Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [82]
In the 20th Century, however, liberalism became synonymous with the view that government had to be much more active in helping citizens get to the point where they would be able to truly live a free life. In this expanding view of liberalism, government intervention in society is necessary to create a more level playing field on which individuals can then use their freedom to achieve desired goals. Such beliefs have been at the roots of government expansion into social welfare policies such as public housing, food stamps, and affirmative action, and have formed the core of government agendas such as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
As this piece progresses, you can expect that it will either resolve the significant gap between the two historical definitions of liberalism or that it will in various ways show us how the gap has continued to produce tensions or misunderstandings.
In the case of most academic writing, it is usually a mistake to assume that the piece is making a single argument. A smarter assumption is that the piece is interested in exploring an issue or a problem from multiple points of view.
THE PROBLEM OF CRITIQUE
Although you should not be expected simply to go along with all that you read, neither should you jump in and try to critique an expert from your too limited experience. So how do you go about doing the thing that people call “critical reading”?
Ultimately, your aim is to put the reading into conversation with other readings on the same subject. In this situation, you speculate, making inferences about what writer X would say about the position of writer Y, and vice versa, establishing a critical conversation in which you cast yourself as referee (see Chapter 13, Using Sources Analytically for ways of making this move).
Usually, it is more important to learn how to use a complex theoretical lens than it is to arrive at a point from which you can launch an extended critique.
Even when an academic reading offers a single dominant claim, in most cases the writing will focus on limiting and qualifying that claim—categorizing it, dividing it into parts, tracing its implications, and so forth. So instead of approaching the reading with the question, “Where might this be wrong?”, ask yourself, “How is the argument presented, and why is it presented in this way?”
What Do We Mean by Critical Reading? A Music Professor Speaks
In the following Voice from Across the Curriculum, music professor Ted Conner discusses ways of helping students develop more sophisticated reading skills.
Voices From Across the Curriculum
As a first step, we consider what we mean by a “critical reading.” Because the term itself has become so ingrained in our consciousness, we rarely think critically about what it means. So, we discuss moving beyond a summary of the content and cursory judgment. I ask students to take notes on each reading (content and commentary) and conclude with three points. These points may include a main idea of the article or a part of the author’s argument they found particularly interesting. We try to locate insights into the author’s reason for writing the essay and rhetorical gestures or techniques used by the author to influence the reader.
Does the author make his or her objectives and biases explicit? If not, we examine the rhetorical strategies authors employ to convince us of their objectivity. We observe the ways that language