Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [110]
Then look up the term in one or preferably several specialized dictionaries. We offer a list of some of these in Chapter 14, “Finding, Citing, and Integrating Sources,” but you can also ask your reference librarian for pertinent titles. Generally speaking, different disciplines generate their own specialized dictionaries.
Summarize key differences and similarities among the ways the dictionaries have defined your term or terms. Then write a comparative essay in which you argue for the significance of a key similarity or difference, or an unexpected one.
Here is the list of words: hysteria, ecstasy, enthusiasm, witchcraft, leisure, gossip, bachelor, spinster, romantic, instinct, punk, thug, pundit, dream, alcoholism, aristocracy, atom, ego, pornography, conservative, liberal, entropy, election, tariff. Some of these words are interesting to look at together, such as ecstasy/enthusiasm or liberal/conservative or bachelor/ spinster. Feel free to write on a pair instead of a single word.
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UNIT II
WRITING ANALYTICAL PAPERS: HOW TO USE EVIDENCE, EVOLVE CLAIMS, AND CONVERSE WITH SOURCES
Chapter 8
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Reasoning from Evidence to Claims
Most of what goes wrong in using a thesis is the result of a writer leaping too quickly to a generalization that would do as a thesis, and then treating evidence only as something to be mustered in support of that idea.
THIS CHAPTER IS ABOUT EVIDENCE—what it is, what it is meant to do, and how to recognize when you are using it well. The chapter’s overall argument is that you should use evidence to test, refine, and develop your ideas, rather than just to prove they are correct.
Evidence is usually suggestive rather than conclusive. The interesting and important questions are to be found not in the facts but in our hypotheses about what the facts mean. Finding solid evidence—the facts—is only part of the problem. The larger question is always interpretive: what do the facts really tell us?
Theories—ways of seeing and understanding things—are what cause us to accept some things as facts. So, for example, once observers and theorists had demonstrated that the sun rather than the earth was at the center of the (then) known universe, people had to reconsider what was and wasn’t a fact. This is why good writing uses evidence to test and qualify claims as well as support them. And this is also why this book argues against the narrow view of evidence as “the stuff that proves I’m right.” Rather than arriving at demonstrably true claims from definite facts, writers more often arrive at plausible theories about evidence. Most thinking about evidence, in other words, is inevitably interpretive and tentative (see Chapter 6, Making Interpretations Plausible).
THE FUNCTIONS OF EVIDENCE
To substantiate claims
To test and \refine ideas
To define key terms more precisely
To qualify (restrict the scope) of claims, making them more accurate
The chapter’s first section addresses two common problems: claims without evidence (unsubstantiated claims) and evidence without claims (pointless evidence). The chapter’s second section then offers examples of the kinds of evidence most commonly encountered in academic writing.
HOW TO MAKE EVIDENCE SPEAK
Select telling pieces of concrete data
Explain clearly what you take the data to mean
Show why the evidence might support the claim
Focus on how the evidence complicates (qualifies) the claim
A. Linking Evidence and Claims
Evidence matters because it always involves authority: the power of evidence is, well, evident in the laboratory, the courtroom, the classroom, and just about everywhere