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A Guide to Perspective Analysis

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A Guide to Perspective Analysis A Guide to Perspective Analysis v. 1.0 This is the book A Guide to Perspective Analysis (v. 1.0). This book is licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/ 3.0/) license. See the license for more details, but that basically means you can share this book as long as you credit the author (but see below), don't make money from it, and do make it available to everyone else under the same terms. This book was accessible as of December 29, 2012, and it was downloaded then by Andy Schmitz (http://lardbucket.org) in an effort to preserve the availability of this book. Normally, the author and publisher would be credited here. However, the publisher has asked for the customary Creative Commons attribution to the original publisher, authors, title, and book URI to be removed. Additionally, per the publisher's request, their name has been removed in some passages. More information is available on this project's attribution page (http://2012books.lardbucket.org/attribution.html?utm_source=header). For more information on the source of this book, or why it is available for free, please see the project's home page (http://2012books.lardbucket.org/). You can browse or download additional books there. ii Table of Contents About the Author .................................................................................................................. 1 Acknowledgments................................................................................................................. 2 Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis.................................................... 3 Chapter 1: Analysis for Multiple Perspectives................................................................ 6 The Nature of Analysis .................................................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 2: Setting the Stage for Writing ....................................................................... 14 Considering your own subjectivity ............................................................................................................ 15 Consulting Other Sources............................................................................................................................ 20 An Overview of the Writing Process .......................................................................................................... 27 Chapter 3: Developing Assertions: From a Close Reading of Examples .................. 31 A Close Reading of the Details .................................................................................................................... 32 From Interpretations to Assertions ........................................................................................................... 46 Chapter 4: Explanations and Significance: Developing Your Analysis.................... 53 Explaining Your Perspective....................................................................................................................... 54 Considering the Broader Significance ....................................................................................................... 66 Chapter 5: The Analytical Essay: Expressing Your Points of View........................... 76 Focusing, Developing, and Synthesizing ................................................................................................... 77 Creating an Effective Style.......................................................................................................................... 86 Appendix: Frequently Asked Questions About Analysis........................................... 100 iii About the Author Randall Fallows is a lecturer and writing two coordinator for the Department of Writing Programs at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds an M.A in Rhetoric and Composition from San Diego State University and a Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of California, San Diego. He has published articles on composition theory, popular culture, literature and philosophy in The Journal of Popular Culture, Rhetoric Review, The Journal of Popular Film and Television, American Drama, Americana, and contributed to the books Conversation: Theory and Practice, Taking South Park Seriously, and Americana: Readings in American Culture. Since 1982, he has been teaching courses in writing, composition pedagogy, literature, and American Culture at SDSU, UCSD, and UCLA. He also spent two years teaching at ELTE University in Budapest, Hungary. When he’s not teaching or writing articles, he participates in both standup and improvisational comedy at various venues throughout Los Angeles, and likes to spend his summer traveling with his wife, Tamar Christensen. 1 Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to extend a special thanks to all my friends at Unnamed Publisher for their faith, guidance, and support. Michael Boezi for taking a chance on this book and offering several helpful suggestions along the way, Pam Hersperger for guiding the development and for providing direction along with many kind words of support, and Lori Cerreto for carefully editing the text and helping me to clarify the main ideas. I couldn’t have finished the book without all of your help. A big thanks to Jerry Farber for explaining and demonstrating the pedagogical ideals at the heart of this text and for reading earlier drafts and to Bill Covino for introducing me to rhetoric and composition pedagogy. I would also like to thank my colleagues who have read various drafts of this book and provided me with excellent feedback, especially Greg Rubinson, Teddi Chichester, Peggy Davis, and Bruce Beiderwell. Similarly, I would like to thank all of my students who have been using this book through its various stages of development. I deeply appreciate all of your enthusiastic comments, and, even more, the improvement you’ve made to your writing as a result of applying the lessons in this book. I would also like to thank my friends and family who have helped me both directly and indirectly. Jen Parker, Liz Dickson, Lars Kenseth, Stan Wells, Dan Prosek, and all of my friends at the Empty Stage for helping me to keep a comic perspective. My parents, Dave and Rachael Lehmberg, for encouraging me throughout the writing of this book and for giving me confidence and loving guidance throughout my life. And most of all I would like to thank my wife, Tamar Christensen, for not only providing me with continued faith and support but also for helping me to develop and consider every single idea in this text. 2 Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis Preface for Teachers Whenever I ask my students to analyze anything, I am usually met with a collective groan. To them, the implied definition of an academic analysis is making something that could be enlightening and fun in a non-scholastic context seem irrelevant and dull. “Why do we have to analyze it? Why can’t we just enjoy it?” the students think, mutter, and sometimes ask outright. What I find strange is that I know that they often talk to each other about many subjects—film, politics, sports—in a highly analytical manner. And they seem to enjoy doing so. I believe the main reason students often dislike analyzing anything in school is because of the dominance of what James A. Berlin and others have labeled “current traditional rhetoric,” an approach that has always “denied the role of writer, reader and language in arriving at meaning” and places truth “in the external world, existing prior to the individual’s perception of it.” By its very nature this approach keeps students from finding their own meaning in the composing process, making analysis seem like an academic game of guesswork to find the answer that the teacher has determined to be correct. Despite the fact that this approach seems naïve in light of twenty-first century epistemology, where even the hard sciences recognize the role the observer plays in the definition of the subject, it continues to dominate composition classrooms because of its pedagogical efficiency. It’s simply much easier to tell students to come up with the “right” way to look at a given subject than to help them individually to form their own perspectives. In addition, many teachers find that when students have the freedom to write what they think, the results are often disappointing. Instead of thoughtful, unique analyses, they get surface level meanings that retreat to easier modes of writing: summaries, oratories, and tangents. But this is understandable. How can we expect students to write an original analysis, when few of them have ever had the opportunity to do so? I wrote this book to help students with this difficult task, to give them a better understanding of how to discover, develop, and revise an analytical essay. The first two chapters focus on the nature of an analysis and what’s involved in writing an analytical essay. First I show that analysis consists of a balance of assertions (statements which present their viewpoints or launch an exploration of their concerns), examples (specific passages, scenes, or events which inspire these 3 Exploring Perspectives: A Concise Guide to Analysis views), explanations (statements that reveal how the examples support the assertions), and significance (statements which reveal the importance of their study to personal and/or cultural issues). After showing why each feature should be present throughout an essay, I reveal how
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