Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [176]
TWO METHODS FOR CONVERSING WITH SOURCES
Choose one sentence from a secondary source and one from a primary source, and put these into conversation. What does each reveal about the other?
Pick one sentence from one source (A) and one from another (B): how does A speak to B? How does B speak to A?
Remember: go local, not global. You will be better off if you bring together two representative moves or ideas from the sources rather than trying to compare a summary of one source with a summary of another. A useful phrase here is “points of contact”: look for ways that an idea or observation in source A appears to intersect with one in source B. Then stage the conversation you can imagine taking place between them.
Conversing with a Source: A Brief Example
Consider, for example, the following quotation, the opening sentences of an essay, “Clichés,” by Christopher Ricks, which is ostensibly a review of a reissued book on the subject:
The only way to speak of a cliché is with a cliché. So even the best writers against clichés are awkwardly placed. When Eric Partridge amassed his Dictionary of Cliches in 1940 (1978 saw its fifth edition), his introduction had no choice but to use the usual clichés for clichés. Yet what, as a metaphor, could be more hackneyed than hackneyed, more outworn than outworn, more tattered than tattered? Is there any point left to—or in or on—saying of a cliché that its “original point has been blunted”? Hasn’t this too become blunted? (Christopher Ricks, “Cliches” in The State of the Language, University of California Press, 1980, p. 54)
A writer would not want to cite this passage simply to illustrate that clichés are “bad”—language uses to be avoided—or to suggest, as a dictionary might, that a cliché is a form of expression one might call “hackneyed” or “outworn” or “tattered,” even though this information is clearly included in Ricks’s sentences. Nor would a writer simply want to reiterate Ricks’s leading claim, that “The only way to speak of a cliché is with a cliché,” because Ricks already said that.
Instead, you’d need to talk about how Ricks treats the topic—that he has uncovered a paradox, for example, in that first sentence. You might go on to say that his point of view provides a useful warning for those who wish to talk about clichés. And then you might make some inferences you could build on: that simply dismissing clichés on vaguely moral grounds as unoriginal (hackneyed) does not add anything to our knowledge, and so perhaps, it’s time to rethink our usual response to clichés and to see them afresh. In any case, as a rule of thumb, only include a quotation if you plan to say something about it.
WAYS TO USE A SOURCE AS A POINT OF DEPARTURE
There are many ways of approaching secondary sources, but these ways generally share a common goal: to use the source as a point of departure. Here is a partial list of ways to do that.
Make as many points as you can about a single representative passage from your source, and then branch out from this center to analyze other passages that “speak” to it in some way. (See 10 on 1 and Pan, Track and Zoom in Chapter 10.)
Use Notice and Focus to identify what you find most strange in the source; this will help you cultivate your curiosity about the source and find the critical distance necessary to thinking about it.
Use The Method to identify the most significant organizing contrast in the source; this will help you see what the source itself is wrestling with, what is at stake in it.
Apply an idea in the source to another subject. (See Applying a Reading as a Lens in Chapter 5.)
Uncover the assumptions in the source, and then build upon the source’s point of view, extending its implications. (See Uncovering Assumptions in