Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [98]
First, the assumption that things have single hidden meanings interferes with open-minded and dispassionate observation. Adherents of the Fortune Cookie School look solely for clues pointing to the hidden message and, having found these clues, discard the rest, like the cookie in a Chinese restaurant once the fortune has been extracted. The fortune cookie approach forecloses on the possibility of multiple plausible meanings, each within its own context. When you assume only one right answer exists, you are also assuming there is only one proper context for understanding and, by extension, that anybody who happens to select a different starting point or context and who thus arrives at a different answer is necessarily wrong.
Most of the time, practitioners of the fortune cookie approach aren’t even aware they are assuming the correctness of a single context because they don’t realize a fundamental truth about interpretations: they are always limited by contexts. In other words, we are suggesting that claims to universal truths are always problematic. Things don’t just mean in some simple and clear way for all people in all situations; they always mean within a network of beliefs, from a particular point of view. The person who claims to have access to some universal truth, beyond context and point of view, is either naïve (unaware) or, worse, a bully—insisting that his or her view of the world is obviously correct and must be accepted by everyone.
THE ANYTHING GOES SCHOOL OF INTERPRETATION
At the opposite extreme from the single-right-answer Fortune Cookie School lies the completely relativist Anything Goes School. The problem with the Anything Goes approach is that it tends to assume that all interpretations are equally viable, and that meanings are simply a matter of individual choice, regardless of evidence or plausibility. Put another way, it overextends the creative aspect of interpretation to absurdity, arriving at the position that you can see in a subject whatever you want to see. But such unqualified relativism is not logical. It is simply not the case that meaning is entirely up to the individual; some readings are clearly better than others. The better interpretations have more evidence and rational explanation of how the evidence supports the interpretive claims—qualities that make these meanings more public and negotiable.
MAKING AN INTERPRETATION: THE EXAMPLE OF A NEW YORKER COVER
A major point of this section is that interpretive contexts are suggested by the material you are studying; they aren’t simply imposed. Explaining why you think a subject should be seen through a particular interpretive “lens” is an important part of making interpretations reasonable and plausible. Our discussion illustrates a writer’s decisionmaking process in choosing an interpretive context and how, once that context has been selected, the writer goes about analyzing evidence to test as well as support the usefulness of that context.
The example on which we focus is a visual image, a cover from the New Yorker magazine (see Figure 6.2). The cover of the October 9, 2000 issue is by Ian Falconer and is entitled “The Competition.” To see the image in color, you can easily access it online by following these steps: (1) visit the New Yorker store website; (2) click on Browse by Artist; (3) choose Ian Falconer; and (4) page forward to October 9, 2000.
Producing a close description of anything you analyze is one of the best ways to begin because the act of describing causes you to notice more and triggers analytical thinking. Here is our description of the New Yorker cover:
The picture contains four women, visible from the waist up, standing in a row in semi-profile, staring out at some audience other than us, since their eyes look off to the side. All four gaze in the same direction. Each woman is dressed in a bathing suit and wears a banner draped over one shoulder in the manner of those