Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [30]
Discussion First, a note on implication—crucial to step 2, and a subject treated at length in the next chapter. For now, it is enough to know that implications are suggested meanings. We look at the evidence and draw a conclusion that is not directly stated but that follows from what we see.
For example, a recent article in Foreign Policy entitled “Bury the Graveyard” demonstrates that the reputation of Afghanistan as “the graveyard of empires” is a “bogus history,” or myth. So what? The implication, unstated but palpable, is that the makers of U.S. foreign policy should seek out another version of the history of military intervention in Afghanistan—one that might put current military efforts there in a better light. When you ask So what? you are looking to make overt (direct, clear) what is at present indirect.
The tone of So what? can sound rude or at least brusque, but that directness can be liberating. Often, writers will go to great lengths to avoid stating what they take something to mean. After all, that leaves them open to attack, they fear, if they get it wrong. But asking So what? is a way of forcing yourself to take the plunge without too much hoopla. And when you are tempted to stop thinking too soon, asking So what? will press you onward.
For example, let’s say you make a number of observations about the nature of e-mail communication—it’s cheap, informal, often grammatically incorrect, full of abbreviations (“IMHO”), and ephemeral (impermanent). You rank these and decide that its ephemerality is most interesting. So what? Well, that’s why so many people use it, you speculate, because it doesn’t last. So what that its popularity follows from its ephemerality? Well, apparently we like being released from the hard-and-fast rules of formal communication; e-mail frees us. So what? Well, …
The repeated asking of this question causes people to push on from and pursue the implications of their first responses; it prompts people to reason in a chain, rather than settling prematurely for a single link, as the next example illustrates.
MOVING FORWARD
Observation --> So what? --> Implications
Implications --> So what? --> Conclusions
Asking So What?: An Example
The following is the opening paragraph of a talk given by a professor of Political Science at our college, Dr. Jack Gambino, on the occasion of a gallery opening featuring the work of two contemporary photographers of urban and industrial landscapes. We have located in brackets our annotations of his turns of thought, as these pivot on “strange” and “So what?” (Note: images referred to in the example are available from Google Images—type in Camilo Vergara Fern Street 1988, also Edward Burtynsky.)
If you look closely at Camilo Vergara’s photo of Fern Street, Camden, 1988, you’ll notice a sign on the side of a dilapidated building:
Danger: Men Working
W. Hargrove Demolition
Perhaps that warning captures the ominous atmosphere of these very different kinds of photographic documents by Camilo Vergara and Edward Burtynsky: “Danger: Men Working.” Watch out—human beings are at work! But the work that is presented is not so much a building-up as it is a tearing-down—the work of demolition. [strange: tearing down is unexpected; writer asks So what? and answers:] Of course, demolition is often necessary in order to construct anew: old buildings are leveled for new projects, whether you are building a highway or bridge in an American city or a dam in the Chinese countryside. You might call modernity itself, as so many have, a process of creative destruction, a term used variously to describe modern art, capitalism, and technological innovation. The photographs in this exhibit, however, force us to pay attention to the “destructive” side of this modern equation. [strange: photos emphasize destruction and not creation; writer asks So what? and answers] What both Burtynsky and Vergara do in their respective ways is to put up a warning sign—they question whether the reworking of our natural and