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Try This 4.4: Reformulating Binaries in a Familiar Expression

Write a few paragraphs in which you work with the binaries suggested by the following familiar expression: “School gets in the way of one’s education.” Keep the focus on working through the binaries implicit in the quotation. What other terms would you substitute for “school” and “education”? Coming up with a range of synonyms for each term will clarify what is at stake in the binary. Remember to consider the accuracy of the claim. To what extent, and in what ways, is the expression both true and false?

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Try This 4.5: Reformulating Binaries: More Practice

Apply the Strategies for Using Binaries Analytically to analyze the following statements (or questions), as we did with the TQM example. This does not mean that you must proceed step-by-step through the strategies, but, at the least, you should list all of the binaries you can find, isolate the key terms, and reformulate them. Even if the original formulation looks okay to you, assume that it is an overgeneralization that needs to be refined and rephrased.

a. It is important to understand why leaders act in a leadership role. What is the driving force? Is it an internal drive for the business or group to succeed, or is it an internal drive for the leader to dominate others?

b. Is nationalism good for emerging third-world countries?

c. The private lives of public figures should not matter in the way they are assessed by the public. What matters is how competently they do their jobs.

d. The Seattle sound of rock and roll known as Grunge was not original; it was just a rehash of Punk and New Wave elements.

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Try This 4.6: Reformulating Binaries: Fieldwork

Locate some organizing contrasts in anything—something you are studying, something you’ve just written, something you saw on television last night, something on the front page of the newspaper, something going on at your campus or workplace, and so forth. Binaries pervade the way we think; therefore, you can expect to find them everywhere. Consider, for example, the binaries suggested by current trends in contemporary music or by the representation of women in birthday cards. Having selected the binaries you want to work with, pick one and transform the either/or thinking into a more qualified thinking using the extent to which formula.

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4. DIFFERENCE WITHIN SIMILARITY

When A & B are obviously similar,

look for unexpected difference.

When A & B are obviously different,

look for unexpected similarity.

Too often, writers notice a fundamental similarity and stop there. But ideas tend to arise when a writer moves beyond this basic demonstration and complicates (or “qualifies”) the basic similarity by also noting areas of difference, and accounting for the significance of that difference.

Step 1: Decide whether the similarities or differences are most obvious and easily explained.

Step 2: Briefly explain the relatively obvious similarity or difference by asking “So what?” Why is this similarity or difference significant?

Step 3: Then focus your attention on the less obvious but revealing difference within the similarity or similarity despite the difference.

Discussion The phrase “difference within similarity” is to remind you that once you have started your thinking by locating apparent similarities, you can usually refine that thinking by pursuing significant, though often less obvious, distinctions among the similar things. In Irish studies, for example, scholars characteristically acknowledge the extent to which contemporary Irish culture is the product of colonization. To this extent, Irish culture shares certain traits with other former colonies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. But instead of simply demonstrating how Irish culture fits the general pattern of colonialism, these scholars also isolate the ways that Ireland does not fit the model. They focus, for example, on how its close geographical proximity and racial similarity to England, its colonizer,