Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [32]
Step 2: Find synonyms for all of the key terms. Don’t just go for the gist, a loose approximation of what was said. Substitute language virtually word-for-word to produce a parallel version of the original statement.
Step 3: Repeat this entire rephrasing several times (we suggest three). This will produce a range of possible implications that the original passage may possess.
Step 4: Contemplate the various versions you have produced. Which seem most plausible as restatements of what the original piece intends to communicate? Where can you not determine which of two restatements might win out as most accurate?
Step 5: Return to the original passage and reflect: what do you now recognize about the passage on the basis of your repeated restatements? What does it appear to mean? What else might it mean?
Discussion Like the other heuristics in this chapter, Paraphrase × 3 seeks to locate you in the local, the particular, and the concrete rather than the global, the overly general and the abstract. Rather than make a broad claim about what a sentence or passage says, a paraphrase stays much closer to the actual words. Most students think of paraphrase in the context of avoiding plagiarism (“putting it in your own words”) and demonstrating their understanding of assigned reading. In more advanced writing, paraphrase serves the purpose of producing the literature review—survey of relevant research—that forms the introduction to reports in the sciences. Paraphrase as an act of analytical translation, however, goes further.
Why is paraphrasing useful? When you paraphrase language, whether your own or language you encounter in your reading, you are not just defining terms but opening out the wide range of implications those words inevitably possess. When we read, it is easy to skip quickly over the words, assuming we know what they mean. Yet when people start talking about what particular words mean—the difference, for example, between assertive and aggressive or the meaning of ordinary words such as polite or realistic or gentlemanly—they usually find less agreement than expected.
Here’s a theory that underlies paraphrase as an interpretive tool. What we see as reality is shaped by the words we use. What we say is inescapably a product of how we say it. This idea is known as the constitutive theory of language. It is opposed to the so-called “transparent” theory of language—that we can see through words to some meaning that exists beyond and is independent of them. The transparent theory of language, which assumes that the meanings of words are obvious and self-evident, is rejected by linguists and other language specialists. They know that to change a word is inevitably to change meaning. So, to make paraphrase work for you:
don’t assume you know the meanings of words you encounter
assume instead that words may have more than one clear meaning, depending on context.
How Paraphrase × 3 Unlocks Implications: An Example
Like the “So what?” question, paraphrasing is an effective way of bringing out implications, meanings that are there in the original but not overt. And especially if you paraphrase the same passage repeatedly, you will discover which of the words are most “slippery”—elusive, hard to define simply and unambiguously.
Let’s look at a brief example of Paraphrase × 3. The sentence comes from a book entitled The Literature Workshop by Sheridan Blau.
“A conviction of certainty is one of the most certain signs of ignorance and may be the best operational definition of stupidity” (213).
Absence of doubt is a clear indication of cluelessness and is perhaps the top way of understanding the lack of intelligence.
A feeling of being right is one of the most reliable indexes of lack of knowledge and may show in action the meaning of mental incapacity.
Being confident that you are correct is a foolproof warning that you don’t know what’s going on, and this kind of confidence may be an embodiment of foolishness.