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Strategy 2: Use a definition from one source to critique and illuminate another. As a general rule, you should attempt to identify the points of view of the sources from which you take your definitions, rather than accepting them as uncontextualized answers. It is essential to identify the particular slant because otherwise you will tend to overlook the conflicting elements among various definitions of a key term.

A paper on alcoholism, for example, will lose focus if you use all of the definitions available. If, instead, you convert the definition into a comparison and contrast of competing definitions, you can more easily generate a point and purpose for your definition. By querying, for example, whether a given source’s definition of alcoholism is moral or physiological or psychological, you can more easily problematize the issue of definition.

Strategy 3: Problematize as well as synthesize the definition. To explore competing definitions of the same term requires you to attend to the difficulties of definition. In general, analysis achieves direction and purpose by locating and then exploring a problem. You can productively make a problem out of defining. This strategy is known as problematizing, which locates and then explores the significance of the uncertainties and conflicts. It is always a smart move to problematize definitions, as this tactic reveals complexity that less careful thinkers might miss.

The definition of capitalism that you might take from Karl Marx, for example, will differ in its emphases from Adam Smith’s. In this case, you would not only isolate the most important of these differences but also try to account for the fact that Marx’s villain is Smith’s hero. Such an accounting would probably lead you to consider how the definition has been shaped by each of these writers’ political philosophies or by the culture in which each theory was composed.

Strategy 4: Shift from “what?” to “how?” and “why?” questions. It is no accident that we earlier offered the same strategy for making summary more analytical: analytical topics that require definition also depend on “why?” or “how?” questions, not “what?” questions (which tend simply to call for information).

If, for example, you sought to define the meaning of darkness in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and any two other modern British novels, you would do better to ask why the writers find darkness such a fertile term than simply to accumulate various examples of the term in the three novels. You might start by isolating the single best example from each of the works, preferably ones that reveal important differences as well as similarities. Then, in analyzing how each writer uses the term, you could work toward some larger point that would unify the essay. You might show how the conflicts of definition within Conrad’s metaphor evolve historically, get reshaped by woman novelists, change after World War I, and so forth.

GUIDELINES FOR MAKING COMMON TOPICS MORE ANALYTICAL

Find ways to move beyond passive summary (what questions). Use information to develop some idea (how and why questions) rather than just repackaging what others have written.

Drastically reduce scope. Concentrate on what seems the most important or revealing part of your subject (ranking) rather than trying to cover everything.

Avoid turning comparisons into pointless matching exercises. Only set up similarities and differences in order to discuss the significance of that comparison.

You needn’t devote equal space to both sides of a comparison. If one side is used primarily to illuminate the other, a 30–70 ratio (or 20–80 or 40–60) makes more sense than 50–50.

Rather than answering a question of definition with inert summary, test the definition against evidence and/or explore its competing parts.

For agree/disagree questions, the best move is to choose neither side. Question the terms of the binary so as to arrive at a more complex and qualified position. Decide to what extent you agree and to what