Develop your perspective on the subject.

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The following activities will help you deepen your analysis and think of ways to help your readers gain a better understanding of your subject’s cultural significance. Complete them in any order that seems helpful to you, and try using the sentence strategies to come up with ideas.

Ways In

HOW CAN I DEVELOP A PERSPECTIVE FOR MY PROFILE?

Explore your perspective

Write for five minutes exploring your perspective on the subject—what about the subject seems important and meaningful?

If you are focusing on a place, ask yourself what you find interesting about its culture: What rituals or habits are practiced there? Who visits it? What is its function in the community?

  • Without [name of place], [life/business/academics] would be different in [name of community or larger place], according to [interview subject]: [type of people] would/ would no longer because .

    If you are focusing on an activity, consider how it has changed over time, for good or ill; how outsiders are initiated into the activity; who benefits from it; and what its value is for the community.

  • Although [activity] might seem , it’s important to because , says [interviewee]. , in particular, benefit from it in the following ways: .
  • [Activity] today is [somewhat/very] different from [activity] [in the past/long ago/just a few years ago]: Instead of , a change brought on by , those interested in participating are in for .

    If you are focusing on a person or group, ask yourself what sense of identity they have; what customs and ways of communicating they have; what their values and attitudes are; what they think about social hierarchies or gender differences; and how they see their role in the community.

  • Despite common assumptions that , [subject] thinks of [himself/herself] as , an identity that comes across [in/through] .
  • [She/he] cares less about than about , to the point of .

Define your purpose for your readers

Write for five minutes exploring what you want your readers to learn about the subject. Use these sentence strategies to help you clarify your thinking:

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  • In addition to my teacher and classmates, I envision my ideal readers as .
  • They probably know about my subject and have these opinions: .
  • They would be most surprised to learn and most interested in the following facets of the subject: .
  • I can help change their opinions of the subject by and get them to think about the subject’s social and cultural significance by .
  • What I’ve learned about the subject implies about our shared values and concerns, and I can help readers understand this by .

Consider your main point

Review what you have written, and add a couple of sentences summarizing the main idea you want readers to take away from your profile. Readers don’t expect a profile to have an explicit thesis statement, as they do an argumentative essay, but the descriptive details and other information need to work together to convey the main idea.

Clarify the dominant impression

Although you need to create a dominant impression, readers appreciate profiles that reveal the richness and complexity of a subject. Even as Cable shows that the Goodbody Mortuary is guided by commercialism, he also gets readers to think about cultural attitudes toward death, perhaps exemplified in his own complex feelings. To create a dominant impression, try reviewing your notes and write-ups, highlighting in one color the descriptive language that supports the dominant impression you want your essay to create. Then highlight in a second color any descriptions that seem to create a different impression. Finally, write for a few minutes exploring how these different impressions relate to one another. Consider whether they reveal complexity in the subject or ambivalence in your perspective that could be developed further in your essay. You might start with one of the following sentence strategies and elaborate from there.

  • Although [subject] clearly seemed , I couldn’t [shake the feeling that/ignore/stop thinking about] .
  • Although [subject] [tries to/pretends to/has made progress toward] , [overall/for the most part/primarily] [he/she/it] .

Present the information

Review the notes from your interviews and observations, noting which information you should include in your draft and how you might present it. Consider including the following:

  • Definitions of key terms
  • Comparisons or contrasts that make information clearer or more memorable
  • Lists or categories that organize information
  • Ways to show processes or causes and effects vividly
  • Quotes that reveal the character of the speaker as well as something about the subject