Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [84]
USE A READING AS A MODEL
Most of the critical activities with readings involve assimilating and thinking about the information conveyed. But to use a reading as a model is to focus instead on presentation. This represents a change in orientation for most readers, and it takes a little practice to learn how to do it. A useful guideline to remember is look beyond content (or subject matter). To focus on presentation is to focus on what a piece of writing does rather than just on what it says.
There are two primary reasons for using a reading as a model:
It can provide a way of approaching and organizing your own material.
Additionally, it can lead you to see features of a reading that you might otherwise overlook. We are, for the most part, “seduced” by the content of what we read, and so we do not see how the piece is “behaving”—how it sets us up, how it repeats certain phrases, how it is patterned.
If, for example, you were to do an analysis of programs designed to help smokers quit by using an analysis of programs designed to help drinkers quit, the latter might be used as a model for the former. And, if the drinking cessation piece began with a long anecdote to phrase some central problem in program design, and you then began your piece with an analogous problem serving the same aim for your piece, that would represent a still closer use of a reading as a model.
To use a reading as a model, detach your attention from the pure informationassimilation mode to observe how the reading says what it says. Where does it make claims? What kind of evidence does it provide? Does the writer overtly reveal his or her premises? How and when does she use metaphors or analogies?
And what about the overall organization of the piece you are reading? Not all reading proceeds in a straight narrative line from A to B to C. Some pieces are organized like quilts, a series of patches or vignettes operating as variations on a theme. Others favor a radial organization—locating some central issue or example in the center, and then spiraling out to connect it to other matters, then returning to it again and spiraling out again.
APPLY A READING AS A LENS
This final section of the chapter shows how to apply a reading to other material you are studying. Using a reading as a lens means literally looking at things as the reading does, trying to think in its terms.
As with using a reading as a model, when you use a reading as a lens, you first need to separate its analytical method from the particular argument to which it leads. Not that the argument should be ignored, but your emphasis rests on extracting the methodology in order to apply it to your own analytical ends. For example, you can learn a lot about looking at spaces from one of Mike Davis’ urban studies articles on the relocation of the homeless in Los Angeles without necessarily focusing on either L.A. or the homeless. Most college campuses, for example, offer significant opportunities to observe the manipulation of public space either to encourage or deter use by certain populations.
Your first goal when working with a reading as a lens is to fully explore its usefulness for explaining features of your subject. Of course, the match between lens and new material will never be perfect. Thus, you need to remember that whenever you apply the lens A to a new subject B, you are taking lens A from its original context and using its ideas in somewhat different circumstances for at least somewhat different purposes. Using the lens in a different context on a different kind of information will often require you to adjust the lens—to refocus it a bit to bring this new content into clear focus.
Let’s say, for example, that you read a smart review essay on the representation of black/white race relations in contemporary films in the 1970s, and you decide to use the review as a lens for exploring the spate of black/white buddy films that emerged in the 1990s.
“Yes, but …,” you find yourself responding: there are places where the 1990s films appear to fit within the