Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [52]
—Bruce Wightman, Professor of Biology
“2:30”: An Example of the Five Analytical Moves in Action
Printed below is a commencement address given on May 27, 2010 at Harvard University to medical and dentistry students and their families and friends. Students in both programs take their courses together for the first two years and then pursue separate tracks in the final two years before coming together again at graduation. The speaker, Bob Tarby, was a biology and English major at our college before going on to Harvard. HSDM is the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.
Study how this speech develops as a piece of thinking from its initial observation that “dentistry is the butt of a lot of jokes.” Concentrate on moves 4 and 5—making the implicit explicit and reformulating questions. Throughout the piece, you will also notice how the writer has set up his primary questions by employing moves 1–3. He suspends judgment to explore a question. He locates significant parts and finds patterns, both in people’s responses to dentists and in the way people think and feel about teeth.
Mark specific sentences in which the speaker makes the implicit explicit. Also mark places where he pauses to formulate and to reformulate questions. We have included a few analytical observations in square brackets to help you shift your attention from what the speech says to what it does—how it operates and moves.
2:30
by Bob Tarby
[1] Distinguished guests, deans, faculty, staff, and of course classmates, friends, and families—welcome! Welcome to the 138th HSDM-HMS Class Day. To my classmates— my friends and now my colleagues—thank you for the privilege to represent our class today.
[2] I’m not the most doggedly determined dental student that’s graced Harvard’s hallways. Therefore, as my classmates would only expect, I would like to start with an old joke:
[3] What’s the best time to go see the dentist? Tooth hurty.
[4] If you didn’t get it, just give it a few seconds to sink in. If you still don’t get it, I can explain it later, although I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be funny. But maybe it’s better that way, because to all the dentists in the room, dental jokes are never funny. Anyone who’s seen Seinfeld remembers the episode where Jerry tells another dental wisecrack: what’s the difference between a dentist and a sadist? – Newer magazines. His dentist, Dr. Whatley, seeks his revenge in an unnecessarily prolonged and painful procedure that is peppered with question upon question requiring narrative answers… Why is it, by the way, that dentists never ask simple yes or no questions when they’ve got their hands in your mouth?
[5] I’m sorry that Jerry’s procedure was painful… but what do you think dentist jokes are to Dr. Whatley, or to us, the thirtysomething individuals with purple lapels walking across the stage in about 20 minutes? “What do you call a doctor that didn’t get into medical school? A dentist!?” Ouch.
[6] I’m certainly not here today solely to tell dentist jokes. Instead, I want to pose a nuanced idea about the intersection of humor and dentistry. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking seriously about what makes dentistry unique. As we often cite, dentistry is a subspecialty of medicine, and our first two years in the medical school have been invaluable to who we have become as professionals. We are not medical doctors but doctors of dental medicine, and there is an important difference. Two things set dentistry apart from all other medical specialties:
1) dentistry deals (almost exclusively) with the oral cavity and maxillofacial region, and
2) dentistry is the butt of a lot of jokes
[7] There are plenty of other doctor jokes—I think proctology and urology probably bear the brunt of these—but I’ll refrain from discussing other specialties and other orifices. Why do we care so