Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [114]
We might, for instance, formulate at least three conclusions from the evidence offered in the baseball paragraph. We might decide that the writer believes baseball will be ruined by going broke or that its spirit will be ruined by becoming too commercial. Worst of all, we might disagree with his claim and conclude that baseball is not really being ruined, since the evidence could be read as signs of health rather than decay. The profitable resale of the Orioles, the expensive new ballparks (which, the writer neglects to mention, have drawn record crowds), and the skyrocketing salaries all could testify to the growing popularity rather than the decline of the sport.
How to Make Details Speak: A Brief Example
The best way to begin making the details speak is to take the time to look at them, asking questions about what they imply.
Say explicitly what you take the details to mean.
State exactly how the evidence supports your claims.
Consider how the evidence complicates (qualifies) your claims.
The writer of the baseball paragraph leaves some of his claims and virtually all of his reasoning about the evidence implicit. What, for example, bothers him about the special luxury seating areas? Attempting to uncover his assumptions, we might speculate that he intends it to demonstrate how economic interests are taking baseball away from its traditional fans because these new seats cost more than the average person can afford. This interpretation could be used to support the writer’s governing claim, but he would need to spell out the connection, to reason back to his own premises. He might say, for example, that baseball’s time-honored role as the all-American sport—democratic and grassroots—is being displaced by the tendency of baseball as a business to attract higher box office receipts and wealthier fans.
The writer could then make explicit what his whole paragraph implies, that baseball’s image as a popular pastime in which all Americans can participate is being tarnished by players and owners alike, whose primary concern appears to be making money. In making his evidence speak in this way, the writer would be practicing step 3 above—using the evidence to complicate and refine his ideas. He would discover which specific aspect of baseball he thinks is being ruined, clarifying that the “greedy businessmen” to whom he refers include both owners and players.
Let’s emphasize the final lesson gleaned from this example. When you focus on tightening the links between evidence and claim, the result is almost always a “smaller” claim than the one you set out to prove. This is what evidence characteristically does to a claim: it shrinks and restricts its scope. This process, also known as qualifying a claim, is the means by which a thesis develops.
Sometimes it is hard to give up on the large, general assertions that were your first responses to your subject. But your sacrifices in scope are exchanged for greater accuracy and validity. The sweeping claims you lose (“Greedy businessmen are ruining baseball”) give way to less resounding but also more informed, more incisive, and less judgmental ideas (“Market pressures may not bring the end of baseball, but they are certainly changing the image and nature of the game”).
B. Kinds of Evidence: What Counts?
Thus far, this chapter has concentrated on how to use evidence after you’ve gathered it. In many cases, though, a writer has to consider a more basic and often hidden question before collecting data: what counts as evidence? This question raises two related concerns:
Relevance: in what ways does the evidence bear on the claim or problem you are addressing? Do the facts really apply in this particular case, and if so, how?
Framing assumptions: in what ways is the evidence colored by the point of view that designated it as evidence? At what