Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [39]
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Try This 2.14: Fieldwork: Looking for Naturalized Assumptions
Take a day to research just how pervasive a habit of mind naturalizing assumptions is in the world around you. Start listening to the things people say in everyday conversation. (Lunch lines are a choice site for a little surreptitious overhearing.) Or read some newspaper editorials with your morning coffee (a pretty disturbing way to start the day in most cases). Jot down examples of people naturalizing their assumptions.
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“I Didn’t Know You Wanted My Opinion”
We cannot leave the topic of naturalizing assumptions—assuming our way of seeing the world is the only way—without contemplating the key term at the heart of the subject: opinions. Over the years, those of us who teach have heard our students say a million times, “I didn’t know you wanted my opinion.”
This classic student/teacher miscommunication warrants some analysis. What, in this context, does the word “opinion” mean? You may have already done some thinking on opinions and people’s attitude toward them in the paraphrase × 3 section of this toolkit. There we asked you to paraphrase the assertion “I am entitled to my opinion.” Now let’s pursue the implications (which is what analysis does) of the exclamation—or complaint—“I didn’t know you wanted my opinion.”
Paraphrase #1: You should have told me sooner that it is okay for me to talk about my personal beliefs!
Paraphrase #2: I am pleasantly surprised to find that you are interested in my feelings and experience.
Paraphrase #3: I had not anticipated that you might expect me to say what I think.
Paraphrases 1 and 2 reveal a common but problematic definition of opinion as personal beliefs and feelings. This way of thinking leads to the implicit ground rule that when a teacher asks for personal opinion, students believe they do not need to provide evidence or reasoning. They’re in a “free zone,” which is why another ground rule seems to be that “opinion pieces” should be graded more leniently or not at all.
The problem with this way of understanding opinion is that it assumes our opinions are merely personal. In fact, our opinions are never just our opinions. They are deeply embedded in the conceptual fabric of a culture, and they are always learned.
As contemporary cultural theorists are fond of pointing out, the “I” is not a wholly autonomous free agent who writes from a unique point of view. Rather, the “I” is shaped by forces outside the self—social, cultural, educational, historical, and so on. Chronic naturalizers will not see the extent to which they are socially constructed, sites through which dominant cultural ways of understanding the world (ideologies) circulate. To put it perhaps too strongly, they’re like actors who don’t know they’re actors, reciting various cultural scripts they don’t realize are scripts.
What about the third paraphrase, “I had not anticipated that you might expect me to say what I think”? Paraphrase #3 reveals a person who recognizes that she is being asked to share her thinking, not just her views.
She is ready to think more about what opinion means. Is an opinion the same as an idea or theory? Are most ideas just opinions? How do I figure out what I think about things other than simply consulting my ready store of familiar views?
What do faculty really want when they make assignments to which students respond, “I didn’t know you wanted my opinion?” Faculty at our college tell us they want two things:
(1) for students to do more than merely transmit information
(2) for students to do more than merely react and instead find thoughtful ways to engage the information and develop a stake in it.
Opinions: Are They Counterproductive