Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [104]
To focus on how and why something is presented in a given way—whether it be a sign on a subway or the language of a presidential speech—is to focus rhetorically. Like analysis in general, rhetorical analysis asks what things mean, why they are as they are and do what they do. But rhetorical analysis asks these questions with one primary question always foregrounded: how does the thing achieve its effects on an audience? Rhetorical analysis asks not just what do I think, but what am I being invited to think (and feel) and by what means?
One way to distinguish a summary is to concentrate on rhetorical matters. If, for example, you were asked to discuss the major discoveries that Darwin made on The Beagle, you could avoid simply listing his conclusions by redirecting your attention to how he proceeds. You could choose to focus, for example, on Darwin’s use of the scientific method, examining how he builds and, in some cases, discards hypotheses. Or you might select several passages that illustrate how Darwin proceeded from evidence to conclusion and then rank them in order of importance to the overall theory. Notice that in shifting the emphasis to Darwin’s thinking—the how and why—you would not be excluding the what (the information component) from your discussion.
PERSONAL RESPONSE: THE REACTION PAPER
The biggest advantage of reaction papers is that they give you the freedom to explore where and how to engage your subject. They bring to the surface your emotional or intuitive response, allowing you to experiment with placing the subject in various contexts.
Interestingly, a response paper is not actually asking for your response, at least not primarily. Instead, it is asking you to locate something you think is interesting, revealing, especially significant, and/or perhaps difficult (and thus in need of discussion) in the reading (or observing), and to analyze what you locate. You are allowed to talk about how you responded to the subject, but you are expected to do so in terms of how you found a way to understand and think about the material—as opposed to your gut-level evaluative judgment (like/dislike) of it.
Personal response becomes a problem, however, when it distracts you from analyzing the subject. When you are invited to respond personally, you are being asked for more than your endorsement or critique of the subject. If you find yourself constructing a virtual list—I agree with this point, or I disagree with that point—you are probably doing little more than matching your opinions with the points of view encountered in a reading. At the very least, you should look for places in the reaction paper where you find yourself disagreeing with yourself.
In most cases, you will be misinterpreting the intent of a personal response topic if you view it as an invitation either to
assert your personal opinions unreflectively, or
substitute narratives of your own experience for careful consideration of the subject. In an academic setting, an opinion is more than simply an expression of your beliefs; it’s a conclusion that you earn the rights to through a careful examination of evidence.
Strategies for Making Personal Responses More Analytical
Strategy 1: Trace your responses back to their causes. As we noted in the first two chapters, tracing your impressions back to their causes is the key to making personal response analytical—because you focus on the details that gave you the response rather than on the response alone. In the planning stage, you may find it useful to brainstorm some of your reactions/responses—the things you might say about the material if asked to talk about it with a sympathetic friend. You would then take this brainstorm and use it to choose the key sentences, passages, and so forth in the reading that you want to focus on in your analysis.
Let’s say you are responding to an article on ways of increasing the numbers of registered voters in