Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [93]
Interpretation in the natural and social sciences considers the extent to which data either confirm or fail to confirm the expectations defined in a hypothesis, which is a theory the writer proposes in response to a research question. This chapter’s examples demonstrate analytical thinking as it typically operates in the humanities. The emphases, however, on careful description of evidence and on arguing for the appropriateness of a particular interpretive context are common to all three academic divisions. (For more on the language and methods of interpretation in the natural and social sciences, see Chapter 15, Forms and Formats Across the Curriculum.)
PLAUSIBLE VERSUS IMPLAUSIBLE INTERPRETATIONS: THE SOCIAL CONTEXT
Meanings must be reasoned from sufficient evidence if they are to be judged plausible. Meanings can always be refuted by people who find fault with your reasoning or can cite conflicting evidence. Let’s refer back briefly to a hypothetical question raised in Chapter 3’s discussion of Whistler’s Mother—that the woman in the painting who is clad in black is mourning the death of a loved one, perhaps a person who lived in the house represented in the painting on the wall. It is true that black clothes often indicate mourning. This is a culturally accepted, recognized sign. But with only the black dress, and perhaps the sad facial expression (if it is sad) to go on, this “mourning theory” gets sidetracked from what is actually in the painting into storytelling. Insufficient evidence would make this theory implausible.
Now, what if another person asserted that Whistler’s mother is an alien astronaut, for example, her long black dress concealing a third leg? Obviously, this interpretation would not win wide support, and for a reason that points up another of the primary limits on the meaning-making process: meanings, to have value outside one’s own private realm of experience, have to make sense to other people. The assertion that Whistler’s mother is an alien astronaut is unlikely to be deemed acceptable by enough people to give it currency.
This is to say that the relative value of interpretive meanings is to some extent socially (culturally) determined. Although people are free to say that things mean whatever they want them to mean, saying doesn’t make it so. The mourning theory has more evidence than the alien astronaut theory, but it still relies too heavily on what is not there, on a narrative for which there is insufficient evidence in the painting itself.
In experimental science, it is especially important that a writer/researcher can locate his or her work in the context of other scientists who have achieved similar results. Isolated results and interpretations, those that are not corroborated by others’ research, have much less credibility. In this respect, the making of meaning is collaborative and communal. The collaborative nature of scientific and scholarly work is one of the reasons that writing about reading is so important in college-level writing. In order to interpret evidence in a way that others will find plausible, you first have to have some idea of what others in the field are talking about.
INTERPRETIVE CONTEXTS AND MULTIPLE MEANINGS
There are, however, other possible interpretations that would satisfy the two criteria of sufficient evidence and broad cultural acceptance. And it is valuable to recognize that evidence usually will support more than one plausible interpretation. Consider, for example, a reading of Whistler’s Mother that a person might produce if he or she began with noticing the actual title, Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist’s Mother. From this starting point,