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MOVE 1: SUSPEND JUDGMENT

The first of these five moves, suspending judgment, is really more a pre-condition than an actual activity. We include it as an analytical move, however, because suspending judgment takes an act of will, and we need then to consciously substitute other ways of thinking.

As we suggested in our critique of the Judgment Reflex in Chapter 2, the tendency to judge everything—to respond with likes and dislikes, with agreeing and disagreeing—shuts down our ability to see and to think. Just listen in on the next three conversations around you to be reminded of the pervasiveness of this phenomenon.

Consciously leading with the word interesting (as in “What I find most interesting about this is …”) tends to deflect the judgment response into a more exploratory state of mind, one motivated by curiosity. As a general rule, you should seek to understand the subject you are analyzing before deciding how you feel about it. (See the discussion of interesting, revealing, and strange under Notice and Focus in Chapter 2.)

MOVE 2: DEFINE SIGNIFICANT PARTS AND HOW THEY’RE RELATED

Whether you are analyzing an awkward social situation, an economic problem, a painting, a substance in a chemistry lab, or your chances of succeeding in a job interview, the process of analysis is the same:

Divide the subject into its defining parts, its main elements or ingredients.

Consider how these parts are related, both to each other and to the subject as a whole.

One common denominator of all effective analytical writing is that it pays close attention to detail. We analyze because our global responses—to a play, for example, or to a speech or a social problem—are too general. Let’s say you hear a local environmentalist give a public lecture on pollution. Afterward, you tell your friend, “I heard this great talk.” This kind of generic response one could offer about almost anything. Such “one-size-fits-all” comments don’t tell us much, except that you liked what you heard.

In order to say more, you’d need to become more analytical: you’d shift your attention to different elements of the talk and how they fit together. You might note that the talk began with a slide show of polluted creeks and that the speaker explained how different kinds of drain lines—sewer lines and storm water lines—are connected, so that when there are not enough water treatment plants in an area, a storm can cause the drains to overflow capacity and force officials to use “direct release,” thus easing the pressure on the facility but fouling the creeks.

This move from generalization to analysis, from the larger subject to its key components, is characteristic of good thinking. To understand a subject, we need to get past our first, generic, evaluative response in order to discover what the subject is “made of,” the particulars that contribute most strongly to the character of the whole.

The tendency of analysis to break things down into their component parts is sometimes thought of as destructive—as murdering to dissect (to paraphrase a famous poet). This point of view, however, fails to recognize that when people analyze, they break things down in order to see them more clearly and construct their understandings of the world they inhabit.

Some Everyday Examples If you find yourself being followed by a large dog, your first response, other than breaking into a cold sweat, will be to analyze the situation. What does being followed by a large dog mean for me, here, now? Does it mean the dog is vicious and about to attack? Does it mean the dog is curious and wants to play? Similarly, if you are losing a game of tennis or you’ve just left a job interview or you are looking at a painting of a woman with three noses, you will begin to analyze. How can I play differently to increase my chances of winning? Am I likely to get the job, and why (or why not)? Why did the artist give the woman three noses?

In the case of the large dog, you might notice that he’s dragging a leash, has a ball in his mouth, and