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pattern that the article claims, but there are also exceptions to the pattern. What do you do? What not to do is either choose different films that “fit better” or decide that the article is wrong-headed. Instead, start with the “yes”: talk about how the film accords with the general pattern. Then focus on the “but,” the claims in the reading (the lens) that seem not to fit, or material in your subject not adequately accounted for by the lens.

Because cultural climates and trends are constantly shifting and reconfiguring themselves, particularly in popular culture, you will learn from examining the films how the original review might be usefully extended to account for phenomena that were not present when it was originally written.

Using a Reading as a Lens: “Self-Deprecation on Late Night Television”

The following student paper by Anna Whiston was a culminating project for a firstyear seminar. The assignment was to use concepts from two books by sociolinguist Deborah Tannen—You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation and That’s Not What I Meant: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships— to explore a conversational topic of the student’s choice, in this case, conversations among male celebrities on late night talk shows. The essay won an award at our college for best writing by a first-year student. The faculty reviewers praised the essay for its analytical depth, its respect for complexity, and its sophisticated use of secondary sources as lenses.

Throughout the essay, the writer deliberately seeks out evidence that might initially seem to contradict theories supplied by her lens. But rather than finding fault with the lens or dismissing the apparent contradictions, she deftly locates the complexity in Tannen’s thinking and in her primary material, refusing to oversimplify either.

As you read the essay (which we have excerpted slightly), notice how the writer

locates significant patterns in her primary material (her transcripts of conversations on late night talk shows) and asks “So what?”;

uses restatement to infer implications;

uncovers assumptions;

formulates and reformulates binaries; and

uses both data and lens to repeatedly qualify and complicate her claims.

We have included annotations in square brackets to suggest how the writer uses various analytical methods for writing about reading.

“I think my cooking, uh, sucks”: Self-Deprecation

on Late Night Television

by Anna Whiston

Low confidence is not exactly typical in Hollywood. Celebrities are known just as much for their egos as they are for the movies that they headline and the scandals that they induce. And yet, late night talk shows, such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Late Show with David Letterman, and Jimmy Kimmel Live, include endless examples of self-deprecation on the parts of both the male hosts and the male celebrity guests. Self-deprecation is, on the surface, a way of belittling oneself. However, examination of the conversations that take place on these television programs helps show that this strand of apparent humility is actually a much more nuanced conversational technique. Conversations on late night talk shows reveal that self-deprecation does not necessarily pit one man as inferior to another.

In You Just Don’t Understand, linguist Deborah Tannen explores conversation as a process affected largely by the gender of the speaker. For men, according to Tannen, “…life is a contest in which they are constantly tested and must perform, in order to avoid the risk of failure” (178). This sense of competition often manifests itself in “one-upsmanship,” a strategy in which men attempt to outdo each other in order to achieve a hierarchical position within a conversation (Tannen 26). However, there are certain situations in which hierarchy is not necessarily desirable. The interactions between men on late night talk shows serve as one example of this situation.

In another one of her works on conversation, That’s Not What I Meant, Tannen discusses framing,