Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [176]
WAYS TO USE A SOURCE AS A POINT OF DEPARTURE
There are many ways of approaching secondary sources, but these ways generally share a common goal: to use the source as a point of departure. Here is a partial list of ways to do that.
Make as many points as you can about a single representative passage from your source, and then branch out from this center to analyze other passages that “speak” to it in some way. (See 10 on 1 and Pan, Track and Zoom in Chapter 10.)
Use Notice and Focus to identify what you find most strange in the source; this will help you cultivate your curiosity about the source and find the critical distance necessary to thinking about it.
Use The Method to identify the most significant organizing contrast in the source; this will help you see what the source itself is wrestling with, what is at stake in it.
Apply an idea in the source to another subject. (See Applying a Reading as a Lens in Chapter 5.)
Uncover the assumptions in the source, and then build upon the source’s point of view, extending its implications. (See Uncovering Assumptions in Chapter 4.)
Agree with most of what the source says, but take issue with one small part that you want to modify.
Identify a contradiction in the source, and explore its implications, without necessarily arriving at a solution.
In using a source as a point of departure, you are in effect using it as a stimulus to have an idea. If you quote or paraphrase a source with the aim of conversing rather than allowing it to do your thinking for you, you will discover that sources can promote rather than stifle your ability to have ideas. Try to think of sources not as answers but as voices inviting you into a community of interpretation, discussion, and debate.
SIX STRATEGIES FOR ANALYZING SOURCES
Many people never get beyond like/dislike responses with secondary materials. If they agree with what a source says, they say it’s “good,” and they cut and paste the part they can use as an answer. If the source somehow disagrees with what they already believe, they say it’s “bad,” and they attack it or—along with readings they find “hard” or “boring”—discard it. As readers, they have been conditioned to develop a point of view on a subject without first figuring out the conversation (the various points of view) that their subject attracts. They assume, in other words, that their subject probably has a single meaning—a gist—disclosed by experts, who mostly agree. The six strategies that follow offer ways to avoid this trap.
Strategy 1: Make Your Sources Speak
Quote, paraphrase, or summarize in order to analyze—not in place of analyzing. Don’t assume that either the meaning of the source material or your reason for including it is self-evident. Stop yourself from the habit of just stringing together citations for which you provide little more than conjunctions. Instead, explain to your readers what the quotation or paraphrase or summary of the source means. What elements of it do you find interesting or revealing or strange? Emphasize how those affect your evolving thesis.
In making a source speak, focus on articulating how the source has led to the conclusion you draw from it. Beware of simply putting a generalization and a quotation next to each other (juxtaposing them) without explaining the connection. Instead, fill the crucial site between claim and evidence with your thinking. Consider this problem in the following paragraph from a student’s paper on political conservatism.
Edmund Burke’s philosophy evolved into contemporary American conservative ideology. There is an important distinction between philosophy and political ideology: philosophy is “the knowledge of general principles that explain facts and existences.” Political