Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [177]
The final sentence offers the writer’s conclusion—what the source information has led him to—but how did it get him there? The writer’s choice of the word “therefore” indicates to the reader that the idea following it is the result of a process of logical reasoning, but this reasoning has been omitted. Instead, the writer assumes the reader will be able to connect the quotations with his conclusion. The writer needs to make the quotation speak by analyzing its key terms more closely. What is “an overarching conception of society,” and how does it differ from “knowledge of general principles”? More important, what is the rationale for categorizing conservatism as either an ideology or a philosophy?
Here, by contrast, is a writer who makes her sources speak. Focus on how she integrates analysis with quotation.
Stephen Greenblatt uses the phrase “self-fashioning” to refer to an idea he believes developed during the Renaissance—the idea that one’s identity is not created or born but rather shaped, both by one’s self and by others. The idea of self-fashioning is incorporated into an attitude toward literature that has as its ideal what Greenblatt calls “poetics of culture.” A text is examined with three elements in mind: the author’s own self, the cultural self-fashioning process that created that self, and the author’s reaction to that process. Because our selves, like texts, are “fashioned,” an author’s life is just as open to interpretation as that of a literary character.
If this is so, then biography does not provide a repository of unshakeable facts from which to interpret an author’s work. Greenblatt criticizes the fact that the methods of literary interpretation are applied just to art and not to life. As he observes, “We wall off literary symbolism from the symbolic structures operative elsewhere, as if art alone were a human creation” (Begley 37). If the line between art and life is indeed blurred, then we need a more complex model for understanding the relationship between the life and work of an author.
In this example, the writer shows us how her thinking has been stimulated by the source. At the end of the first paragraph and the beginning of the second, for example, she not only specifies what she takes to be the meaning of the quotation but also draws a conclusion about its implications (that the facts of an author’s life, like his or her art, require interpretation). And this manner of proceeding is habitual: the writer repeats the pattern in the second paragraph, moving beyond what the quotation says to explore what its logic suggests.
Strategy 2: Attend Carefully to the Language of Your Sources by Quoting or Paraphrasing Them
Rather than generalizing broadly about ideas in your sources, you should spell out what you think is significant about their keywords. In those disciplines in which it is permissible, quote sources if the actual language they use is important to your point. Generally, disciplines in the humanities expect you to quote as well as paraphrase, while in the social sciences, students are encouraged to paraphrase, not quote.
Quoting and paraphrasing has the benefit of helping writers to represent the views of their sources fairly and accurately. In situations where quoting is not allowed— such as in the report format in psychology—you still need to attend carefully to the meaning of keywords in order to arrive at a summary or paraphrase that is not overly general. As we have suggested repeatedly, paraphrasing provides an ideal way to begin interpreting because the act of careful rephrasing usually illuminates attitudes and assumptions implicit in a text. It is almost impossible not to have ideas and not to see the questions when you start paraphrasing.
Another reason quoting and paraphrasing are important is because your analysis of a source will nearly