Seek a Fuller Understanding of Your Subject
If you’ve ever talked with people who don’t know what they’re talking about but nonetheless are certain of their opinions, you’ll recognize the dangers of applying an interpretive framework before you thoroughly understand your subject. To enhance your understanding of your subject, use division and classification. Division allows you to identify the elements that make up a subject. Classification allows you to explore a subject in relation to other subjects and to consider the similarities, differences, and relationships among its elements.
Division. Division breaks a subject into its parts and considers what each contributes to the whole. A financial analyst, for example, might examine the various groups within a company to understand what each group does and how it contributes to the overall value of the company. Similarly, a literary critic might consider how each scene in a play relates to other scenes and how it contributes to the play’s major theme.
As you use division to examine a subject, keep in mind the following guidelines:
- Pick a focus. Division can take place on many levels. Just as you can divide numbers in different ways (100, for example, can be seen as ten 10s, five 20s, four 25s, and so on), you can divide subjects differently. A government agency, for instance, might be considered in terms of its responsibilities, its departments, or its employees. Trying to understand all of these aspects at once, however, would be difficult and unproductive. Use your analytical question as a guide to determine how best to divide your subject.
- Examine the parts. Most subjects can be thought of as a system of interrelated parts. As you divide your subject, determine what role each part plays, individually and in relation to other parts.
- Assess contributions to the whole. As you divide a subject, be sure to consider the contributions that each part makes to the larger whole. In some cases, you’ll find that a part is essential. In other cases, you’ll find that it makes little or no contribution to the whole.
Even though you can divide and reassemble a subject in a variety of ways, always take into account your purpose and your readers’ needs, interests, and expectations. It might be easier to focus on a government agency’s departments than on its functions, but if your question focuses on how the agency works or what it does, you’ll be more successful if you examine its functions.
Classification. Classification places your subject — or each part of your subject — into a category. By categorizing a subject or its parts, you can discover how and to what extent your subject or a part of your subject is similar to others in the same category and how it differs from those in other categories. Identifying those similarities and differences, in turn, allows you to consider the subject, or its parts, in relation to the other items in your categories. As you use classification to gain a better understanding of your subject, consider the following guidelines:
- Choose a classification scheme. The categories you work with might be established already, or you might create them specifically to support your analysis. For example, if you are analyzing state representatives, you might place them into standard categories: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, and so on. Or you might create categories especially for your analysis, such as who voted for and against particular types of legislation.
- Look at both similarities and differences. When you place an item in a category, you decide that it is more similar to the other items in the category than to those in other categories. However, even though the items in a broad category will share many similarities, they will also differ in important ways. Botanists, for example, have developed a complex system of categories and subcategories to help them understand general types of plants (such as algae, roses, and corn) as well as to consider subtle differences among similar plants (such as corn bred for animal feed, for human consumption, and for biofuels).
- Justify your choices. Your decisions about what to place in a given category will be based on your definition of the category, if you’ve created it yourself, or your understanding of categories that have been established by someone else. In most cases, you’ll need to explain why a particular category is the best fit for your subject. If you wanted readers to accept your classification of Walmart as a mom-and-pop retailer, for instance, you would have to explain that your category is defined by origin (not current size) and then inform readers that the chain started as a single discount store in Arkansas.
Classification and division are often used in combination, particularly when you want to consider similarities and differences among different parts of your subject. For example, if you are examining a complex organization, you might use division to analyze each department; in addition, you might use classification so that you can analyze groups of departments that have similar functions, such as customer service and technical support, and contrast those departments with departments in other categories, such as sales, marketing, and research and development.