com­ puter”), be careful not to switch to the present (“So I look at him and say . . . ”) along the way.

• Check to see that verb tenses correctly indicate when an action took place. If one action took place before another action in the past, for example, you should use the past perfect tense: “I forgot to dot my i’s, a mistake I had made many times before.”

• Punctuate dialogue correctly. Whenever someone speaks, surround the speech with quotation marks (“No way,” I said). Periods and com­ mas go inside quotation marks; exclamation points and question marks go inside if they’re part of the quotation, outside if they’re part of the whole sentence:

INSIDE Opening the door, Ms. Cordell announced, “Pop quiz!” OUTSIDE It wasn’t my intention to announce “I hate to read”!

• proofread your finished narrative carefully before turning it in.

Taking Stock of Your Work

• How well do you think you told the story?

• What did you do especially well?

• What could still be improved?

• How did you go about coming up with ideas and generating text?

• How did you go about drafting your narrative?

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• Did you use photographs or any other visual or audio elements? What did they add? Can you think of such elements you might have used?

• How did others’ responses influence your writing?

• What would you do differently next time?

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IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See also MEMOIRS (Chapter 18), a kind of narrative that focuses more generally on a significant event from your past, and REFLECTIONS (Chapter 21), a kind of essay for thinking about a topic in writing. See Chapter 34 if you are required to submit your literacy narrative as part of a writing PORTFOLIO.

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Analyzing Texts11

Both the Huffington Post and National Review cover the same events, but each one interprets them differently. All toothpaste ads claim to make teeth “the whitest.” The Environmental Protection Agency is a guardian of America’s air, water, and soil — or an unconstitutional impediment to economic growth, depending on which politician is speaking. Those are but three examples that demonstrate why we need to be careful, analytical readers of magazines, newspapers, blogs, websites, ads, political docu- ments, even textbooks. Text is commonly thought of as words, as a piece of writing. In the academic world, however, text can include not only writing but images — photographs, illustrations, videos, films — and even sculptures, buildings, and music and other sounds. And many texts combine words, images, and sounds. We are constantly bombarded with texts: on the web, in print, on signs and billboards, even on our clothing. Not only does text convey information, but it also influences how and what we think. We need to read, then, to understand not only what texts say but also how they say it and how they try to persuade or influence what we think. Because understanding how texts say what they say and achieve their effects is so crucial, assignments in many disciplines ask you to analyze texts. You may be asked to analyze candidates’ speeches in a political sci- ence course or to analyze the imagery in a poem for a literature class. In a statistics course, you might analyze a set of data — a numerical text — to find the standard deviation from the mean. This chapter offers detailed guidelines for writing an essay that closely examines a text both for what it says and for how it does so, with the goal of demonstrating for readers how — and how well — the text achieves its effects. We’ll begin with three good examples, the first annotated to point out the key features found in most textual analyses.

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HANNAH BERRY

The Fashion Industry: Free to Be an Individual

Hannah Berry wrote this analysis of two visual texts, shoe ads, for a first-year writing course at Wright State University.

As young women, we have always been told through the medium of adver- tisement that we must use certain products to make ourselves beautiful. For decades, ads for things like soap, makeup, and mouthwash have estab- lished a sort of misplaced control over our lives, telling us what will make us attractive and what will not. Recently, however, a new generation of adver- tisement has emerged in the fashion industry, one that cleverly equates the products shown in the ads with the quest for confident individuality. Ads such as the two for Clarks and Sorel discussed below encourage us to break free from the standard beauty mold and be ourselves; using mostly imagery, they remind us that being unique is the true origin of beauty. The first ad promotes Clarks fashion as band geek chic, quite literally raising a unique personality onto a pedestal, with the subject poised on a decorative stone platform as shown in fig. 1. Photographed in standing profile, this quirky- looking young woman is doing what she loves — playing some kind of trumpet — and looks great doing it. She is wearing her hair in a French twist with a strand tucked behind her ear, as if she recently moved it out of her face to play the music she loves without distraction. The downturn of her nose points to the short gray-black dress that stops several inches above her knees but covers her chest and shoulders modestly, with a col- lar situated at the base of her neck and sleeves that reach for her elbows. The dress is plain,

Attention to the context of the ads Berry will analyze.

•

•

Clear thesis.

•

•

Fig. 1. Clarks ad shows a band geek doing what she loves (Clarks). •

•

Illustrations are labeled in MLA format.

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Detailed description of the first text.

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but it is a perfect fit for the personality implied in the photo. Set against the background of a light-tan wall, the model leans back slightly as if supporting the weight of her instrument. Her right knee is bent while her left knee remains straight. The positioning of her legs not only accentu- ates her unbalanced posture but also points out the pair of simple brown pumps that complete the look. She wears the shoes with a pair of socks in a much darker shade of brown pulled up around her shins. Around her ankles are sandy-colored rings of shaggy fabric that are most likely attached to the socks, giving the whole outfit a sense of nerdy flair. Her expression is a simple mix of calm and concentration. It’s as if the photographer happened to take the picture while she was practicing for a school recital. Clarks has taken what looks like your average high school student and dressed her in an outfit that speaks to her own distinctive character and talents. The image sparks the idea that her beauty comes from an internal base of secure self-confidence and moves outward to infuse her physical appearance and sense of style. This ad urges us to celebrate indi- viduality with the right look. Using an image alone, Clarks advertises its products with the simple prom- ise that they will support you in doing what you love and keep you original. Taking a narrower per- spective on originality, the ad for Sorel boots shown in fig. 2 dramatizes the idea that spontaneity is key to a dis- tinctive personal identity. This abstract idea is depicted in a vividly concrete way, using the featured fur-topped boots as a base for encouraging a bold sense of self. The ad dares us to break free from the mold of society and do something “fearless” (Sorel). It shows us a dark-haired, red-lipped woman sitting in a formal French upholstered chair in a

Description of the second text.

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Fig. 2. Sorel ad flaunts devil-red boots worn by a fearless woman with a shotgun (Sorel).

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Analysis of the first text.

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dark-blue, elaborately paneled parlor. An expression of triumph and mischief adorns her sultry visage. She’s wearing a revealing short white dress that overlaps slightly around her chest and falls strategically over her hips so that large portions of her upper thighs are visible. Feath- ers in autumn colors cover her shoulders, and a gold belt accentuates her waist. Next to her is a polished wood table supporting a lighted candle, a small glass vase of pink and white flowers, and a black- and-white-patterned orb. There is a dormant, ornate fireplace to her left. But what makes this scene extraordinary is what seems to have taken place moments before the picture was taken. One of the young woman’s feet, clad in the devil-red black-laced boots being advertised, rests defiantly on top of the shattered remains of a crystal chandelier. In her right hand, the woman holds an old-looking shotgun with her forefinger still resting on the trigger. In Sorel’s explosive ad, it is apparent that the woman not only shot down the ceiling fixture but also has no regrets about doing so. Her white dress represents a sort of purity and innocence that is completely contradicted by the way she wears it — and by the boots. They gave her the power to shoot down the chandelier, the push she needed to give in to a long-held desire that perhaps she couldn’t have indulged in without the extra help. They symbolize her liberty to decide to be herself and do what she wants. Along with the white dress, the formal decor represents the bounds that society tells her she must fit into — but that she decides to take a potshot at instead. Focusing on the beauty of inner power, not just the power of outer beauty, this Sorel ad punctuates its bold visual statement with a single verbal phrase: “Après anything” (Sorel). In the French language, the word après means “after.” So, the ad suggests, no matter what outrageous or outlandish deed you do, the Sorel boots will be there for you, suitable for slipping into afterward like a negligee. With these pioneering fashion ads that celebrate blowing your own horn or shooting up fancy French lighting fixtures for fun, young women are told to accessorize their inner beauty with articles of clothing geared toward their distinctive individual desires. “You don’t have to just try to be beautiful in the ways other women do,” they say; “you can strike out on your own, and our products will help you do it.” The extent to which women will respond to these messages remains to be seen, but certainly the ads themselves achieve a strikingly different look. Whether celebrating individual talents or random acts of defiance in our everyday lives, they dare us to accessorize our personalities.

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Analysis of the second text.

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Conclusion ties together the strands of the analysis.

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Speculation about the story behind the image.

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Works Cited Clarks. Advertisement. Lucky, Sept. 2011, p. 55. Sorel. Advertisement. Lucky, Sept. 2011, p. 65.

Berry summarizes each ad clearly and focuses her analysis on a theme run- ning through both ads: that clothing is an expression of one’s individuality. She describes patterns of images in both ads as evidence.

DANIELLE ALLEN

Our Declaration

Danielle Allen is a political theorist, teaches at Harvard University, and directs Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. This analysis is a chapter from her book Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality.

There’s something quite startling about the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Perhaps it can be made visible most easily with a comparison. The Catholic Church, too, is committed to a set of truths. At every mass priest and parishioners together recite a list of their beliefs called the Credo. One version, called the Apostles’ Creed, starts like this: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son and Lord.” Each section begins with the words “I believe,” and that’s why this recitation is called the Credo. Latin, “credo” simply means “I believe.” The Declaration launches its list of truths altogether differently. Jefferson and his colleagues do not say, “I believe,” or even “we believe,” that all men are created equal. Instead, they say, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” and then they give us a set of either three or five truths, depending on how you count. What’s the difference between “We believe” and “We hold these truths to be self-evident”? In the Catholic Credo, when one says, “I believe,” the basis for that belief is God’s revealed word. In contrast, when Jefferson and his colleagues say, “We hold these truths to be

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self-evident,” they are claiming to know the truths thanks to their own powers of perception and reasoning. These truths are self-evident, and so humans can grasp and hold them without any external or divine assistance. In order to understand what “We hold these truths to be self-evident” really means, then, it is important to know what “self-evident” means. Sometimes people take it to mean that we can instantly under- stand an idea, but that’s not really right. It’s true that sometimes the idea of self- evidence is used for things that we simply perceive. For instance, when I look out my window I immediately perceive that the world includes things like trees and flowers. If outside my window there are many different kinds of tree — hickory and maple and oak, for instance — when I look at them, I nonetheless rapidly perceive that they are all the same kind of thing. That many different kinds of a particular sort of growing thing are all trees is self-evident. We can call this self-evidence from sense perception. The immediacy of perception, though, is not the same as instantly understanding an idea. And, in fact, to call a proposition self-evident is not at all to say that you will instantly get it. It means instead that if you look into the proposition, if you entertain it, if you reflect upon it, you will inevitably come to affirm it. All the evidence that you need in order to believe the proposition exists within the proposition itself. This second kind of self-evidence comes not from perception but from logic and how language works. For instance, we define a chair as an object with a seat and some structure of legs to hold that seat up; and the artifact serves the purpose of having someone sit on it. Then, if I say that a chair is for sitting on, I am expressing a self-evident truth based only on the definition of a chair. Of course a chair is for sitting on! That is how I’ve defined the word, after all. That’s a pretty trivial example of self-evidence. If that were all there were to the idea of self-evidence, it wouldn’t be very interesting. So here is where matters get more interesting: one can string together more than one kind of self-evident proposition — let’s call them “premises” — in order to lead to a new piece of knowledge, a con- clusion, which will also count as self-evident, since it has been deduced from a few basic self-evident premises.

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Aristotle called this method of stringing together valid premises to yield a self-evident conclusion, a syllogism. Above, I said that “syl- logism” is a technical word. Here is a basic example:

FIRST PREMISE: Bill Gates is a human being. SECOND PREMISE: All human beings are mortal. CONCLUSION: Bill Gates is mortal.

This is a bit like math. We can use a Venn diagram to show how the syllogism works. Venn diagrams represent sets of things and how they overlap, and the argument of a syllogism can be thought of as expressing facts about sets and their members. Bill Gates is in the set of human beings. And the set of human beings is entirely contained within the set of mortals. It follows that Bill Gates is in the set of mortals. The validity of this syllogism becomes self-evident when those facts are represented as in this Venn diagram:

Bill Gates

All humans

All mortals

Now, in this syllogism, our two premises are both self-evident truths based on sense perception. We know Bill Gates is a human being by looking at and listening to him. As to the idea that human beings are mortal, we know that human beings die by seeing it happen all around us and never seeing a counterexample. Then we take these two premises, each self-evident through sense perception, and generate a third self-evident proposition, in this case a conclusion, through deduc- tion. From the two premises, we can deduce the certain conclusion that Bill Gates will die.

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The Declaration introduces a similar kind of argument when it says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” At first glance, it looks as if we just have three separate self-evident truths. But if we look closer, we notice that our truths also represent an argument with two premises, which are true from sense perception, and a conclusion that is deduced from them. Here’s how it works. After the Declaration says, “We hold these truths to be self- evident,” the text proceeds to identify three truths: one about human beings, one about government, and one about revolution. The truth about human beings, though, is a three-part truth. It is self-evidently true:

that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

How do these three claims make a single truth? Human beings are equal in all acquiring the same rights at the moment of their creation. From the moment of their emergence as living beings, human beings seek to survive, to be free from domination, and to be happy. This is something we simply observe about human beings. For that matter, we observe it about other animals, too. For instance, I’ve never seen a cat that didn’t want to survive, to be free, and to be happy. Then, with the next truth, we come to the difference between human beings and animals. The Declaration says, it is self-evidently true

— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

This is a truly salient point. The signers are saying that, in contrast to the animal kingdom, the world of human beings is indeed full of kingdoms and other kinds of governments. The so-called animal king- dom is a kingdom only metaphorically. There are no governments among animals. Animals have social hierarchies, and they have their own methods for seeking their survival, freedom, and happiness, but human beings use politics. Human beings display self-conscious thought about social organization, and politics is the activity that flows from

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that self- consciousness about power. Again, this is simply a matter of observation. From the beginning of time to the present day, human beings have formed governments. Human beings have done this just as regularly as birds build nests. Then the Declaration puts these first two truths together. Since human beings seek their own survival, freedom, and happiness, and since they have a special tool for doing so — namely, the ability to form governments — it makes sense for them to stick with any particular version of that tool, any particular government, only if it’s doing the work it’s been built to do. Compare it to a bird with a nest. What’s the point of a bird’s stay- ing in a nest if it turns out that the nest has been built out of material inimical or poisonous to the bird? What’s the use, in other words, of having a government, if it doesn’t serve the purposes of protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for which governments are set up in the first place? The Declaration puts it this way: It is self-evidently true

— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destruc- tive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

From the facts, first, that people are simply wired, as are all animals, to seek their survival, freedom, and happiness, and, second, that human beings use governments as their central instrument for protecting their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, we can deduce that people have a right to change governments that aren’t working for them. This makes an argument that goes like this:

PREMISE 1: All people have rights to life, liberty, and the pur- suit of happiness.

PREMISE 2: Properly constituted government is necessary to their securing their rights

CONCLUSION: All people have a right to a properly constituted government.

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In fact, a philosopher would say that a premise is missing from that argument and that the full formally valid syllogism would look like this:

PREMISE 1: All people have rights to life, liberty, and the pur- suit of happiness.

PREMISE 2: Properly constituted government is necessary to their securing these rights.

PREMISE 3: [All people have a right to whatever is necessary to secure what they have a right to].

CONCLUSION: All people have a right to a properly constituted government.

Politicians often craft maxims simply by dropping out pieces of their argument. With the missing premise inserted, the Declaration’s truths fit together almost like the pieces of a mathematical equation; we intuitively feel the puzzle pieces snap together. That is how self- evidence should feel.

Allen’s analysis focuses on the Declaration’s second sentence, unpacking its logic through a careful examination of its key term, “self-evident,” and explaining how the rest of the sentence forms a syllogism that “snaps together.” She looks carefully at every word, restricting her analysis here to a very brief part of the text — but provides insights that illuminate the whole document.

ROY PETER CLARK

Why It Worked: A Rhetorical Analysis of Obama’s Speech on Race

Roy Peter Clark teaches writing at the Poynter Institute. This essay, which Clark describes as “an X-ray reading of the text,” appeared online on the Poynter Institute’s website, first in 2008 and again in 2017, with a new introduction.

The National Conference of Teachers of English (NCTE) has declared today [October 20, 2017] a National Day on Writing. I celebrate such a day. The introduction of my book Writing Tools imagines what America might look like and sound like if we declared ourselves a “nation of

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writers.” After all, what good is freedom of expression if we lack the means to express ourselves? To mark this day — and to honor language arts teachers every- where — Poynter is republishing an essay I wrote almost a decade ago. Remember? It was the spring of 2008 and Barack Obama was running for president. Many of us wondered if America was ready to elect an African-American president (a man with the middle name Hussein). To dispel the fears of some white Americans and to advance his chances for election, Obama delivered a major address on race in America, a speech that was praised even by some of his adversaries. Obama had / has a gift for language. He is a skilled orator. To neutral- ize that advantage, his opponents — including Hillary Clinton at one point — would characterize Obama’s words as empty “rhetoric” — an elaborate trick of language. The spring of 2008 seems like such a long time ago. A time just before the Great Recession [that affected the U.S. from 2008 to 2009]. A time just before the ascendancy of social networks and the trolls who try to poison them. A time before black lives were said to matter in a more assertive way. A time before fake news was anything more dangerous than a piece of satire in the Onion. A time before Colin Kaepernick took a knee — except when he was tired. A time before torch-bearing white supremacists marched through the night in Charlottesville, Virginia. It feels like the perfect time for a restart on a conversation about race. To prepare us, let’s take another look at the words of Barack Obama before he was president. Let’s review what he said, and, more important, how and why he said it. My X-ray analysis of that speech is meant not as a final word on that historical moment, but as an invitation, a doorway to a room where we can all reflect on American history and the American language. Have a great National Day on Writing.

More than a century ago, scholar and journalist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote a single paragraph about how race is experienced in America. I have learned more from those 112 words than from most book-length studies of the subject:

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil,

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and gifted with second-sight in this American world, a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Much has been said about the power and brilliance of Barack Obama’s March 18, 2008, speech on race, even by some of his detrac- tors. The focus has been on the orator’s willingness to say things in public about race that are rarely spoken at all, even in private, and his expressed desire to move the country to a new and better place. There has also been attention to the immediate purpose of the speech, which was to reassure white voters that they had nothing to fear from the congregant of a fiery African-American pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Amid all the commentary, I have yet to see an X-ray reading of the text that would make visible the rhetorical strategies that the orator and authors used so effectively. When received in the ear, these effects breeze through us like a harmonious song. When inspected with the eye, these moves become more apparent, like reading a piece of sheet music for a difficult song and finally recognizing the chord changes. Such analysis, while interesting in itself, might be little more than a scholarly curiosity if we were not so concerned with the language issues of political discourse. The popular opinion is that our current president [George W. Bush], though plain spoken, is clumsy with language. Fair or not, this perception has produced a hope that our next president will be a more powerful communicator, a Kennedy or Reagan, perhaps, who can use language less as a way to signal ideology and more as a means to bring the disparate parts of the nation together. Journalists need to pay closer attention to political language than ever before. Like most memorable pieces of oratory, Obama’s speech sounds better than it reads. We have no way of knowing if that was true of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but it is certainly true of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. If you doubt this assertion, test it out. Read

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the speech1 and then experience it in its original setting2 recited by his soulful voice. The effectiveness of Obama’s speech rests upon four related rhe- torical strategies:

1. The power of allusion and its patriotic associations. 2. The oratorical resonance of parallel constructions. 3. The “two-ness” of the texture, to use Du Bois’s useful term. 4. His ability to include himself as a character in a narrative about race.

Allusion Part of what made Dr. King’s speech resonate, not just for black people, but for some whites, was its framing of racial equality in familiar patriotic terms: “This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, ‘My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.’” What follows, of course, is King’s great litany of iconic topography that carries listeners across the American land- scape: “Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! . . .” In this tradition, Obama begins with “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union,” a quote from the Constitution that becomes a recurring refrain linking the parts of the speech. What comes next is “Two hundred and twenty one years ago,” an opening that places him in the tradition of Lincoln at Gettysburg and Dr. King at the Lincoln Memorial: “Five score years ago.” On the first page, Obama mentions the words democracy, Decla- ration of Independence, Philadelphia convention, 1787, the colonies, the founders, the Constitution, liberty, justice, citizenship under the law, parchment, equal, free, prosperous, and the presidency. It is not as well known as it should be that many black leaders, including Dr. King, use two different modes of discourse when addressing white vs. black audiences, an ignorance that has led to some of the hysteria over some of Rev. Wright’s comments. Obama’s patriotic lexicon is meant to comfort white ears and soothe white fears. What keeps the speech from falling into a pan-

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1. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm 2. https://archive.org/details/MLKDream

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dering sea of slogans is language that reveals, not the ideals, but the failures of the American experiment: “It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.” And “what would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part . . . to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.” Lest a dark vision of America disillusion potential voters, Obama returns to familiar evocations of national history, ideals, and language:

— “Out of many, we are truly one.” — “survived a Depression.” — “a man who served his country” — “on a path of a more perfect union” — “a full measure of justice” — “the immigrant trying to feed his family” — “where our union grows stronger” — “a band of patriots signed that document.”

Parallelism At the risk of calling to mind the worst memories of grammar class, I invoke the wisdom that parallel constructions help authors and orators make meaning memorable. To remember how parallelism works, think of equal terms to express equal ideas. So Dr. King dreamed that one day his four children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” (By the content of their character is parallel to by the color of their skin.) Back to Obama: “This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign — to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America.” If you are counting, that’s five parallel phrases among 43 words. And there are many more:

“. . . we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction.”

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“So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.” “. . . embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past.”

Two-ness I could argue that Obama’s speech is a meditation upon Du Bois’s theory of a dual experience of race in America. There is no mention of Du Bois or two-ness, but it is all there in the texture. In fact, once you begin the search, it is remarkable how many examples of two-ness shine through:

— “through protests and struggles” — “on the streets and in the courts” — “through civil war and civil disobedience” — “I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman

from Kansas.” — “white and black” — “black and brown” — “best schools . . . poorest nations” — “too black or not black enough” — “the doctor and the welfare mom” — “the model student and the former gang-banger” — “raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor” — “political correctness or reverse racism” — “your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my

dreams”

Such language manages to create both tension and balance and, with- out being excessively messianic, permits Obama to present himself as the bridge builder, the reconciler of America’s racial divide.

Autobiography There is an obnoxious tendency among political candidates to frame their life story as a struggle against poverty or hard circumstances. As satirist Stephen Colbert once noted of presidential candidates, it is not

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enough to be an average millionaire. To appeal to populist instincts it becomes de rigueur to be descended from “goat turd farmers” in France. Without dwelling on it, Obama reminds us that his father was black and his mother white, that he came from Kenya, but she came from Kansas: “I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners — an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” The word “story” is a revealing one, for it is always the candidate’s job (as both responsibility and ploy) to describe himself or herself as a character in a story of his or her own making. In speeches, as in homilies, stories almost always carry the weight of parable, with moral lessons to be drawn. Most memorable, of course, is the story at the end of the speech — which is why it appears at the end. It is the story of Ashley Baia, a young, white Obama volunteer from South Carolina, whose family was so poor she convinced her mother that her favorite meal was a mustard and relish sandwich. “Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. . . . He simply says to everyone in the room, ‘I am here because of Ashley.’ ” During most of the 20th century, demagogues, especially in the South, gained political traction by pitting working class whites and blacks against each other. How fitting, then, that Obama’s story points in the opposite direction through an old black man who feels a young white woman’s pain.

Clark traces four patterns of rhetorical strategies used by President Obama in his speech: allusion, parallelism, W. E. B. Du Bois’s “two-ness,” and autobiog- raphy. His analysis shows how these strategies combine to provide Obama with the opportunity to address and bring together a broad audience through mem- orable prose.

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For four more textual analyses, see CHAPTER 62.

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Key Features / Textual Analysis

A summary or description of the text. Your readers may not know the text you are analyzing, so you need to include it or tell them about it before you analyze it. Allen’s text, the Declaration of Independence, is well known, so she assumes that her readers already know its first sentences. Texts that are not so well known require a more detailed summary or description. For example, Berry includes the ads she analyzes and also describes them in detail.

Attention to the context. Texts don’t exist in isolation: they are influenced by and contribute to ongoing conversations, controversies, debates, and cul- tural trends. To fully engage a particular text, you need to understand its larger context. Clark begins by quoting a 1903 book on race in America, and Berry places shoe ads into the context of fashion advertising.

A clear interpretation or judgment. Your goal in analyzing a text is to lead readers through careful examination of the text to some kind of inter- pretation or reasoned judgment, sometimes announced clearly in a thesis statement. When you interpret something, you explain what you think it means, as Berry does when she argues that the two ads suggest that our clothing choices enhance our individuality. She might instead have chosen to judge the effectiveness of the ads, perhaps noting that they promise the impossible: uniqueness through mass-produced clothing. Clark argues that through Obama’s use of four rhetorical strategies, he “present[s] himself as the bridge builder, the reconciler of America’s racial divide.”

Reasonable support for your conclusions. Written analysis of a text is generally supported by evidence from the text itself and sometimes from other sources as well. The writer might support their interpretation by quoting words or passages from a verbal text or referring to images in a visual text. Allen, for example, interprets the term “self-evident” by referring to formal logic, Venn diagrams, and the Catholic Credo. Berry examines patterns of both language and images in her analysis of two ads. Clark provides lists of phrases from Obama’s speech to support his thesis. Note that the support you offer for your interpretation need only be “reasonable” — there is never only one way to interpret something.

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A GUIDE TO WRITING TEXTUAL ANALYSES

Choosing a Text to Analyze

Most of the time, you will be assigned a text or a type of text to analyze: a poem in a literature class, the work of a political philosopher in a political science class, a speech in a history or communications course, a painting or sculpture in an art class, a piece of music in a music theory course. If you must choose a text to analyze, look for one that suits the demands of the assignment — one that is neither too large or complex to analyze thoroughly (a Dickens novel or a Beethoven symphony is probably too big) nor too brief or limited to generate sufficient material (a ten-second TV news brief or a paragraph from Hillbilly Elegy would probably be too small). You might also choose to analyze three or four texts by examining elements common to all. Be sure you understand what the assignment asks you to do, and ask your instructor for clari- fication if you’re not sure.

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

purpose Why are you analyzing this text? To demonstrate that you understand it? To show how its argument works — or doesn’t? Or are you using the text as a way to make some other point?

audience Are your readers likely to know your text? How much detail will you need to supply?

stance What interests you (or not) about your text? Why? What do you know or believe about it, and how will your own beliefs affect your analysis?

media / design Will your analysis appear in print? on the web? How will your medium affect your analysis? If you are analyzing a visual text, you will probably need to include an image of it.

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Generating Ideas and Text

In analyzing a written text, your goal is to understand what it says, how it works, and what it means. To do so, you may find it helpful to follow a certain sequence: read, respond, summarize, analyze, and draw conclu- sions from your analysis.

Read to see what the text says. Start by reading carefully, to get a sense of what it says. This means first skimming to preview the text, rereading for the main ideas, then questioning and annotating. Consider your initial response. Once you have a sense of what the text says, what do you think? What’s your reaction to the argument, the tone, the language, the images? Do you find the text difficult? puzzling? Do you agree with what the writer says? disagree? agree and disagree? Your reaction to a text can color your analysis, so start by thinking about how you react — and why. Consider both your intellectual and any emotional reactions. Identify places in the text that trigger or account for those reac- tions. If you think that you have no particular reaction or response, try to articulate why. Whatever your response, think about what accounts for it. Next, consolidate your understanding of the text by summarizing what it says in your own words. You may find it helpful to outline its main ideas. For instance, Allen carefully maps out the parts of the syl- logism at the heart of her analysis.

Decide what you want to analyze. Having read the text carefully, think about what you find most interesting or intriguing and why. Does the argument interest you? its logic? its attempt to create an emotional response? its reliance on the writer’s credibility or reputation? its use of design to achieve its aims? its context? Does the text’s language, imagery, or structure intrigue you? something else? You might begin your analysis by exploring what attracted your notice.

Think about the larger context. All texts are part of larger conversations with other texts that have dealt with the same topic. An essay arguing for handgun trigger locks is part of an ongoing conversation about gun regula-

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tion, which is itself part of a conversation on individual rights and respon- sibilities. Academic texts include documentation in part to weave in voices from the conversation. And, in fact, anytime you’re reading to learn, you’re probably reading for some larger context. Whatever your reading goals, being aware of that larger context can help you better understand what you’re reading. Here are some specific aspects of the text to pay attention to:

• Who else cares about this topic? Especially when you’re reading in order to learn about a topic, the texts you read will often reveal which people or groups are part of the conversation — and might be sources of fur- ther reading. For example, an essay describing the formation of the Grand Canyon could be of interest to geologists, environmentalists, Native Americans, travel writers, or tourists. If you’re reading such an essay while doing research on the canyon, you should consider how the audience addressed determines the nature of the information provided — and its suitability as a source for your research.

• Ideas. Does the text refer to any concepts or ideas that give you some sense that it’s part of a larger conversation? An argument on airport security measures, for example, is part of larger conversations about government response to terrorism, the limits of freedom in a democ- racy, and the possibilities of using technology to detect weapons and explosives, among others.

• Terms. Is there any terminology or specialized language that reflects the writer’s allegiance to a particular group or academic discipline? If you run across words like false consciousness, ideology, and hegemony, for example, you might guess the text was written by a Marxist scholar.

• Citations. Whom does the writer cite? Do the other writers have a par- ticular academic specialty, belong to an identifiable intellectual school, share similar political leanings? If an article on politics cites Michael Moore and Maureen Dowd in support of its argument, you might assume the writer holds liberal opinions; if it cites Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, the writer is likely a conservative.

Write a brief paragraph describing the larger context surrounding the text and how that context affects your understanding of the text.

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Consider what you know about the writer. What you know about the person who created a text can influence your understanding of it. Their credentials, other work, reputation, stance, and beliefs are all useful windows into understanding a text. You may need to conduct an online search to find information on the writer. Then write a sentence or two summarizing what you know about the writer and how that information affects your understanding of the text.

Study how the text works. Written texts are made up of various components, including words, sentences, paragraphs, headings, lists, punctuation — and sometimes images as well. Look for patterns in the way these components are used and try to decide what those patterns reveal about the text. How do they affect its message? See the sections on thinking about how the text works and identifying patterns for specific guidelines on examining patterns this way. Then write a sentence or two describing the patterns you’ve discovered and how they contribute to what the text says.

Analyze the argument. Every text makes an argument and provides some kind of support for it. An important part of understanding any text is to recognize its argument — what the writer wants the audience to believe, feel, or do. Here are some questions you’ll want to consider when you analyze an argument:

• What is the claim? What is the main point the writer is trying to make? Is there a clearly stated thesis, or is the thesis merely implied? Is it appropriately qualified?

• What support does the writer offer for the claim? What reasons are given to support the claim? What evidence backs up those reasons? Facts? Statistics? Examples? Testimonials by authorities? Anecdotes or stories? Are the reasons and evidence appropriate, plausible, and sufficient? Are you convinced by them? If not, why not?

• How does the writer appeal to readers? Do they appeal to your emotions? rely on logic? try to establish common ground? demon - strate credibility?

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• How evenhandedly does the writer present the argument? Is there any mention of counterarguments? If so, how does the writer deal with them? By refuting them? By acknowledging them and responding to them reasonably? Does the writer treat other arguments respectfully? dismissively?

• Does the writer use any logical fallacies? Are the arguments or beliefs of others distorted or exaggerated? Is the logic faulty?

• What authorities or other sources of outside information does the writer use? How are they used? How credible are they? Are they in any way biased or otherwise unreliable? Are they current?

• How does the writer address you as the reader? Does the writer assume that readers know something about what is being discussed? Does their language include you or exclude you? (Hint: If you see the word we, do you feel included?) Do you sense that you and the writer share any beliefs or attitudes? If the writer is not writing to you, what audi- ence is the target? How do you know?

Then write a brief paragraph summarizing the argument the text makes and the main way the writer argues it, along with your reactions to or questions about that argument.

In analyzing a visual text, your goal is to understand its intended effect on viewers as well as its actual effect, the ways it creates that effect, and its relationship to other texts. If the visual text accompanies a written one, you need to understand how the texts work together to convey a message or make an argument.

Describe the text. Your first job is to examine the image carefully. Focus on specific details; given the increasing use of Photoshop and other digital image manipulation tools, you can usually assume that every detail in the image is intentional. Ask yourself these questions:

• What kind of image is it? Does it stand alone, or is it part of a group? Are there typical features of this kind of image that it includes — or lacks?

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• What does the image show? What stands out? What is in the back- ground? Are some parts of the image grouped together or connected? Are any set apart from one another?

• As you look at the image, does the content seem far away, close up, or in between? Are you level with it, looking down from above, or looking up from below? What is the effect of your viewing position?

• Does the image tell or suggest a story about what has happened (as in Berry’s ad for Sorel shoes) or is about to happen?

• Does the image allude to or refer to anything else? For example, the Starbucks logo features the image of a Siren, a mythical being who lured sailors to their doom.

Explore your response. Images, particularly those in advertisements, are often trying to persuade us to buy something or to feel, think, or behave a certain way. News photographs and online videos also try to evoke emotional responses, from horror over murdered innocents to amuse- ment at cute kittens. Think about your response:

• How does the image make you feel? What emotional response, if any, does the image make you feel? Sympathy? Concern? Anger? Happiness? Contentment? Something else?

• What does the image lead you to think about? What connections does it have to things in your life, in the news, in your knowledge of the world?

• Do the image and any words accompanying seem to be trying to per- suade you to think or do something? Do they do so directly, such as by pointing out the virtues of a product (Buick Encore: “Sized to Fit Your Life”)? Or indirectly, by setting a tone or establishing a mood (the Clarks shoe ad that Berry analyzes)?

• Does the GENRE affect your response? For example, do you expect to laugh at a comic? feel empathy with victims of a tragedy in a photo accompanying a news story? find a satirical editorial cartoon offensive?

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Consider the context. Like written texts, visual texts are part of larger conversations with other texts that have dealt with the same topic or used similar imagery. This editorial cartoon on global warming, for example, is part of an ongoing conversation about climate change and the role our lifestyles play in it:

Consider what you know about the artist or sponsor. Editorial car- toons, like the one above, are usually signed, and information about the artist and their other work is usually readily available on the web. Many commercials and advertisements, however, are created by ad agencies, so the organization or company that sponsored or posted the image should be identified and researched. How does that information affect your under- standing of the text?

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Decide on a focus for your analysis. What do you find most interest- ing about the text, and why? Its details and the way they work together (or not)? The argument it makes? The way it uses images to appeal to its audience? The emotional response it evokes? The way any words and images work together to deliver a message? These are just some ways of thinking about a visual text, ones that can help you find a focus. However you choose to focus your analysis, it should be limited in scope so that you can zero in on the details of the visual you’re analyzing. Here, for example, is an excerpt from an essay from 2014 by an art historian responding to a statement made by former president Barack Obama that manufacturing skills may be worth more than a degree in art history:

“I promise you, folks can make a lot more potentially with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.” President Barack Obama

Charged with interrogating this quote from the president, I Google “Obama art history.” I click on the first result, a video from CNN, in which the quote is introduced by a gray-haired man in a dark and serious suit, standing in front of a bank of monitors in a digitally created nonspace. The camera cuts from this man to President Obama, who stands in shirtsleeves, his tie slightly loosened. His undershirt is visible through his buttondown under the intense light from what I assume is the work-day sun. Behind him is a crowd of men and women in more casual clothing, some wearing sweatshirts that have the name of a union printed across them. Their presence creates a spectrum of skin tones. Each person was clearly vetted for visual effect, as were the president’s and the newscaster’s costumes, the size of their flag lapel pins, the shape of the microphones they speak into, and the angle of the light on their faces. The president makes the comment in question, immediately declares his love for art history, and says that he doesn’t want to get a bunch of angry emails from art historians. The crowd behind him laughs and the clip cuts off abruptly. A click away, I find a digitized copy of a handwritten note from President Obama, apologizing to an angry art history professor who emailed him to complain about his comments. The card on which the note is written is plain, undecorated save for two lines of text printed in a conservative, serif font in a shade of blue that is just on the vibrant

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side of navy — THE WHITE HOUSE — and under it in smaller letters, WASHINGTON. Its tasteful, minimal aesthetic pulls double duty, meant to convey both populist efficiency (note the absence of gold gilding) and stern superiority (you know where Washington is, right?). It sets up a productive contrast with the friendliness of the president’s own handwriting, particularly his looping signature, soft on the outside with a strong slash through the middle. Like the video of the president’s speech, it is a screen-scale tour de force of political imagecraft, certainly produced with the full knowledge that it would be digitized and go viral, at least among a particular demographic.

— Joel Parsons, “Richness in the Eye of the Beholder”

Parsons begins by describing the images — Obama’s clothing, the peo- ple standing behind him, the letterhead on his note card, his “looping

Barack Obama speaking at a General Electric plant in Waukesha, Wisconsin, 2014.

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Obama’s apology note to Ann Johns, art history professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

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signature” — followed by an analysis of how every aspect of the video and the note card was “certainly produced with the full knowledge that it would be digitized and go viral.” Notice as well that Parsons’s analysis focuses more on the visual aspects of the video and note card than on what was said or written. And in a part of his essay not shown here, he notes that his analysis is grounded in “tools . . . he learned in a first-year art history course” — a not-so-subtle response to what President Obama said.

Coming Up with a Thesis

When you analyze a text, you are basically arguing that the text should be read or seen in a certain way. Once you’ve studied the text thoroughly, you need to identify your analytical goal: do you want to show that the text has a certain meaning? uses certain techniques to achieve its purposes? tries to influence its audience in particular ways? relates to some larger context in some significant manner? should be taken seriously — or not? something else? Come up with a tentative thesis to guide your thinking and analyzing — but be aware that your thesis may change as you continue to work.

Ways of Organizing a Textual Analysis

Examine the information you have to see how it supports or complicates your thesis. Look for clusters of related information that you can use to structure an outline. Your analysis might be structured in at least two ways. You might, as Clark does, discuss patterns, elements, or themes that run through the text. Alternatively, you might analyze each text or section of text separately, as Berry does. Following are graphic representations of some ways of organizing a textual analysis:

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[Thematically]

Introduce your analysis: • Summarize or describe

the text. • Provide needed context. • Outline your method

or focus. State your thesis.

Analyze the text: • Identify a theme or pattern. • Use examples from the text

and appropriate contexts as evidence.

Continue as needed.

Conclude: Explain what your analysis reveals about the text.

[Part by part, or text by text]

Introduce your analysis: • Summarize or

describe the text. • Provide needed

context. • Outline your

method or focus. State your thesis.

Analyze first section of text.

Analyze next section of text.

Continue as needed.

Conclude: Explain what your analysis reveals about the text.

[Spatially, as the text is likely to be experienced by viewers]

Introduce your analysis: • Summarize or

describe the text. • Provide needed

context. • Outline your

method or focus. State your thesis.

Analyze the most prominent part of the text or the part viewers see first.

Continue the analysis in the order the text is experienced:

• top to bottom • left to right • center to edges • foreground to background • what becomes visible as text

is scrolled, video is played, or images are seen in succession

Conclude: Explain what your analysis reveals about the text.

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Writing Out a Draft

In drafting your analysis, your goal should be to integrate the various parts into a smoothly flowing, logically organized essay. However, it’s easy to get bogged down in the details. Consider writing one section of the analysis first, then another and another, until you’ve drafted the entire middle; then draft your beginning and ending. Alternatively, start by sum- marizing the text and moving from there to your analysis and then to your ending. However you do it, you need to support your analysis with evidence: from the text itself (as Berry’s analysis of advertisements does)‚ or from research on the larger context of the text (as Allen does), or by comparing the text you are analyzing to another text (as Clark does).

Draft a beginning. The beginning of an essay that analyzes a text generally has several tasks: to introduce or summarize the text for your readers, to offer any necessary information on the larger context, and to present your thesis.

• Summarize or describe the text. If the text is one your readers don’t know, you need to summarize or describe it early on to show that you understand it fully. For example, Berry begins each analysis of a shoe advertisement with a description of its content.

• Show the text. If you’re analyzing a visual text online, consider starting off with an image, a video, or a link to it or something simi- lar, as Berry does by embedding the ads she analyzes in her text.

• Provide a context for your analysis. If there is a larger context that is significant for your analysis, you might mention it in your introduc- tion. Allen does this by comparing the Declaration’s statement about self-evident truths to the statements of belief in the Apostles’ Creed of the Catholic Church.

• State your thesis . Berry ends her first paragraph by stating her thesis explicitly: These ads “for Clarks and Sorel . . . encourage us to break free from the standard beauty mold and be ourselves; using mostly imagery, they remind us that being unique is the true origin of beauty.” Clark promises to analyze “the rhetorical strategies that the orator and authors used so effectively.”

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Draft an ending. Think about what you want your readers to take away from your analysis, and end by getting them to focus on those thoughts.

• Restate your thesis — and say why it matters. Berry, for example, ends by asserting that the ads she examines invite women to “be ourselves” by “accessoriz[ing] our personalities.”

• Explain what your analysis reveals. Your analysis should tell your read- ers something about the way the text works or about what it means or says. Allen, for example, concludes by noting that “the Declaration’s truths fit together almost like the pieces of a mathematical equation; we intuitively feel the puzzle pieces snap together. That is how self- evidence should feel.”

Come up with a title . A good title indicates something about the sub- ject of your analysis — and makes readers want to see what you have to say about it. Berry’s title provides a preview of her thesis that the ads she is analyzing are selling a vision of clothing as a vehicle for being unique, while Clark’s title straightforwardly announces his topic.

Consider rewriting. If you have time and want to explore alternatives, you might try rewriting your draft to see if a different plan or approach might work better.

Considering Matters of Design

• If you cite written text as evidence, be sure to set long quotations and documentation according to the style you’re using.

• If your essay is lengthy, consider whether headings would make your analysis easier for readers to follow.

• If you’re analyzing a visual text, include a copy of the image and a caption identifying it.

• If you’re submitting your essay electronically, provide links to what- ever text you are analyzing.

• If you’re analyzing an image or a screen shot, consider annotating elements of it right on the image.

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Getting Response and Revising

The following questions can help you and others study your draft with a critical eye. Make sure that anyone you ask to read and respond to your text knows your purpose and audience.

• Is the beginning effective? Does it make a reader want to continue?

• Does the introduction provide an overview of your analysis? Is your thesis clear?

• Is the text described or summarized clearly and sufficiently?

• Is the analysis well organized and easy to follow? Do the parts fit together coherently? Does it read like an essay rather than a collec- tion of separate bits of analysis?

• Does each part of the analysis relate to and support the thesis?

• Is anything confusing or in need of more explanation?

• Are all quotations accurate and correctly documented?

• Is it clear how the analysis leads to the interpretation? Is there ade- quate evidence to support the interpretation?

• Does the ending make clear what your analysis shows?

Then it’s time to revise. Make sure your text appeals to your audience and think hard about whether it will achieve your purpose.

Editing and Proofreading

Readers equate correctness with competence. Once you’ve revised your draft, edit carefully:

• Is your thesis clearly stated?

• Check all quotations, paraphrases, and summaries for accuracy and form. Be sure that each has the required documentation.

• Make sure that your analysis flows clearly from one point to the next and that you use transitions to help readers move through your text.

• proofread your finished analysis carefully before turning it in.

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Taking Stock of Your Work

Take stock of what you’ve written and learned by writing out answers to these questions:

• How did you go about analyzing the text? What methods did you use — and which ones were most helpful?

• How did you go about drafting your essay?

• How well did you organize your written analysis? What, if anything, could you do to make it easier to read?

• Did you provide sufficient evidence to support your analysis?

• What did you do especially well?

• What could still be improved?

• Did you include any visuals, and if so, what did they add? Could you have shown the same thing with words?

• How did other readers’ responses influence your writing?

• What would you do differently next time?

• Are you pleased with your analysis? What did it teach you about the text you analyzed? Did it make you want to study more works by the same writer or artist?

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IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See Chapter 30 for guidelines on DRAFTING , Chapter 31 on ASSESSING YOUR OWN WRITING , Chapter 32 on GETTING RESPONSE AND REVISING , and Chapter 33 on EDITING AND PROOFREADING . See Chapter 34 if you are required to submit your analysis in a writing PORTFOLIO . See Chapter 58 for help USING VISUALS .

653–63

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Many kinds of writing report information. Newspapers report on local and world events; textbooks give information about biology, history, writing; websites provide information about products ( jcrew.com), people ( pharrellwilliams.com), institutions (smithsonian.org). We write out a lot of information ourselves, from a note we post on our door saying we’ve gone to choir practice to a text we send to tell a friend where to meet us for dinner and how to get there. College assignments often call for reporting information as well. In a history class, you may be assigned to report what you’ve learned about the state of U.S. relations with Japan just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. A biology course may require you to report the effects of an experiment in which plants are deprived of sunlight for different periods of time. In a nursing class, you may have to report the changes in a patient’s symptoms after the administration of a particular drug. This chapter focuses on reports that are written to inform readers about a particular topic. Very often this kind of writing calls for some kind of research: you need to know your subject in order to report on it! When you write to report information, you are the expert. We’ll begin with three good examples, the first annotated to show the key features found in most reports.

MICHAELA CULLINGTON  

Does Texting Affect Writing?

This essay by a student at Marywood University was published in Young Schol- ars in Writing, a journal of undergraduate writing published by the University of Missouri–Kansas City.

Reporting Information

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It’s taking over our lives. We can do it almost anywhere — walking to class, waiting in line at the grocery store, or hanging out at home. It’s quick, easy, and convenient. It has become a concern of doctors, parents, and teachers alike. What is it? It’s texting! Text messaging — or texting, as it’s more commonly called — is the process of sending and receiving typed messages via a cellular phone. It is a common means of communication among teenagers and is even becoming popular in the business world because it allows quick messages to be sent without people having to commit to a telephone conversa- tion. A person is able to say what is needed, and the other person will receive the information and respond when it’s convenient to do so. In order to more quickly type what they are trying to say, many people use abbreviations instead of words. The language created by these abbreviations is called textspeak. Some people believe that using these abbreviations is hindering the writing abilities of students, and others argue that texting is actually having a positive effect on writing. In fact, it seems likely that texting has no significant effect on student writing.

Concerns about Textspeak A September 2008 article in USA Today entitled “Texting, Testing Destroys Kids’ Writing Style” summarizes many of the most common complaints about the effect of texting. It states that according to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 25% of high school seniors are “proficient” writers. The article quotes Jacquie Ream, a former teacher and author of K.I.S.S. — Keep It Short and Simple, a guide for writing more effectively. Ream states, “[W]e have a whole genera- tion being raised without communication skills.” She blames the use of acronyms and shorthand in text messages for students’ inability to spell and ultimately to write well. Ream also points out that students struggle to convey emotion in their writing because, as she states, in text messages “emotions are always sideways smiley faces.” This debate became prominent after some teachers began to believe they were seeing a decline in the writing abilities of their students. Many attributed this perceived decline to the increasing popularity of text mes- saging and its use of abbreviations. Naomi Baron, a linguistics professor at American University, blames texting for what she sees as the fact that “so much of American society has become sloppy and laissez faire about

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Definitions of key terms.

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Analysis of causes and effects.

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the mechanics of writing” (“Should”). Teachers report finding “2” for “to,” “gr8” for “great,” “dat” for “that,” and “wut” for “what,” among other examples of textspeak, in their students’ writing. A Minnesota teacher of the seventh and ninth grades says that she has to spend extra time in class editing papers and must “explicitly” remind her students that it is not acceptable to use text slang and abbreviations in writing (Walsh). Another English teacher believes that text language has become “second nature” to her students (Carey); they are so used to it that they do not even catch themselves doing it. Many also complain that because texting does not stress the impor- tance of punctuation, students are neglecting it in their formal writing. Teachers say that their students are forgetting commas, apostrophes, and even capital letters to begin sentences. Another complaint is that text messages lack emotion. Many argue that texts lack feeling because of their tendency to be short, brief, and to the point. Because students are not able to communicate emotion effectively through texts, some teachers worry, they may lose the ability to do so in writing. To get a more personal perspective on the question of how teach- ers perceive texting to be influencing student writing, I interviewed two of my former high school teachers — my junior-year English teacher and my senior-year theology teacher. Both teachers stress the importance of writing in their courses. They maintain that they notice text abbre- viations in their students’ writing often. To correct this problem, they point it out when it occurs and take points off for its use. They also remind their students to use proper sentence structure and complete sentences. The English teacher says that she believes texting inhibits good writing — it reinforces simplistic writing that may be acceptable for conversation but is “not so good for critical thinking or analysis.” She suggests that texting tends to generate topic sentences without emphasizing the following explanation. According to these teachers, then, texting is inhibiting good writing. However, their evidence is limited, based on just a few personal experiences rather than on a significant amount of research.

Responses to Concerns about Textspeak In response to these complaints that texting is having a negative impact on student writing, others insist that texting should be viewed as ben- eficial because it provides students with motivation to write, practice

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in specific writing skills, and an opportunity to gain confidence in their writing. For example, Betty Sternberg and her coauthors argue that texting is a good way to motivate students: teens enjoy texting, and if they frequently write through texts, they will be more motivated to write formally. Texting also helps to spark students’ creativity, these authors argue, because they are always coming up with new ways to express their ideas (417). In addition, because they are engaging in written communication rather than oral speech, texting teens learn how to convey their mes- sage to a reader in as few words as possible. In his book Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, David Crystal discusses a study that concludes that texting actually helps foster “the ability to summarize and express oneself concisely” in writing (168). Furthermore, Crystal explains that texting actually helps people to “sharpen their diplomatic skills . . . [because] it allows more time to formulate their thoughts and express them carefully” (168). One language arts teacher from Minnesota believes that texting helps students develop their own “individual voice” (qtd. in Walsh). Perfecting such a voice allows the writer to offer personal insights and express feelings that will interest and engage readers. Supporters of texting also argue that it not only teaches elements of writing but provides extra practice to those who struggle with the conventions of writing. As Crystal points out, children who struggle with literacy will not choose to use a technology that requires them to do something that is difficult for them. However, if they do choose to text, the experience will help them “overcome their awkwardness and develop their social and communication skills” (Txtng 171). Shirley Holm, a junior high school teacher, describes texting as a “comfort- able form of communication” (qtd. in Walsh). Teenagers are used to texting, enjoy doing so, and as a result are always writing. Through this experience of writing in ways they enjoy, they can learn to take pleasure in writing formally. If students are continually writing in some form, they will eventually develop better skills. Furthermore, those who favor texting explain that with practice comes the confidence and courage to try new things, which some observ- ers believe they are seeing happen with writing as a result of texting. Teenagers have, for example, created an entirely new language — one that uses abbreviations and symbols instead of words, does not require punctuation, and uses short, incomplete phrases throughout the entire

Synthesis of various sources of information. Quotations are introduced with signal phrases.

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conversation. It’s a way of speaking that is a language in and of itself. Crystal, among others, sees this “language evolution” as a positive effect of texting; he seems, in fact, fascinated that teenagers are capable of creating such a phenomenon, which he describes as the “latest manifes- tation of the human ability” (Txtng 175). David Warlick, a teacher and author of books about technology in the classroom, would agree with Crystal. He believes students should be given credit for “inventing a new language ideal for communicating in a high-tech world” (qtd. in Carey).

Methods I decided to conduct my own research into this controversy. I wanted to get different, more personal, perspectives on the issue. First, I surveyed seven students on their opinions about the impact of texting on writ- ing. Second, I questioned two high school teachers, as noted above. Finally, in an effort to compare what students are actually doing to people’s perceptions of what they are doing, I analyzed student writing samples for instances of textspeak.1

To let students speak for themselves, I created a list of questions for seven high school and college students, some of my closest and most reliable friends. Although the number of respondents was small, I could trust my knowledge of them to help me interpret their responses. In addition, these students are very different from one another, and I believed their differences would allow for a wide array of thoughts and opinions on the issue. I was thus confident in the reliability and diversity of their answers but was cautious not to make too many assumptions because of the small sample size. I asked the students how long they had been texting; how often they texted; what types of abbreviations they used most and how often they used them; and whether they noticed themselves using any type of textspeak in their formal writing. In analyzing their responses, I looked for commonalities to help me draw conclusions about the students’ text- ing habits and if/how they believed their writing was affected. I created a list of questions for teachers similar to the one for the students and asked two of my high school teachers to provide their input. I asked if they had noticed their students using textspeak in their writing assignments and, if so, how they dealt with it. I also asked if they believed texting had a positive or negative effect on writing. Next, I asked if they were texters themselves. And, finally, I solicited their

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Firsthand research: interviews and survey.

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opinions on what they believed should be done to prevent teens from using text abbreviations and other textspeak in their writing. I was surprised at how different the students’ replies and opinions were from the teachers’. I decided to find out for myself whose impres- sions were more accurate by comparing some students’ actual writing with students’ and teachers’ perceptions of that writing. To do this I looked at twenty samples of student writing — end-of-semester research arguments written in two first-year college writing courses with differ- ent instructors. The topics varied from increased airport security after September 11 to the weapons of the Vietnam War to autism, and lengths ranged from eight to ten pages. To analyze the papers for the presence of textspeak, I looked closely for use of abbreviations and other com- mon slang terms, especially those usages which the students had stated in their surveys were most common. These included “hbu” (“How about you?”); “gtg” (“Got to go”); and “cuz” (“because”). I also looked for the numbers 2 and 4 used instead of the words “to” and “for.”

Discussion of Findings My research suggests that texting actually has a minimal effect on student writing. It showed that students do not believe textspeak is appropriate in formal writing assignments. They recognize the differ- ence between texting friends and writing formally and know what is appropriate in each situation. This was proven true in the student samples, in which no examples of textspeak were used. Many experts would agree that there is no harm in textspeak, as long as students con- tinue to be taught and reminded that occasions where formal language is expected are not the place for it. As Crystal explains, the purpose of the abbreviations used in text messages is not to replace language but rather to make quick communications shorter and easier, since in a standard text message, the texter is allowed only 160 characters for a communication (“Texting” 81). Dennis Baron, an English and linguistics professor at the University of Illinois, has done much research on the effect of technology on writ- ing, and his findings are aligned with those of my own study. In his book A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, he concludes that students do not use textspeak in their writing. In fact, he suggests students do not even use abbreviations in their text mes- sages very often. Baron says that college students have “put away such

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childish things, and many of them had already abandoned such signs of middle-school immaturity in high school” (qtd. in Golden). In surveying the high school and college students, I found that most have been texting for a few years, usually starting around ninth grade. The students said they generally text between thirty and a hun- dred messages every day but use abbreviations only occasionally, with the most common being “lol” (“Laugh out loud”), “gtg” (“Got to go”), “hbu” (“How about you?”), “cuz” (“because”), and “jk” (“Just kid- ding”). None of them believed texting abbreviations were acceptable in formal writing. In fact, research has found that most students report that they do not use textspeak in formal writing. As one Minnesota high school student says, “[T]here is a time and a place for everything,” and formal writing is not the place for communicating the way she would if she were texting her friends (qtd. in Walsh). Another student admits that in writing for school she sometimes finds herself using these abbreviations. However, she notices and corrects them before handing in her final paper (Carey). One teacher reports that, despite texting, her students’ “formal writing remains solid.” She occasionally sees an abbreviation; however, it is in informal, “warm-up” writing. She believes that what students do in everyday writing is up to them as long as they use standard English in formal writing (qtd. in Walsh). Also supporting my own research findings are those from a study which took place at a midwestern research university. This study involved eighty-six students who were taking an Introduction to Education course at the university. The participants were asked to complete a questionnaire that included questions about their texting habits, the spelling instruc- tion they had received, and their proficiency at spelling. They also took a standardized spelling test. Before starting the study, the researchers had hypothesized that texting and the use of abbreviations would have a negative impact on the spelling abilities of the students. However, they found that the results did not support their hypothesis. The research- ers did note that text messaging is continuing to increase in popularity; therefore, this issue should continue to be examined (Shaw et al.). I myself am a frequent texter. I chat with my friends from home every day through texting. I also use texting to communicate with my school friends, perhaps to discuss what time we are going to meet for dinner or to ask quick questions about homework. According to my cell phone bill, I send and receive around 6,400 texts a month. In the messages I send, I

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rarely notice myself using abbreviations. The only time I use them is if I do not have time to write out the complete phrase. However, sometimes I find it more time-consuming to try to figure out how to abbreviate something so that my message will still be comprehensible. Since I rarely use abbreviations in my texting, I never use them in my formal writing. I know that they are unacceptable and that it would make me look unintelligent if I included acronyms and symbols instead of proper and formal language. I also have not noticed an effect on my spelling as a result of texting. I am confident in my spelling abilities, and even when I use an abbreviation, I know how to spell the word(s) it stands for. On the basis of my own research, expert research, and personal obser- vations, I can confidently state that texting is not interfering with students’ use of standard written English and has no effect on their writing abilities in general. It is interesting to look at the dynamics of the arguments over these issues. Teachers and parents who claim that they are seeing a decline in the writing abilities of their students and children mainly support the negative-impact argument. Other teachers and researchers suggest that texting provides a way for teens to practice writing in a casual setting and thus helps prepare them to write formally. Experts and students themselves, however, report that they see no effect, positive or negative. Anecdotal experiences should not overshadow the actual evidence.

Note 1. All participants in the study have given permission for their responses to be published.

Works Cited Baron, Dennis. A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital

Revolution. Oxford UP, 2009. Carey, Bridget. “The Rise of Text, Instant Messaging Vernacular Slips

into Schoolwork.” The Miami Herald, 6 Mar. 2007, Academic OneFile, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?.direct=true&db=edsgao&AN= edsgcl.160190230&site=eds-live. Accessed 27 Oct. 2009.

Crystal, David. “Texting.” ELT Journal, vol. 62, no. 1, Jan. 2008, pp. 77–83. Academic OneFile, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true& db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.177163353&site=eds-live. Accessed 8 Nov. 2009.

———. Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. Oxford UP, 2008.

Pertinent personal experience.

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Golden, Serena. Rev. of A Better Pencil. Inside Higher Ed, 18 Sept. 2009, insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/18/barron. Accessed 9 Nov. 2009.

Shaw, Donita M., et al. “An Exploratory Investigation into the Relationship between Text Messaging and Spelling.” New England Reading Association Journal, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 57–62. EBSCO Discovery Service for Marywood University, search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&AN=25648081&site=eds-live. Accessed 8 Nov. 2009.

“Should We Worry or LOL?” NEA Today, Mar. 2004, p. 12. ProQuest, search.proquest.com/docview/198894194?accountid=42654. Accessed 27 Oct. 2009.

Sternberg, Betty, et al. “Enhancing Adolescent Literacy Achievement through Integration of Technology in the Classroom.” Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 3, July–Sept. 2007, pp. 416–20. ProQuest, search.proquest.com/docview/ 212128056?accountid=42654. Accessed 8 Nov. 2009.

“Texting, Testing Destroys Kids’ Writing Style.” USA Today Magazine, vol. 137, no. 2760, Sept. 2008, p. 8. ProQuest, search.proquest .com/docview/214595644?accountid=42654. Accessed 9 Nov. 2009.

Walsh, James. “Txt Msgs Creep in2 class; Some Say That’s gr8.” McClatchy- Tribune News Service, 23 Oct. 2007. ProQuest, search.proquest.com/ docview/456879133?accountid=42654. Accessed 27 Oct. 2009.

Cullington’s essay examines whether or not texting affects students’ writing. Her information is based on both published scholarship and a small survey of students and teachers.

FRANKIE SCHEMBRI

Edible Magic

In the following report, Massachusetts Institute of Technology student Frankie Schembri explains the science behind how popcorn pops. Her essay was origi­ nally published in Angles 2016: Selected Essays from Introductory Writing Subjects at MIT.

Life is studded with little pockets of magic. These are the moments with mysterious emergent qualities, when the whole is greater than

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the sum of the parts, when one plus one somehow equals three. Such magic is even better when it comes in edible form. When an unassuming little kernel of corn meets hot oil, it is trans- formed. It is elevated with an unmistakable “pop!” into a fluffy cloud of goodness ready to be dressed with butter, caramel, or whatever your heart desires. This magic is called popcorn. Popcorn exploded in popularity in the early 20th century but sur- prisingly only made it into movie theaters with the advent of sound films, or “talkies,” in 1927. Silent films catered to a smaller, more exclu- sive clientele and owners worried that the sound of the snack being munched would detract from the experience (Geiling, 2013). By the 1940s, popcorn had become an inextricable part of going to the movies, and from then on, over half of the popcorn consumed yearly in America was eaten at movie theaters (Geiling, 2013). Fast- forward some 70 years and the relationship remains unbreakable.

Step into any movie theater lobby across America and your senses are bombarded with the unmistakable scent of salt and butter.

Popcorn snuck into the American household in the 1960s with Jiffy Pop, a self- contained stovetop popper including kernels, oil, and even the pan, and it flour- ished with the popularity of microwave ovens in the

1970s (Smith, 1999, p. 124). Popcorn cultivated an important relation- ship with microwaves in the latter half of the 20th century, important enough that popcorn was eventually given the rare honor of its own designated microwave button (Smith, 1999, p. 127). “But how?” you might ask. How do these ordinary kernels magi- cally spring to life with a little heat and oil, enchanting kids and grown- ups alike? Like most acts of magic, popcorn’s “pop” can be understood with a little science.

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Botanically speaking, popcorn is a type of maize, the only domesti- cated subgroup in the genus Zea, a group of plants in the grass family. The different types of maize are classified based on their kernel’s size, shape, and composition (Smith, 1999, p. 6). Corn kernels have three main structural components. First, there is the germ (from the Latin germen, meaning seed or sprout), a small pocket of genetic material that is essentially a baby corn plant waiting to grow. The germ is surrounded by the endosperm (the Greek endon, within, and sperma, seed), a larger parcel of water mixed with soft and hard starch granules that make up most of the kernel’s weight and would provide food for the corn plant if it were to sprout. Finally, the germ-endosperm complex is surrounded by the pericarp (from the Greek peri, around, and karpos, fruit), the hard shell that winds up stuck between your molars after you enjoy a bag of popcorn (Ghose, 2015). Popcorn kernels are unique in that they are relatively small, they have endosperms containing a larger number of hard starch granules, and their pericarps are hard and impermeable, essentially sealing off the contents of the kernel from the outside environment. These charac- teristics have endowed popcorn kernels with the ability to pop (Ghose, 2015). In an attempt to better understand the physics of popcorn, aero- nautical engineer Emmanuel Virot and physicist Alexandre Ponomarenko, who seem to have also fallen under popcorn’s spell (judging by the language of their published report), experimented with the tempera- ture at which a kernel pops. As Virot and Ponomarenko (2015) explain, when heat is applied to the kernels via hot oil on a stovetop or in a microwave, the temperature of the kernels begins to rise accordingly. Most affected by this increase in heat is the water stored between the starch granules in the endosperm. Much like a bubbling pot of water brought to a boil, the water in the kernel begins to change from liquid into gas. While liquid water is content to stay put, gaseous water in the form of steam craves space to move, but the hard shell of the peri- carp effectively keeps the water trapped inside the kernel. As a result, the kernel acts like a tiny steamer and the starch granules inside are cooked into a gooey mass. As the mass gets hotter and hotter, the steam presses harder and harder on the inside surface of the kernel’s

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shell like the hands of a million tiny creatures trapped inside a bubble (Virot & Ponomarenko, 2015). The tension is palpable. The kernel begins to shake with anticipa- tion. It rocks back and forth, back and forth, faster and faster, and faster still. Then finally . . . pop! The bubble bursts, the lid flies off the pot, and fireworks explode as the hard shell of the pericarp cracks and the steam breaks free from its kernel prison. The starchy goop also bubbles out into the world, where it meets cold, fresh air and rapidly hardens into spongy cloudlike shapes. Just like that, in just one-fifteenth of a second, a new piece of popcorn is born (Virot & Ponomarenko, 2015). Virot and Ponomarenko (2015) determined that the temperature at which kernels typically pop is 180 degrees Celsius. The pair also deter- mined that the resulting popped kernel can be up to 40 times its un- popped volume, although usually the kernel’s radius merely doubles. But what propels the kernel, with what Virot and Ponomarenko (2015) call “all the grace of a seasoned gymnast,” into the air as it pops? When the pericarp fractures, it does so in only one place first, giving some of the steam and starchy goop a head start on escaping. The starch released first extends to create a leg of sorts, off of which the rest of the kernel springboards, launching it somersaulting into the air like an Olympic gymnast. Popcorn jumps typically only reach a height of a few centimeters, but still manage to create endless entertainment for the hungry viewer. Where does the “pop” sound come from? Arguably the most important part of the whole experience, popcorn’s characteristic noise is not, contrary to popular belief, the sound of the kernel’s shell break- ing open. The popping sound is created by the release of trapped water vapor resonating in the kernel, similar to how, when removed, a champagne cork makes a popping sound that resonates in the glass bottle (Virot & Ponomarenko, 2015). Making popcorn hardly seems like an opportunity to learn about physics, but the kernels’ unique transformation illustrates some prin- ciples of thermodynamics, biomechanics, and acoustics, as the properties of different materials dictate how they respond to pressure and heat. Life is studded with little pockets of magic. From the enticing smell during a night at the movies to the rising staccato sound of a bag coming to life in your microwave, popcorn is magic-meets-science in its most delicious form. And it always leaves you hungry for more.

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References

Geiling, N. (2013, October 3). Why do we eat popcorn at the movies? Smithsonian.com. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag .com/arts-culture/why-do-we-eat-popcorn-at-the-movies-475063/

Ghose, T. (2015, February 10). The secret acrobatics of popcorn revealed. Live Science. Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/49768 -mechanics-of-popcorn.html

Smith, A. (1999). Popped culture: A social history of popcorn in America. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.

Virot, E., & Ponomarenko, A. (2015). Popcorn: Critical temperature, jump and sound. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 12(104). doi:10.1098/rsif.2014.1247

Schembri introduces her subject by placing it in a cultural context of the movies, Jiffy Pop, and microwave popcorn. She then distinguishes popcorn from other varieties of corn or maize and goes on to describe what happens when popcorn kernels are heated, pop, and fly into the air. To explore her subject from these various perspectives, she draws on scientific, historical, and popular sources.

JON MARCUS

The Reason College Costs More than You Think

Writing online for Time in 2014, Hechinger Report editor Jon Marcus examines the length of time students take to graduate and how that affects the cost of getting a degree.

When Alex Nichols started as a freshman at the University of Mississippi, he felt sure he’d earn his bachelor’s degree in four years. Five years later, and Nichols is back on the Oxford, Mississippi, campus for what he hopes is truly his final semester. “There are a lot more students staying another semester or another year than I thought there would be when I got here,” Nichols says. “I meet people once a week who say, ‘Yes, I’m a second-year senior,’ or, ‘I’ve been here for five years.’”

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They’re likely as surprised as Nichols still to be toiling away in school. Nearly nine out of 10 freshmen think they’ll earn their bachelor’s degrees within the traditional four years, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. But the U.S. Department of Education reports that fewer than half that many actually will. And about 45 percent won’t have finished even after six years. That means the annual cost of college, a source of so much anxiety for families and students, often overlooks the enormous additional expense of the extra time it will actually take to graduate. “It’s a huge inconvenience,” says Nichols, whose college career has been prolonged for the common reason that he changed majors and took courses he ended up not needing. His athletic scholarship — Nichols was a middle-distance runner on the cross-country team — ran out after four years. “I had to get some financial help from my parents.” The average added cost of just one extra year at a four-year public university is $63,718 in tuition, fees, books, and living expenses, plus lost wages each of those many students could have been earning had

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they finished on time, according to the advocacy group Complete Col- lege America. A separate report by the Los Angeles–based Campaign for College Opportunity finds that the average student at a California State Uni- versity campus who takes six years instead of four to earn a bachelor’s degree will spend an additional $58,000 and earn $52,900 less over their lifetimes than a student who graduates on time, for a total loss of $110,900. “The cost of college isn’t just what students and their families pay in tuition or fees,” says Michele Siqueiros, the organization’s execu- tive director. “It’s also about time. That’s the hidden cost of a college education.” So hidden that most families still unknowingly plan on four years for a bachelor’s degree, says Sylvia Hurtado, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Although the institute does not poll parents in its annual survey, “that high percentage of freshmen [who are confident they’ll finish in four years] is probably reflecting their parents’ expectation — ‘This is costing me a lot, so you’re going to be out in four years.’ So the students think, ‘Sure, why not?’ I don’t think the parents even initially entertain or plan for six years or some possible outcome like that.” Yet many students almost immediately doom themselves to taking longer, since they register for fewer courses than they need to stay on track. Surveys of incoming freshmen in California and Indiana who said they expected to graduate in four years found that half signed up for fewer courses than they’d needed to meet that goal, according to a new report by the higher-education consulting firm HCM Strategists. It’s not entirely the students’ fault. More than half of community-college students are slowed down by having to retake subjects such as math and reading that they should have learned in high school, says Complete College America. And at some schools, budget cuts have made it difficult to register for the courses students do need to take. Two-thirds of students at one Cali- fornia State University campus weren’t able to get into their required courses, according to a 2010 study by the University of California’s Civil Rights Project. Most state financial-aid programs, meanwhile, cover only four years. “They do not fund a fifth or sixth year,” says Stan Jones, president of

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Complete College America and a former Indiana commissioner of higher education. “And by that time the parents’ resources and the students’ resources have run out. So that fifth year is where you borrow.” Students at the most elite colleges and universities tend not to have this problem, which means that schools with some of the high- est annual tuition can turn out to be relative bargains. These schools “would have a revolt if their students had to go a fifth year,” Jones says. “But that recognition has really not hit the public sector yet, about the hidden cost of that extra year.” Policymakers urge speeding students through remedial classes more quickly, adding more sections of required courses so students can get in when they need them, and encouraging students to take 15 credits per semester instead of the typical 12. Change won’t come soon enough for Nichols, who is determined that it won’t take more than one extra semester to finish his degree in integrated marketing communications. “That’s time you’re wasting,” he says, “that you could be out making money.”

Marcus combines information from various research institutes, advocacy groups, surveys, and academic sources to support his argument. His statistics are given a human face by quotations from a student who is taking longer to graduate than he expected.

Key Features / Reports

A tightly focused topic. The goal of this kind of writing is to inform read- ers about something without digressing — and without, in general, bring- ing in the writer’s own opinions. All three examples focus on a particular topic — texting, popping popcorn, and the cost of college — and present information about the topics evenhandedly.

Accurate, well-researched information. Reports usually require research. The kind of research depends on the topic. Sometimes internet research will suffice, though reports done for college courses may require library research to locate scholarly sources — Cullington, for example, uses various

For four more reports, see CHAPTER 63.

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sources available through her university library’s databases. Other top- ics may require or benefit from field research — interviews, observations, surveys, and so on. In addition to doing library and online research, for example, Marcus interviewed a student, and Cullington conducted a survey of students and analyzed twenty samples of student writing.

A synthesis of ideas. Reports seldom rely on a single source of informa- tion. Rather, they draw on several sources, making connections among the facts and ideas found in them. For example, Schembri combines information from a magazine article and a book to provide a brief history of the growth of popcorn’s popularity in the United States. Marcus compares undergraduate students’ expectations of finishing college in four years with statistics show- ing that more than half will take longer, using information from a university study and a government report as well as an interview with a student.

Various writing strategies. Presenting information usually requires various organizing patterns — defining, comparing, classifying, explaining processes, analyzing causes and effects, and so on. Schembri explains the process governing popcorn popping and classifies different kinds of maize. Marcus analyzes the financial effects of delaying graduation, and Cullington analyzes the effects (or lack of effects) of texting on students’ writing ability.

Clear definitions. Reports need to provide clear definitions of any key terms that their audience may not know. Cullington defines both text­ ing and textspeak. Schembri defines several components of corn kernels, including the germ, endosperm, and pericarp.

Appropriate design. Reports often combine paragraphs with informa- tion presented in lists, tables, diagrams, and other illustrations. When you’re presenting information, you need to think carefully about how to design it — numerical data, for instance, can be easier to understand and remember in a table than in a paragraph. Often a photograph can bring a subject to life, as does the photo on page 140, which accompanies “Edible Magic.” Online reports offer the possibility of video and audio clips as well as links to source materials and more detailed information.

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A GUIDE TO WRITING REPORTS

Choosing a Topic

Whether you get to choose your topic or are working with an assigned one, see if you can approach the topic from an angle that interests you.

If you get to choose. What interests you? What do you wish you knew more about? The possible topics for informational reports are limitless, but the topics that you’re most likely to write well on are those that engage you. They may be academic in nature or reflect your personal interests or both. If you’re not sure where to begin, here are some places to start:

• an intriguing technology: driverless cars, touchscreens, tooth whiteners

• sports: soccer, snowboarding, ultimate Frisbee, basketball

• an important world event: the Arab Spring, the fall of Rome, the Black Death

• a historical period: the African diaspora, the Middle Ages, the Ming dynasty, the Great Depression

• a common object: hoodies, gel pens, mascara, Post-it notes

• a significant environmental issue: melting Arctic ice, deer overpopula- tion, mercury and the fish supply

• the arts: rap, outsider art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Savion Glover, Mary Cassatt

list a few possibilities, and then choose one that you’d like to know more about — and that your audience might find interesting, too. You might start out by phrasing your topic as a question that your research will attempt to answer. For example:

How is Google different from Yahoo!?

How was the Great Pyramid constructed?

What kind of training do football referees receive?

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If your topic is assigned. If your assignment is broad — “Explain some aspect of the U.S. government” — try focusing on a more limited topic within the larger topic: federalism, majority rule, political parties, states’ rights. Even if an assignment seems to offer little flexibility — “Explain the physics of roller coasters” — your task is to decide how to research the topic, and sometimes even narrow topics can be shaped to fit your own interests and those of your audience.

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

purpose Why are you presenting this information? To teach read- ers about the subject? To demonstrate your research and writing skills? For some other reason?

audience Who will read this report? What do they already know about the topic? What background information do they need in order to understand it? Will you need to define any terms? What do they want or need to know about the topic? Why should they care about it? How can you attract their interest?

stance What is your own attitude toward your subject? What inter- ests you most about it? What about it seems important?

media / design What medium are you using? What is the best way to pre- sent the information? Will it all be in paragraph form, or is there information that is best presented as a chart, table, or infographic? Do you need headings? Would diagrams, photographs, or other illustrations help you explain the information?

Generating Ideas and Text

Good reports share certain features that make them useful and interesting to readers. Remember that your goal is to present information clearly and accurately. Start by exploring your topic.

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Explore what you already know about your topic. Write out what- ever you know or want to know about your topic, perhaps by freewriting, listing, or clustering. Why are you interested in this topic? What ques- tions do you have about it? Such questions can help you decide what you’d like to focus on and how you need to direct your research efforts.

Narrow your topic. To write a good report, you need to narrow your focus — and to narrow your focus, you need to know a fair amount about your subject. If you are assigned to write on a subject like biodiversity, for example, you need to know what it is, what the key issues are, and so on. If you do, you can simply list or brainstorm possibilities, choose one, and start your research. If you don’t know much about the subject, though, you need to do some research to discover focused, workable topics. This research may shape your thinking and change your focus. Start with sources that can give you a general sense of the subject, such as a Wikipedia entry, a magazine article, a website, perhaps an interview with an expert. Your goal at this point is simply to find out what issues your topic might include and then to focus your efforts on an aspect of the topic you will be able to cover.

Come up with a tentative thesis. Once you narrow your topic, write out a statement that explains what you plan to report or explain. A good thesis is potentially interesting (to you and your readers) and limits your topic enough to make it manageable. Schembri phrases her thesis as a question: “How do these ordinary kernels magically spring to life with a little heat and oil?” Cullington frames her thesis in relation to the context surrounding her topic: “Some people believe that using these abbreviations is hindering the writing abilities of students, and others argue that texting is actually having a positive effect on writing. In fact, it seems likely that texting has no significant effect on student writing.” At this point, however, you need only a tentative thesis that will help focus any research you do.

Do any necessary research, and revise your thesis. To focus your research efforts, outline the aspects of your topic that you expect to discuss. Identify any aspects that require additional research and develop a research plan.

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Expect to revise your outline as you do your research, since more informa- tion will be available for some aspects of your topic than others, some may prove irrelevant to your topic, and some may turn out to be more than you need. You’ll need to revisit your tentative thesis once you’ve done any research, to finalize your statement.

Ways of Organizing a Report

Reports can be organized in various ways. Here are three common orga- nizational structures:

[Reports on topics that are unfamiliar to readers]

Begin with an anecdote, quote, or other means of interesting readers.

Provide background, and state your thesis.

Describe your topic, defining any key terms.

Explain by comparing, classifying, analyzing causes or effects, explaining processes, and so on.

Conclude by restating your thesis or refer- ring to your beginning.

[Reports on events]

Introduce the topic; provide any necessary background information; state your thesis.

Narrate the first event or procedure.

Narrate the second event or procedure.

Narrate the third event or procedure.

Repeat as necessary.

Conclude by telling the outcome of the event or stating its implications.

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[Reports that compare and contrast]

Introduce the topic; provide any necessary background information; state your thesis.

Conclude by restating your thesis.

Describe one item.

Describe the other items, using the same structure used to describe the first.

Many reports use a combination of organizational structures; don’t be afraid to use whatever method of organization best suits your material and your purpose.

Writing Out a Draft

Once you have generated ideas and thought about how you want to orga- nize your report, it’s time to start drafting. Do this quickly — try to write a complete draft in one sitting, concentrating on getting the report on paper or screen and on putting in as much detail as you can. Writing that reports information often calls for certain writing strategies. The report on popcorn, for example, explains the process of popping, whereas the report on college costs analyzes the effects of delaying college graduation. When you’re reporting on a topic your readers aren’t familiar with, you may wish to compare it with something more familiar; you can find useful advice on these and other writing strategies in Part 6 of this book.

Draft a beginning. Essays that report information often need to begin in a way that will get your audience interested in the topic. Here are a few ways of beginning:

• Simply state your thesis. Cullington states her thesis about texting after only a brief introduction. Opening with a thesis works well when you

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can assume your readers have enough familiarity with your topic that you don’t need to give much detailed background information.

• Start with something that will provoke readers’ interest. Marcus’s report begins with an anecdote about a college student.

• Begin with an illustrative example. Schembri evokes the childhood won- der of popping corn before exploring its history and physics.

Draft an ending. Think about what you want your readers to read last. An effective ending leaves them thinking about your topic.

• Summarize your main points. This is a good way to end when you’ve presented several key points you want readers to remember. Cullington ends this way, summarizing the debate about texting’s effects and the results of her research.

• Point out the implications of your report. Cullington ends by affirming the importance of researched evidence when drawing conclusions not only about texting but in general.

• Frame your report by referring to its introduction. Marcus begins and ends his report by quoting the same student, and Schembri returns to her introductory evocation of popcorn as “little pockets of magic.”

• Tell what happened. If you are reporting on an event, you could con- clude by telling how it turns out.

Come up with a title. You’ll want a title that tells readers something about your subject — and makes them want to know more. Cullington’s title, “Does Texting Affect Writing?,” is a straightforward description of what’s to come. Marcus suggests that his essay will disclose the rea- son college costs more than you think — but doesn’t tell us in the title. See the chapter on guiding your reader for tips on coming up with titles that are informative and enticing enough to make readers wish to read on.

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Considering Matters of Design

You’ll probably write the main text of your report in paragraph form, but think about what kind of information you’re presenting and how you can design and format it to make it as easy as possible for your readers to understand. You might ask yourself these questions:

• What is an appropriate font? A font like Times New Roman that is easy to read in print? A font like Ariel or Verdana that looks good onscreen? Something else?

• Would it help your readers if you divided your report into shorter sections and added headings?

• Is there any information that would be easier to follow in a list?

• Could any of your information be summarized in a table or figure?

• Do you have any data that readers would more easily understand in the form of a bar graph, line graph, or pie chart?

• Would illustrations (diagrams, photos, drawings, and so on ), video or audio clips, or links help you explain anything in your report?

Getting Response and Revising

The following questions can help you study your draft with a critical eye. getting response from others is always good, and these questions can guide their reading, too. Make sure they know your purpose and audience.

• Do the title and opening sentences get readers’ interest? If not, how might they do so?

• What information does this text provide, and for what purpose?

• Does the introduction explain why this information is being pre- sented? Does it place the topic in a larger context?

• Are all key terms defined that need to be?

• Do you have any questions? Where might more explanation or an example help you understand something better?

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• Is any information presented visually, with a chart, graph, table, draw- ing, or photograph? If so, is it clear how the illustration relates to the written text? Is there any text that would be more easily understood if it were presented visually?

• Is any information presented through digital media, such as hyper- links, video clips, or audio files? If so, is the relation of these elements to the written text made clear? Would any aspect of the report be clearer if presented using such elements?

• Does the organization help make sense of the information? Does the text include description, comparison, or any other writing strategies? Does the topic or rhetorical situation call for any particular strategies that should be added?

• If the report cites any sources, are they quoted, paraphrased, or sum- marized effectively (and with appropriate documentation)? Is infor- mation from sources introduced with signal phrases?

• Does the report end in a satisfying way? What are readers left thinking?

These questions should identify aspects of your report you need to work on. When it’s time to revise, make sure your report appeals to your audi- ence and achieves your purpose as successfully as possible. If you have time and want to explore alternatives, you might try rewriting your draft to see if a different plan or approach might work better.

Editing and Proofreading

Readers equate correctness with the writer’s competence. Once you’ve revised your draft, follow these guidelines for editing a report:

• Check your use of key terms. Repeating key words is acceptable in reports; using synonyms for unfamiliar words may confuse readers, while the repetition of key words or the use of clearly identified pronouns for them can be genuinely helpful.

• Check to be sure you have transitions where you need them.

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• If you have included headings, make sure they’re parallel in structure and consistent in design.

• Make sure that any photos or other illustrations have captions, that charts and graphs have headings — and that all are referred to in the main text. Use white space as necessary to separate sections of your report and to highlight graphic elements.

• Check any documentation to see that it follows the appropriate style.

• proofread and spell-check your report carefully.

Taking Stock of Your Work

• How well did you convey the information? Is it complete enough for your audience’s needs?

• What strategies did you rely on, and how did they help you achieve your purpose?

• How well did you organize the report?

• How did you go about researching the information for this piece?

• How did you go about drafting this piece?

• Did you use any tables, graphs, diagrams, photographs, illustrations, or other graphics effectively?

• How did others’ responses influence your writing?

• What did you do especially well?

• What could still be improved?

• What would you do differently next time?

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IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See Chapter 34 if you are required to submit your report in a writing PORTFOLIO. See also Chapter 14 on ABSTRACTS if your report requires one; and Chapter 19 on PROFILES, a report based on firsthand research.

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Everything we say or do presents some kind of argument, takes some kind of position. Often we take overt positions: “Everyone in the United States is entitled to affordable health care.” “The university needs to offer more language courses.” “Photoshopped images should carry disclosure notices.” But arguments can be less direct and specific as well, from yel- low ribbons that honor U.S. troops to a yellow smiley face, which might be said to argue for a good day. In college course work, you are constantly called on to argue posi- tions: in an English class, you may argue for a certain interpretation of a poem; in a business course, you may argue for the merits of a flat tax; in a linguistics class, you may argue that English is now a global language. All of those positions are arguable — people of goodwill can agree or disagree with them and present reasons and evidence to support their positions. This chapter provides guidelines for writing an essay that argues a position. We’ll begin with three good examples, the first one annotated to point out key features of this kind of writing.

JOANNA MACKAY

Organ Sales Will Save Lives

In this essay, written for a class on ethics and politics in science, MIT student Joanna MacKay argues that the sale of human organs should be legal.

There are thousands of people dying to buy a kidney and thousands of people dying to sell a kidney. It seems a match made in heaven. So why are we standing in the way? Governments should not ban the sale of human organs; they should regulate it. Lives should not be wasted; they should be saved.

13 Arguing a Position

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Clear and arguable position.

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About 350,000 Americans suffer from end-stage renal disease, a state of kidney disorder so advanced that the organ stops functioning altogether. There are no miracle drugs that can revive a failed kidney, leaving dialysis and kidney transplantation as the only possible treat- ments (McDonnell and Mallon, pars. 2 and 3). Dialysis is harsh, expensive, and, worst of all, only temporary. Act- ing as an artificial kidney, dialysis mechanically filters the blood of a patient. It works, but not well. With treatment sessions lasting three hours, several times a week, those dependent on dialysis are, in a sense, shackled to a machine for the rest of their lives. Adding excessive stress to the body, dialysis causes patients to feel increasingly faint and tired, usually keeping them from work and other normal activities. Kidney transplantation, on the other hand, is the closest thing to a cure that anyone could hope for. Today the procedure is both safe and reliable, causing few complications. With better technology for confirming tissue matches and new anti-rejection drugs, the surgery is relatively simple. But those hoping for a new kidney have high hopes indeed. In the year 2000 alone, 2,583 Americans died while waiting for a kidney trans- plant; worldwide the number of deaths is around 50,000 (Finkel 27). With the sale of organs outlawed in almost every country, the number of living donors willing to part with a kidney for free is small. When no family member is a suitable candidate for donation, the patient is placed on a deceased donors list, relying on the organs from people dying of old age or accidents. The list is long. With over 60,000 people in line in the United States alone, the average wait for a cadaverous kidney is ten long years. Daunted by the low odds, some have turned to an alternative solution: purchasing kidneys on the black market. For about $150,000, they can buy a fresh kidney from a healthy, living donor. There are no lines, no waits. Arranged through a broker, the entire procedure is carefully planned out. The buyer, seller, surgeons, and nurses are flown to a predetermined hospital in a foreign country. The operations are performed, and then all are flown back to their respective homes. There is no follow-up, no paperwork to sign (Finkel 27). The illegal kidney trade is attractive not only because of the promptness but also because of the chance at a living donor. An organ from a cadaver will most likely be old or damaged, estimated

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Necessary back- ground information.

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to function for about ten years at most. A kidney from a living donor can last over twice as long. Once a person’s transplanted cadaverous kidney stops functioning, he or she must get back on the donor list, this time probably at the end of the line. A transplanted living kidney, however, could last a person a lifetime. While there may seem to be a shortage of kidneys, in reality there is a surplus. In third-world countries, there are people willing to do anything for money. In such extreme poverty these people barely have enough to eat, living in shacks and sleeping on dirt floors. Eager to pay off debts, they line up at hospitals, willing to sell a kidney for about $1,000. The money will go toward food and clothing, or perhaps to pay for a family member’s medical operation (Goyal et al. 1590–91). Whatever the case, these people need the money. There is certainly a risk in donating a kidney, but this risk is not great enough to be outlawed. Millions of people take risks to their health every day for money, or simply for enjoyment. As explained in The Lancet, “If the rich are free to engage in dangerous sports for pleasure, or dangerous jobs for high pay, it is difficult to see why the poor who take the lesser risk of kidney selling for greater rewards . . . should be thought so misguided as to need saving from themselves” (Radcliffe-Richards et al. 1951). Studies have shown that a person can live a healthy life with only one kidney. While these studies might not apply to the poor living under strenuous conditions in unsanitary environments, the risk is still theirs to take. These people have decided that their best hope for money is to sell a kidney. How can we deny them the best opportunity they have? Some agree with Pope John Paul II that the selling of organs is morally wrong and violates “the dignity of the human person” (qtd. in Finkel 26), but this is a belief professed by healthy and affluent indi- viduals. Are we sure that the peasants of third-world countries agree? The morals we hold are not absolute truths. We have the responsibility to protect and help those less fortunate, but we cannot let our own ideals cloud the issues at hand. In a legal kidney transplant, everybody gains except the donor. The doctors and nurses are paid for the operation, the patient receives a new kidney, but the donor receives nothing. Sure, the donor will have the warm, uplifting feeling associated with helping a fellow human being, but this is not enough reward for most people to part with a

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• Reason (altruism is not enough) supported by evidence.

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Counterargument (selling organs is wrong) acknowledged.

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Counterargument (donating a kidney is risky) acknowledged.

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Reason (donors need the money) supported by evidence.

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piece of themselves. In an ideal world, the average person would be altruistic enough to donate a kidney with nothing expected in return. The real world, however, is run by money. We pay men for donating sperm, and we pay women for donating ova, yet we expect others to give away an entire organ for no compensation. If the sale of organs were allowed, people would have a greater incentive to help save the life of a stranger. While many argue that legalizing the sale of organs will exploit the poorer people of third-world countries, the truth of the matter is that this is already the case. Even with the threat of a $50,000 fine and five years in prison (Finkel 26), the current ban has not been success- ful in preventing illegal kidney transplants. The kidneys of the poor are still benefit ing only the rich. While the sellers do receive most of the money promised, the sum is too small to have any real impact on their financial situation. A study in India discovered that in the long run, organ sellers suffer. In the illegal kidney trade, nobody has the interests of the seller at heart. After selling a kidney, their state of living actually worsens. While the $1,000 pays off one debt, it is not enough to relieve the donor of the extreme poverty that placed him in debt in the first place (Goyal et al. 1591). These impoverished people do not need stricter and harsher penalties against organ selling to protect them, but quite the opposite. If the sale of organs were made legal, it could be regulated and closely monitored by the government and other responsible organizations. Under a regulated system, education would be incorpo- rated into the application process. Before deciding to donate a kidney, the seller should know the details of the operation and any hazards involved. Only with an understanding of the long-term physical health risks can a person make an informed decision (Radcliffe-Richards et al. 1951). Regulation would ensure that the seller is fairly compensated. In the illegal kidney trade, surgeons collect most of the buyer’s money in return for putting their careers on the line. The brokers arranging the procedure also receive a modest cut, typically around ten percent. If the entire practice were legalized, more of the money could be directed toward the person who needs it most, the seller. By eliminating the middleman and allowing the doctors to settle for lower prices, a regulated system would benefit all those in need of a kidney, both rich

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Counterargument (poor people are exploited) acknowledged.

Reason (regulating organ sales would lead to better decisions).

Reason (fairness to sellers) followed by evidence.

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and poor. According to Finkel, the money that would otherwise be spent on dialysis treatment could not only cover the charge of a kidney transplant at no cost to the recipient, but also reward the donor with as much as $25,000 (32). This money could go a long way for people living in the poverty of third-world countries. Critics fear that controlling the lawful sale of organs would be too difficult, but could it be any more difficult than controlling the unlaw- ful sale of organs? Governments have tried to eradicate the kidney market for decades to no avail. Maybe it is time to try something else. When “desperately wanted goods” are made illegal, history has shown that there is more opportunity for corruption and exploitation than if those goods were allowed (Radcliffe-Richards et al. 1951). (Just look at the effects of the prohibition of alcohol, for example.) Legalization of organ sales would give governments the authority and the opportunity to closely monitor these live kidney operations. Regulation would also protect the buyers. Because of the need for secrecy, the current illegal method of obtaining a kidney has no contracts and, therefore, no guarantees. Since what they are doing is illegal, the buyers have nobody to turn to if something goes wrong. There is nobody to point the finger at, nobody to sue. While those participating in the kidney market are breaking the law, they have no other choice. Without a new kidney, end-stage renal disease will soon kill them. Desperate to survive, they are forced to take the only offer available. It seems immoral to first deny them the opportunity of a new kidney and then to leave them stranded at the mercy of the black market. Without laws regulating live kidney transplants, these people are subject to possibly hazardous procedures. Instead of turning our backs, we have the power to ensure that these operations are done safely and efficiently for both the recipient and the donor. Those suffering from end-stage renal disease would do anything for the chance at a new kidney, take any risk or pay any price. There are other people so poor that the sale of a kidney is worth the profit. Try to tell someone that he has to die from kidney failure because selling a kidney is morally wrong. Then turn around and try to tell another person that he has to remain in poverty for that same reason. In matters of life and death, our stances on moral issues must be reevaluated. If legalized and regulated, the sale of human organs would save lives. Is it moral to sentence thousands to unnecessary deaths?

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Counterargument (controlling organ sales would be difficult) acknowledged.

Reason (fairness to buyers) supported by examples.

Concludes by asking a question for readers to consider.

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Works Cited Finkel, Michael. “This Little Kidney Went to Market.” The New York

Times Magazine, 27 May 2001, pp. 26+. Goyal, Madhav, et al. “Economic and Health Consequences of Selling

a Kidney in India.” Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 288, 2002, pp. 1589–92.

McDonnell, Michael B., and William K. Mallon. “Kidney Transplant.” eMedicine Health, 18 Aug. 2008, www.emedicinehealth.com/ articles/24500-1.asp. Accessed 30 Nov. 2008.

Radcliffe-Richards, J., et al. “The Case for Allowing Kidney Sales.” The Lancet, vol. 351, no. 9120, 27 June 1998, pp. 1950–52.

MacKay clearly states her position at the beginning of her text: “Governments should not ban the sale of human organs; they should regulate it.” Her argu- ment appeals to her readers’ sense of fairness; when kidney sales are legalized and regulated, both sellers and buyers will benefit from the transaction. She uses MLA style to document her sources.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF

Our Blind Spot about Guns

In this essay, which first appeared in the New York Times in 2014, columnist Nicholas Kristof argues that if guns and their owners were regulated in the same way that cars and their drivers are, thousands of lives could be saved each year.

If we had the same auto fatality rate today that we had in 1921, by my calculations we would have 715,000 Americans dying annually in vehicle accidents. Instead, we’ve reduced the fatality rate by more than 95 percent — not by confiscating cars, but by regulating them and their drivers sensibly. We could have said, “Cars don’t kill people. People kill people,” and there would have been an element of truth to that. Many accidents are a result of alcohol consumption, speeding, road rage or driver distraction. Or we could have said, “It’s pointless because even if you regulate cars, then people will just run each other down with bicycles,” and that, too, would have been partly true.

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Yet, instead, we built a system that protects us from ourselves. This saves hundreds of thousands of lives a year and is a model of what we should do with guns in America. Whenever I write about the need for sensible regulation of guns, some readers jeer: Cars kill people, too, so why not ban cars? Why are you so hypocritical as to try to take away guns from law-abiding people when you don’t seize cars? That question is a reflection of our national blind spot about guns. The truth is that we regulate cars quite intelligently, instituting evidence-based measures to reduce fatalities. Yet the gun lobby is too strong, or our politicians too craven, to do the same for guns. So guns and cars now each kill more than 30,000 in America every year. One constraint, the argument goes, is the Second Amendment. Yet the paradox is that a bit more than a century ago, there was no uni- versally recognized individual right to bear arms in the United States, but there was widely believed to be a “right to travel” that allowed people to drive cars without regulation. A court struck down an early attempt to require driver’s licenses, and initial attempts to set speed limits or register vehicles were met with resistance and ridicule. When authorities in New York City sought in 1899 to ban horseless carriages in the parks, the idea was lam- basted in the New York Times as “devoid of merit” and “impossible to maintain.” Yet, over time, it became increasingly obvious that cars were kill- ing and maiming people, as well as scaring horses and causing acci- dents. As a distinguished former congressman, Robert Cousins, put it in 1910: “Pedestrians are menaced every minute of the days and nights by a wanton recklessness of speed, crippling and killing people at a rate that is appalling.” Courts and editorial writers alike saw the carnage and agreed that something must be done. By the 1920s, courts routinely accepted driver’s license requirements, car registration and other safety measures. That continued in recent decades with requirements of seatbelts and air bags, padded dashboards and better bumpers. We cracked down on drunken drivers and instituted graduated licensing for young people, while also improving road engineering to reduce accidents. The upshot is that there is now just over 1 car fatality per 100 million miles driven.

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Yet as we’ve learned to treat cars intelligently, we’ve gone in the opposite direction with guns. In his terrific new book, The Second Amendment: A Biography, Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, notes that “gun control laws were ubiquitous” in the nineteenth century. Visitors to Wichita, Kansas, for example, were required to check their revolvers at police headquarters. And Dodge City, symbol of the Wild West? A photo shows a sign on the main street in 1879 warning: “The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited.”

Dodge City, Kansas, 1878. The sign reads, “The Carrying of Fire Arms strictly prohibited.”

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The National Rifle Association supported reasonable gun control for most of its history and didn’t even oppose the landmark Gun Control Act of 1968. But, since then, most attempts at safety regulation have stalled or gone backward, and that makes the example of cars instructive. “We didn’t ban cars, or send black helicopters to confiscate them,” notes Waldman. “We made cars safer: air bags, seatbelts, increasing the drinking age, lowering the speed limit. There are similar techno- logical and behavioral fixes that can ease the toll of gun violence, from expanded background checks to trigger locks to smart guns that recognize a thumbprint, just like my iPhone does.” Some of these should be doable. A Quinnipiac poll this month found 92 percent support for background checks for all gun buyers. These steps won’t eliminate gun deaths any more than seatbelts eliminate auto deaths. But if a combination of measures could reduce the toll by one-third, that would be 10,000 lives saved every year. A century ago, we reacted to deaths and injuries from unregulated vehicles by imposing sensible safety measures that have saved hundreds of thousands of lives a year. Why can’t we ask politicians to be just as rational about guns?

Kristof argues that because regulating cars has made them much safer, guns should be regulated similarly. He supports his argument with data on fatality rates and the history of automobile and gun regulation in the United States.

MOLLY WORTHEN

U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This

Molly Worthen is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill and a frequent contributor to the New York Times, where this essay arguing that manners and etiquette matter in the college classroom originally appeared.

At the start of my teaching career, when I was fresh out of graduate school, I briefly considered trying to pass myself off as a cool professor. Luckily, I soon came to my senses and embraced my true identity as a

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young fogey. After one too many students called me by my first name and sent me email that resembled a drunken late-night Facebook post, I took a very fogeyish step. I began attaching a page on etiquette to every syllabus: basic rules for how to address teachers and write polite, grammatically correct emails. Over the past decade or two, college students have become far more casual in their interactions with faculty members. My colleagues around the country grumble about students’ sloppy emails and blithe informality. Mark Tomforde, a math professor at the University of Houston who has been teaching for almost two decades, added etiquette guidelines to his website. “When students started calling me by my first name, I felt that was too far, and I’ve got to say something,” he told me. “There were also the emails written like text messages. Worse than the text abbreviations was the level of informality, with no address or signoff.” His webpage covers matters ranging from appropriate email addresses (if you’re still using “[email protected],” then “it’s time to retire that address”) to how to be gracious when making a request (“do not make demands”). Sociologists who surveyed undergraduate syllabuses from 2004 and 2010 found that in 2004, 14 percent addressed issues related to classroom etiquette; six years later, that number had more than doubled, to 33 percent. This phenomenon crosses socio-economic lines. My colleagues at Stanford gripe as much as the ones who teach at state schools, and students from more privileged backgrounds are often the worst offenders. Why are so many teachers bent out of shape because a student fails to call them “Professor” or neglects to proofread an email? Are academics really that insecure? Is this just another case of scapegoating millennials for changes in the broader culture? Don’t dismiss these calls for old-fashioned courtesy as a case of fragile ivory tower egos or misplaced nostalgia. There is a strong liberal case for using formal manners and titles to ensure respect for all uni- versity professionals, regardless of age, race or gender. More important, doing so helps defend the university’s dearest values at a time when they are under continual assault. It’s true that the conventions that have, until recently, ruled higher education did not rule from time immemorial. Two centuries ago, students often rejected expectations of deference. In 1834, Harvard

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students rebelled when some of their classmates were punished for refusing to memorize their Latin textbook. They broke the windows of a teacher’s apartment and destroyed his furniture. When the president of the college cracked down and suspended the entire sophomore class, the juniors retaliated by hanging and burning him in effigy and setting off a rudimentary explosive in the campus chapel. Later in the 19th century, etiquette manuals proliferated in book- stores, and Americans began to emphasize elaborate social protocols. As colleges expanded and academic disciplines professionalized, they mimicked the hierarchical cultures of the German research universities, where students cowered before “Herr Professor Doktor.” The historian John Kasson has noted that back then, formal eti- quette was not aimed at ensuring respect for all. It was, in part, a system to enforce boundaries of race, class and gender at a time when the growth of cities and mass transit forced Americans into close quarters with strangers. Codes of behavior served “as checks against a fully democratic order and in support of special interests, institutions of privilege and structures of domination,” he writes in his book Rudeness and Civility. But today, on the other side of the civil rights revolution, formal titles and etiquette can be tools to protect disempowered minorities and ensure that the modern university belongs to all of us. Students seem more inclined to use casual forms of address with professors who are young, nonwhite and female — some of whom have responded by becoming vocal defenders of old-fashioned propriety. Angela Jackson-Brown, a professor of English at Ball State Univer- sity in Muncie, Ind., told me that “most of my students will acknowledge that I’m the first and only black teacher they’ve ever had.” Insisting on her formal title is important, she said: “I feel the extra burden of having to go in from Day 1 and establish that I belong here.” When Professor Jackson-Brown began teaching in the 1990s, most students respected her authority. But in recent years, that deference has waned (she blames the informality of social media). “I go out of my way now to not give them access to my first name,” she said. “On every syl- labus, it states clearly: ‘Please address me as Professor Jackson-Brown.’“ She linked this policy to the atmosphere of mutual respect that she cultivates in her classes. These days, simply being considerate can feel like a political act. “After this recent election, I’ve had several female students come to me and say, ‘I’m noticing differences in how

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men are treating me.’ It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “We’re trying to set standards for them that they may not see outside the classroom, places where you’d think there would be decorum.” This logic resonates with some students. “Having these titles forces everyone to give that respect,” Lyndah Lovell, a graduating senior at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., said. “They know they have to use these manners with everyone. Even if the underlying thoughts of prejudice will still be there to some extent, you give these thoughts less power.” Insisting on traditional etiquette is also simply good pedagogy. It’s a teacher’s job to correct sloppy prose, whether in an essay or an email. And I suspect that most of the time, students who call faculty members by their first names and send slangy messages are not seeking a more casual rapport. They just don’t know they should do otherwise — no one has bothered to explain it to them. Explaining the rules of profes- sional interaction is not an act of condescension; it’s the first step in treating students like adults. That said, the teacher-student relationship depends on a special kind of inequality. “Once I refer to them as I would my best friend, I eliminate that boundary of clarity,” Ms. Lovell told me. She recalled how awkward she felt when the head of the research lab where she worked asked undergraduates to call him Willy. “All my friends were saying: ‘Oh, man, do we do this? He has a Ph.D. He’s a professor. Is it O.K. to do this?’ Sometimes I do, but he’s a great mentor, and it’s confusing. A lot of us like to preserve that distance.” Alexis Delgado, a sophomore at the University of Rochester, is skeptical of professors who make a point of insisting on their title. “I always think it’s a power move,” she told me. “Just because someone gave you a piece of paper that says you’re smart doesn’t mean you can communicate those ideas to me. I reserve the right to judge if you’re a good professor.” But she ruefully recalled one young professor who made the mis- take of telling the class that he didn’t care if they used his first name. “He didn’t realize how far it would go, and we all thought, this is awkward,” she said. “I had no desire to be friends. I only wanted to ask questions.” During office hours, we have frank conversations about career choices, mental health crises and family tribulations. But the last thing most students want from a mentor is the pretense of chumminess.

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Ms. Lovell said the very act of communicating more formally helps her get some distance on a personal problem. “When I explain my difficulties and struggles, I try to explain in a mature way,” she said. “I want to know: How would someone older than me think through this?” The facile egalitarianism of the first-name basis can impede good teaching and mentoring, but it also presents a more insidious threat. It undermines the message that academic titles are meant to convey: esteem for learning. The central endeavor of higher education is not the pursuit of money or fame but knowledge. “There needs to be some understanding that degrees mean something,” Professor Jackson- Brown said. “Otherwise, why are we encouraging them to get an edu- cation?” The values of higher education are not the values of the commer- cial, capitalist paradigm. At a time when corporate executives populate university boards and politicians demand proof of a diploma’s immedi- ate cash value, this distinction needs vigilant defense. The erosion of etiquette encourages students to view faculty members as a bunch of overeducated customer service agents. “More and more, students view the process of going to college as a business transaction,” Dr. Tomforde, the math professor, told me. “They see themselves as a customer, and they view knowledge as a physical thing where they pay money and I hand them the knowledge — so if they don’t do well on a test, they think I haven’t kept up my side of the business agreement.” He added, “They view professors in a way similar to the person behind the counter getting their coffee.” But if American culture in general — including many work- places — has become less formal, are professors doing students a dis- service by insisting on old-fashioned manners? When Anna Lewis left a Ph.D. program in English to work at a technology firm, she had to learn to operate in a different culture. Yet she has noticed that the informality of the tech industry can mislead new millennial employees. “They see they can call everyone from the C.E.O. down by their first name, and that can be confusing — because what they often don’t realize is that there’s still a high standard of professionalism,” she told me. “At the intern level, these things are basic, but they require reminders: show up to meetings on time; be aware that you, yourself, are fully responsible for your work schedule. No one is going to tell

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you to attend a meeting.” In other words, young graduates mistake informality for license to act unprofessionally. “There is some value in being schooled in more formal etiquette, developing personal and professional accountability, a work ethic and a level of empathy, which is very much valued in the tech industry,” Ms. Lewis said. Here’s an analogy: We should teach students traditional etiquette for the same reason most great abstract painters first mastered figura- tive painting. In order to abandon or riff on a form, you have to get the hang of its underlying principles. That means that professors should take the time to explain these principles, making it clear that learning how to write a professional email and relate to authority figures is not just preparation for a job after graduation. The real point is to stand up for the values that have made our universities the guardians of civilization. And if you’re going to write an angry email telling me how wrong I am, I beg you: Please proofread it before you hit “send.”

Worthen argues that using “formal manners and titles” shows respect for both academic professionals and the ideals for which they stand, protects minorities and women, and is part of a complete education. Much of the support for her position is in the form of testimony from college teachers and students.

Key Features / Arguments

A clear and arguable position. At the heart of every argument is a claim with which people may reasonably disagree. Some claims are not arguable because they’re completely subjective, matters of taste or opinion (“I hate sauerkraut”), because they are a matter of fact (“The first Star Wars movie came out in 1977”), or because they are based on belief or faith (“There is life after death”). To be arguable, a position must reflect one of at least two points of view, making rea- soned argument necessary: Guns should (or should not) be regulated; selling human organs should be legal (or illegal). In college writing, you

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For four more arguments, see CHAPTER 64.

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will often argue not that a position is correct but that it is plausible — that it is reasonable, supportable, and worthy of being taken seriously.

Necessary background information. Sometimes we need to provide some background on a topic we are arguing so that readers can under- stand what is being argued. MacKay establishes the need for kidney donors before launching her argument for legalizing the selling of organs; Kristof describes the history of automobile regulation.

Good reasons. By itself, a position does not make an argument; the argu- ment comes when a writer offers reasons to back up the position. There are many kinds of good reasons. Kristof makes his argument by comparing cars to guns. MacKay bases her argument in favor of legalizing the sale of human organs on the grounds that doing so would save more lives, that impoverished people should be able to make risky choices, and that regulation would protect such people who currently sell their organs on the black market as well as desperate buyers.

Convincing evidence. Once you’ve given reasons for your position, you then need to offer evidence for your reasons: facts, statistics, expert testimony, anecdotal evidence, case studies, textual evidence. All three arguments use a mix of these types of evidence. MacKay cites statistics about Americans who die from renal failure to support her argument for legalizing organ sales. Kristof shows how regulating cars led to dramatic decreases in driving deaths and injuries. Worthen offers testimony from several college faculty and students who assert the value of etiquette and manners in the classroom.

Appeals to readers’ values. Effective arguers try to appeal to readers’ values and emotions. MacKay appeals to basic values of compassion and fairness. These are deeply held values that we may not think about very much and as a result may see as common ground we share with the writers. And some of MacKay’s evidence appeals to emotion — her descrip- tions of people dying from kidney disease and of poor people selling their organs are likely to evoke an emotional response in many readers.

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A trustworthy tone. Arguments can stand or fall on the way readers perceive the writer. Very simply, readers need to trust the person who’s making the argument. One way of winning this trust is by demonstrating that you know what you’re talking about. Kristof offers plenty of facts to show his knowledge of the history of automotive regulation — and he does so in a self-assured tone. There are many other ways of establishing yourself (and your argument) as trustworthy — by showing that you have some experience with your subject, that you’re fair, and of course that you’re honest.

Careful consideration of other positions. No matter how reasonable and careful we are in arguing our positions, others may disagree or offer coun- terarguments. We need to consider those other views and to acknowledge and, if possible, refute them in our written arguments. MacKay, for example, acknowledges that some believe that selling organs is unethical, but she counters that it’s usually healthy, affluent people who say this — not people who need either an organ or the money they could get by selling one.

A GUIDE TO WRITING ARGUMENTS

Choosing a Topic

A fully developed argument requires significant work and time, so choos- ing a topic in which you’re interested is very important. Students often find that widely debated topics such as “animal rights” or “abortion” can be difficult to write on because they don’t feel any personal connection to them. Better topics include those that

• interest you right now

• are focused but not too narrowly

• have some personal connection to your life

One good way to generate ideas for a topic that meets those three cri- teria is to explore your own roles in life.

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Start with your roles in life. Make four columns with the headings “Personal,” “Family,” “Public,” and “School.” Then list the roles you play that relate to it. Here is a list one student wrote:

Personal Family Public School

gamer

dog owner

old-car owner

male

white

middle class

son

younger

brother

grandson

voter

homeless-shelter volunteer

American

resident of Texas

college student

work-study employee

dorm resident

primary-education major

Identify issues that interest you. Think, then, about issues or controver- sies that may concern you as a member of one or more of those groups. For instance, as a primary-education major, this student cares about the controversy over whether teachers’ jobs should be focused on preparing kids for high-stakes standardized tests. As a college student, he cares about the costs of a college education. Issues that stem from these subjects could include the following: Should student progress be measured by standard- ized tests? Should college cost less than it does? Pick four or five of the roles you list. In 5 or 10 minutes, identify issues that concern or affect you as a member of each of those roles. It might help to word each issue as a question starting with Should.

Frame your topic as a problem. Most position papers address issues that are subjects of ongoing debate — their solutions aren’t easy, and people disagree on which ones are best. Posing your topic as a problem can help you think about the topic, find an issue that’s suitable to write about, and find a clear focus for your essay. For example, if you wanted to write an argument on the lack of student parking at your school, you could frame your topic as one of several prob- lems: What causes the parking shortage? Why are the university’s parking garages and lots limited in their capacity? What might alleviate the shortage?

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Choose one issue to write about. Remember that the issue should be interesting to you and have some connection to your life. It is a tentative choice; if you find later that you have trouble writing about it, simply go back to your list of roles or issues and choose another.

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

purpose Do you want to persuade your audience to do something? Change their minds? Consider alternative views? Accept your position as plausible — see that you have thought carefully about an issue and researched it appropriately?

audience Who is your intended audience? What do they likely know and believe about this issue? How personal is it for them? To what extent are they likely to agree or disagree with you — and with one another? Why? What common ground can you find with them?

stance What’s your attitude toward your topic, and why? How do you want your audience to perceive your attitude? How do you want your audience to perceive you? As an authority on your topic? As someone much like them? As calm? reasonable? impassioned or angry? something else?

media/design What media will you use, and how do your media affect your argument? Does your print or online argument call for photos or charts? If you’re giving an oral presenta- tion, should you put your reasons and support on slides? If you’re writing electronically, should you include audio or video evidence or links to counterarguments or your sources?

Generating Ideas and Text

Most essays that successfully argue a position share certain features that make them interesting and persuasive. Remember that your goal is to stake out a position and convince your readers that it is plausible.

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Explore what you already know about the issue. Write out whatever you know about the issue by freewriting or as a list or outline. Why are you interested in this topic? What is your position on it at this point, and why? What aspect do you think you’d like to focus on? Where do you need to focus your research efforts? This activity can help you discover what more you need to learn. Chances are you’ll need to learn a lot more about the issue before you even decide what position to take.

Do some research. At this point, try to get an overview. Start with one general source of information that will give you a sense of the ins and outs of your issue, one that isn’t overtly biased. The Atlantic, Time, Slate, and other online newspapers and magazines can be good starting points on current issues. For some issues, you may need to interview an expert. For example, one student who wanted to write about chemical abuse of animals at 4-H competitions interviewed an experienced show competi- tor. Use your overview source to find out the main questions raised about your issue and to get some idea about the various ways in which you might argue it.

Explore the issue strategically. Most issues may be argued from many different perspectives. You’ll probably have some sense of the different views that exist on your issue, but you should explore multiple perspec- tives before deciding on your position. The following methods are good ways of exploring issues:

• As a matter of definition. What is it? How should it be defined? How can organic or genetically modified food be defined? How do proponents of organic food define it — and how do they define genetically modified food? How do advocates of genetically modified food define it — and how do they define organic food? Considering such definitions is one way to identify different perspectives on the topic.

• As a matter of classification. Can the issue be divided into cat- egories? Are there different kinds of, or different ways of, producing organic foods and genetically modified foods? Do different categories suggest particular positions or perhaps a way of supporting a certain position? Are there other ways of categorizing foods?

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• As a matter of comparison. Is one subject being considered better than another? Is organic food healthier or safer than genetically modified food? Is genetically modified food healthier or safer than organic? Is the answer somewhere in the middle?

• As a matter of process. Should somebody do something? What? Should people buy and eat more organic food? More genetically modi- fied food? Should they buy and eat some of each?

Reconsider whether the issue can be argued. Is this issue worth dis- cussing? Why is it important to you and to others? What difference will it make if one position or another prevails? Is it arguable? At this point, you want to be sure that your topic is worth arguing about.

Draft a thesis. Having explored the possibilities, decide your position, and write it out as a complete sentence. For example:

Parents should be required to have their children vaccinated.

Pod-based coffeemakers should be banned.

Genetically modified foods should not be permitted in the United States.

Qualify your thesis. Rather than taking a strict pro or con position, in most cases you’ll want to qualify your position — in certain circum- stances, with certain conditions, with these limitations, and so on. This is not to say that we should settle, give in, sell out; rather, it is to say that our position may not be the only “correct” one and that other positions may be valid as well. qualifying your thesis also makes your topic manageable by limiting it. For example:

Parents should be required to have their children vaccinated, with only medical exemptions allowed.

Pod-based coffeemakers should be banned unless the pods are recyclable.

Genetically modified foods should not be permitted in the United States if a link between GMOs and resistance to antibiotics is proven.

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Come up with good reasons. Once you have a thesis, you need to come up with good reasons to convince your readers that it’s plausible. Write out your position, and then list several reasons. For instance, if your thesis is that pod-based coffeemakers should be banned, two of your reasons might be:

The pods cannot be recycled.

Other methods of making coffee are more environmentally sound.

Think about which reasons are best for your purposes. Which seem the most persuasive? Which are most likely to be accepted by your audience? Which seem to matter the most now? If your list of reasons is short or you think you’ll have trouble developing them enough to write an appropriate essay, this is a good time to rethink your topic — before you’ve invested too much time in it.

Develop support for your reasons. Next you have to come up with evidence to support your reasons: facts, statistics, examples, testimony by authorities and experts, anecdotal evidence, scenarios, case studies and observation, and textual evidence. For some topics, you may want or need to use evidence in visual form like photos, graphs, and charts; online, you could also use video or audio evidence and links to evidence in other websites. What counts as evidence varies across audiences. Statistical evidence may be required in certain disciplines but not in others; anecdotes may be accepted as evidence in some courses but not in engineering. Some audiences will be persuaded by emotional appeals while others will not. For example, if you argue that foods produced from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) should be allowed to be sold because they’re safe, you could support that reason with facts: GMOs are tested thoroughly by three separate U.S. government agencies. Or you could support it with statistics: A study of 29 years of data on livestock fed GMO feed found that GMO-fed cattle had no adverse health effects on people who ate them. Expert tes- timony might include R. E. Goodman of the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, who writes that

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“there is an absence of proof of harm to consumers from commercially available GMOs.”

Identify other positions. Now think about positions other than yours and the reasons people are likely to give for those positions. Be careful to represent their points of view as accurately and fairly as you can. Then decide whether you need to acknowledge or to refute each position.

Acknowledging other positions. Some positions can’t be refuted but are too important to ignore, so you need to acknowledge concerns and objections they raise to show that you’ve considered other perspectives. For example, in an essay arguing that vacations are necessary to main- tain good health, medical writer Alina Tugend acknowledges that “in some cases, these trips — particularly with entire families in tow — can be stressful in their own way. The joys of a holiday can also include lugging around a ridiculous amount of paraphernalia, jet-lagged children sobbing on airplanes, hotels that looked wonderful on the Web but are in reality next to a construction site.” Tugend’s acknowledgment moderates her position and makes her argument appear more reasonable.

Refuting other positions. State the position as clearly and as fairly as you can, and then refute it by showing why you believe it is wrong. Perhaps the reasoning is faulty or the supporting evidence inadequate. Acknowledge the merits of the position, if any, but emphasize its short- comings. Avoid the fallacy of attacking the person holding the position or bringing up a competing position that no one seriously entertains.

Ways of Organizing an Argument

Readers need to be able to follow the reasoning of your argument from beginning to end; your task is to lead them from point to point as you build your case. Sometimes you’ll want to give all the reasons for your argument first, followed by discussion of any other positions. Al ternatively, you might discuss each reason and any opposing arguments together.

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[Reasons to support your argument, followed by opposing arguments]

Introduce the issue, and provide any neces- sary back- ground information.

State your thesis.

Give the first reason, with support.

Give the second rea- son, with support.

Continue as needed.

Acknowledge and/or refute opposing arguments.

End with a call to action, a restatement of your thesis, or a statement of implications.

[Reason/opposing argument, reason/opposing argument]

Introduce the issue, and pro- vide any necessary background information.

State your thesis.

Give the first reason, with support.

Give the second reason, with support.

Acknowledge and/or refute opposing arguments.

Acknowledge and/or refute opposing arguments.

Continue this pattern as needed, discussing reasons and opposing arguments one by one.

End with a call to action, a restatement of your thesis, or a statement of implications.

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Consider carefully the order in which you discuss your reasons. Usu- ally what comes last makes the strongest impression on readers and what comes in the middle the least impression, so you might want to put your most important or strongest reasons first and last.

Writing Out a Draft

Once you have generated ideas, done some research, and thought about how you want to organize your argument, it’s time to start drafting. Your goal in the initial draft is to develop your argument — you can fill in support and transitions as you revise. You may want to write your first draft in one sitting, so that you can develop your reasoning from beginning to end. Or you may write the main argument first and the introduction and conclusion after you’ve drafted the body of the essay; many writers find that beginning and ending an essay are the hardest tasks they face. Here is some advice on how you might begin and end your argument:

Draft a beginning. There are various ways to begin an argument essay, depending on your audience and purpose. Here are a few suggestions:

• Offer background information. You may need to give your readers infor- mation to help them understand your position. MacKay outlines the extent of kidney failure in the United States and the limits of dialysis as treatment.

• Begin with an anecdote. Worthen starts by summarizing her early teaching days and how her students’ behavior led her to become a “young fogey” who instructed her students on classroom and email etiquette.

• Define a key term. You may need to show how you’re using certain keywords. MacKay, for example, defines end-stage renal disease as “a state of kidney disorder so advanced that the organ stops function- ing altogether,” a definition that is central to her argument.

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• Begin with something that will get readers’ attention. MacKay begins emphatically: “There are thousands of people dying to buy a kidney and thousands of people dying to sell a kidney . . . So why are we standing in the way?”

• Explain the context for your position. All arguments are part of a larger, ongoing conversation, so you might begin by showing how your posi- tion fits into the arguments others have made. Kristof places his argu- ment about guns in the context of government regulation of other dangerous technologies.

Draft an ending. Your conclusion is the chance to wrap up your argu- ment in such a way that readers will remember what you’ve said. Here are a few ways of concluding an argument essay:

• Summarize your main points. Especially when you’ve presented a com- plex argument, it can help readers to summarize your main point. MacKay sums up her argument with the sentence “If legalized and regulated, the sale of human organs would save lives.”

• Call for action. Kristof does this by asking politicians to consider “sensible safety measures.” Worthen asks professors to teach the principles underlying etiquette.

• Frame your argument by referring to the introduction. MacKay does this when she ends by reiterating that selling organs benefits both seller and buyer. Worthen mentions the need for correct emails in both her first and last few paragraphs.

Come up with a title. Most often you’ll want your title to tell readers something about your topic — and to make them want to read on. MacKay’s “Organ Sales Will Save Lives” tells us both her topic and position. Kristof’s title, “Our Blind Spot about Guns,” entices us to find out what that blind spot is. Worthen’s “U Can’t Talk to Ur Professor Like This” leads us to ask, “Like what?” See the chapter on guiding your reader for more advice on composing a good title.

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Considering Matters of Design

You’ll probably write the main text of your argument in paragraph form, but think about what kind of information you’re presenting and how you can design it to make your argument as easy as possible for your readers to understand. Think also about whether any visual or audio elements would be more persuasive than written words.

• What would be an appropriate font? Something serious like Times Roman? Something traditional like Courier? Something else?

• Would it help your readers if you divided your argument into shorter sections and added headings?

• If you’re making several points, would they be easier to follow if you set them off in a list?

• Do you have any supporting evidence that would be easier to under- stand in the form of a bar graph, line graph, or pie chart?

• Would illustrations — photos, diagrams, or drawings — add support for your argument? Online, would video, audio, or links help?

Getting Response and Revising

At this point you need to look at your draft closely, and if possible get response from others as well. Following are some questions for look- ing at an argument with a critical eye.

• Is there sufficient background or context?

• Have you defined terms to avoid misunderstandings?

• Is the thesis clear and appropriately qualified?

• Are the reasons plausible?

• Is there enough evidence to support these reasons? Will readers accept the evidence as valid and sufficient?

• Can readers follow the steps in your reasoning?

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• Have you considered potential objections or other positions? Are there any others that should be addressed?

• Have you cited enough sources, and are these sources credible?

• Are source materials documented carefully and completely, with in-text citations and a works-cited or references section?

• Are any visuals or links that are included used effectively and inte- grated smoothly with the rest of the text? If there are no visuals or links, would using some strengthen the argument?

Next it’s time to revise, to make sure your argument offers convincing evidence, appeals to readers’ values, and achieves your purpose. If you have time and want to explore alternatives, you might try rewriting your draft to see if a different plan or approach might work better.

Editing and Proofreading

Readers equate correctness with competence. Once you’ve revised your draft, follow these guidelines for editing an argument:

• Check to see that your tone is appropriate and consistent throughout, reflects your stance accurately, and enhances the argument you’re making.

• Be sure readers will be able to follow the argument; check to see you’ve provided transitions and summary statements where necessary.

• Make sure you’ve smoothly integrated quotations, paraphrases, and summaries from source material into your writing and documented them accurately.

• Look for phrases such as “I think” or “I feel” and delete them; your essay itself expresses your opinion.

• Make sure that illustrations have captions and that charts and graphs have headings — and that all are referred to in the main text.

• If you’re writing online, make sure all your links work.

• proofread and spell-check your essay carefully.

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Taking Stock of Your Work

Take stock of what you’ve written by writing out answers to these questions:

• What did you do well in this piece?

• What could still be improved?

• How did you go about researching your topic?

• How did others’ responses influence your writing?

• How did you go about drafting this piece?

• Did you use visual elements (tables, graphs, diagrams, photographs), audio elements, or links effectively? If not, would they have helped?

• What would you do differently next time?

• What have you learned about your writing ability from writing this piece? What do you need to work on in the future?

IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See Chapter 34 if you are required to submit your argument as part of a writing PORTFOLIO. See also Chapter 11 on ANALYZING A TEXT , Chapter 16 on EVALUATIONS, and Chapter 20 on PROPOSALS for advice on writing those specific types of arguments.

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185

14Abstracts

Abstracts are summaries written to give readers the gist of a report or presentation. Sometimes they are published in conference proceedings or databases. In courses in the sciences, social sciences, and engineering, you may be asked to create abstracts of your proposed projects and completed reports and essays. Abstracts are brief, typically 100–200 words, sometimes even shorter. Two common kinds are informative abstracts and proposal abstracts.

INFORMATIVE ABSTRACTS

Informative abstracts state in one paragraph the essence of a whole paper about a study or a research project. That one paragraph must mention all the main points or parts of the paper: a description of the study or project, its methods, the results, and the conclusions. Here is an example of the abstract accompanying a seven-page article that appeared in the Journal of Clinical Psychology:

The relationship between boredom proneness and health-symptom reporting was examined. Undergraduate students (N 5 200) completed the Boredom Proneness Scale and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist. A multiple analysis of covariance indicated that individuals with high boredom-proneness total scores reported significantly higher ratings on all five subscales of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (Obsessive – Compulsive, Somatization, Anxiety, Interpersonal Sensitivity, and Depression). The results suggest that boredom proneness may be an

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important element to consider when assessing symptom reporting. Implications for determining the effects of boredom proneness on psychological- and physical-health symptoms, as well as the applica- tion in clinical settings, are discussed.

— Jennifer Sommers and Stephen J. Vodanovich, “Boredom Proneness”

The first sentence states the nature of the study being reported. The next summarizes the method used to investigate the problem, and the follow- ing one gives the results: students who, according to specific tests, are more likely to be bored are also more likely to have certain medical or psychological symptoms. The last two sentences indicate that the paper discusses those results and examines the conclusion and its implications.

PROPOSAL ABSTRACTS

Proposal abstracts contain the same basic information as informative abstracts, but their purpose is very different. You prepare proposal abstracts to persuade someone to let you write on a topic, pursue a project, conduct an experiment, or present a paper at a scholarly confer- ence. This kind of abstract is not written to introduce a longer piece but rather to stand alone, and often the abstract is written before the paper itself. Titles and other aspects of the proposal deliberately reflect the theme of the proposed work, and you may use the future tense, rather than the past, to describe work not yet completed. Here is a possible proposal for doing research on boredom:

Undergraduate students will complete the Boredom Proneness Scale and the Hopkins Symptom Checklist. A multiple analysis of covariance will be performed to determine the relationship between boredom- proneness total scores and ratings on the five subscales of the Hop- kins Symptom Checklist (Obsessive–Compulsive, Somatization, Anxiety, Interpersonal Sensitivity, and Depression).

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Key Features / Abstracts

A summary of basic information. An informative abstract includes enough information to substitute for the report itself, and a proposal abstract gives an overview of the planned work.

Objective description. Abstracts present information on the contents of a report or a proposed study; they do not present arguments about or per- sonal perspectives on those contents. The informative abstract on boredom proneness, for example, offers only a tentative conclusion: “The results suggest that boredom proneness may be an important element to consider.”

Brevity. Although the length of abstracts may vary, journals and organi- zations often restrict them to 120–200 words — meaning you must carefully select and edit your words.

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING ABSTRACTS

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

purpose Are you giving a brief but thorough overview of a com- pleted study? only enough information to create inter- est? a proposal for a planned study or presentation?

audience For whom are you writing this abstract? What informa- tion about your project will your readers need?

stance Whatever your stance in the longer work, your abstract must be objective.

media / design How will you set off your abstract from the rest of the text? If you are publishing it online, should it be on a separate page? What format do your readers expect?

55–56

55–56

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Generating Ideas and Text

Write the paper first, the abstract last. You can then use the finished work as the guide for the abstract, which should follow the same basic structure. Exception: You may need to write a proposal abstract months before the work it describes will be complete.

Copy and paste key statements. If you’ve already written the work, highlight your thesis , objective, or purpose; basic information on your methods; your results; and your conclusion. Copy and paste those sen- tences into a new document to create a rough version of your abstract.

Pare down the rough abstract. summarize the key ideas in the docu- ment, editing out any nonessential words and details. In your first sen- tence, introduce the overall scope of your study. Also include any other information that seems crucial to understanding your paper. Avoid phrases that add unnecessary words, such as “It is concluded that.” In general, you probably won’t want to use “I”; an abstract should cover ideas, not say what you think or will do.

Conform to any requirements. In general, an informative abstract should be at most 10 percent of the length of the entire work and no longer than the maximum length allowed. Proposal abstracts should conform to the requirements of the organization calling for the proposal.

Ways of Organizing an Abstract

Organizing abstracts is straightforward: in a single paragraph, briefly state the nature of the report or presentation, followed by an overview of the paper or the proposal.

387–89

534–35

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14 / Abstracts 189▲

[An informative abstract]

State nature of study.

Summarize method of study.

Summarize results or findings of study.

Summarize discussion of results or findings.

State conclusions of study.

State implications of study.

and / or

[A proposal abstract]

Announce subject of study.

Summarize method to be used.

Taking Stock of Your Work

Take stock of what you’ve written by writing out answers to these questions:

• How did you decide on the type of abstract — informative or proposal — to write?

• How did you identify key statements in your finished work?

• What did you do well in this piece? What could still be improved? What would you do differently next time?

IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See Chapter 30 for guidelines on DRAFTING, Chapter 31 on ASSESSING YOUR OWN WRITING, Chapter 32 on GETTING RESPONSE AND REVISING, and Chapter 33 on EDITING AND PROOFREADING.

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15 Annotated Bibliographies and Reviews of Scholarly Literature

When we do research, we may consult annotated bibliographies to evalu- ate potential sources and literature reviews when we need an overview of the important research (“literature”) on a topic. In some courses, you may be asked to create annotated bibliographies or literature reviews to demonstrate that you have researched your topic thoroughly. This chapter offers advice on writing both.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Annotated bibliographies describe, give publication information for, and sometimes evaluate each work on a list of sources. There are two kinds of annotations, descriptive and evaluative; both may be brief, consisting only of phrases, or more formal, consisting of sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes an annotated bibliography is introduced by a short statement explaining its scope. Descriptive annotations simply summarize the contents of each work, without comment or evaluation. They may be very short, just long enough to capture the flavor of the work, like the examples in the following excerpt from a bibliography of books and articles on teen films, published in the Journal of Popular Film and Television.

MICHAEL BENTON, MARK DOLAN, AND REBECCA ZISCH

Teen Film$

In the introduction to his book The Road to Romance and Ruin, Jon Lewis points out that over half of the world’s population is currently under the age of twenty. This rather startling fact should be enough

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15 / Annotated Bibliographies 191▲

to make most Hollywood producers drool when they think of the potential profits from a target movie audience. Attracting the largest demographic group is, after all, the quickest way to box-office success. In fact, almost from its beginning, the film industry has recognized the importance of the teenaged audience, with characters such as Andy Hardy and locales such as Ridgemont High and the ‘hood. Beyond the assumption that teen films are geared exclusively toward teenagers, however, film researchers should keep in mind that people of all ages have attended and still attend teen films. Popular films about adolescents are also expressions of larger cultural currents. Studying the films is important for understanding an era’s common beliefs about its teenaged population within a broader pattern of gen- eral cultural preoccupations. This selected bibliography is intended both to serve and to stimu- late interest in the teen film genre. It provides a research tool for those who are studying teen films and their cultural implications. Unfortu- nately, however, in the process of compiling this list we quickly realized that it was impossible to be genuinely comprehensive or to satisfy every interest.

Doherty, Thomas. Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s. Unwin Hyman, 1988. Historical discussion of the identification of teenagers as a targeted film market.

Foster, Harold M. “Film in the Classroom: Coping with ‘ Teenpics.’ ” English Journal, vol. 76, no. 3, Mar. 1987, pp. 86–88. Evaluation of the potential of using teen films such as Sixteen Candles, The Karate Kid, Risky Business, The Flamingo Kid, and The Breakfast Club to instruct adolescents on the difference between film as com- munication and film as exploitation.

Washington, Michael, and Marvin J. Berlowitz.“Blaxploitation Films and High School Youth: Swat Superfly.” Jump Cut, vol. 9, Oct.–Dec. 1975, pp. 23–24. Marxist reaction to the trend of youth-oriented black action films. Article seeks to illuminate the negative influences the films have on high school students by pointing out the false ideas about education, morality, and the black family espoused by the heroes in the films.

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These annotations are purely descriptive; the authors express none of their own opinions. They describe works as “historical” or “Marxist” but do not indicate whether they’re “good.” The bibliography entries are documented in MLA style.

Evaluative annotations offer opinions on a source as well as describe it. They are often helpful in assessing how useful a source will be for your own writing. The following evaluative annotations are from a bibliogra- phy by Kelly Green, a student at Arizona State University. Following her instructor’s directions, she labeled each required part of her annotation — summary, degree of advocacy, credibility, and reliability.

KELLY GREEN

Researching Hunger and Poverty

Abramsky, Sasha. “The Other America, 2012: Confronting the Poverty Epi- demic.” The Nation, vol. 294, no. 20, 25 Apr. 2012, https://www.thenation .com/article/other-america-2012-confronting-poverty-epidemic/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2017. The author presents the image of American poverty in 2012 with examples from various families living in poverty. The author explores the conditions that make up the new recession and suggests that people in America notice the scale of the issue and take action to solve it [Sum- mary]. The author advocates poverty reform and shows bias toward the interests of low-income families. He acknowledges other perspectives on the issue respectfully [Degree of Advocacy]. Abramsky is a freelance journalist with experience in several magazines and newspapers. He has written several books on the topic of poverty [Credibility]. The Nation is one of the oldest-running magazines in the United States and contains opinions on politics and culture [Reliability].

Ambler, Marjane. “Sustaining Our Home, Determining Our Des- tiny.” Tribal College Journal, vol. 13, no. 3, Spring 2002, http://www .tribalcollegejournal.org/sustaining-home-determining-destiny/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2017.

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The author examines the causes of poverty on Native American reservations, the factors that lead to solutions to Native American poverty, and the ways in which tribal colleges have helped improve life on reservations [Summary]. The author is strongly biased toward Native American interests and advocates that effective solutions to poverty originate within the reservations, especially in tribal colleges and universities [Degree of Advocacy]. Marjane Ambler was an editor for the Tribal College Journal for 9 years and worked in national park service for nearly a decade [Credibility]. This article was published in 2002 in the Tribal College Journal, a national magazine published by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium [Reliability].

These annotations not only summarize the sources in detail but also evaluate their bias, or “degree of advocacy”; credibility; and reliability.

Key Features / Annotated Bibliographies

A statement of scope. Sometimes you need or are asked to provide a brief introductory statement to explain what you’re covering. The authors of the bibliography on teen films introduce their bibliography with three paragraphs establishing a context for the bibliography and announcing their purpose for compiling it.

Complete bibliographic information. Provide all the information about each source using one documentation system (MLA, APA, or another one) so that you, your readers, or other researchers will be able to find the source easily. It’s a good idea to include sources’ URLs or permalinks to make accessing online sources easier.

A concise description of the work. A good annotation describes each item as carefully and objectively as possible, giving accurate information and showing that you understand the source. These qualities will help to build authority — for you as a writer and for your annotations.

487

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Relevant commentary. If you write an evaluative bibliography, your comments should be relevant to your purpose and audience. The best way to achieve relevance is to consider what questions a potential reader might have about each source: What are the main points of the source? What is its argument? How even-handed or biased is it? How current and reliable is it? Will the source be helpful for your project?

Consistent presentation. All annotations should follow a consistent pat- tern: if one is written in complete sentences, they should all be. Each anno- tation in the teen films bibliography, for example, begins with a phrase (not a complete sentence) characterizing the work.

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

purpose Will your bibliography need to demonstrate the depth or breadth of your research? Will your readers actually track down and use your sources? Do you need or want to convince readers that your sources are good?

audience For whom are you compiling this bibliography? What does your audience need to know about each source?

stance Are you presenting yourself as an objective describer or evaluator? Or are you expressing a particular point of view toward the sources you evaluate?

media / design If you are publishing the bibliography electronically, will you provide links from each annotation to the source itself? Online or offline, should you distinguish the bib- liographic information from the annotation by using a different font?

55–56

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66–68

69–71

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Generating Ideas and Text

Decide what sources to include. You may be tempted to include in a bibliography every source you find or look at. A better strategy is to include only those sources that you or your readers may find potentially useful in researching your topic. For an academic bibliography, you need to consider the qualities in the list below. Some of these qualities should not rule a source in or out; they simply raise issues you need to think about.

• Appropriateness. Is this source relevant to your topic? Is it a primary source or a secondary source? Is it aimed at an appropriate audi- ence? General or specialized? Elementary, advanced, or somewhere in between?

• Credibility. Is the author reputable? Is the publication, publishing com- pany, or sponsor of the site reputable? Do the ideas more or less agree with those in other sources you’ve read?

• Balance. Does the source present enough evidence for its assertions? Does it show any particular bias? Does it present countering arguments fairly?

• Timeliness. Is the source recent enough? Does it reflect current think- ing or research about the subject?

If you need help finding sources , see Chapter 48.

Compile a list of works to annotate. Give the sources themselves in whatever documentation style is required; see the guidelines for mla and apa styles in Chapters 54 and 55.

Determine what kind of bibliography you need to write. Will your bibliography be descriptive or evaluative? Will your annotations be in the form of phrases? complete sentences? paragraphs? The form will shape your reading and note taking. If you’re writing a descriptive bibliography, your reading goal will be just to understand and capture the writer’s mes- sage as clearly as possible. If you’re writing an evaluative bibliography, you will also need to assess the source as you read in order to include your own opinions of it.

489–510

mla 548–96

apa 597–636

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Read carefully. To write an annotation, you must understand the source’s argument, but when you are writing an annotated bibliography as part of a proposal , you may have neither the time nor the need to read the whole text. Here’s a way of quickly determining whether a source is likely to serve your needs:

• Check the publisher or sponsor (university press? scholarly journal? popular magazine? website sponsored by a reputable organization?).

• Read the preface (of a book), abstract (of a scholarly article), introduc- tion (of an article in a nonscholarly magazine or a website).

• Skim the table of contents or the headings.

• Read the parts that relate specifically to your topic.

Research the writer, if necessary. If you are required to indicate the writer’s credentials, you may need to do additional research. You may find information by typing the writer’s name into a search engine or looking up the writer in Contemporary Authors. In any case, information about the writer should take up no more than one sentence in your annotation.

Summarize the work in a sentence or two. describe it as objectively as possible: even if you are writing an evaluative annotation, you can evaluate the central point of a work better by stating it clearly first. If you’re writing a descriptive annotation, you’re done.

Establish criteria for evaluating sources. If you’re evaluating sources for a project, you’ll need to evaluate them in terms of their usefulness for your project, their stance , and their overall credibility.

Write a brief evaluation of the source. If you can generalize about the worth of the entire work, fine. You may find, however, that some parts are useful while others are not, and what you write should reflect that mix.

Be consistent — in content, sentence structure, and format.

• Content. Try to provide about the same amount of information for each entry. If you’re evaluating, don’t evaluate some sources and just describe others.

▲246–55

443–51

511–18

66–68

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• Sentence structure. Use the same style throughout — complete sen- tences , brief phrases, or a mix.

• Format. Use one documentation style throughout; use a consistent font for each element in each entry — for example, italicize or underline all book titles.

Ways of Organizing an Annotated Bibliography

Depending on their purpose, annotated bibliographies may or may not include an introduction. Most annotated bibliographies cover a single topic and so are organized alphabetically by author’s or editor’s last name. When a work lacks a named author, alphabetize it by the first important word in its title. Consult the documentation system you’re using for additional details about alphabetizing works appropriately.

State scope.

List first alphabetical entry, and annotate it.

List second alphabetical entry, and annotate it.

List third alphabetical entry, and annotate it.

List final alphabetical entry, and annotate it.

Sometimes an annotated bibliography needs to be organized into several subject areas (or genres, periods, or some other category); if so, the entries are listed alphabetically within each category. For example, a bibliography about terrorism breaks down into subjects such as “Global Terrorism” and “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

[Multicategory bibliography]

Explain

category 1.

State scope;

identify

categories.

List entries

alphabetically,

and annotate

them.

Explain

category 2.

List entries

alphabetically,

and annotate

them.

Category 2Category 1

HB-4–7

648–49

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Taking Stock of Your Work

Take stock of what you’ve written by writing out answers to these questions:

• How did you go about researching the entries in this bibliography?

• How did you decide which sources to include and which to leave out?

• How did you go about drafting your bibliography?

• Did you cite your sources accurately?

• What did you do well? What could still be improved? What would you do differently next time?

REVIEWS OF SCHOLARLY LITERATURE

Reviews of scholarly literature describe and evaluate important research (“literature”) available on a topic. In writing a literature review, your goal is to give an overview of the literature on a topic. You do that by discussing the literature that is most relevant to your topic and your purposes, pro- viding clear and accurate summaries of appropriate source material, and describing relationships among facts and concepts. Here is a brief excerpt from a literature review that describes scholarship in zombie movies by a student at the University of Mary Washington.

CAMERON CARROLL

Zombie Film Scholarship: A Review of the Literature

Zombies are the shambling undead creatures that attack in hordes and strike terror into the hearts of moviegoers with their mindless aggres- sion. Monsters on the big screen fascinate American audiences and scholars alike as representations of cultural fears and reflections of pub- lic perceptions, and they have done so since they first shuffled into the- aters. The walking dead first haunted cinemas in 1932 with the release of White Zombie and have gone through cycles of popularity both at the box office and in scholarly debate. Without a doubt, the height of

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zombie scholarship began in the mid-2000s with only shallow mentions made in horror analyses before then. Only the English discipline gave the zombie credit as a subject worthy of study. As author and English professor Kyle Bishop wrote in 2010, “The zombie phenomenon has yet to be plumbed to its depths by the academic and literary markets.”1 Although significant zombie research has only surfaced in the 2000s, a valiant effort is currently being made to explore zombie symbolism and its historical and cultural context across non-traditional scholarly fields, such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy.

. . .

Zombies, as creatures that waver between living and dead, nec- essarily bring forth questions on the nature of being and thus also fall into the realm of philosophy as seen in Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead published in 2010 and edited by Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammed, professors of philosophy and English, respectively. Philosophers in the study of zombies seek to answer such questions as, is it better to be undead or dead? Richard Greene argues that since death is a state of non-existence and Undeath is at least a primal existence, the question comes down to the classic “to be, or not to be?” For him, Undeath is the only option for a state of being, since death is non-existence. Existence in any form is inher- ently better than utterly ceasing to be.16 Greene’s philosophy colleague, William Larkin, counters that zombies are driven to actions seen as evil and mindless, both states that humans do not usually choose. He cites how zombie films repeatedly depict survivors who ask their friends and family to kill them should it appear that they will turn into zombies, so desperate are they to avoid Undeath.17 Simon Clark, a writer with a master’s degree in Fine Arts, discusses morality in relation to zom- bies: if zombies are non-moral and whether or not they are the freest creatures because of their lack of morality. Clark writes that they become ultimately free in their modern incarnations from turn of the millennium cinema.18 Zombies break through barriers that survivors put up to keep them confined and are so primal that they cannot be held accountable for their actions, making them truly liberated. A fictional creature encourages real discussions in philosophical debate, demonstrating yet another area that inspires scholars to reexamine their own field because of zombies.

. . .

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The message to take away from zombie scholarship is that what it represents is evolutionary and infinitely debatable, but the victory for zombie studies is that zombies are being studied at all. After decades of being underrepresented in horror scholarship, zombies are finally getting their due as a cultural icon, complete with varying opinions and interpretations. Scholarly debate proves that the zombie is a valid resource for understanding American culture and worthy of the enthu- siastic pursuit of interdepartmental scholarship. As shown within the scholarly works above, the debate over the meaning of the living dead is quite lively, indeed.

Notes 1. Kyle William Bishop, American Zombie Gothic: The Rise and Fall

(and Rise) of the Walking Dead in Popular Culture (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 7.

. . .

16. Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammed, eds., Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy: New Life for the Undead (Chicago: Open Court, 2010), 13.

17. Greene and Mohammed, Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy, 20. 18. Greene and Mohammed, Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy, 208.

Carroll begins by establishing a context for her discussion and then focuses on her topic, the scholarship of zombies in film. In her review, she discusses the history of zombie scholarship in general and then in psychology, social trends, fiction, and, in this excerpt, philosophy. A history major, she follows Chicago style; in addition to the notes, she included a bibliography listing all her sources, including the two noted here.

Key Features / Reviews of Scholarly Literature

Careful, thorough research. A review of scholarly literature demands that you research all the major literature on the topic — or at least the major literature available to you, given the time you have.

Accurate, objective summaries of the relevant literature. Readers expect a literature review to objectively summarize the main ideas or conclusions of the texts reviewed.

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Critical evaluation for the literature. A literature review offers consid- ered selection of the most important, relevant, and useful sources of infor- mation on its topic, so you must evaluate each source to decide whether it should be included and then to determine how it advances understanding of the topic.

synthesis of the scholarship. A literature review differs from an anno- tated bibliography in that the review identifies key concepts, similarities, and differences within the body of literature, showing how the sources relate to one another by method, study findings, themes, main ideas, or something else.

A clear focus. Because a literature review provides an overview of your topic’s main issues and explains the main concepts underlying your research, it must be carefully organized and clearly focused on your spe- cific topic.

Taking Stock of Your Work

Take stock of what you’ve written by writing out answers to these questions:

• How did you go about researching the sources you used?

• How did you decide which sources to include and which to leave out?

• What led you to group related sources together as you did?

• How did you go about synthesizing similar sources?

• What did you do well? What could still be improved? What would you do differently next time?

519–25

IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See Chapter 30 for guidelines on DRAFTING, Chapter 31 on ASSESSING YOUR OWN WRITING, Chapter 32 on GETTING RESPONSE AND REVISING, and Chapter 33 on EDITING AND PROOFREADING. See Chapter 34 if you are required to submit your bibliography in a writing PORTFOLIO.

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TestFreaks evaluates audio equipment and appliances. The Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report evaluate colleges and universities. You prob- ably consult such sources to make decisions, and you probably evaluate things all the time — when you recommend a film (or not) or a teacher (ditto). An evaluation is at bottom a judgment; you judge something according to certain criteria, supporting your judgment with reasons and evidence. You need to give your reasons for evaluating it as you do because often your evaluation will affect your audience’s actions: they must see this movie, needn’t bother with this book, should be sure to have the Caesar salad at this restaurant, and so on. In college courses, students in literature, film, drama, and art classes may be assigned to evaluate poems, fiction, movies, plays, and artwork,

TestFreaks crawls the web for expert reviews and user opinions.

16 Evaluations

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and those in business and political science classes may be asked to evaluate advertising or political campaigns or plans for business or public-policy initiatives. In a review that follows, written for The Daily Bruin, UCLA’s stu- dent newspaper, William Thorne offers his evaluation of the film The Circle.

WILLIAM THORNE

Movie Review: The Circle

The Circle imagines a world in which internet stardom is just a daily vlog away, and giant tech companies battle governments over privacy issues. Sound familiar? The latest offering from up-and-coming indie director James Ponsoldt aims to be both a reflection on documenting one’s life online and a warning against millennials’ unchecked faith in tech giants. But the film falls short of being a well-rounded piece. If anyone can get millennials to put down their iPhones and listen, it’s the film’s main star, Emma Watson. Fresh off her all-singing all- dancing performance in the Disney behemoth Beauty and the Beast, Watson plays Mae Holland, a frustrated young woman trapped in a dull office job in the modern-day Bay Area. Mae’s problems stretch beyond her career concerns, though, as her father, played by the late, great Bill Paxton in his final film role, has multiple sclerosis. And Mae’s relationship with her ex-boyfriend Mercer (Ellar Coltrane), a local lad who makes antler chandeliers, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The solution to all of Mae’s problems? Joining The Circle, a pow- erful internet company co-founded by Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks), a bearded, ambitious genius who is a turtleneck and a pair of glasses away from Steve Jobs. Bailey’s motto is “Knowing is good. Knowing everything is better,” yet somehow hardly anyone at the company can see the creepy, maniacal implications of these two sentences, and so Bailey and his co-founder Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt) act on their crazy ideas unchallenged. The Circle starts out as a promising and intriguing sci-fi thriller, exploring the pros and cons of having minute, camouflaged cameras on every street corner. Hanks does a Jobsian job of selling Big Brother surveillance to the audience, channeling a mixture of his trademark

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American Dream optimism and “Go get ’em, Woody” attitude. But, as with most Hanks performances, there’s more to the character than meets the eye, and Bailey’s enthusiasm masks his stalkerish desire to see what everyone is doing. Some of the best moments in the movie occur when Mae volun- teers to wear a tiny camera on her chest and document her every move for the world to see as part of The Circle’s latest venture. Although Mae is reluctant at first to expose her life to the online world, she soon becomes addicted to the millions of faceless followers and begins to sacrifice real relationships with her family and friends for superficial interactions with often offensive users. The character adopts a fake smile and exudes nauseating enthusiasm, echoing many of today’s YouTube vloggers and providing a clever commentary on how online fame can come with a price. Tonally, however, the film can’t quite decide what it wants to be. At one point, Ty Lafitte (John Boyega), who seems to be the only person even slightly worried by The Circle’s practices, leads Mae into the sewers underneath The Circle’s colossal offices, referred to as “the campus,” to warn her about the dangers of the company’s omniscience. The

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scene suggests that the two will team up to take down the company and escape together in a heart-racing thriller. Yet Ty is subsequently sidelined, and the uneasy sexual tension between him and Mae is left unresolved. The film’s tonal issues begin even earlier, during a scene that cri- tiques millennials’ obsession with social media and their trademark fear of missing out on socializing. Two “Circlers,” acting under the pretense of getting her settled in at the company, approach Mae and inform her that The Circle’s company barbecues and impromptu Beck concerts are not mandatory, but that if she doesn’t show up, she’ll drop in the company participation rankings. The moment is laugh-out-loud funny, but it makes the seriousness of subsequent scenes dealing with Mae’s father’s disease and Mercer’s detachment feel empty and tasteless. The Circle lurches from tense thriller to weepy family drama to savvy, knowing comedy from scene to scene, leaving the audience wondering why it couldn’t just settle for one of the above. The film only avoids rotten-apple status because of the elements of clever com- mentary on modern-day surveillance and the power of information in the hands of tech companies, and because of the solid acting. Watson and Hanks both shine, and it’s definitely worth getting off Instagram for a few hours to see the final film performance from the legendary Paxton.

Thorne quickly summarizes The Circle’s plot and then evaluates the film using clear criteria: the performances of Tom Hanks and Emma Watson, the complex- ity of their characters, the film’s coherence, and its message.

Key Features / Evaluations

A concise description of the subject. You should include just enough infor- mation to let readers who may not be familiar with your subject understand what it is; the goal is to evaluate, not summarize. Depending on your topic and medium, some of this information may be in visual or audio form. Thorne briefly describes The Circle’s main plot points, only providing what readers need to understand the context of his evaluation.

For four more evaluations, see CHAPTER 65.

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Clearly defined criteria. You need to determine clear criteria as the basis for your judgment. In reviews or other evaluations written for a broad audi- ence, you can integrate the criteria into the discussion as reasons for your assessment, as Thorne does in his evaluation of The Circle. In more formal evaluations, you may need to announce your criteria explicitly. Thorne evaluates the film based on the stars’ performances, the complexity of their characters, and the film’s coherence.

A knowledgeable discussion of the subject. To evaluate something cred- ibly, you need to show that you know it yourself and that you understand its context. Thorne cites many examples from The Circle, showing his knowl- edge of the film, and he draws parallels to other topics, such as Steve Jobs’s iconic look, Tom Hanks’s tendency to play complicated characters, and modern society’s obsession with social media. Some evaluations require that you research what other authoritative sources have said about your subject. Thorne might have referred to other reviews of the film to show that he’d researched others’ views.

A balanced and fair assessment. An evaluation is centered on a judg- ment. Thorne concedes that The Circle doesn’t quite know what kind of movie it is, so it “lurches from tense thriller to weepy family drama to savvy, knowing comedy.” Nevertheless, he thinks the film is worth seeing due to its “clever commentary on modern-day surveillance” and some of the actors’ performances. It is important that any judgment be balanced and fair. Seldom is something all good or all bad. A fair evaluation need not be all positive or all negative; it may acknowledge both strengths and weaknesses. For example, a movie’s soundtrack may be wonderful while the plot is not.

Well-supported reasons. You need to argue for your judgment, provid- ing reasons and evidence that might include visual and audio as well as verbal material. Thorne gives several reasons for his assessment of The Circle — the strong performances by Hanks and Watson, the ways in which “the film can’t quite decide what it wants to be” — and he supports these reasons with several examples from the film.

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A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING EVALUATIONS

Choosing Something to Evaluate

You can more effectively evaluate a limited subject than a broad one: review certain dishes at a local restaurant rather than the entire menu; review one film or episode rather than all the films by Alfred Hitchcock or all seventy-three Game of Thrones episodes. The more specific and focused your subject, the better you can write about it.

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

purpose Are you writing to affect your audience’s opinion of a subject? to help others decide what to see, do, or buy? to demonstrate your expertise in a field?

audience To whom are you writing? What will your audience already know about the subject? What will they expect to learn from your evaluation of it? Are they likely to agree with you or not?

stance What is your attitude toward the subject, and how will you show that you have evaluated it fairly and appropri- ately? Think about the tone you want to use: should it be reasonable? passionate? critical?

media / design How will you deliver your evaluation? In print? Electroni- cally? As a speech? Can you show images or audio or video clips? If you’re submitting your text for publica- tion, are there any format requirements?

Generating Ideas and Text

Explore what you already know. freewrite to answer the following questions: What do you know about this subject or subjects like it? What are your initial or gut feelings, and why do you feel as you do? How does

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this subject reflect or affect your basic values or beliefs? How have others evaluated subjects like this?

Identify criteria. Make a list of criteria you think should be used to eval- uate your subject. Think about which criteria will likely be important to your audience . You might find cubing and questioning to be useful processes for thinking about your criteria.

Evaluate your subject. Study your subject closely to determine to what extent it meets each of your criteria. You may want to list your criteria and take notes related to each one, or you may develop a rating scale for each criterion to help stay focused on it. Come up with a tentative judgment.

Compare your subject with others. Often, evaluating something involves comparing and contrasting it with similar things. We judge movies in comparison with the other movies we’ve seen and french fries with the other fries we’ve tasted. Sometimes those comparisons can be made informally. For other evaluations, you may have to do research — to try on several pairs of jeans before buying any, for example — to see how your subject compares.

State your judgment as a tentative thesis statement. Your thesis statement should be one that addresses both pros and cons. “Hawaii Five-O is fun to watch despite its stilted dialogue.” “Of the five sport-utility vehicles tested, the Toyota 4Runner emerged as the best in comfort, power, and dura- bility, though not in styling or cargo capacity.” Both of these examples offer a judgment but qualify it according to the writer’s criteria.

Anticipate other opinions. I think Will Ferrell is a comic genius whose movies are first-rate. You think Will Ferrell is a terrible actor who makes awful movies. How can I write a review of his latest film that you will at least consider? One way is by acknowledging other opinions — and refuting those opinions as best I can. I may not persuade you to see Ferrell’s next film, but I can at least demonstrate that by certain criteria he should be appreciated. You may need to research how others have evaluated your subject.

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Identify and support your reasons. Write out all the reasons you can think of that will convince your audience to accept your judgment. Review your list to identify the most convincing or important reasons. Then review how well your subject meets your criteria and decide how best to support your reasons: through examples, authoritative opinions, statistics, visual or audio evidence, or something else.

Ways of Organizing an Evaluation

Evaluations are usually organized in one of two ways. One way is to intro- duce what’s being evaluated, followed by your judgment, discussing your criteria along the way. This is a useful strategy if your audience may not be familiar with your subject.

[Start with your subject]

Describe what you’re evaluating.

State your judgment.

Provide reasons and evidence, discussing criteria as you apply them.

Acknowledge objections or other opinions.

Restate your overall judgment.

You might also start by identifying your criteria and then follow with a discussion of how well your subject meets those criteria. This strategy foregrounds the process by which you reached your conclusions.

[Start with your criteria]

Identify criteria for evaluation.

Describe what you’re evaluating.

Evaluate it against each of your criteria, one at a time, adding potential objections or other opinions in relation to each criterion.

State your overall judgment.

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Taking Stock of Your Work

Take stock of what you’ve written by writing out answers to these questions:

• What did you do well in this piece?

• What could still be improved?

• How did you develop criteria for your evaluation?

• How did others’ responses influence your writing?

• What would you do differently next time?

• What have you learned about your writing ability or writing processes from writing this piece? What do you need to work on in the future?

IF YOU NEED MORE HELP

See Chapter 30 for guidelines on DRAFTING, Chapter 31 on ASSESSING YOUR OWN WRITING, Chapter 32 on GETTING RESPONSE AND REVISING, and Chapter 33 on EDITING AND PROOFREADING. See Chapter 34 if you are required to submit your report in a writing PORTFOLIO.

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17Literary Analyses

Literary analyses are essays that examine literary texts closely to under- stand their messages, interpret their meanings, appreciate their tech- niques, or understand their historical or social contexts. Such texts traditionally include novels, short stories, poems, and plays but may also include films, TV shows, videogames, music, and comics. You might read Macbeth and notice that Shakespeare’s play contains a pattern of images of blood. You could explore the distinctive point of view in Ambrose Bierce’s story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” Or you could point out the differences between Stephen King’s The Shining and Stanley Kubrick’s screenplay based on that novel. In all these cases, you use specific ana- lytical techniques to go below the surface of the work to deepen your understanding of how it works and what it means. You may be assigned to analyze works of literature in courses in English, film, drama, and many other subjects. Here is a poem by the twentieth- century American poet Robert Frost, followed by a student’s analysis of it written for a literature course at the University of South Dakota and chosen as a winner of the 2017 Norton Writer’s Prize.

ROBERT FROST

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

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Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

MATTHEW MILLER

Frost’s Broken Roads

“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is arguably one of the most popular poems ever written. Read at graduations, eulogies, even in movies and car commercials, it is often interpreted as an ode to individualism. Frost’s image of the road “less traveled” has become synonymous with daring life choices that make “all the difference” in living a fulfilling life (lines 19–20). Some may latch on to this as the poem’s deeper meaning. However, this convenient conclusion ignores several conflicting, yet beautiful, details that lead the poem down a path of broken metaphor and temporal inconsistency. To truly recog- nize what Frost is building in this poem, a few nagging inconsistencies must be considered.

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In the first line of the poem, the traveler is depicted hiking in a “yellow wood” wherein he finds a fork in his path (1). This setting is the foundation of a common metaphor, but transposing familiar notions of a figurative fork in the road onto Frost’s poem requires acceptance of the traveler’s metaphoric natural world and its “temporal scheme,” or some form of unified movement through time, as the critic Cleanth Brooks describes it in his classic book on poetic structure, The Well Wrought Urn (203). If the path that is covered “[i]n leaves no step had trodden black” (12) makes “all the difference” (20) in a life, common sense indicates the decision to choose that path has to occur early enough during a lifetime to properly affect its outcome. The speaker/ traveler affirms this, telling the reader that he “shall be telling” them the story of his decision “with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence” (16–17). In other words, the traveler must be fairly young, otherwise he wouldn’t have “ages and ages” (17) left to tell his story. It may not be apparent at a surface level, but this complicates our understanding of the poem’s implicit story. It is common knowledge that morning, the beginning of the day, is often paralleled figuratively with the beginning of other things (e.g. “the dawn of civilization”). In this sense, the setting helps to solidify the poem’s established temporal sense; the earliness of the day — “morning” (16) — parallels the early point in life when the traveler makes his life-altering decision. However, the description of the scene, the “yellow wood” (1) where the ground “lay / In leaves” (11–12), indicates that late autumn has set in around the forest. Paral- lels between seasonal progression and the human life cycle saturate literature and art with such metaphors as the “springtime of youth” and the “hoary winter of old age” (Kammen 23). With that in mind, the end of autumn represents the bitter end of productive years and the first step into the cold and death of winter. So, embedded in the poem is a temporal inconsistency; the traveler is young, with “ages and ages” (17) yet to live, but the autumn setting implies his world is quickly coming to an end. Another question that complicates a traditional understanding of the poem is that of identity. The narrator claims he is “sorry” he “could not travel both” paths “and be one traveler” (2–3). For him to stray off his path would equal becoming a different person; he “could not travel both / And be one traveler” (2–3, emphasis added). However, one person

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can easily be two different travelers in a lifetime (i.e. one person can take both a cruise vacation and a backpacking trip: two very different travel- ing styles). The traveler/speaker even admits this is possible by saying he could keep “the first for another day” (13). His excuse for not traveling both paths was not that it was impossible but rather that “knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back” (14–15). Although he believes one of the paths has “the better claim, / Because it was grassy and wanted wear” (7–8), in practically the same breath he casts doubt on the claim that it is “less traveled” (19), admitting other travelers have worn down the two trails “really about the same” (10). The speaker in this poem is not Emerson’s self-reliant transcendentalist, who can “speak what [he] think[s] to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing [he] said to-day” (214). Frost’s syntax and punctuation add even more nuance. The poem consists of one sentence that takes up the first two stanzas and part of the third, in which our traveler deliberates and, eventually, makes his decision; and the three sentences of the third and fourth stanzas, in which our traveler lives with his choice. As the poem progresses to the point where our traveler makes his decision, we see punctuation that is irregular when compared with the rest of the poem: an exclama- tion point when the traveler finally makes a decision (possibly showing excess emotion); an em dash (—) followed by a repeated word when re-telling his story that functions almost like a stutter, possibly showing regret/lack of confidence in his choice. With this in mind, it seems as though our traveler had a tough time making his decision, and after- ward, there is no obvious approval or happiness with it, only that it “made all the difference” (20), which could be positive or negative. Placing the poem in its historical context further complicates these questions. According to an article written for the Poetry Foundation by the poet Katherine Robinson, “The Road Not Taken” was actually written “as a joke for a friend, the poet Edward Thomas.” Indeed, when Frost and Thomas went walking together, Thomas would often choose one fork in the road because he was convinced it would lead them to something, perhaps a patch of rare wild flowers or a particular bird’s nest. . . . In a letter, Frost goaded Thomas, saying, “No matter which road you take, you’ll always sigh, and wish you’d taken another” (Robinson, emphasis added).

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Introducing the poet’s biography might be considered by many a sin against the work, especially for those espousing Cleanth Brooks’ celebration of poetic unity and universal meaning. However, know- ing this information fills in several gaps about the poem; instead of confusing inconsistencies and paradoxical meanings, the poem can now be viewed — at least partly — as teasing from a friend. It is easy to imagine an indecisive Thomas, standing and staring down the fork in the path, afraid of what he’ll miss if he picks the wrong trail, and then on the way home “telling” Frost, “with a sigh” (16), about all he swore he missed on the road he didn’t take (16). This being said, Frost published this work knowing full well of its depth and epistemological possibilities, saying in a letter, “My poems . . . are all set to trip the reader head foremost into the boundless” (qtd. in Robinson). Frost’s timeless poem is an elegant narrative, filled with serene imagery and laced with layers of mystery. Readers of this canonical work can easily find themselves slipping into the easy, traditional reading of an ode to individualism. Upon closer inspection, there is only one thing clear about “The Road Not Taken,” which is said best in words Frost loved to tell his readers regarding his classic poem: “[Y]ou have to be careful of that one; it’s a tricky poem — very tricky” (qtd. in Robinson).

Works Cited Brooks, Cleanth. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of

Poetry. Harcourt, 1975. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance.” The Norton Anthology of

American Literature, edited by Robert S. Levine et al., 9th ed., vol. B, W. W. Norton, 2017, pp. 236–53.

Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Poetry Foundation, https:// www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken. Accessed 8 Nov. 2016.

Kammen, Michael G. A Time to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture. U of North Carolina P, 2004.

Robinson, Katherine. “Robert Frost: ‘The Road Not Taken.’” Poetry Foundation, 27 May 2016, https://www.poetryfoundation.org /articles/89511/robert-frost-the-road-not-taken. Accessed 8 Nov. 2016.

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Miller focuses his analysis on “tricky” aspects of Frost’s poem. In addition, he uses aspects of Frost’s biography and letters to resolve some of the seeming contradictions and tensions in the poem.

Key Features / Literary Analyses

An arguable thesis. A literary analysis is a form of argument; you are argu- ing that your analysis of a literary work is valid. Your thesis, then, should be arguable, as Miller’s is: “To truly recognize what Frost is building in this poem, a few nagging inconsistencies must be considered.” A mere summary — “Frost writes about someone trying to decide which road to take” — would not be arguable and therefore is not a good thesis.

Careful attention to the language of the text. The key to analyzing a text is looking carefully at the language, which is the foundation of its meaning. Specific words, images, metaphors — these are where analysis begins. You may also bring in contextual information, such as cultural, historical, or biographical facts, or you may refer to similar texts. But the words, phrases, and sentences that make up the text you are analyzing are your primary source when dealing with texts. That’s what literature teachers mean by “close reading”: reading with the assumption that every word of a text is meaningful.

Attention to patterns or themes. Literary analyses are usually built on evidence of meaningful patterns or themes within a text or among several texts. These patterns and themes reveal meaning. In Frost’s poem, images of diverging roads and yellow leaves create patterns of meaning, while the regular rhyme scheme (wood/stood/could, both/undergrowth) cre- ates patterns of sound and structure that may contribute to the overall meaning.

A clear interpretation. A literary analysis demonstrates the plausibility of its thesis by using evidence from the text and, sometimes, relevant

For two more literary analyses, see CHAPTER 66.

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contextual evidence to explain how the language and patterns found there support a particular interpretation. When you write a literary analysis, you show readers one way the text may be read and understood; that is your interpretation.

MLA style. Literary analyses usually follow MLA style. Miller’s essay includes a works-cited list and refers to line numbers using MLA style.

A BRIEF GUIDE TO WRITING LITERARY ANALYSES

Considering the Rhetorical Situation

purpose What do you need to do? Show that you have examined the text carefully? Offer your own interpretation? Dem- onstrate a particular analytical technique? Or some com- bination? If you’re responding to an assignment, does it specify what you need to do?

audience What do you need to do to convince your readers that your interpretation is plausible and based on sound anal- ysis? Can you assume that readers are already familiar with the text you are analyzing, or do you need to tell them about it?

stance How can you see your subject through interested, curi- ous eyes — and then step back in order to see what your observations might mean?

media/design Will your analysis focus on an essentially verbal text or one that has significant visual content, such as a graphic novel? Will you need to show visual elements in your analysis? Will it be delivered in a print, spoken, or elec- tronic medium? Are you required to follow MLA or some other style?

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