Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [48]
3. The woman silences the man in only two stories studied. [Here the writer searches out an anomaly—women silencing men—that grows in the rest of the paragraph into an organizing contrast.] In the first, “The Death of Orpheus,” the women make use of “clamorous shouting, Phrygian flutes with curving horns, tambourines, the beating of breasts, and Bacchic howlings” (246) to drown out the male’s songs, dominating his speech in terms of volume. In this way, the quality of power within speech is demonstrated: “for the first time, his words had no effect, and he failed to move them [the women] in any way by his voice” (247). Next the women kill him, thereby rendering him silent. However, the male soon regains his temporarily destroyed power of expression: “the lyre uttered a plaintive melody and the lifeless tongue made a piteous murmur” (247). Even after death Orpheus is able to communicate. The women were not able to destroy his power completely, yet they were able to severely reduce his power of speech and expression. [The writer learns, among other things, that men are harder to silence; Orpheus’s lyre continues to sing after his death.]
4. The second story in which a woman silences a man is the story of Actaeon, in which the male sees Diana naked, and she transforms him into a stag so that he cannot speak of it: “he tried to say ‘Alas!’ but no words came” (79). This loss of speech leads to Actaeon’s inability to inform his own hunting team of his true identity; his loss of speech leads ultimately to his death. [This example reinforces the pattern that the writer had begun to notice in the Orpheus example.]
These paragraphs exemplify a writer in the process of discovering a workable idea. They begin with a list of similar examples, briefly noted. Notice, as the examples accumulate, how the writer begins to make more connections and to formulate trial explanations. In turn, the emerging patterns help her to see more significant details.
MOVE 4: MAKE THE IMPLICIT EXPLICIT
This move and the one that follows it (Keep reformulating questions and explanations) are the ones that push observations toward conclusions (the “So what?” part of the process).
One of the central activities and goals of analysis is to make explicit—overtly stated—what is implicit (suggested). When we do so, we are addressing such questions as “What follows from this?” and “If this is true, what else is true?” The pursuit of such questions—drawing out implications—moves our thinking and our writing forward.
We have already introduced in Chapter 2 several of the tools that spur the quest for implication: Asking So What? and Paraphrase × 3. Both of these heuristics enable a writer to examine evidence and draw conclusions about it that are not literally present but that follow from what the writer sees.
The word implication comes from the Latin implicare, which means “to fold in.” The word explicit is in opposition to the idea of implication. It means “folded out.” An act of mind is required to take what is folded in and fold it out for all to see. Paraphrasing is an especially useful tool in uncovering implications precisely because restating things in other words widens the range of meanings (folds them out) that are embedded in (folded in) the language and details under scrutiny.
This process of drawing out implications is also known as making inferences. Inference and implication are related but not synonymous terms. The term implication describes something suggested by the material itself; implications reside in the matter you are studying. The term inference describes your thinking process. In short, you infer what the subject