• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Step 4: Substitute “to what extent?” for “either/or.” The best strategy in using binaries productively is usually to locate arguments on both sides of the either/or choice that the binary poses and then choose a position somewhere between the two extremes. Once you have arrived at what you consider the most accurate phrasing of the binary, you can rephrase the original either/or question in the more qualified terms that asking “To what extent?” allows. Making this move does not release you from the responsibility of taking a stand and arguing for it.

Discussion Thinking is not simply linear and progressive, moving from point A to point B to point C like stops on a train. Careful thinkers are always retracing their steps, questioning their first—and second—impressions, assuming that they’ve missed something. All good thinking is recursive; that is, it repeatedly goes over the same ground, rethinking connections. And that’s why reformulating binaries is an essential analytical move.

As a general rule, analysis favors live questions over inert answers. It thrives where something remains to be resolved, not where things are already pretty much nailed down and don’t leave much space for further thinking.

Reformulating binaries will cause you to do one or more of the following:

Discover that you have not named the binary adequately and that another formulation of the opposition would be more accurate.

Weigh one side of your binary more heavily than the other, rather than seeing the issue as all or nothing.

Discover that the two terms of your binary are not really so separate and opposed after all but are actually parts of one complex phenomenon or issue. (This is a key analytical move known as “collapsing the binary.”)

There is usually no single “right” answer about which of a number of binary oppositions is the primary organizing contrast. This is because analytical thinking involves interpretation. Interpretive conclusions are not matters of fact, but theories. It is in the nature of theories to be tentative and open to alternative readings of the same information. This is why good analytical thinking takes time and is inevitably open-ended.

Reformulating Binaries: An Example

Suppose you are analyzing the following topic in a management course: Would the model of management known as Total Quality Management (TQM) that is widely used in Japan function effectively in the American automotive industry?

Step 1: There are a range of opposing categories suggested by the language of the topic, the most obvious being function versus not function. But there are also other binaries here: Japanese versus American, and TQM versus more traditional and more traditionally American models of management. These binaries imply further binaries. The question requires a writer to consider the accuracy and relative suitability of particular traits commonly ascribed to Japanese versus American workers, such as communal and cooperative versus individualistic and competitive.

Step 2: Questions of definition might concentrate on what it means to ask whether TQM functions effectively in the American automotive industry? Does that mean “make a substantial profit”? “Produce more cars more quickly”? “Improve employee morale”? You would drown in vagueness unless you carefully argued for the appropriateness of your definition of this key term.

Step 3: How accurate is the binary? To what extent do American and Japanese management styles actually differ? Can you locate significant differences between these management styles that correspond to supposed differences between Japanese and American culture that might help you formulate your binary more precisely?

Step 4: To complicate the either/or formulation, you might suggest the danger of assuming that all American workers are rugged individualists and all Japanese workers are communal bees. Insofar as you are going to arrive at a qualified claim, it would be best stated in terms of the extent to which TQM might be adaptable to the auto industry.