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5

Writing an Analysis of an Argument

This is what we can all do to nourish and strengthen one another: listen to one another very hard, ask questions, too, send one another away to work again, and laugh in all the right places.

— NANCY MAIRS

I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

— PEARL S. BUCK

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

— MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH

Analyzing an Argument

EXAMINING THE AUTHOR’S THESIS

Most of your writing in other courses will require you to write an analysis of someone else’s writing. In a course in political science you may have to analyze, say, an essay first published in Foreign Affairs, perhaps reprinted in your textbook, that argues against raising tariff barriers to foreign trade. Or a course in sociology may require you to analyze a report on the correlation between fatal accidents and drunk drivers under the age of twenty-one. Much of your writing, in short, will set forth reasoned responses to your reading as preparation for making an argument of your own.

Obviously, you must understand an essay before you can analyze it thoughtfully. You must read it several times — not just skim it — and (the hard part) you must think critically about it. Again, you’ll find that your thinking is stimulated if you take notes and if you ask yourself questions about the material. Are there any Web sites or organizations dedicated to the material you are analyzing? If there are, visit some to see what others are saying about the material you are reviewing. Notes will help you to keep track of the writer’s thoughts and also of your own responses to the writer’s thesis. The writer probably does have a thesis, a claim, a point, and if so, you must try to locate it. Perhaps the thesis is explicitly stated in the title or in a sentence or two near the beginning of the essay or in a concluding paragraph, but perhaps you will have to infer it from the essay as a whole.

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Notice that we said the writer probably has a thesis. Much of what you read will indeed be primarily an argument; the writer explicitly or implicitly is trying to support some thesis and to convince readers to agree with it. But some of what you read will be relatively neutral, with the argument just faintly discernible — or even with no argument at all. A work may, for instance, chiefly be a report: Here are the data, or here is what X, Y, and Z said; make of it what you will. A report might simply state how various ethnic groups voted in an election. In a report of this sort, of course, the writer hopes to persuade readers that the facts are correct, but no thesis is advanced — at least not explicitly or perhaps even consciously; the writer is not evidently arguing a point and trying to change readers’ minds. Such a document differs greatly from an essay by a political analyst who presents similar findings to persuade a candidate to sacrifice the votes of one particular ethnic bloc and thereby get more votes from other blocs.

EXAMINING THE AUTHOR’S PURPOSE

While reading an argument, try to form a clear idea of the author’s purpose. Judging from the essay or the book, was the purpose to persuade, or was it to report? An analysis of a pure report (a work apparently without a thesis or argumentative angle) on ethnic voting will deal chiefly with the accuracy of the report. It will, for example, consider whether the sample poll was representative.

Much material that poses as a report really has a thesis built into it, consciously or unconsciously. The best evidence that the prose you are reading is argumentative is the presence of two kinds of key terms: transitions that imply the drawing of a conclusion (such as therefore, because, for the reason that, and consequently) and verbs that imply proof (such as confirms, verifies, accounts for, implies, proves, disproves, is [in]consistent with, refutes, and it follows that). Keep your eye out for such terms, and scrutinize their precise role whenever they appear. If the essay does not advance a thesis, think of one that it might support or some conventional belief that it might undermine. (See also Thinking Critically: Drawing Conclusions and Implying Proof.)

EXAMINING THE AUTHOR’S METHODS

If the essay advances a thesis, you will want to analyze the strategies or methods of argument that allegedly support the thesis.

In writing your analysis, you will want to tell readers something about the author’s purpose and something about the author’s methods. It is usually a good idea at the start of your analysis — if not in the first paragraph, then in the second or third — to let the reader know the purpose (and thesis, if there is one) of the work you are analyzing and then to summarize the work briefly.

Next, you will probably find it useful (readers will certainly find it helpful) to write out your thesis (your evaluation or judgment). You might say, for instance, that the essay is impressive but not conclusive, or is undermined by convincing contrary evidence, or relies too much on unsupported generalizations, or is wholly admirable. Remember, because your paper is itself an argument, it needs its own thesis.

And then, of course, comes the job of setting forth your analysis and the support for your thesis. There is no one way of going about this work. If, say, the author whose work you’re analyzing gives four arguments (e.g., an appeal to common sense, the testimony of authorities, the evidence of comparisons, and an appeal to self-interest), you might want to do one of the following:

In short, the organization of your analysis may or may not follow the organization of the work you are analyzing.

EXAMINING THE AUTHOR’S PERSONA

You will probably also want to analyze something a bit more elusive than the author’s explicit arguments: the author’s self-presentation. Does the author seek to persuade readers partly by presenting himself or herself as conscientious, friendly, self-effacing, authoritative, tentative, or in some other light? Most writers do two things:

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In some persuasive writing this persona or voice or presentation of the self may be no less important than the presentation of evidence. In other cases, the persona may not much matter, but our point is that you should spend a little time looking at the author's self-presentation to consider if it’s significant.

In establishing a persona, writers adopt various rhetorical strategies, ranging from the use of characteristic words to the use of a particular form of organization. For instance:

All such devices deserve comment in your analysis.

The writer’s persona, then, may color the thesis and help it develop in a distinctive way. If we accept the thesis, it is partly because the writer has won our goodwill by persuading us of his or her good character (ethos, in Aristotle’s terms). Later we talk more about the appeal to the speaker’s character — the so-called ethical appeal, but here we may say that good writers present themselves not as wise-guys, bullies, or pompous asses but as decent people whom the reader would like to invite to dinner.

The author of an essay may, for example, seem fair-minded and open-minded, treating the opposition with great courtesy and expressing interest in hearing other views. Such a tactic is itself a persuasive device. Another author may appear to rely on hard evidence such as statistics. This reliance on seemingly objective truths is itself a way of seeking to persuade — a rational way, to be sure, but a mode of persuasion nonetheless.

Especially in analyzing a work in which the author’s persona and ideas are blended, you will want to spend some time commenting on the persona. Whether you discuss it near the beginning of your analysis or near the end will depend on how you want to construct your essay, and this decision will partly depend on the work you are analyzing. For example, if the author’s persona is kept in the background and is thus relatively invisible, you may want to make that point fairly early to get it out of the way and then concentrate on more interesting matters. If, however, the persona is interesting — and perhaps seductive, whether because it seems so scrupulously objective or so engagingly subjective — you may want to hint at this quality early in your essay and then develop the point while you consider the arguments.

In short, the author’s self-presentation usually matters. Recognize its effect, whether positive or negative.

EXAMINING PERSONA AND INTENDED AUDIENCE

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A key element in understanding an argument lies in thinking about the intended audience — how the author perceives the audience and what strategies the author uses to connect to it. We have already said something about the creation of the author’s persona. An author with a loyal following is, almost by definition, someone who in earlier writings has presented an engaging persona, a persona with a trustworthy ethos. A trusted author can sometimes cut corners and can perhaps adopt a colloquial tone that would be unacceptable in the writing of an unknown author.

Authors who want to win the assent of their audiences need to think about how they present information and how they present themselves. Consider how you prefer people to talk to you. What sorts of language do you find engaging? Much of course depends on the circumstances, notably the topic, the audience, and the place. A joke may be useful in an argument about whether the government should regulate junk food, but almost surely a joke will be inappropriate — will backfire, will alienate the audience — in an argument about abortion. The way an author addresses the reader (through an invented persona) can have a significant impact on the reader’s perception of the author, which is to say perception of the author’s views, the author’s argument. A slip in tone or an error of fact, however small, may be enough for the audience to dismiss the author’s argument. Understanding audience means thinking about all of the possible audiences who may come into contact with your writing or your message, and thinking about the consequences of what you write and where it is published.

You may recall a tweet by Lebron James, who formerly played basketball for the Cleveland Cavaliers but left to play for the Miami Heat. After James left the Cavaliers (and his home state of Ohio), the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Cavaliers by fifty-five points, and James tweeted: “Crazy. Karma is a b****. Gets you every time. It’s not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything!” Cleveland fans not surprisingly perceived his tweet as a slap in the face. The broader audience, too, outside of Cleveland, perceived it as inappropriate. Though he has since returned to Cleveland and been largely forgiven by fans, Lebron James clearly did not think about his audience(s). To put it in rhetorical terms, Lebron James vastly diminished his ethos. Doubtless he wishes he could retract the tweet, but as the ancient Roman poet Horace said, “Nescit vox missa reverti” (“The word once spoken can never be recalled”), or, in plain proverbial English, “Think twice before you speak.”

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Consider Facebook status updates. Have you ever posted a status update and wished you could take it back only to find out it was too late? People you did not want to see it saw it before you could remove it. Have you ever tweeted or even texted something you wished you hadn’t? When reading and writing more formal essays, it is equally important to think about who wrote what you are reading, and who will read what you are writing.

SUMMARY

In the last few pages we have tried to persuade you that, in writing an analysis of a reading, you must do the following:

We have also tried to point out these facts:

Possibly all this explanation is obvious. There is yet another point, equally obvious but often neglected by students who begin by writing an analysis and end up by writing only a summary, a shortened version of the work they have read: Although your essay is an analysis of someone else’s writing, and you may have to include a summary of the work you are writing about, your essay is your essay, your analysis, not a mere summary. The thesis, the organization, and the tone are yours.

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Most of the essays that we have included thus far are more or less in an academic style, and indeed several are by students and by professors. But argumentative writing is not limited to academicians — if it were, your college would not be requiring you to take a course in the subject. The following essay, in a breezy style, comes from a columnist who writes for the New York Times.