Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [170]
The most blatant version of this tendency occurs in the second problem example, which asserts, “Any individual, if he looks deeply enough into his soul, knows what is right and what is wrong. The environment should be protected because it is the right thing to do.” Translation (only slightly exaggerated): “Any individual who thinks about the subject will obviously agree with me because my feelings and convictions feel right to me and therefore they must be universally and self-evidently true.” Testing an idea against your own feelings and experience is not an adequate means of establishing whether something is accurate or true.
It is fine, of course, to write about what you believe and to consult your feelings as you formulate an idea. But the risk you run in arguing from your unexamined feelings and convictions is that you will continue to play the same small set of tunes in response to everything you hear. And without the ability to think from multiple perspectives, you are less able to defend your convictions against the ideas that challenge them because you won’t really have examined the logic of your own beliefs—you just believe them.
Solution: Try on other points of view honestly and dispassionately; treat your ideas as hypotheses to be tested rather than obvious truths. In the following solution examples, we have replaced opinions (in the form of self-evident truths) with ideas—theories about the meaning and significance of the subjects that are capable of being supported and qualified by evidence.
Solution Examples
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia treats individualism as a serious but remediable social problem. His radical treatment of what we might now call “socialization” attempts to redefine the meaning and origin of individual identity.
Although I agree with Jeane Kirkpatrick’s argument that environmentalists and business should work together to ensure the ecological future of the world, her argument undervalues the necessity of pressuring businesses to attend to environmental concerns that may not benefit them in the short run.
WEAK THESIS TYPE 5: THE THESIS MAKES AN OVERLY BROAD CLAIM
Problem Examples
Violent revolutions have had both positive and negative results for man.
There are many similarities and differences between the Carolingian and the Burgundian Renaissances.
Othello is a play about love and jealousy.
Overly generalized theses avoid complexity. Such statements usually lead either to say-nothing theses or to reductive either/or thinking. Similar to a thesis that makes no claim, theses with overly broad claims say nothing in particular about the subject at hand and so are not likely to guide a writer’s thinking beyond the listing stage. One of the best ways to avoid drafting overly broad thesis statements is to sensitize yourself to the characteristic phrasing of such theses: “both positive and negative,” “many similarities and differences,” or “both pros and cons.” Virtually everything from meatloaf to taxes can be both positive and negative.
Solution: Convert broad categories and generic claims to more specific, more qualified assertions; find ways to bring out the complexity of your subject.
Solution Examples
Although violent revolutions begin to redress long-standing social inequities, they often do so at the cost of long-term economic dysfunction and the suffering that attends it.
The differences between the Carolingian and Burgundian Renaissances outweigh the similarities.
Although Othello appears to attack jealousy, it also supports the skepticism of the jealous characters over the naïveté of the lovers.
Getting Beyond the All-Purpose Thesis: A Dance Professor Speaks
In the following Voice from Across the Curriculum, dance professor Karen Dearborn offers