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By Root 10218 0

to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding and arguing that define the discourse of our community” (3). He effectively builds up the reader, perhaps making him or her more open to absorbing the argument that follows. He refrains from criticizing, including his audience in his idea and putting them on the same level as he is. He refers to the students as ‘our students’ and writes almost as though the reader is separate from any flaws in the current system. He writes to colleagues, with the tone of one sharing something new and interesting.

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Try This 5.2: Locating the Pitch and the Complaint

Go to aldaily.com (Arts & Letters Daily, the website sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education). Locate an article on a topic you find interesting. It should be a substantive piece of thinking, as opposed to an editorial or a piece of popular commentary.

It is easier to find the pitch if you first look for language that reveals the position or situation the writer is trying to correct. Once you have done this, find language that reveals the position or positions the piece seems interested in having you adopt. Type out these sentences, and be ready to explain your choices.

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SEEK TO UNDERSTAND THE READING FAIRLY ON ITS OWN TERMS

Most good reading starts by giving the reading the benefit of the doubt: this is known as producing a sympathetic reading, or reading with the grain. This advice applies whether or not you are inclined to agree with the claims in the reading. When you are seeking to entertain the reading on its own terms, first you have to decide to suspend judgment as an act of mind, trying instead to think with the piece.

While giving the piece its most sympathetic reading, you may find yourself occasionally confused by disagreements that the reading appears to be having with itself. The back-and-forth movement of claims and qualifications can often be mistaken for contradiction or inconsistency. Rather than sit in judgment, follow the movement of mind in the writing as it tries to make sense of something complicated.

Notice, by the way, that this is a place where skimming for overall shape (“fast reading”) is appropriate as a starting point. Browse first and last sentences of paragraphs, the introduction and conclusion, and transitional words such as “but” and “however.”

ENTERING THE THINKING IN A READING: UNCOVERING ASSUMPTIONS AND REFORMULATING BINARIES (A REPRISE)

Here, we briefly revisit two items from Toolkit II, heuristics essential to seeing the thinking in a reading (see Chapter 4).

UNCOVERING ASSUMPTIONS

Isolate the key terms in the statement.

Ask what the statement rests on, the ideas underlying it.

Draw out implications of the underlying ideas.

All readings—virtually all statements—are built on assumptions. Uncovering the assumptions in a reading, also known as reasoning back to premises, enables you to understand the text better—where it’s coming from, what else it believes that is more fundamental than what it is overtly declaring. The essential move is to ask, “Given its overt claim, what must this reading also already believe?” To answer this question, you need to make inferences from the primary claims to the ideas that underlie them. In effect, you are working backward, reinventing the chain of thinking that led the writer to the position you are now analyzing.

Once you begin looking at chains of thought, you will often discover that key binaries rise to the surface and need to be reconsidered. You will see examples of this phenomenon in two examples that follow: Christopher Borick’s consideration of the term “liberal” and Anna Whiston’s analysis of self-deprecation on late night talk shows.

REFORMULATING BINARIES

Step 1: Locate a range of opposing categories

Step 2: Define and analyze the key terms

Step 3: Question the accuracy of the binary and rephrase the terms

Step 4: Substitute “to what extent?” for “either/or”

At the heart of most seriously reflective thinking is some