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INCORPORATING YOUR READING INTO YOUR THINKING: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF SYNTHESIS

At the beginning of Chapter 6 we quoted a passage by Kenneth Burke (1887–1993), a college dropout who became one of America’s most important twentieth-century students of rhetoric. It is worth repeating:

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.

— The Philosophy of Literary Form (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1941), 110–11.

Why do we quote this passage? Because it is your turn to join the unending conversation.

During the process of reading, and afterward, you will want to listen, think, say to yourself something like this:

During your composition courses at least (and we think during your entire life), you will be reading or listening and will sometimes want to put in your oar — you will sometimes want to respond in writing, for example in the form of a Letter to the Editor or in a memo at your place of employment. In the course of your response you almost surely will have to summarize the idea or ideas you are responding to, so that your readers will understand the context of your remarks. These ideas may not come from a single source; you may be responding to several sources. For instance, you may be responding to a report and also to some comments that the report evoked. In any case, you will state these ideas briefly and fairly and will then set forth your thoughtful responses, thereby giving the reader a statement that you hope represents an advance in the argument, even if only a tiny one. That is, you will synthesize sources, combining existing material into something new, drawing nourishment from what has already been said (giving credit, of course), and converting it into something new — a view that you think is worth considering.

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Let’s pause for a moment and consider this word synthesis. You probably are familiar with photosynthesis, the chemical process in green plants that produces carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Synthesis, again, combines pre-existing elements and produces something new. In our use of the word synthesis, even a view that you utterly reject becomes a part of your new creation because it helped to stimulate you to formulate your view; without the idea that you reject, you might not have developed the view that you now hold. Consider the words of Francis Bacon, Shakespeare’s contemporary:

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Your instructor will expect you to digest your sources — this doesn’t mean you need to accept them but only that you need to read them thoughtfully — and that, so to speak, you make them your own thoughts by refining them. Your readers will expect you to tell them what you make out of your sources, which means that you will go beyond writing a summary and will synthesize the material into your own contribution. Your view is what is wanted, and readers expect this view to be thoughtful — not mere summary and not mere tweeting.

THE USE AND ABUSE OF QUOTATIONS

When is it necessary, or appropriate, to quote? Sometimes, the reader must see the exact words of your source; the gist won’t do. If you are arguing that Z’s definition of rights is too inclusive, your readers have to know exactly how Z defined rights. Your brief summary of the definition may be unfair to Z; in fact, you want to convince your readers that you’re being fair, and so you quote Z’s definition, word for word. Moreover, if the passage is only a sentence or two long, or even if it runs to a paragraph, it may be so compactly stated that it defies summary. And to attempt to paraphrase it — substituting natural for inalienable, and so forth — saves no space and only introduces imprecision. There is nothing to do but to quote it, word for word.

Second, you may want to quote a passage that could be summarized but that is so effectively stated that you want the readers to have the pleasure of reading the original. Of course, readers won’t give you credit for writing these words, but they will appreciate your taste and your effort to make especially pleasant the business of reading your paper.

In short, use (but don’t overuse) quotations. Speaking roughly, quotations

Most of your paper should set forth your ideas, not other people’s ideas.

HOW TO QUOTE

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Long and Short Quotations Long quotations (more than four lines of typed prose or three or more lines of poetry) are set off from the text. To set off material, start on a new line, indent one-half inch from the left margin, and type the quotation double-spaced. Do not enclose quotations within quotation marks if you are setting them off.

Short quotations are treated differently. They are embedded within the text; they are enclosed within quotation marks, but otherwise they do not stand out.

All quotations, whether set off or embedded, must be exact. If you omit any words, you must indicate the ellipsis by substituting three spaced periods for the omission; if you insert any words or punctuation, you must indicate the addition by enclosing it within square brackets, not to be confused with parentheses.

Leading into a Quotation Now for a less mechanical matter: the way in which a quotation is introduced. To say that it is “introduced” implies that one leads into it, though on rare occasions a quotation appears without an introduction, perhaps immediately after the title. Normally one leads into a quotation by giving any one or more of the following (warning: using them all at once can get unwieldy and produce awkward sentences):

For example:

William James provides a clear answer to Huxley when he says that “. . .”

Psychologist William James provides a clear answer to Huxley when he says that “. . .”

In The Will to Believe (1897), psychologist William James provides a clear answer to Huxley when he says that “. . .”

Any of these work, especially because William James is quite well known. When you’re quoting from a lesser-known author, it becomes more important to identify his or her expertise and perhaps the source, as in “Biographer Theodora Bosanquet, author of Henry James at Work (1982), subtly criticized Huxley’s vague ideas on religion by writing ‘. . .’.”

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Note that in all of the above samples, the writer uses the lead-in to signal to readers the general tone of the quotation to follow. The writer uses “a clear answer” to signal that what’s coming is, in fact, clear. The writer uses “subtly criticized” and “vague” to indicate that the following words by Bosanquet will be critical and will point out a shortcoming in Huxley’s ideas. In this way, the writer anticipates and controls the meaning of the quotation for the reader. If the writer believed otherwise, the lead-ins might have run thus:

William James attempts to answer Huxley, but his response does not really meet the difficulty Huxley calls attention to. James writes, “. . .”

or thus:

Biographer Theodora Bosanquet, author of Henry James at Work (1982), unjustly criticized Huxley’s complex notion of religion by writing “. . .”

In this last example, clearly the words “unjustly criticized” imply that the essayist wants the reader to interpret the quotation as an unjust criticism. Similarly, Huxley’s idea is presented as “complex,” not vague.

Signal Phrases Think of your writing as a conversation between you and your sources. As in conversation, you want to be able to move smoothly between different, sometimes contrary, points of view. You also want to be able to set your thoughts apart from those of your sources. Signal phrases make it easy for readers to know where your information came from and why it’s trustworthy by pointing to key facts about the source:

According to psychologist Stephen Ceci . . .

A report published by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes . . .

Feminist philosopher Sandra Harding argues . . .

To avoid repetitiveness, vary your sentence structure:

. . . claims Stephen Ceci.

. . . according to a report published by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics.

Some useful verbs to introduce sources include the following:

Note that papers written using MLA style refer to sources in the present tense (acknowledge, argue, believe). Papers written in APA style use the past tense (acknowledged, argued, believed).

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Leading Out of a Quotation You might think of providing quotations as a three-stage process that includes the lead-in, the quotation itself, and the lead-out. The lead-out gives you a chance to interpret the quoted material, further controlling the intended meaning, telling the reader what is most important. In the lead-out, you have a chance to reflect upon the quotation and to shift back toward your own ideas and analysis. Consider this three-stage process applied in the following two ways:

In his first book, A World Restored (1954), future Secretary of Defense Henry Kissinger wrote the famous axiom “History is the memory of states.” It is the collective story of an entire people, displayed in public museums and libraries, taught in schools, and passed on from generation to generation.

In his first book, A World Restored (1954), Nixon’s former Secretary of Defense Henry Kissinger wrote glibly, “History is the memory of states.” By asserting that history is largely the product of self-interested propaganda, Kissinger’s words suggest that the past is maintained and controlled by whatever groups happen to hold power.

Note the three-step process, and note especially how the two examples convey different meanings of Kissinger’s famous phrase. In the lead-in to the first sample, Kissinger’s “future” role suggests hope. It signals a figure whose influence is growing. By using famous and axiom, the author presents the quotation as “true” or even timeless. In the lead-out, the role of the state in preserving history is optimistic and idealistic.

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In the second sample, “former” is used in the lead-in, suggesting Kissinger’s later association with the ousted president. Readers are told that Kissinger “wrote glibly” even before they are told what he wrote, so readers may tend to read the quoted words that way. In the lead-out, the state becomes a more nefarious source of history-keeping, one not interested in accommodating marginal voices or alternative perspectives, or remembering events inconvenient to its authority or righteousness.

Again, we hope you can see in these examples how the three-step process facilitates a writer’s control over the meanings of quotations. Returning to our earlier example, if after reading something by Huxley the writer had merely stated that “William James says . . . ,” readers wouldn’t know whether they were getting confirmation, refutation, or something else. The essayist would have put a needless burden on the readers. Generally speaking, the more difficult the quotation, the more important is the introductory or explanatory lead-in, but even the simplest quotation profits from some sort of brief lead-in, such as “James reaffirms this point when he says. . . .”