The Cultural Studies Essay Writing Guide

a handbook for the foreign learner of English

by Kit Kelen

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Copyright page

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The purpose of this guide is to provide useful advice for the writing of an essay or a thesis in the broad area ofcultural studies, a field which includes literature, comparative studies and the criticism of popular culture. Broadly speaking, two kinds of essay are envisaged, the essay that deals with cultural processes and their comparison (e.g. Chinese versus Western weddings or funeralsor houses or ideas) and the essay which deals directly and specifically with texts, and often also their comparison across cultures.

The materials in this guide should be useful for the preparation of lectures or conference papers in the humanities, and they should as well be generally helpful forthose who need to develop theories and arguments for the purpose of cultural critique.

Contents:

1. Text and context2. Writing: imaginative and critical3. Stages in the writing process4. The structure of an essay5. What an essay has to be, what an essay has to do6. Originality and attribution7. Opinion, judgement and point of view8. Argument9. Traps and flaws10. Reading to write

Appendices:Glossary of terms in argumentGlossary of literary termsGlossary of tropes or figures of speechMythology

Essay marking symbols

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The unexamined life is not worth living.– Socrates

Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world; the point however is to change it. – Karl Marx’s 11th Feuerbach thesis

When something seems the ‘most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up. – Berthold Brecht

The activities of thought have a vocation: that of bearing witness to differends.

– Jean-François Lyotard

To speak is to fall into tautology.– Jorge Luis Borges

The simpler of two theories, all other things being equal, is preferable.

– William of Occam (Occam’s razor)

Culture is…the disinterested study…of the ideal of human perfection, as it emerges through all the voices of human experience…the best that is thought and known in the world.

– Matthew Arnold

The heart has its reasons of which reason can know nothing.

– Pascale

Consider the ant.– Proverbs, 6:6

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1text and context

The study of film and literature, of music, of song, ofadvertising and of philosophy, the study of words and the study of ideas: each of these is a part of the study of culture. The purpose of reading literature is to understand culture. Culture is, broadly speaking, the context of literature. Culture is also the context of thought in any given society. So to understand how people think, and why people think what they think, one needs to understand their culture. To understand a culture one reads its texts.

Text used to mean only the written word, but today the spoken word is also acknowledged as being of great value to the student of culture. The words of everyday casual conversation are of great importance for what they reveal ofattitudes and assumptions characteristic of a particular culture or of a particular segment in a society. Graphs and charts and the populations they reveal, we may likewise regard, if metaphorically, as texts. It is possible to regard a city itself, even a nation, as a kind of writing: the inscription a culture makes over the landscape it occupies. To understand a culture one reads its texts. All human phenomena can, in this way, be regarded as texts and/or as con-texts.

Text and context are involved in each other in a kind ofcircle. You can’t really understand a text without understanding where it comes from, i.e. its context. You can’t really understand a context, a culture, without knowing some of its texts. (Context, from the Latin, here means what’s with the text.) Text in this sense entails (or includes) very broadly all of the instances of language or culture which can be apprehended (caught) and discussed. Text includes casual conversation, the weather report, commentary on the radio, the stock market figures. In literature classes we’re especially interested in a

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particular variety of text: the canonic literary variety. Increative writing classes we’re interested in the imaginativetexts you yourself can produce. These two types of text are closely related because you can often use canonic literary texts as models for your own writing. Please note that in creative and in critical or theoretical writing, using a model is not the same as plagiarising or stealing. All literary works have antecedents (texts which come before them and make them possible) so – whether a particular author is aware of it or not – it’s actually impossible not to have models for writing.

The difficulty of understanding texts (and contexts) has to do with the fact that writing and interpretation are endless processes. Stories come from other stories. As long as there are people in the world, people will keep telling their stories. Stories change with every new telling and they change according to the context in which they are told.Language itself is miraculous in that it allows infinite possibilities from finite resources: a finite number of words and rules allows everything that can be thought and everything that can be said in any given language. Humanitydoesn’t stop talking and writing and explaining itself and the world, to itself and to the world. And yet the world is never fully explained. No text in particular is ever fully explained. No single word is ever completely understood. To understand word and text and world would require infinite knowledge of texts and words. Sadly (or happily?) we humans – students and teachers – have very limited knowledge. To bean effective scholar of culture and literature one needs therefore to wisely deploy one’s most precious resource: time.

One needs as well to deploy one’s time and energy in a balanced way. Some of the important balances to manage as a student of culture are as follows:

- the one already mentioned between text and context. If you don’t know enough of the context a particular text originates from then you won’t be able to understand

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how that text could be understood in its own time and place, or how it began its journey in meaning. Taking context into account gives an essay or argument relevance. Giving emphasis to particular texts allows the reader to understand a context in depth.

- the balance between theory and observation (between theoretical and empirical or experiential research). Theoretical research relies on ideas and on logic in order to advance arguments. Empirical research relies on the observation of phenomena, in our case texts and contexts. Because texts are observable objects and because they are full of ideas, it is important not to lean too far, either from theory or from observation. Hypotheses about text or context have to be supported or refuted with reference to evidence from texts. How to apply theory – your and other people’s – to the textyou’re investigating? A searchlight is a useful metaphor. Think of theory as the light you’re shining on the text or texts under investigation.

- the balance between form and content. Texts have meaning and they have a shape or structure as well. Writing obeys rules and patterns, e.g. the rules or patterns of grammar or the structure of a particular genre. Studies which ignore the fact that texts make meaning risk making no meaning themselves. They risk having no relevance. Essays which ignore the structuresthey study risk missing the patterns of which they should be informing their readers. It’s important to recognise that form and content are always fused (i.e. inseparable) in the text; it’s only by abstracting themfrom each other they can be studied separately.

- closely allied to the balances between form and contentand theory and observation, is that between subject andmethod. The relationship here is simply that you are studying something (i.e. a subject) and that you use particular methods in order to do it (for instance the methods of a particular discipline, e.g. historical methods or socio-linguistic methods). A good essay or argument knows what it’s studying (i.e. understands the

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nature of its subject) and it knows how it’s studying what it’s studying (i.e. it understands the methods it is using).

- perhaps most important of all is an understanding of the difference between (and the balance between) imaginative (or creative) and critical texts. Culture consists of both types of text; the distinction and therelationship between them are dealt with in the next chapter.

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2 writing: imaginative and critical

In the study of literature there are two types of text to read and to write: the imaginative or creative text and the critical or theoretical text.

Most of the canon of famous literature is made up of the first type of writing. It includes the major genres of creative literature: poetry, drama and fiction (the short story and the novel). It includes imaginative works that have been written and are accepted as famous, it includes works that ought to have been read widely, but were instead forgotten, and it includes works still in progress, works being written today. It includes for instance your own creative efforts, inspired probably as many in the past havebeen, by the imaginative work of those who went before you. The imaginative kind of text is primary to the study of culture, and especially literature, and so the imaginative text is often the source text, which the essay on culture or literature addresses.

The literature essay is usually about the poem or the play or the story, or about these in the plural or in some combination. It’s about their context, what they mean and how they mean what they mean. The literature essay is a goodrepresentative of the other type of text, the critical or theoretical kind. The critical or theoretical text is usually a text about an imaginative text and/or about its context/s. Traditionally that’s the kind of text a student of literature has had to be able to produce. The university has a special responsibility for that kind of writing, because the university is the one place in the world where the essay is most at home.

The traditional process in the study of English literature (since the nineteenth century) is to read the imaginative work of others – usually canonic works, the best

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available – and then to write about these. The student is helped in that process by reading what other critics or theorists have also written about those works. These secondary or critical sources help the student to understand the sometimes difficult texts s/he is approaching. So the student’s own critical or theoretical writing – usually in the form of an essay (or a thesis or dissertation) usually needs to demonstrate an understanding of:

- the original text and- what knowledgeable authors (critics and

theorists) have written about the text. The student’s writing should also demonstrate new insights, i.e. originality. Those new insights should show an understanding both of the text discussed (i.e. the imaginative literary or original text) and also of critical writing about that text.

That traditional kind of writing demanded of its literature students isn’t useful just for dealing with literature. It’s useful across a wide range of disciplines. There are similar demands made for academic writing in English in every part of the university, because in every subject you need to be able to frame arguments and weigh up evidence. You need to give reasons why you agree with or disagree with other people’s arguments. You need to be able to think up your own ideas and test them against the available facts. So if you can write a good essay on a Shakespeare play you can probably write a good essay about global politics or attitudes to euthanasia or the prospects of an endangered species. There are differences in the styles of argument in each of these disciplines but similar kinds of writing skill are required. In each case the essayistneeds to support or refute arguments previously made. In each case evidence has to be used to support the argument in the essay.

Every kind of cultural object and process is open to investigation. And so English studies overlap particularly

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with a related social science discipline, linguistics, but also with anthropology and with philosophy, with the literatures of other languages and with a range of related types of enquiry. The method of the critical essay is usefulfor many disciplines. And the methods of literary enquiry apply to many objects and fields. If you want to study popular songs or folk tales or traditional rituals, if you want to compare these across cultures, then the literature essay is the model for your enquiry.

There’s no reason why the literature essay needs to be an end in itself; the best purpose in reading literature is to learn how to make it. Seen this way, reading and writing,imaginative and critical literature, are parts of an ongoingcycle in cultural production and reception: they’re stages in the one process. There are some great benefits to this kind of reading and writing cycle. By going to the trouble of making a story oneself one comes to a far deeper understanding of what it takes to make a story than one could have as a mere observer of literature.

Imaginative writing? There’s a dangerous tendency to imagine that imaginative writing is inspired and that it can’t be learned or acquired as a skill. According to that kind of thinking, you’ve got it or you don’t. Coupled with this is the attitude that the world’s literature is a fixed and finite body of work to which no one can add. According to this kind of thinking, everyone can write critically but very few people can write creatively and most of them are dead. It’s easy to see this is nonsense and it’s easy to sayso, but unfortunately many people behave as if it were true.In fact it’s just as hard to write well critically as it is to write well creatively. Many of the demands of critical writing apply in creative writing, and vice versa. All good writing is rigorous and well structured, the result of deep and careful thought. Critical writing requires imagination; without imagination it cannot hope to be original and originality is one of the key criteria for establishing the quality of any kind of writing. All good writing is creative

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in the sense that is original and that it exercises the imagination. The process of every kind of writing is learnedand practised. It’s never just a question of genius or inspiration. As the old saying goes, it’s 1% inspiration and99% perspiration. Waiting for inspiration is the way to get writer’s block.

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Successful critical writing in the form of the essay iswell structured and it demonstrates the writer’s originality(thus requiring her imagination). It deals with the primary texts of a culture – for instance imaginative literature – and it considers the interpretations and opinions of others about those texts and about the context/s from which those texts arose. Critical writing is original because it tells the reader something about those texts, something the readerdid not already know.

The two types of texts we’ve described so far – the creative and the critical – overlap in various ways. Traditionally, the literature essay reads one kind of text (the creative) in order to write the other (the critical). That cycle of reading and writing – of reading in order to write – corresponds to another cycle of apparently opposed motions: analysis and synthesis.

Put simply, analysis means taking someone’s argument ortext apart in order to understand it, in order to understandhow the text works, in order to show others how to understand it and how it works. Synthesis – the opposite motion – means putting your own text or argument together from the materials available to you.

To write critically about the products and processes ofa culture involves both analysis and synthesis. You need to be able to show the parts of the object you’re studying. Youneed to be able to construct – or to make – your own argument, your own text.

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The analysis of cultural phenomena such as texts involves interpretation. Interpretation is the act of understand, or better, the act of coming to a particular understanding of a text. Interpretation answers two fundamental questions: What does the text mean and how does it mean what it means? Texts worth studying are open to interpretation,i.e. there are different ways of understanding them. In youressay you should present evidence in order to argue for yourinterpretation of the text. No particular interpretation exhausts the possibilities of the text it addresses. Interpretation is endless and so is the cycle of reading andwriting. These processes enable each other. In order to write we need to read. The point of reading is that you yourself might have something worthwhile to say.

The practice of synthesis, which leads to the production of an argument or an essay, depends on the fundamental formsof argument, including hypothesis and theory. These are discussed in chapter 8 below. It’s through the process of synthesis – or putting an argument together – the essayist is able to create an original and critical text worth reading.

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The success of the essay depends not only on exercisingthe imagination far enough to be original, it also depends on the effectiveness of the critique it attempts. Critique, critical, criticism: how are these words related? A critiqueis what successful critical writing achieves. Criticism in literature refers to the assessment of literary or imaginative works. But what does it mean to write critically? Because there’s some confusion with related words, it’s probably best to say first what critique and/or critical writing are not. Writing critically does not mean criticising everything and everyone. It doesn’t imply a negative attitude or that one is always trying to find fault. (That’s what we usually mean when we say that someone

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is being ‘too critical’.) It shouldn’t imply that anyone’s likely to die (as ‘critical’ does in a hospital). On the other hand critical writing should be serious and it should tell the reader important things, things that are worth reading.

Critique involves the assessment or examination of a text or question or a cultural phenomenon; it implies a review or a ‘looking again’ at the object in question, whether that object is a few lines of a poem or the whole ofa civilisation.

Being original and being critical coincide in a

determination not to simply agree with what everyone else has said before about a book or a culture, an event or a movement. This is not as easy as it sounds. Being critical doesn’t mean just saying something different so that you cansay you said something different; it doesn’t mean just beingnegative for the sake of being negative. Criticism needs to be well argued and based on solid evidence. (For more on this see chapters 8 and 9). It’s not easy to disagree with the wise things one reads in books or which one’s teacher has taught. It’s not easy and it needs to be done with care;the people you have to disagree with in order to be originalvery often know much more than you do about whatever it is you’re studying. It’s also true that in the real world some of the experts think they’re very important and really don’tlike to hear others disagreeing with them. Nevertheless, theprinciple remains that critical thought advances because theideas that were previously accepted are now being challenged, questioned, doubted.

As an essayist you should regard these as your three most fundamental instructions: Challenge! Question! Doubt!

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Critique is the opposite of dogma, it’s the opposite of unanalysed assumption. Critique is a refusal of the

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refusal to think, it’s a refusal to accept that everything is obvious or already understood, or that there is nothing further to think or that there is nothing to be done.

Critical thinking and writing implies that there are things about the world that need to be better understood, and that there are things in the world that need changing. Critical thinking assumes that is possible and worthwhile tochange the world, for instance to make it fairer, better, more efficient or more human, more open, less dangerous. Thepurpose of writing critically is then to show the reader howthings might be better and/or to show the reader how the world really is, so that s/he herself can work out how to improve things.

In order to write and to think critically one needs to adopt appropriate techniques, in order to question, to challenge and to doubt in the appropriate way, in order thatis to successfully question and challenge and doubt: to do these things well and to have an effect by doing them. Some of the most fundamental methods for critical thinking and writing are to problematise, to contextualise and to historicise. These three procedures are closely related but let’s look at them briefly one by one:

To problematise means to see beyond common sense and assumptions in order to ask the questions that would help usto better understand a text or a cultural phenomenon. Problematising often means finding the right set of questions to ask, it means seeing the right questions where others could see no questions at all.

To contextualise means to study, to understand and to be able to explain the situation from which a text arises, and also the situation in which a text is read or received. Reading out of context means failing to take into account the real situation from which the text arose. It’s important to remember that there are contexts inside as well as outside of texts. Just as a civilisation can be considered to be a text on a large scale, so novels and poems are full of

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scenes and situations and these serve as the context in which the characters in the story act. When we speak or write about the actions of those characters we need to understand their context. In the broadest sense, context is what motivates text.

To historicise means to contextualise in a specific way, that is with specific reference to the historical changes that have taken place between the time of reading and the time of writing. It’s fairly clear that when we readShakespeare in the third millennium we’re reading in a very different context from that in which Shakespeare wrote. If you fail to historicise it means that you are reading anachronistically, in other words you’re reading the situation in the text you’re studying as if it were the same as your own. It’s actually very difficult to avoid this problem. That’s because we’re so familiar with our own lives and our own situations that sometimes it’s difficult to imagine, forinstance a world without electricity or motor cars. It’s important however to be able to imagine how the world was before these things, because the vast bulk of human existence was lived without cars or electric light. A knowledge of canonic literature helps us to achieve a historical consciousness of our own situation; in other words, it helps us to understand how our own world became possible. But to read the texts of other times well we need to make the effort to historicise.

Beyond these very general means of questioning and challenging the knowledge we receive when we read, it is necessary to use the methods of specific disciplines. In thecase of cultural criticism the most obvious of those methodsare those of

- literary criticism- history- the language sciences (linguistics) and related

disciplines like anthropology- philosophy- social science methods from disciplines like

sociology or psychology

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In fact the methods and the findings of all sorts of disciplines – for instance of the hard sciences – may help to inform the practice of cultural criticism.

Comparative methods are specifically developed for the purposeof studying literatures of different cultures, for comparingthem and for allowing the understanding of one culture and its differences to throw light on another culture and its differences. Interdisciplinary methods involve the combination of techniques from disciplines usually considered separate; e.g. a study of particular texts might involve combining the methods of history and of comparative literature.

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Just as in creative writing you need to know what the rules are in order to know how to break them, so in criticalthinking and writing about any subject, you need to understand the train of thought – the collection of various people’s ideas over time – that has allowed you to reach your understanding of the subject, and that therefore allowsyou to go on and to say something new, something worth reading because it is new.

Which are the right questions, which are the right doubts? Which challenges will be most effective and most worthwhile for any given topic? These are important and difficult questions and before taking them any further it’s probably worthwhile considering what they’re more difficult than, and likewise what they’re easier than. It’s helpful toimagine a hierarchy of intellectual tasks involved in reaching original thought. Here’s a simplified account of what that kind of hierarchy might look like:

One reads and one listens in order to understand what’salready been thought.

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and so that one can…

copy the ideas one would like to quote in the body of anessay or to use for an epigraph

and/or

paraphrase the ideas of other authors one would like toacknowledge in developing one’s own ideas

so that one can…

interpret the writings or theories of others in order tobring the reader a new or better understanding of these. Oneargues for or against the ideas of others, showing how thenew ideas presented differ from those presented by others

before, and sometimes in order to develop one’s own originaltheory.

At the highest level in the intellectual hierarchy, onedevelops one’s own original hypotheses and/or theory, onetests these with evidence from texts or elsewhere, and oneshows how this new theory has surpassed the thinking which

enabled it.

All of these levels of intellectual work are important, all of them are valid; a good essay very often contains all of them. Naturally the two highest levels are the hardest to achieve. It’s important to know which level you’re working at any given time because that knowledge helps you to work out where you have to go next in order to get your job done as a scholar. Think of the structure above as a ladder, a ladder you climb every time you write an essay, every time you begin to build an argument.

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The asking of questions and the casting of doubts: these are the scholar’s most important challenges. It’s in the top two levels of the hierarchy described above – from interpretation to theory – that the writer seriously faces these challenges. It’s in those top two levels of thought the critical function of the essay is realized. Along these lines, we can say that the general purpose of the essay (andof critical thought more generally) is to open the mind, to show a reader connections s/he’d not seen before, to pursue possibilities through their consequences to logical conclusions. To look at the work negatively, the job of the essay is to not close off options, to not decide for once and for all, to not tell the reader what s/he already knows or could easily have guessed for herself.

How to climb the ladder? Step by step of course. But the two biggest steps the student must take are

- from reading to interpretation and from - interpretation to theory

It’s important to realise that these levels overlap in various ways and it’s not the case that one is necessarily cleverer or more important than the other.

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3stages in the writing process

It takes time to think well and it takes time to write well. The two processes are closely connected. Reading, thinking and writing are essential and continuous processes for a serious scholar. Like learning and teaching, they’re part of a cycle. Like interpretation, the process of scholarship is endless and infinite. Knowledge never completes itself.

Serious writing of any kind takes time. It happens in stages. Even when ideas come in a blinding flash, it still takes time for a writer to tidy them up later, before they’re worthy of publication.

Whether you are assigned, choose or create your own topic, you still need to write an original essay. You need to have something worthwhile to say, you need to interest your reader. You need to satisfy your reader by dealing seriously with a topic of sufficient importance and by telling her something she doesn’t already know about it. Youneed to have an argument.

In the case of an essay or a thesis, the writing process might look something like this:

choosing or creating a topicthen

brainstorming, by for instancecreating a list of questions to be answered

thentrying to answer those questions

and/or work out the different aspects of the topic your workshould discuss

thenwriting a sketch and then an outline in note form

then

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writing some of the parts of the essay, possibly finding thepassages you would like to quote, the arguments or stories

you would like to paraphrasethen

honing or refining the central argument in order towrite a complete first draft

thenimproving the first draft on the basis of teacher or peer

feedbackthen

working through successive drafts (as many as needed) untilyou have a more or less finished essay

thenpolishing the essay

thenwriting the bibliography

thenwriting an abstract to summarise the argument

In practice however, progress through these stages is less clear and straightforward than the list above would suggest.In practice, some of the stages may be repeated several times, some of them may take much longer than others. Writing an essay or a thesis, writing a book, is often a case of two steps forward, one step back. It’s also true that writing is a highly individual process; after all it’s something you mainly do by yourself. Therefore people develop their own methods of working. Certain stages of the process are more important to certain people than to others.For this reason it’s difficult and somewhat dangerous to generalise too far about the process of writing. It’s easierand safer to describe the structure of an essay (the topic of the next chapter) or the structure or method of an argument (the subject of chapter 8). Nevertheless it is possible to give useful advice on how to structure the process of one’s critical and theoretical writing; it is possible to provide models for the process. There are certain stages in the writing process one shouldn’t skip, and so this chapter will make suggestions about these.

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Now note that in an examination you have to condense all of the thinking and essay writing processes listed aboveinto a very short space of time. This is frustrating and stressful because you can’t necessarily think (or write well) in such a short space of time. But it’s useful becauseit helps you to focus in quick succession on every part of the writing process. So the writing you do in the exam is good practice even if you can’t do justice to the brilliant ideas you have under exam conditions. The value of exams is in the fact that thinking and writing quickly are valuable skills. Often one does come up with great ideas when one is under pressure.

Having to write a thesis puts you in just the opposite position. You have a year or perhaps several years in which to pass through all of the thinking and writing processes necessary to get your thesis written. This sounds very relaxing but most people find at least parts of the process as stressful as an exam. In an exam you can be forgiven for not dealing thoroughly or well with your subject, or for notbeing very original. When you write a thesis you don’t have the excuse that you had to be in a hurry. The longer you have to write, the better the job you should be able to do.

Let’s look now at some of the stages in the writing process that should apply in the case of an essay you are writing for an end of term assignment. (Most of this advice should be useful for thesis writing as well.) At each stage we’ll consider what role reading should play in the researchprocess. Please note that the stages in the writing process described below assume that you will be able to combine two types of technology while you work (old and new): book and pen and paper, screen and keys and internet browsing.

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Brainstorming

We’ll assume at this point that you’ve already chosen or created or been given a topic or a question for your essay. Now you need to get started on the work. You need to find a way to start, a way into the work.

Getting started at researching anything is hard and theless material you have to begin with, the more difficult it seems. That’s why brainstorming is important. It’s a way of giving you different angles on the subject/topic. It’s a wayof discovering the possibilities among which you can choose to find your way.

You can do your brainstorming with pen and paper, you

can do your brainstorming on the computer screen, you can doboth. You can combine the two by, for instance, making noteson paper, then printing those notes out and annotating them by hand. It’s useful to train yourself to move fluently between these two important technologies for writing.

How to direct your thinking for brainstorming purposes?Remember, you needn’t think in a straight line (for instancein terms of cause and effect logic) to begin with. It’s better to begin by thinking associatively. Think of possiblerather than definite connections. Think of the ways in whichideas or texts or objects or people might be related. Remember your objective is to write something new, somethingoriginal. In order to do that you have to think of things ina new way, a different way. Trying to think differently is one of the most difficult tasks humans face. It’s difficult in a university because universities are the home of well thought thoughts. However, it’s important to remind yourselfthat someone had to come up with those ideas in the first place. Coming up with new and useful ideas is what the university is for.

Don’t make things difficult for yourself by trying to think of the cleverest thing you can think of first.

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Instead, try to think first at the most basic level. Imagineyou’re writing about a topic with which you are familiar on an everyday basis. For example, imagine your essay is about the designs of the coins that pass through your hands every day. A starting point for your thinking about that topic would be to simply describe the designs: they’re something you ‘see’ – but don’t see – all the time. Some of the most valuable brainstorming towards an argument comes from this kind of looking again at something familiar, an object already known.

Try to divide your topic into sub-topics or divide it into questions. What are the questions you would like answered about this topic? What questions do you think your reader would like answered?

Look at the topic in different ways, from different angles (perspectives). Think in terms of those three instructions we established in the last chapter: Problematise! Contextualise! Historicise!

One of the most obvious ways to problematise a literarytext is to ask whether and how it’s worth paying attention to. That can be another way of asking how well the text represents the context from which it originates. That kind of understanding of text in context in turn involved historical consciousness.

Look broadly at your topic or question first, for instance at the wider context of the text or object of investigation. Under what circumstances was the text created, what conditions enabled it to be created? Go back as far as you can in your thinking. If you’re studying Macaocoins, then when were the first ones minted? What’s the earliest example of the kinds of design we can see today? What kinds of design were used before that?

If you’re not studying something that is absolutely contemporary, then you’re dealing with a time gap of some

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sort. There’s the context of creation and there’s the context in which you are writing. Why is the text or object you’re studying of interest today? Or, why do you think it should be of interest? Look for relevance; look for the relevance of your topic to your reader, of the parts of yourtopic to each other. Sometimes you can discover the structure your argument or essay needs simply by understanding how a particular object or text should be relevant to a particular reader.

As suggested above, it’s sensible to look for the simple and obvious things first, to look for the easy thingsyou might have missed. Look also for connections that might have been too obvious to see. Originality in an essay is often the result simply of seeing or developing a connectionwhich was too obvious for others to see before. The best writing and the best teaching often shows us what was under our noses all along.

As well as looking for what was missed on the surface, look below surface meanings for the deeper significance of things. That kind of meaning is often thought of as underlying. Like the foundations of a house, meaning of that kind might be vitally important and yet completely invisibleto the untrained eye.

Look into the corners of your topic as well. Look for detail, for particular things – events, processes, pieces oftext – relevant to the questions you’re asking, to the hypothesis you might wish to test, to the argument you mightwish to develop.

Of course you need to get from the corners to the big picture you’re trying to paint or describe. You might be able to do that simply by joining the dots. In other words, if you can find what’s in the corners of the picture you’re creating then maybe you’ll work out what the whole of your argument is simply by connecting what’s in the corners. Through brainstorming it’s possible to begin to get an idea

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of the big picture or the whole canvas you’re looking at in a particular topic or question. Your ideas may be sketchy to begin with but brainstorming can help you to work out what approaches or methods suit the angle or perspective that appeals to you as a researcher.

Through brainstorming you can beat writer’s block, that feeling that you just can’t get started or can’t go on. Brainstorming effectively means that you’ve always got a headstart with your writing; you’ve always already begun on the work. You’ve always already got some notes to work from.

The earlier you find your own angle or perspective – your own way into the topic – the better the chances are that you’ll produce a truly original and interesting piece of writing. The earlier you find your own angle the sooner you’ll know exactly what you’re looking for in your reading,and the sooner you’ll know what kind of argument you’re trying to make.

Because finding a unique perspective is often the result of discovering connections that had not occurred to others, it’s usually worthwhile brainstorming more than onceon any particular topic. Take a break from thinking about your topic. That break might be an hour, an afternoon, a day. When you look at the topic again, start with a blank sheet of paper again. Don’t try to remember your previous ideas, try to look at the topic in a completely new way. Do this twice or three times or more and then compare your notes when you sit down to make a sketch towards your outline. The value of giving yourself more than one brainstorming session is in the fact that it allows you to combine perspectives. What makes for an interesting essay isoften a surprising combination of ideas. By looking at the topic from different angles on different occasions you increase the likelihood that you will make some interesting connections in thought about it, and that these connections might help you to develop an original argument.

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Reading at the brainstorming stage: Your object should be totry to discover possible sources of information about your topic. For instance, if you’re researching one literary textor if you’re planning to compare two literary texts, then try to find out now what has been written about these texts already, i.e. what secondary sources are available for you to consider? Other questions you should answer: What are thelikely sources of information for your essay? What works do you think you should probably refer to or be with familiar with in order to write your essay? That’s another way of asking: What should you have already read, in order to read and write what you should read and write next? Never be daunted by the fact that you’ve not read what’s necessary tothe topic you’re tackling. That means that the topic is new enough to you to keep you interested.

Sketch on paper or on screen: drafting the outline

The next major stage in the essay writing process is the production of an outline. It’s sometimes a big jump to get from the brainstorming stage to a reliable structure fora convincing piece of writing. You shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to arrive at a definite structure for your essay.You can create a few intermediate steps if these are helpfulto you. The danger in writing your outline too soon is that you might be too easily satisfied with ideas that are pedestrian, i.e. not challenging or original enough.

To get from brainstorming to outlining, really you needtwo things. You need to have:

- the big picture in your head (i.e. to know what subject or subjects your topic fits into). Having the big picture in mind means you know what you’re writing about

- an argument, or at least the angle or perspective that will lead you to form an argument. Having an

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argument means you have something to say, you know what you’re saying.

Imagine for example you’re writing about a play of Shakespeare’s and a classical Chinese text; your plan is to compare the two in some way. Having the big picture in your head means knowing the two texts, knowing enough about the context in which they were written. It also means knowing enough about what’s been written critically about both texts. If a comparison of these texts has already been made by another writer, then you need to read that, so as to build your own writing on work already done, so as to find your own angle, so as to create your own original argument.

Making a sketch towards an essay outline very often results in the creation of a study plan rather than a plan for a specific piece of writing. That’s because, in the process of beginning to decide what one needs to write, one often begins to discover how little one knows of the subjectabout which one is writing. If this happens to you, you shouldn’t be too worried, just recognise that you have some more work to do before you’re ready to create a plan for theessay itself. Knowing a little of how little you know is always a step in the right direction. Until you know your subject adequately it will be impossible for you to develop a worthwhile argument.

Having an argument – your ‘something to say’ – means that you have a particular contention or point to prove. You’re trying to show your reader something she hadn’t seen or recognised before. You’re trying to give her a new way tounderstand the topic in question. An argument comes from applying your perspective to the topic or question or task at hand. (Much more on argument in chapter 8.)

Once you’ve got the big picture, an angle and hopefullyan argument, your task is to convert these into a viable structure from which to create a persuasive piece of writing. How to find the structure of your argument? To some

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extent the structure of the essay itself – introduction ^ body ^ conclusion – will help you. The next chapter deals indetail with the structure of this essay in this sense. But you need to build your essay around whatever your angle on your subject makes necessary.

In order to create the structure you need, go for what’s easiest first, work up to what’s hardest. It may be that by doing do, you will naturally create an argument, i.e. working from the simplest to the most difficult question may actually give you the structure of your essay, or if not, it may give you some valuable guidance towards a structure that works. Don’t be too quick to abandon the questions you asked in your brainstorming process. Sometimesfirst thoughts are the best thoughts, and this applies even more strongly in the case of questions. It may well be that some of those questions you thought up for the brainstormingprocess are worth keeping now and possibly right through into your finished essay. It’s quite acceptable to build actual questions into the structure of your essay. It’s quite acceptable to structure your essay around a series of questions, or even around a series of answers to the same question.

Is it best to do the argument sketching work on screen or on a piece of paper? Like everything else about the essaywriting process, the more experienced the writer the more personal the correct answer to a question like that will be.The computer screen has the advantage that you can easily shift pieces of text around, repeat phrases or parts of a diagram you need to re-use. You can print out what you’ve typed on the screen and annotate (add extra handwritten notes), you can easily adjust a computer created text, you can re-incorporate pieces of text on screen in the essay itself later. Perhaps best of all, by saving a new version of the outline created on the screen, you can save time by allowing the outline file to become the actual essay draft.

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The computer screen has many advantages over pen and paper. That’s why it was invented! But as your sketch beginsto turn into an outline it’s best to try to conceptualise your argument and/or essay structure on a single piece of paper. You should be able to take it in a single glance. Think of a single piece of paper as the ‘canvas’ for the bigpicture of your essay. The beginning is at the top, the middle in the middle, the conclusion at the bottom of the page. Taking the whole of the structure of your essay in, inone glance, is a very useful way for you to conceptualise the task ahead of you in your writing.

Reading at the argument forming stage: You should be lookingat the works of others – i.e. critical works – with the specific goal of extracting and distilling their arguments. Being able to carry other writers’ arguments in your head isthe best possible practice for making your own. By being able to compare other authors’ arguments should also help you to see how your angle is different and how you could form a different argument.

An argument in your head – the oral stage

Before you commit yourself to the outline you’ll followthrough to a finished essay, it’s best to test the argument by seeing if it works when you say it out loud. Can you makeyour argument to someone else? Will it make sense to them? Will you be able to answer basic questions about it if you try to describe it to them, if you try to take your listenerthrough, step by step?

Who to tell your argument to? Your teacher is the obvious choice. Her experience as a writer should be directly useful to you at this point. The one-to-one interview in which you test your argument by telling it to your teacher should be an essential part of the essay writing process. Unfortunately large class sizes sometimes make this impractical. Telling your argument to your

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classmates or friends, partners, siblings, parents: all of these conversations can help, and each of them is good practice for the encounter with the teacher. Translating your argument from one language to another is useful practice too. It’s like an extra test: does your argument work in Chinese as well as English? Don’t worry too much if the argument seems a little less clear in the other language. Different languages have different ways of arguing.

It’s best to think through the whole of your argument before telling it to anyone else, but there’s something about the process of communicating your ideas out loud that actually gives them a very effective test. It’s at this stage you discover some of the most fundamental problems your argument might have. Chapters 8 and 9 deal in detail with what an argument should and shouldn’t do. Some of the questions you should be able to answer from talking your essay argument through, are as follows:

- Is your argument interesting enough to be worth writing? Does your argument matter? Can you keep your listener awake?

- Is your argument really original? Has your listener heard the same thing (or almost the same thing) before?

- Does your argument make sense? Do the steps in your argument follow on logically, each from the one before?

- Is your argument credible? Can your reader believe what you are telling her?

- Is there sufficient evidence for your argument? Evenif you don’t have that evidence right now, will it be possible for you to find the kind/s of evidence your argument will require?

- Is your argument convincing? This doesn’t mean that your listener must agree with you, but you want her to acknowledge that you have an argument, that your case is well argued.

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Of course you can use your notes to speak from in proposing your argument, but it’s even better if you can speak without reading anything. Can you keep the whole of your basic argument in your head well enough to tell it to someone else? If you can, it means that you can carry the argument around with you. That means you can work on the argument anywhere, at any time.

Writing an outline

An outline is a point form guide which shows what you intend to write. It shows the structure or skeleton of your essay. It’s a point-form master plan of the work you intend to write. While it’s usually essential to create some kind of outline before you start writing, your outline should also develop while you’re writing. It’s a working document, not a finished product. In other words the structure of youressay changes while you’re writing because your thoughts, your hypotheses, your questions and your conclusions all evolve as you write. This means that the methods which applyat the sketch and oral stage also apply to the outline. The difference between the sketch and the outline is that the outline is what you actually intend to write. It may change as you go but it constitutes a definite plan from which to work.

You might need a big piece of paper (or several) to accommodate all the changes you’ll need to make to your outline in the course of an essay. Or you might be able to make your writing process paper free. The computer screen isan ideal place to create an essay outline because the scrollformat allows for infinite expansion up or down or in between. However the sketch of your essay evolves, try to keep the outline to a single piece of paper if possible; this way you can always see at glance where your essay is going.

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Reading at the outline stage: You should now be thinking of which works you’ll be referring to at each stage of the essay. If you’re focusing on one (or even two) primary textsthen probably you will dealing with them throughout your essay. But which parts of those primary texts will you be referring to any particular stage? And which secondary textswill be you looking at with them at each stage in your essay?

Putting flesh on the bones, scrolling from outline to essay

Once you have a definite outline from which to work, whether you made it on paper or on the screen, it’s now timeto type it up neatly, print and put it somewhere prominent so that you can see it while you work on writing the essay. (Note that for a thesis, you might want one of these single page outlines for each chapter. In that case you’ll still want an overall outline which shows how the chapters are coordinated.)

As you work to write the essay proper, you should regularly keep an eye on the overall structure. This helps you to remember where you are going, it helps you to controldigressions. It’s best to do most of the job on the computerscreen, although you may still find it useful to do some of your thinking with pen and paper, and some of your thinking aloud, talking your work through with classmates or your teacher.

Your outline is like a skeleton; it turns into an essaywhen you put the flesh on the bones. There’s a simple reasonwhy you need a printed out version of the outline to stick on your wall as you work. Your outline will disappear into the essay you’re creating so that you won’t be able to see it anymore. For these reason it’s important to save the outline as just an outline before you begin working on the file for the essay proper. Save it as: Essay Title: Outline.You’ll start writing your essay proper from the same file,

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or rather a copy of the same file, so in practice this meansthat when you decide to begin writing the essay, you need tosave a new version. It’s probably best to name that something like: Essay Title Draft 1. This way you can easilydistinguish a first draft from the outline and subsequent drafts from the first one. When the essay is finished then possibly you should give the final version a new file name as well. But be careful with this; it’s very common to believe that you are finished before you really are.

As you work from the outline, putting the flesh on the bones, you’ll probably want to take the outline down from time to time to adjust with some handwritten annotations. Whenever the annotated outline becomes too messy to read, that means it’s time to tidy the outline up on the screen and print out a new version.

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How to put the flesh on the bones? The beauty of word processing is that it provides you with a single scroll of indefinite length (a file) in which to fit a text also singular but of indefinite length (an essay). It’s true the screen only allows you to see a certain amount of text at a time, but the more familiar you become with word processing the less of a problem this will be for you. The beauty of word processing is that everything in your scroll is easily moveable, delete-able, repeat-able. In the five thousand years or so that people have been writing, this is the most perfect technology devised so far.

The most obvious way to get the flesh of the essay ontothe bones of the outline is to drop in what you need where you know you need it. For instance, you know your text needsquotations from the primary text that you’re studying. So, you find the quotations you want to use, you work out where they will fit into the overall structure of the argument andthen you drop them.

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Now the same process can apply to your secondary or critical sources. Perhaps some of these secondary sources refer directly (or indirectly) to the quotes from the original text which you have already placed. In that case you can put them as close as you can to where you think you will need them.

Now note that by placing quotes in your outline like this you haven’t actually written anything yourself, and so you haven’t actually developed your argument. But chances are that in this way you’ve given yourself something to think about. If you think seriously about how to connect these quotes with each other and with the argument as outlined then you will be developing your essay. Sometimes it’s best to make those kinds of connection in note form, orat least to combine point form with complete sentences or paragraphs as suits. What’s happening at this stage of this essay is in fact a kind of brainstorming. Having assembled some of the big pieces you’ll need to put your essay together, it’s time to play with how they fit, to make your argument more subtle, and stronger, as you fit the pieces together.

At this stage the work is rough, it’s quick work too hopefully. Try to not get stuck on any one part of the essay, rather moving from place to place and adding ideas and quotes, comments and notes, wherever you see the opportunity. Remember too, as you work, that your outline should be a flexible guide and not a rigid unchangeable form. If you can see a different, better order for the work then you shouldn’t be afraid to change your plan. Just remember that changing the order of the argument – or the order in which texts are dealt with – in one part of the essay may change the order elsewhere as well. Whatever you change as you work through the essay may have flow-through effects; you need to think these through and adjust your outline accordingly.

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Working on screens of the big scroll you’re making allows you to be with whichever part of the argument requires your attention. Practice at writing like this will help you to move more freely and more fluently around the text that you are creating. It will help you to know where you need to go next.

Reading at the flesh on bones stage: At this stage you are reading to find the particular quotations (and passages for paraphrase), which you need to be including in your text. You should also continue your general reading in the subjectat this stage, so as to find important information, evidenceand argument you may not have met so far.

Joining the dots

As your essay becomes longer and more written, its outline becomes less and less visible in the file on screen itself. As the scroll you’re looking at on the screen gets longer and longer – and perhaps messier and messier – the printed outline in front of you becomes a more and more important guide.

An essay in progress on the computer screen is a long file consisting of many different kinds of text: outline + accompanying notes + half formed paragraphs + questions + references to useful books + quotes + comments on quotes. Remember that some of your notes and questions are there to help you to know what to do next or later. Some of the notesor questions will really be part of the essay when it’s finished. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell which pieces of text belong to the scaffolding you’ll be removing later and which will really be part of the structure you’re building in the essay.

At the point when you have lots of scaffolding and lotsof text that could be part of the finished essay – if you

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have the right parts in the right places – then you should be able to write your essay by joining the dots, i.e. by turningyour notes into sentences and paragraphs, by working out howto connect the quotations you’ve chosen, to each other and to your overall argument. (The same applies to the paraphrases and possible translations you’ve made.) If your argument is sound to begin with and you’ve chosen the right pieces of evidence to support it, then it will feel as if your essay is effortlessly writing itself. In that case, theconnections between all of the parts flow naturally and easily. Don’t be too surprised if you have to write a few dozen essays before you begin to have that kind of sensation. Most people find this nitty gritty stage of the essaysomething of a struggle. It’s at this stage you’re creating the detail of the argument. It’s at this stage you’re deploying evidence, effectively or otherwise.

It’s very easy to lose track of the overall argument when you’re working on the detail, for instance explaining particular pieces of text, comparing the detail of other critics’ arguments, weighing evidence, coming to conclusions. Having the general structure of your work easily accessible is crucial during this stage in which the essay is assuming its proper shape. In principle, the less need there is to rearrange the dots, the easier they will beto join. In practice though, if you find that the dots are in the wrong place, then you need to re-arrange them, and the sooner you do that job the less trouble it will be in the long run. The dots could be in the wrong place if

- your argument has changed, for instance because you no longer agree with what you started out saying

- new evidence – or a better understanding of the evidence – makes you see that the topic, so the argument, so the essay, should be structured differently

- if you realise that the question you began by askingis less interesting than a new question to which study of the topic has led you

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While, with word processing technology, there’s no need to move from beginning to end of your essay, this traditional procedure has some advantages as a general strategy. When you’re writing an essay on the computer screen, you do jump now and then from one part of the essay to another – putting in sign posts, drawing threads together– but the general overall movement is downwards, from beginning to end. In the sense the stages of this part of the process – i.e. writing the body of the essay – are closely related to but not all the same as the order of the essay’s final structure, discussed in the next chapter. The most obvious example of a clear difference between the ordering of the process and the ordering of the parts of theessay is the abstract. The abstract appears first in the essay, actually before the essay proper, but it’s the last thing you write.

One of the best advantages of word processing technology for the writing of an essay is that you needn’t get stuck at any one point because you can move freely anywhere in the scroll/file that suits you. This freedom of movement in turn helps you to control and to limit digressions. In principle you can be working on every part of your essay at once. In practice the general forward movement of the argument (downward through the scroll) will be the safest and easiest overall motion.

Because you can work on any part of your essay next, it’s possible for you to take the line of least resistance approachto the job. You’re not sure how to finish a particular line of argument or a particular sentence? Don’t worry. Don’t abandon the difficult questions just because they’re difficult. Don’t get stuck because of them either. Leave notes, go on, go elsewhere. Solving the problem in one part of the essay may help you to do the kind of thinking you need to do in order to solve another problem somewhere else.Leave the important but difficult questions at the back of your head, and in note form in the essay draft. Find the books, ask the people who will help you solve the puzzle.

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Don’t just delete a question or a concept that seems too hard at first.

Because your essay proper is in one file and that’s where your main argument lives and grows, it may be useful for various purposes to create other files for related purposes, so as to not crowd the main file on which you’re working. You might want to create other files

- for the abstract (to build up a summary of the argument as you work, rather than simply leaving this to the end)

- for the bibliography (creating it too, as you go)- for specific digressions, or side-arguments, which

may or may not be essential to the main argument you’re developing, and which could in some cases turn into separate arguments in their own right

- for ‘spares’: i.e. phrases, paragraphs, sections, lines of argument, quotes, points of view that you’re deciding need not be central to your argument, but which you’re not sure you should discard. By putting these kinds of material in a separate file you can take the pressure off yourselffor having to make a decision as to whether and how to use them. They’ll always be waiting for you in the other file if and when you need them

Reading at the joining the dots stage: You should be readingas thoroughly as possible to make sure that you understand the connections between the different texts and arguments you’re deploying and making yourself.

Tidying up

There’s probably a stage – or there might be a long period – during the process of

your essay when the whole file looks like a mess: you’re writing a ten page essay but you’ve got fifty pages of notes

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and paragraphs and quotes and it just feels so overwhelming you don’t even want to look at it.

How to cope with this situation? Don’t panic. Take a deep breath, take a break. When you come back to the file, look at the printed outline you’ve got, remember that’s the plan of what you’re writing. Think of the essay (or thesis) writing business as a three-phase job:

1. Reading and hypothesising2. Making a mess with your ideas on screen or on paper3. Cleaning up the mess you’ve made

The point is that making the mess is a necessary part of theprocess. Tidying up is a necessary part too. The more experienced you become the better you become at creating thekind of mess you can more conveniently clean up. The fact that you’ve got a big mess in the first place though is not bad, it means that you’re working creatively with your materials, it means that you’re working on lots of possibilities – at different tangents – at once. These are good things, good signs for your work. If everything in your work is neat and tidy from beginning to end this probably means that you haven’t exercised your imagination sufficiently. People with very ‘neat personalities’ need to work especially hard to broaden their perspective in writing, to see things from different angles and to compare and combine those angles. People with ‘messier personalities’ will have to work harder at the tidying up stage.

At this stage – when things are messiest – it’s tempting to throw up your hands and have a tantrum, tell your family and friends you can’t go on… At this stage it’s tempting to go to your teacher and hope that s/he will wave a magic wand and make your mess a beautiful essay. Don’t do this. This is the point at which your teacher/advisor/thesissupervisor will be the least helpful to you. With the brainstorming and with the outline, at the oral stage and after, s/he can be extremely helpful to you. With the

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finishing of the essay, likewise. But at the tidying up stage, it’s your mess and it’s your duty to clean up after yourself, to get your work into a form fit for others to read.

Just remember that if the file on the screen is a virtual scroll that can be longer and longer all the time, it can also be made shorter again. The function of the technology you’re using is to make it as long or as short asit needs to be. Don’t become a victim of your own extravagant brainstorming by feeling that you simply can’t deal with all this text. If you’re worried about losing important stuff by cutting, then simply make a ‘spares’ fileof all that you cut out, and/or save the version you were working on before you started cutting. That way it won’t be possible for you to lose anything. Think of the essay in a scroll/file on the screen as being like a concertina. It canbe stretched out and it can be squeezed back in again. Squeeze out the air – what you don’t need – and you have a tight argument, an efficient piece of writing.

So – you’ve expanded on screen from your outline to essay by dropping in quotes, by expanding parts of the outline into sentences: questions, hypotheses, lines of argument. The result of all this activity is a very uneven text: a file partly in note form and partly in prose form, afile full of quotes from other people, too many quotes, and with your own ideas only half developed. How to go on from here? You need to move (mainly forward, down) through the file doing two things at once

- clearing away and- making good sentences

You need to clear away what you won’t be using and you need to make good the connections you will be using, you need to make the sentences that will survive into the final version of your essay. This is the fine tuning process in which you

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get your argument as it should be and as it will be when thework is finished.

A frequent problem at this stage is that a particular part of the essay – for instance an important stage in the argument – is re-written in various ways. Perhaps they’re subtly different, perhaps they’re almost the same. The reason – consciously or unconsciously – you’ve produced all these similar versions of similar ideas, is simply that thispart of the argument is important and so you’re trying to look at it in different ways and trying to get the wording just right. The trouble is that you now have to work very closely with wordings which are very similar to each other in order to achieve the best possible result. This can be time consuming. One end of one sentence is better than one end of another. And vice versa. You have to take sentences apart and recombine the parts in order to have them say exactly what you want to say. This can be a real headache. You’d like to just wipe out a paragraph or a page of the inferior text, but it’s not easy to make that kind of decision. This is when the tidying up process is at its slowest. The problem will be made worse if you’ve accidentally saved a wrong version, or started working on anearlier version of the essay, perhaps because you had the file title wrong. This kind of mess is – you could say – thedownside of word processing, a kind of curse. It’s so easy to save text in so many different versions, it’s possible for you to end up by torturing yourself – by driving yourself mad – with different possible choices among your own words.

Printing out can be helpful when it’s difficult to decide between versions. Or sometimes when you can’t decide it’s better to just start again on the particular passage that’s troubling you.

Through all of this tidying up process let the outline be your rock in troubled waters. Fix your eyes on it often enough – understand where you’re going – and the sentences will perform the tricks you need them to perform.

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The process may seem impossible for a while, but as yougo through the work, clearing away and making good the sentences and paragraphs you need, the essay fills out, the gaps disappear, things are written as they need to be, the file begins gradually to look more like continuous prose, more like an essay and less like notes. Before you know it you’ve got a fair draft, something you can show and be proud of.

If you’re working towards publication, it’s at this stage you need to go through your essay carefully with your peers and mentors in order to correct all sorts of problems,especially in terms of grammar and word choice, but also to fine tune the argument.

Reading at the tidying-up stage: You should be reading to find what you’ve missed so far. Does your argument seem uneven or unconnected in some way? Then possibly the problemis that there is some piece of evidence you need to find – aquotation or a paraphrase perhaps – that will allow everything to be properly joined and flow well.

Backing up and saving versions as you work

One of the best things about writing an essay – or any other kind of text – using word processing technology, is that there is absolutely no need and no excuse for losing your work. It’s very easy to back-up, for instance by savingto a floppy disc, a CD or some other storage device, or for instance by e-mailing the file to yourself, and/or then by using a facility such as Yahoo or Hotmail Briefcase for storage. All of these storage facilities are designed to deal with picture and voice and video files which are memoryhungry, so storing text is no problem at all. E-mail is often the easiest means of backing up. Remember that once you’ve e-mailed a document it’s ‘out there’; your computer

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can explode but your e-mail should be, by some means, retrievable.

If you’re working on your writing every day then you should back-up your work everyday. Before you switch off thecomputer at the end of the day (or more usually night) is probably the best time. If you find yourself becoming lazy about this safekeeping process, just remind yourself that you could lose your whole day’s work by not backing up. If you haven’t backed up for a week, then you could lose the whole week’s work. Your computer will fail one day and when that happens you will probably lose whatever you were working on at the time. But by backing up regularly you can limit the loss and make it less painful.

Apart from backing up the most up-to-date version of your work, there is the question of saving earlier and otherversions. There are all sorts of good reasons for doing this. You might want to try taking your argument and/or essay in a different direction, as a kind of experiment. You’re not sure if that will work or not so you want to makesure you have the previous version safely stored so that youcan go back to it if necessary. That kind of deliberate thinking about where to take your essay or argument is oftenoutweighed by less carefully thought out changes in direction. Some of those less well thought out changes will turn into digressions not helpful to your overall argument, others will be extremely useful, they will change your overall direction. Without the fluidity of thinking that allows these kinds of shift your writing will be too constrained, you’ll be working too narrowly on your topic. You won’t have room to move in your thinking and so you won’t have room to move in your writing.

Arguments and so essays – like stories, like poems – are organic products of the mind; they evolve as you work onthem. Their directions and intentions change as you work. Some of these changes are within and some are beyond the

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kind of conscious control you exercise in an overall plan like an outline.

So much for parallel versions of your essay, versions developing along clearly alternative lines. There are many reasons why you might want to go back to previous versions. An argument or emphasis shifts without your having noticed. Something that seemed unimportant a week ago, now in the light of new evidence suddenly seems very important. Try to imagine how difficult it was to save versions of work, priorto on-screen writing with a hard disc for storage. Often onehad to simply re-type, or even re-write, the whole of the essay from beginning to end. Remember too that the technology you’re using to create your essay has only existed for about twenty years, has only been in widespread use for about ten. And remember that this technology is constantly evolving, so that much of the advice offered in this manual will probably be out of date within ten years.

However the technologies for writing evolve, you shouldmake efforts to give yourself a way back through your work. Remember Hansel and Gretel in the fairytale? The better the trail you leave, the easier it will be to find your way backthrough the forest. In general stones leave a more reliable trail than breadcrumbs. Make the kind of trail you will be able to find if you need it later. There are all sorts of reasons why it may be useful to be able to go back and compare an earlier with a later version of your essay. You may not be able to predict such a need ahead of time, but asthese files take up virtually no room on a computer’s hard disc you don’t have much excuse for not saving everything.

If you’re going to have many drafts and versions of your work on your hard disc, remember that when you save versions you need to have a systematic method for naming thefiles, otherwise you could get very confused. The most obvious example of this kind of confusion is when you decidethat your essay is finished, so you put the word ‘finished’ in the file name. The problem is that you think you’re

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finished but half an hour after you’ve saved the finished file (or even sent it somewhere) you’ve decided on a new change, so you create the ‘finished finished’ file, and so on. In general numbers are better for the titling of files for a multi-draft work: version 1, 2, 3. For versions which you know beforehand will not be thelast, it’s probably easiest to save the date somewhere in the file name. When you really are finished it’s very important that the final – the really final – finished version of the work has a distinctive file name so that you don’t send people earlier drafts by mistake. It may be best to create a new folder for finished works only. That way there’ll be no danger of accidentally attaching the wrong version of your essay to an e-mail.

Finishing: Editing and Proof Reading

Finishing your essay involves taking care of all its details: checking spelling, grammar, checking that references are correct and correctly cited. It involves checking that all of the necessary parts are there, from abstract to bibliography. More important than this it involves checking that the overall argument works, that the evidence necessary to it is properly deployed and that the whole work makes sense and flows well, i.e. is properly readable, as clear as it can be, and not unnecessarily confusing.

Flows well? You need to read over your work, for consistency and continuity. Good writing has a rhythm which is consistent enough without being boringly unvaried. Consistency refers to the rhythm in your phrases and clauses and sentences, it also refers to your argument, to the position it assumes and to the detail given to particular parts of the work: to the various part of your subject that make up the whole of your essay. An inconsistent argument may be one that doesn’t agree with itself, i.e. that contradicts itself. Inconsistent writing produces a text

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with uneven texture. The reader feels on page three that sheis reading a different essay from the one she was began on page one. Continuity means making sure that the parts of your essay are in the right order, that you haven’t assumed on page one a knowledge of information that you won’t be givinguntil page seven. Continuity checking is particular important today with essays written on the computer screen because you can write in any order but your reader needs to read the essay from beginning to end. Reading for continuityalso means checking that you have properly followed up the ideas you have suggested or foreshadowed earlier in the essay. (For example, if you say in your introduction that the third part of the essay will also discuss certain Chinese texts of the Tang dynasty, then you’d better make sure that your third part really does so.)

To help you to make sure that your argument is functioning properly, check through chapters 8 and 9. Understand what kind of argument you have, how your argumentworks, try to see what might be wrong with it.

Check through the list of processes in this chapter too. Is there something you’ve forgotten to do along the way? Is there some essential part of the writing process you’ve left out or expected to take care of itself?

Once you’ve checked through everything to do with the structure and the wording of the essay, you’ve finished the editing processing. That still leaves you with proofreading.Proofreading is a term that comes from the publishing/printing industry. In the old days before computer word processing, typescripts or handwritten copy had to be typeset before it could be printed. Typesetting involved retyping what had previously been typed. That re-typing process meant that no matter how accurate the typesetter was there would still be new errors introduced atthis stage, and so the page (or galley) proofs would have tobe checked for these new errors. With word processing today,there’s no need to retype. So the line between editing and

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proofreading is blurred. In practice today proof reading means finally checking for errors prior to publication.

This is the stage at which you need to seek out ambiguities you may not have intended, long cumbersome sentences which might be cut in half, and probably hardest of all to find, typos or typographical error. If you type a word with two letters in the wrong order it can be difficultto see the mistake. That’s because all of the letters you need are actually there. Fortunately today the word processor on your computer will take care of some of these problems for you.

Remember, as you’re finishing your essay, that the mostcommon and obvious way in which an argument, essay or thesisfails is because the writer simply did not spend enough timewith the ideas s/he was working on.

How much to write?

How much do you need to write? According to the course and the teacher and the nature of a particular assignment it’s likely that at the various levels in your course you’ll be expected to write essays of around:

100 level – 500 – 1,000 words200 level – 1,000 – 1,500 words300 level – 1,500 - 2,000 words400 level – 2,500 – 5,000 words400 level – Senior thesis – 10,000 – 15,000 wordsMaster’s seminar – around 5,000 wordsMaster’s thesis – 25,000 – 40,000 wordsPh.D. thesis – around 100,000 wordsJournal paper – average 5,000 wordsMonograph (scholarly work on a single clearly defined subject) – 20,000 – 50,000 wordsScholarly book – usually more than 40,000 words

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Note that these word lengths never include the number of words quoted from primary or secondary sources. Essays whichare seriously under length automatically fail.

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4the structure of an essay

There are many different types of essay and many possible structures. For the sake of convenience only one ‘design’ is described here. Different kinds of essays work in different ways to achieve different kinds of argument. Some essays are more argumentative than others, some are more expository, some more comparative. Some essays rely more on theory than others, some essays are more focused on specific texts or cultural phenomena. These various approaches are combined in all sorts of ways. Some of these approaches and their combinations will be discussed over thenext four chapters. The function of this chapter is to describe – in sequence as they should appear in print – the obligatory parts of the essay or thesis.

The abstract

An abstract is a short summary of the argument of a paper or essay. In journals and at conferences papers are usually first presented to a reader or an audience in abstract form. It’s from reading the abstract that one decides whether to attend the session or to read the whole paper. So in that sense an abstract is a kind of advertisingfor a particular piece of research.

How long or short should an abstract be? 5% is a good rough guide. If your paper is about 2,000 words then probably a 100 word abstract should be long enough to summarise your arguments. For 5,000 words – average length for a journal article – 250 words should be about right. Writing an abstract isn’t just useful for a reader; it’s a useful means of clarifying your own thinking. It helps you to make sure that you really do have a workable argument. Although abstracts are usually produced at the end of the

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writing process, they can be started at any point. They givethe writer a different conceptual framework from the outlinebecause they’re in sentence form, i.e. the form of the essayitself. If you create a ‘proto-abstract’ to begin with, you’ll be able to check the progress of your argument against it as you work. Conversely, you can create the draftof the abstract as you write the essay by dropping key sentences or paragraphs into your abstract file as you go.

An abstract often combines sentences from an essay’s introduction and conclusion and so it’s a good vehicle for making sure that one end of your writing remembers what the other was meant to be doing. In fact, with the abstract you can often kill four birds with one stone. That’s because you’ll probably use phrases and sentences from the abstract – in different versions – in four different parts of your essay – in the abstract itself, in the introduction, in the body of the essay and in the conclusion.

You should not worry about your abstract being too similar to either your introduction or conclusion. This is not a problem. (On the other hand it may be a problem if your introduction and conclusion are very similar to each other.) The abstract is not technically a part of your essay or thesis, it must be able to stand alone and make sense by itself.

If you use both outline and abstract as working documents while you’re writing then you have two independentmethods for keeping track of your essay’s progress and for making sure it’s heading in the right direction. The outlineis a guide to the structure of your essay’s content, the abstract is a guide to the argument. The danger in working from an outline alone is that you might progress through thetopic (i.e. discuss the issues or texts you need to discuss)but without developing a sound argument.

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The epigraph

An epigraph is, very simply, a quotation from another work placed at the beginning of your own, in order to provoke your reader into thinking what kind of connection there might be between that text and yours. An epigraph needs to be relevant to your text, but unlike a quotation ora paraphrase included in your essay, the epigraph stands outside and so its relationship to your topics and themes and the texts with which you deal is open to the reader’s interpretation. When you quote or paraphrase in the body of your essay, you have to do the work of explaining relevance to your reader. With the epigraph, the reader has to do the work. That makes it a kind of gift for the writer. You needn’t labour to find the right words, you just leave them for there at the start for the reader to appreciate. The epigraph is a gift to you from literature already written. The epigraph gives the reader a taste of something before she starts on the main course you are providing as the author of the work s/he is about to read. To use another metaphor, the epigraph gives your writing a particular spin for the reader before she gets started. A carefully chosen epigraph subtly faces the reader the way you’d like her to face, it puts her in the right mood to entertain your argument.

The introduction

The introduction tells your reader what it is you plan to do in the essay. It introduces the content of the work. It tells the reader what the essay is about and it usually gives the reader some idea of how the essay works, e.g. whatkinds of argument and evidence to expect. The introduction may or may not summarise your argument. A reason for not summarising the whole of the argument would be to not ‘spoilthe plot’ for the reader, i.e. to leave some surprises ahead. The kind of introduction which doesn’t spoil the plotdoes however need to lay out the territory of the essay, and

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show how the argument at least begins and where it might be going. That kind of introduction might include questions or hypotheses which will be explored in the body of the essay.

The kind of introduction which does spoil the plot still has to leave sufficient surprises ahead for the reader. If the reader feels at the end of the essay that she’d read all she needed to read in the introduction in thefirst place then she’ll feel robbed having had to read so many unnecessary words. The introduction that presents a summary of the entire argument of the essay for this reason usually only hints at the kind of evidence to be presented; the detail is all to come, but the direction of the entire work is already foreshadowed. The plot spoiling introduction proposes an argument which the rest of the essay needs to prove by logical and persuasive reasoning and by presenting adequate and appropriate evidence.

Think of the difference between these two styles of introduction as between showing a way into the questions andmaterials studied in the essay or, by contrast, giving a view over them.

How long should an introduction be? In a short essay itmight be as short as a single paragraph, telling what the essay will do. In a thesis the introduction should be a chapter, its length appropriate to the length of the thesis,and again telling the reader what the thesis will do.

The body

If the introduction proposes the argument or shows the reader a way in, the body of the essay must deliver what theintroduction and the abstract have promised. The body of theessay contains the detail of the argument, it presents the reader with what s/he needs to know about the area of knowledge and the texts under investigation and it presents and weighs the evidence for and against the argument

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presented. The most important and detailed work of the essayis in the body. The nature of that detailed work varies considerably according to the style or genre of essay you’rewriting (go to chapters 5 and 8 for details about types of essay and types of argument).

In a short essay the body of the work is divided only by paragraph breaks. In a long essay or a thesis extra divisions are necessary in the work; without them the readerfinds it difficult to see where she is in the overall argument. Parts, chapters, sections, sub-sections may be used to achieve convenient divisions of the work. It’s important to organise these on a rational and consistent basis. Headings should be organised according to a clearly visible hierarchy, e.g:

PARTChapter Section Sub-section

Note that parts and chapters (in this sense) are generally appropriate to theses and not to essays. Whatever the ordering of the essay by headings looks like, the organisation of the essay into paragraphs should also be consistent and rational. Page long paragraphs weary the eye.The principle of this kind of structure in your essay shouldbe to make life as easy as possible for your reader. If yourreader also happens to be your marker/examiner then there should be some healthy self-interest for you in making your essay easy to read.

Conclusion

The conclusion sums up your arguments, it presents to the reader – in summary form – a record of what has been discussed in the essay and what has been proved through your

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arguments. A conclusion cannot introduce new material or newargument to the essay. It can tie together or complete arguments developed in the body of the essay, but any new material or new parts or phases of the argument should be introduced in the introduction or the body of the work. The conclusion may however show the reader what hasn’t yet been proved, for instance what remains doubtful. A conclusion can, in this way, present the reader with new questions to consider. However, an essay that ends with a paragraph packed full of questions is likely to leave the reader with the feeling that nothing was proved by the essay. Your topicmay have been difficult and confusing, nevertheless you should leave your reader with the feeling that progress was made towards understanding it. It’s in this sense your conclusion should include findings. The conclusion should provide the reader with a neat summary of that progress towards the understanding of the topic.

A good reason for writing the ‘way in’ as opposed to the ‘overview’ style of introduction is that this will make it relatively easy for the conclusion to be significantly different from whatever you wrote at the beginning. When you’ve already summarised your complete argument at the beginning of your essay, it may be difficult to make your conclusion significantly different.

The bibliography or list of works cited or references

The use of proper bibliographic entries allows citations in the text to be sparing and concise. Usually those citations just consist of a page number because that page number can only refer to the one text by the one authoras listed in the bibliography. Where you cite more than one text from an author then you can place the year of publication in the brackets with the page number (1975, 53).Where there are two works cited by the same author publishedin the same year, you need to label them a and b in the in-text citation and in the bibliographic entry to which the

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citation refers. If you have a reason for not mentioning theauthor’s name in the sentence introducing the quotation or paraphrase in your text, then you can always add that to thebrackets: (Ogilvie, 53).

The bibliography itself is simply an alphabetical list of the works or texts (books, journals, web-sights, films) mentioned in your work. It should look something like this:

Adorno, T.W. (1981). Prisms, transl. by Samuel Weber. Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press.

Allinson, Robert E. (ed.). Understanding the Chinese Mind. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2000.

Aristotle. Poetics. in Great Books of the Western World,Vol. 9, Trans. Ingram Bywater. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952.

Ashcroft, Bill, et. al.. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. Ashcroft, Bill, et.al.. The Post-colonial studies reader. London: Routledge , 1995.

Note that every entry has one title in italics because even if the text you cite is a poem or story or an article, that poem or story or article is published in a book or a journalor a newspaper. Note that the name of a film is likewise italicised in a bibliographic entry; it’s equivalent to a novel or other book length work. Remember that a bibliography is not a list of books you find interesting or that you looked at in the library or that you would like oneday to read. A bibliography is a list of the works you have referred to in your essay or thesis. There are many styles for bibliographies. The MLA style is suggested here as one which is well known and effective. The most important thing

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however is to apply whichever style you use consistently. Ifyou send articles to journals remember to conform to their citation, bibliography and other style demands. If your workisn’t properly formatted it may simply be ignored.

Footnotes or Endnotes

What’s the difference? Footnotes come at the foot (i.e.the bottom) of the page, endnotes come at the end of your essay. Choose one of these styles, don’t mix them. Footnotesor endnotes should be used sparingly. They can mention a piece of information or point to a text which is relevant but not central to the direction of your writing. They can provide the reader with an excursion or digression which canbe justified so long as it is worthwhile in some way. Footnotes or endnotes are particularly useful in providing evidence for an assertion which is important but not essential to an argument. In specific disciplines (e.g. history) footnotes may serve a specialised function in ordering particular types of evidence or textual reference necessary to the argument.

They’re very useful during the process of writing because if you have an idea or a reference which you’re not sure whether to include or not you can always put it in a footnote and come back to look at it later. That way you’ve got material half-way in and half-way out of your essay or thesis. When you come to re-draft or finish your essay you can decide what to do with the footnote. Is this idea or point worth promoting into the text proper? Should your mainargument take this material into account? Should you discardit altogether (i.e. delete the footnote)? Or should you keepit as a footnote, perhaps tidy it up to make it more relevant to what you’re trying to say in your piece? Think of footnotes as ladders in and out of the text you’re writing.

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Structure checklist:Does your essay/thesis have

- an abstract? - an epigraph (or epigraphs for chapters/sections)?- an introduction?- an argument with well presented and credible

evidence in the body of the work?- a conclusion? - an appropriate structure of chapters and/or

headings?- footnotes as appropriate?- a bibliography or reference list, showing your

reader – in a consistent manner – the source of allworks cited?

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5what an essay has to be and what an essay has to do

There are all sorts of things an essay can do or can have or can be. We can classify essays into genres accordingwhat they do or what qualities they have. Just as imaginative literature can usefully be classified according to genre and sub-genre (e.g. poetry: epic/lyric, drama, fiction: short story/novel), so we can classify prose non-fiction according to the kinds of function this writing serves, according to the forms which fit these functions. So, as previously mentioned, there is the expository essay, the comparison essay, the survey, the essay determined to prove a proposition in ethics.

Regardless of genre, there are a few things every good essay has to have and has to be. It has to be well written and well argued. It has to use appropriate strategies to discuss the material with which it deals, it has to use appropriate evidence to prove its points and to come to a conclusion. It has to show an understanding of the ideas that enabled its ideas, it has to acknowledge those ideas where appropriate; and it has to make its own original contribution. The next chapter deals with these issues of originality and attribution.

The introduction ^ body ^ conclusion structure discussed in the last chapter is essential (except in the case of some rare experimental and creative essay forms). Argument cannot be avoided. An essay without an argument is like a story without a plot. But what does argument mean exactly? It doesn’t mean – as people sometimes use the word argument to mean – having a fight in words. ‘Argument’ carries a wide range of possibilities. Sufficiently acknowledging its context and original angle, a coherent survey of a field of knowledge

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(or of an aspect thereof) can certainly be considered an argument.In fact this distinction, between the essay that argues strenuously (so as to prove something) and the essay that shows its reader a field of knowledge, is probably the most important generic division.

The argumentative essay is structured around proving a particular contention (call it argument, theory, hypothesis,point of view). The expository essay shows a reader a field of knowledge or a corner of that field, a particular text orset of texts, for instance for the purposes of comparison orcontrast. The expository essay explains how things are, whatthey mean, how things mean the way they mean.

In practice the distinction between these two essay types is difficult to maintain. An essay dealing with literary works or cultural phenomena generally needs to fulfil both argumentative and expository duties. Without surveying its field it cannot have anything to argue about, without making an argument it can’t have much point. In practice a well written essay usually fulfilsa number of functions, for instance

- to prove a contention - to propose a course of action or a correct attitude - to criticise a course of action or attitude- to give advice (this is properly what hortatory

writing or speech does)- to test an hypothesis or theory- to develop an hypothesis or theory- to survey a subject or a field of learning- to compare subjects or fields of learning- to explain a procedure or set of procedures - to explain and/or interpret a text and/or cultural

phenomenon - to reveal the meaning of things otherwise

misunderstood or unnoticed

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The list could be much longer. Essays may take one of these functions or activities for their emphasis or key goal, theyrarely do only one of these. More commonly an essay will combine two or more of these functions, will tend towards some of these functions without fully embracing them. One part of an essay will be expository, another part more argumentative.

It’s important to realise that it’s possible to go too far in some of these directions too. An essay which seems too argumentative for its material is often thought of as polemical, an essay which surveys its subject but without arguing for its own view risks lacking originality. These are pejoratives or negative criticisms of an essay. To be polemical usually means to be argumentative without a good reason, to lack originality is even more of a problem.

So, to recap, an essay must show an understanding of its subject and, in the broad sense of the term, it must have an original argument. The argument must be logically sound and supported by evidence. And importantly your argument must have a reader. It should be written with some idea in mind of whom that reader might be. It’s difficult toright well without that sense of the destination of your words.

The tests for these essential qualities are easy. They’re in the form of simple questions:

- What’s this essay about?- What’s the argument?- Who’s your reader?

***

Thinking in terms of genre or function is helpful in working out what kind of essay one is writing and how it ought to be constructed. It’s particularly helpful in the sciences and social sciences where a particular model or structure for an essay could be used for many different

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research reports, for many different pieces of writing. But in the humanities and when dealing with the processes and products of the imaginations (literature, culture), part of the originality expected of the essay needs to be in the structure of the writing itself.

For this purpose – the purpose of creating an original structure for thought – it may be more useful to think in terms of metaphor (or other tropes) than in terms of genre or function. That’s because metaphoric schemae are at the basis of how we think, how we teach and learn, how we argue.Metaphors and other tropes provide us with the structures with which we imagine our world and ourselves, our arguments, in fact all that we say and do. Because most of these activities go on without any thought being given to their metaphorical structure, if one wishes to be original then it is necessary to make an effort to bring these structures to consciousness. (If you’re interested in exploring further the metaphoric structure of thought a useful work to read would be George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s 1980 book Metaphors we live by [University of Chicago Press]).

Let’s make all of this more practical, more tangible. Look back to the title of this chapter: ‘What an essay has to be and what an essay has to do.’ There are two quite different tropes implied here. ‘Being’ suggests metaphor: anessay is… or an essay is like a… (simile). Doing suggests personification. If an essay can do something – something ofan intellectual order, one hopes – then an essay is like a thinking person. There have been other metaphors for essay or argument used in this chapter already as well: these include fighting or warfare (an argument is like a fight) and building (an argument or essay is a kind of structure). If I write that an essay must carry or contain or deliver anargument then I would be choosing from three very different metaphors or conceptual schema for an essay: vehicle, container, messenger with message. These three different metaphors imply three quite different orientations to the

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role and to the work of argument in the essay. In this paragraph we’ve seen a few of the many metaphors or tropes available for the purpose of conceptualising what an essay has to be and what an essay has to do. Let me give you a longer list now, starting with some of those already mentioned.

An essay or an argument is or can be like: - a fight or a battle or a war. Usually only one side

is presented, the side that is trying to win in the argument. If the opposition argument is given, it’s so that it may be defeated. Argument in this sense is something one wins or loses. This metaphor is particular apt for the argumentative essay, especially when the opinions expressed are strong.

- a game (e.g. of soccer or a game of chess). You can read this as a more peaceful version of the fight metaphor. War and game metaphors for the essay or argument overlap very easily because war and games are each commonly imagined in terms of the other.

- the kind of game – for instance of darts – in which one tries to hit the target or pin the tail on the donkey.

- a performance or sporting event as seen from a spectator’s point of view. It might have a main event, a digression might be called a side show or awarm-up.

- a conversation or an argument among family or friends.

- a negotiation, like the making of a deal or coming to an arrangement.

- a transaction, like an auction, where the stakes arebid up higher and higher.

- a financial situation or predicament, involving investment and anticipated outcomes, all of which are measurable in money terms. It has a bottom line.

- a legalistic or democratic procedure, like the presentation of evidence and argument in court or like a parliamentary debate.

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- a building or other kind of structure. It has to stand up, if it falls down it’s failed. This metaphor helps to emphasise the process of making, the value of the essay’s being well made. Terms likeunderlying and overarching come from the conception of the essay or argument as a structure. The demand that arguments have a strong foundation usually means their premises need to be valid and relevant.

- a living thing – a plant or an animal. The body of the essay derives from the animal (or human) metaphor for the essay. The organic metaphor can allow you to think of the argument as a plant you’regrowing. The implication here is that it has some life of its own. You can water it and nurture it butyou can’t determine exactly how the argument or the essay will turn out in the end. In the case of the argument/essay as animal or human, the results will be even less predictable. The essay as animal – unless it is your slave – will choose its own direction. It’s the essay as animal that needs to have flesh on its bones.

- a person. The basis of the personification is very simple: we want the essay to do things for us, for instance to argue on our behalf. We also want the essay, as our work, to represent us, our ideas. Thisis the conception behind the idea that the essay is delivering a message, or that the essay considers ideas or comes to conclusions.

- a container. It has to hold water, i.e. if it leaks,it’s not functioning properly.

- a path or a road. In this very common metaphor usually the subject discussed is imagined as a landscape through which the argument of the essay passes, taking the reader with it. It’s from this metaphor the idea of a train of thought comes. When you signpost a strategy in your essay you’re tellingyour reader which road to follow.

- a vehicle. This conception is closely related to thelandscape and path metaphor. The argument of the

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essay carries the reader through the landscape of the subject. If the wheels come off your argument then it and you have a serious problem. In that caseyour argument/essay needs mending.

- a room or other inner space. This is in a way the reverse of the landscape metaphor, inside instead ofoutside space. In this metaphor the essay has corners, arguments can be left on or taken off the shelf, they can gather dust. The inside space or room metaphor for the essay overlaps with the painting metaphor below.

- a meal. The essay is structured in courses like a meal, it presents the reader with different flavoursto taste. Perhaps you give your reader a taste of something before she starts on the main course you’re providing.

- a mathematical structure. This way of looking at argument structure follows from the close relationship between logic and mathematics. An argument needs to add up, its force can be subtracted from. One can read an argument as an equation, considering variables and so forth.

- a mystery, like a detective story or a court case, for which evidence is required in order to prove theinnocence or guilt of a certain party, or to prove whether or not something happened or was or was not done by somebody magic. The essayist performs tricks, pulls a rabbit out of a hat (i.e. makes an unexpected move), has a trick up her sleeve (i.e. something yet to surprise us).

- a piece of cloth. If your argument consists of tangled threads then it isn’t really an argument yet. You’ll have to untangle the threads to create one.

- a painting or picture, hence ‘the big picture’. Thismetaphor can easily be mixed with the vehicle and landscape metaphor. A discipline or area of study islike a landscape pictured. The art of the essay is to take the reader’s eye

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(= mind) through that landscape, though not necessarily on a single path. The

landscape painting metaphor is particular apt for the expository essay.

These metaphors are very commonly used and very commonly mixed together, each carries a different emphasis or is characteristic of a different style of argument. One metaphor may dominate a particular essay’s style or structure but it’s uncommon to read an essay in which only one of these metaphors for argument or text applies. Understanding which metaphor applies in the text that you’rereading is a great help in conceptualising the argument or train of thought being put. As a writer you need to be ableto negotiate sensibly among these metaphors too. Notice thatin the last two sentences I’ve used variants of the ‘argument = path’ metaphor. If you combine too many different metaphors in your essay or if you shift too rapidly or unexpectedly from one to the other your reader will be lost. Remember that ‘mixed metaphor’ is generally considered a flaw in style. The function of the metaphoric schema of your essay is to make it easy for the reader to follow where you lead, not to disorient her, not to draw attention to the fact that metaphors are at work in the landscape you’re presenting. Notice again, that I’ve stayed with the same metaphor (argument = path) through to the end of this paragraph.

Metaphoric structures only the most common and obvious of tropic approaches. Many others are possible. Consult the glossary of tropes at the end of this book to exercise your imagination with the possibilities. Some particular other than metaphoric approaches you might want to consider for your essay or argument are:

- a metonymic (or associative) style. Instead of telling us what’s what in the manner of a metaphor (i.e. a = b), a metonymic style suggests connections or comparisons. The suggestive or associative method

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of argument is particularly useful for literary studies and comparisons. It’s common for instance for the critical work about a particular text to suggest the style of that primary text through its own method (choice of words, structure, etc.); an essay comparing two primary sources might adopt in part the style of each, thus subtly suggesting – rather than loudly announcing – comparisons. Allusion is probably the most reliable method of suggesting the ambiance or method or other content of another text, a text referred to. As opposed to direct reference (where a bibliographic entry tells the reader exactly what is referred to) allusion dependson a reader’s being well enough read to recognize the text suggested. To take a fairly unsubtle example: if I were to title a section of this chapter ‘to allude or not to allude’ then I would bealluding (in a crude and easily recognized way) to afamous soliloquy of Hamlet’s in Shakespeare’s play of that title.

- a synecdochic style. Synecdoche is the trope which allows the part to stand for the whole or the whole to stand for the part. It overlaps with metonymy in many ways and many theorists consider it a kind of metonymy. If I say ‘there were fifteen sail in the harbour’ meaning there were fifteen sailing boats then I am using a metonymy. The sails – a part of the boat – stand for the whole of the boat. Part forwhole and whole for part methods of organization areuseful where an argument needs to be generalised from the particular to the general or vice versa (cfinductive and deductive reasoning in chapter 8).

- frame or border oriented approaches are closely related to and often used in conjunction with metonymy or synecdoche. Much as synecdoche works on the basis of allowing part to stand for the whole, so frame or border tropes may allow inside and outside to represent or contrast with each other, ormay allow play with the border between the two to

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guide the reader through the argument. These approaches are valuable when your work is to define (sometimes subtle) differences between ‘territories’which may be, or may appear to be, closely related. Playing with the ways in which concepts contain or are contained in each other to can lead to useful new insights. When Jesus said, ‘In my father’s houseare many mansions’, he was exercising this kind of trope.

- an ironic style. Contradiction, paradox and irony are closely related concepts. Good argument (e.g. the dialectical kind [cf chapter 8]) often proceeds through or from the revealing of contradictions. Where those contradictions are satisfactorily resolved they sometimes provide the reader with resolution in the form of a paradox: something whichseems not to add up, but does. Where contradictionsare not resolved the trope structuring the thought may be revealed as irony. Contradictions commonly lead onto more contradictions however and these may again be revealed or connected through the operationof irony.

***

When you consider the metaphoric or tropic structure ofyour essay in the making you should remember that this is the kind of structure that should ideally be unconscious from the point of view of the reader. Tropic structure usually works best when you can’t see it. It’s included in the ‘what an essay has to be and what an essay has to do’ chapter because it’s very difficult to avoid having tropic structure to your work. That’s not because academic writing is particularly tricky, it’s because tropes structure everyone’s everyday thought and activity, in mainly unconscious ways. When you write an essay you should think through the choices you have for this aspect of the style. Writing in a de-troped or non-metaphoric way is actually quite difficult, although useful for a certain style of

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essay. It means taking away the pictures, the imagery, whichwould have helped the reader to follow the argument. The essay with no metaphoric structure is one in which it is difficult for the reader to ‘see’ what is meant.

From the writer’s point of view, not choosing tropic structure usually doesn’t mean not having it, generally it means not being aware of the way in which you are writing, not knowing what you are doing. As far as is possible it’s better to choose your own rather style and writing strategy rather than merely adopting one unconsciously or falling into the trap of employing a style which might be unsuited to, or could possibly even contradict, the argument you’re trying to put.

As previously suggested with reference to metaphoric structure or style, a reader-friendly essay is playful but directed, it’s one that moves freely and deliberately among the tropes. It has what we could call a rhetorical rhythm. That rhythm sets the pace of the argument.

***

Beyond the requirements of structure and style, to havean argument and function, to be in a genre, to do the work of imagining itself (e.g. as path through landscape or as building under construction), an essay needs generally to have a sense of where it’s coming from in order to know where it might be going. Just as an essay in the area of cultural studies needs to understand the texts or artefacts with which it deals, so it needs also to understand the other arguments and critical or theoretical texts which makeit possible. The next chapter will be devoted to this relationship between attribution (understanding where your ideas come from) and originality (the expression by you of ideas that have not been expressed before).

What else does an essay need to do? Remember those duties we expressed in chapter 2: the duty to question, the duty to doubt. These too are fundamental. The essay is a

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genre with a duty to adopt a critical point of view, to critique previous arguments, and through this means to form its own. That doesn’t mean the essay has to challenge anything and everything. It needs to work constructively, inorder to establish truth and facts and valid arguments or assertions. So there’s a positive as well as a negative sideto the critical process. Along with the rhetorical rhythm ofthe essay, there’s a rhythm of certainty and doubt in an essay, of knowing and asking, of statement and question.

In terms of process we could similarly say that an essay embodies a rhythm of confidence and anxiety. To write a good essay you have to get at least a little worried alongthe way, worried that you might be on the wrong track, that you might be going in the wrong direction, regressing (goingbackwards) or digressing (finding yourself in a cul de sac or adead-end street).

To sum up, an essay has to present an original argument. It uses valid and appropriate evidence

- to test an hypothesis - or to explore a question - or to discuss an issue - or to frame an argument with a view to proving a

pointMore likely it does some combination of these. An essay worth reading has considered the other points of view plausible for its subject matter. It knows its field and thetexts with which it deals and it understands the important ideas enabling its own argument.An essay that is interesting and convincing deals with an important subject and, no matter how much passion it expresses, makes fair and balanced – reasonable – judgementsabout its subject and the specific issues it discusses.

Beyond these fundamentals the judgement of the quality of an essay rests with the following abstract criteria: clarity, simplicity, eloquence and truth. The essayist has aduty to each of these:

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- clarity: being as unambiguous as is possible, meaning in words on paper what you mean to mean

- simplicity: making ideas no more complicated than they need be in order to further your argument, using words accurately to indicate your ideas

- eloquence: expressing your ideas as well, as beautifully, as aptly, as possible

- truth: revealing to the world what had not before been known

There is a more important duty which lies behind and beyond all of these and everything argued for in this chapter. Thatis the duty to witness the differences in thought to which argument and essay are generically dedicated.

We’ll discuss dialectical argument briefly in chapter 8. This is the kind of argument that arises from finding andresolving disagreements or contradictions. The most important function of the essay – and of critical thought ingeneral – is to find the contradictions that exist between different opinions or points of view: to find such contradictions, express them and/or explain them, to pass beyond them into a new territory of knowledge.

Content checklist:Does your essay/thesis have

- interest for the reader (i.e. something worth saying, something at stake)

- a convincing argument? - adequate evidence to support that argument?- sufficient objectivity? (e.g does it deal fairly

with the evidence for and against the proposition/s argued, does it deal fairly with opposing arguments?)

- an appropriate tropic/metaphoric structure?- clarity in terms of its goals and direction?

Is your essay/argument

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- well enough informed (do you demonstrate in your writing that you understand what you’re writing about)?

- logically sound (does it make sense)?- original (and not merely a rehash of something

someone else has already written)?- clear, as straightforward as possible, eloquent,

honest?

Does your essay do what it set out to do? Does it do the work that needed to be done?

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6originality and attributionor how to borrow and not steal

In the last chapter I mentioned that the essayist has aduty to tell the truth: to reveal to the world what had not before been known, to show the world a new truth. Truth!?

Truth is a confusing idea. The Bible says that the truth will set you free but the fact that people may be so certain about the truth and disagree so strongly about it has been the cause of all sorts of trouble in the world. It still is the cause of all sorts of trouble. How necessary that kind of trouble is is another question. Critical thinking – and what we call argument – has a role in the resolution of conflict of this kind. Critical thought shouldhelp us to work through disagreements, to think them throughclearly. This brings us back to the duty to thought mentioned in the last chapter. The essay – as intellectual process – is dedicated to the duty to witness differences inthought. That’s how the essay can make a contribution to knowledge. It’s from that process of witnessing new truths are discovered.

How to tell the truth? Surely this is the essayist’s hardest task. The easy answer to this difficult question is that you have to find your own way. You’ll be a lot less likely to get into trouble if you can think of truth as personal and/or particular rather than universal and general. The demand for originality in an essay means that what you need to produce is your own truth, in other words you need to show the world as you personally see it, you need to make others see what you can see. Ideally that truthof yours should be one you uniquely can see. It’s yours and yours only because no one else has recognised before what you have just recognised, what you are now in your essay

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telling the world. It’s difficult though to think or write what’s never been thought before. In fact there are degrees of originality and there are degrees of its opposite, derivativeness. You can borrow a lot and still be original enough. You can have very fresh ideas but they still might be heavily influenced by particular thinkers who led you through their mindscapes (= landscape of the mind). So more realistically, the truth you reveal should reflect your own circumstances as a thinker. Truth in this sense is the aim of every kind of essay and of all critical thinking. It depends on those essentials mentioned back in chapter 2. Youneed to problematise, to contextualise, to historicise. You need to challenge, question and doubt.

Now it’s not the case that the demand for originality means that your truth shouldn’t be relevant to others. It’s important that you make sense of ideas and situations otherscan understand. It’s important that you make an argument andexplain things in such a way that others can understand. If no one can understand what you’re writing about or the way you’re writing then you have no reader. An essay without a reader – like any piece of writing without a reader – is simply not functioning. It has no use.

To have a reader – and just as importantly to keep a reader – your truth (and your essay) must serve a function, for instance one of those listed at the beginning of the last chapter: to persuade, to test, to prove, etc. Truth in the personal sense I’m advocating here can fit any of those functions. It’s through one (or more) of those functions youdeliver your truth… or think of it as revelation (something you’re revealing) to your reader.

Keeping a reader from beginning to end of any piece of writing and any type of writing is an increasingly difficulttask today in our world of multi-tasking, multi-media and multiple distractions. In the end, the truth you tell must be nobody else’s and yet a truth you’re prepared to share with the world. The flipside of that willingness to share is

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that your reader has to be able to entertain the ideas you’ve decided to share. There are good and bad readers in this sense, as well as good and bad writers.

Telling something new to someone who’ll be able to understand it is one of the many difficult balancing acts involved in good critical writing. The expression of a pointof view is clearly linked to originality. This will be the subject of the next chapter. How to be sufficiently objective and yet express your own ideas? This is another ofthose difficult tasks for a student of writing.

The truth that no one else has known before is a tall order. An essay is worth reading because, by reading it, one’s knowledge is added to, one’s understanding is improved. It’s very difficult though sometimes to draw the line between what is already and what is not yet known. It’s often difficult to say exactly what constitutes an ‘original contribution to knowledge’. How original is original enough? We’ll return tothis question. It’s very important to decide what constitutes original thought because the phrase ‘original contribution to knowledge’ is the standard key demand for a PhD thesis and the PhD – as the highest university degree – is today the worldwide licence for a scholar and for a university teacher.

Probably the easiest way to make sure that your work issufficiently original is by having an original argument. Theeasiest way, in turn, to ensure that your argument is original would be by asking a question that hasn’t been asked before, or simply by investigating a topic about whichno one has previously written. These are all things easier said than done. More on original argument in chapter 8 when we come to argument in detail.

If it’s difficult to draw the line between original andderivative thinking, fortunately it’s much easier to draw the line between plagiarism and acceptably original work.

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***

Writing comes from somewhere, writing goes somewhere. Writing is influenced, but we only read in the hope of learning something new, something we haven’t read before. How to meet the contradictory demands involved in knowing where you’re coming from and in going somewhere new?

Human imagination is limitless but it’s not lacking in patterns. The functions and genres of arguments and essays discussed in the last chapter, the tropic structures discussed, the metaphors for argument and essay: these have all been used before, some for thousands of years. Are they all therefore useless clichés, are you a thief if you recycle all this old stuff? Not at all. No one expects you to invent a rhetorical structure for your writing out of thin air. Originality is in the way you combine known and practised strategies and structures. It’s by practising at using the strategies and making the structures you can learnto be original. Originality is in the purposes to which you put methods already known, the ways you put them to work. It’s by adopting the right combination of methods for your writing you’ll learn to be – and get to be – original.

Often when first accused of plagiarism, students take their worries a little too far, sometimes deciding that it’simpossible for them to be original. This is not so. The teacher/marker demands that you ‘use your own words’. But noone expects you to invent the words you use to write your essay. You have to borrow well established combinations (collocations) of words and ‘turns of phrase’ in your essay.Every writer has to do this.

How then to draw the line between what is and what is not original enough? The question will be easier to answer if we understand the nature of the difficulty.

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Apart from cultural differences which might get in the way of understanding the answer to the question ‘how original is original enough (?)’, there is the fact that when one writes in a foreign language one can feel as if allof the words and all of the ways of combining them belong tosomeone else. It’s natural to feel this way. After all none of the words you’re using are yours, they’re the words of somebody else’s language. Paradoxically, it’s only when you’ve really ‘stolen’ a lot of the language you’re writing in that you’ll be able to be original. You have to have ‘stolen’ thousands of words and phrases and hundreds of grammatical and rhetorical structures in order to be able tomake the choices in thinking and writing that will allow youto be original.

So there’s a very simple solution to the problem of originality. The solution is to ‘immerse’ yourself in the language you’re using so that the words and phrases you needbecome yours. The solution is in developing fluency and extensive knowledge of the language you use. The solution isin finding for yourself the materials from which you can make the choices you need to make. These ‘answers’ are of course easy to list, much more difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, the first step towards originality is to make yourself welcome – to make yourself at home – in the language you’re using.

***

Sometimes students believe that because originality is so highly prized in the western tradition, every form of copying must be wrong. The result of that thinking can be anessay which shows no knowledge of where its ideas are from. It quotes nothing and refers to no other authors. This kind of writing usually isn’t original, or at least not in a useful way, it’s usually just lost. The author doesn’t know where she’s going because she doesn’t know where she’s coming from.

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In fact copying is a very useful part of the essay writing process. Writing out – or more likely typing out – other peoples ideas and their exact wordings is a useful wayto become familiar with those ideas and to learn the writingand thinking techniques expressed in them. Copying like thisis only a problem when you either

- claim that the words or ideas thus expressed are your own

or- fail to point out to the reader that they’re not

your own (thus leaving her to assume that you are claiming them as your own).

More on plagiarism below, but note that both of these cases just described do amount to plagiarism. If you either claim others’ words as your own or fail to point out that the words of others included in your text are not your inventionthen you are plagiarising.

So – copying is a good starting point. In fact you needto do it in order to show where your argument is coming fromand how it is different from that of the writers and thinkers who have enabled your train of thought. It’s important but please remember that there are only two valid reasons for copying the words of other writers. They are to place them before you (fix them to the wall for instance) sothat you will bear them in mind (the purpose here is inspiration) or to quote them in your essay. When you use the words of others in a quotation in your essay you do so in order to develop your own argument by having an attitude to those borrowed words.

You almost always need to directly deploy the words of others in order to build a viable essay. As suggested in chapter 3, one way to create a structure for your essay or thesis is to build it around the quotations you intend to use. Spending time with famous (or at least relevant) well developed trains of thought and wordings is important for the development of your argument and it’s important for your

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long term development as a writer. One of the problems associated with Internet access and word processing technology today is that it is possible for students to cut and paste without properly reading the materials being used.At least when you had to copy by hand or by keyboard you hadto spend time with those words. For this reason you should always retype any words you intend to use in a quotation in your essay. If those words are worth repeating and commenting on in your essay then they’re worth spending timewith. Get to know the words you’re using. If you don’t understand them properly then how will you be able to advance your argument with them?

An experienced essayist is framing her own attitude andargument while she’s re-typing the words of another author. Simply having those ideas run through your head is often allthat’s needed to help you develop your own original argument, an argument for which you may or may not need to acknowledge the inspiration of another author. Even a beginning writer, in the process of retyping a quotation, may decide that her own wording would be more appropriate, in other words to paraphrase instead of quote. Or sometimes,simply spending time with the words will allow you to develop your own argument in such a way that there is no need to quote at all. In each of these case it’s only by spending the time physically copying someone else’s words it’s possible for you to work what you need to write and how. Note that plagiarism can easily occur if you make a mistake in deciding not to quote or paraphrase, rather expressing an idea as if it were your own. If your idea is not sufficiently different from the unacknowledged idea or wording of another author then you have in fact plagiarised.How to draw the line? Best to play on the safe side, especially while you’re learning the ropes.

Back to copying for the purpose of quoting: don’t think

of copying the words of others as the opposite of originality. Remember rather that you can only use those words or ideas if you acknowledge them. Think of copying as

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the first step on the ladder that leads to originality. You could imagine the steps on that ladder as follows, in terms of a task hierarchy for writing:

- copying for the purpose of quoting- paraphrase/summary- interpretation - theorising/ hypothesising

Copying and paraphrase involve direct engagement with the ideas and words of

other authors. When you copy or paraphrase you represent their words for the purpose of interpretation or of creatingyour own theory/argument. Interpretation is a higher level task, it involves deliberately creating your own text by explaining what other authors mean by their words and by explaining how they mean what they mean. Interpretation still depends though on the ideas of other authors. Hypothesising and theorising may take the reader beyond the ideas and writings of previous authors into what is clearly original (as opposed to derivative) thought.

In writing about literature, interpretation may be the highest level of critical thought. In that case interpretingis theorising and it does constitute original thought. That is to say, you can – and you should – write about the writing of others in an original way. It’s not only imaginative works that are original. Often, in theory or criticism, one goes beyond the ideas of a particular author by comparing them with those of another, by synthesising thetwo or by bearing witness to differences in their ideas or style of thought.

Note that both interpretation and theorising involve the creation of argument,

quoting and paraphrasing are by contrast steps toward (or steps in) an argument. Quoting and paraphrasing – the borrowing of ideas from other authors – are necessary to your argument, they do not constitute your argument.

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Where do draw the line between the borrowed and the original? How original is

original enough? The line between paraphrase and interpretation is the line between the borrowed and the original parts of your essay. Everything borrowed – whether quoted or paraphrased – must be acknowledged. An essay cannot consist entirely of materials borrowed. If does it fails as insufficiently original.

Before we go any further though, let’s look step by step at what’s involved

stages towards originality. Think back to our hierarchy of tasks: copying ^ paraphrasing ^ interpreting ^ theorising. It’s important to remember that in general the steps above depend on the steps below.

Avoiding plagiarism has to do with clear knowledge of what you’re doing with your words and ideas and with the words and ideas of others. It has to do with knowing how your ideas and your wordings are different from those which have enabled them. It has to do with knowing exactly which step of the ladder you’re on at any given place in your writing.

Quoting and paraphrasing

We’ll save the top rungs of the ladder – hypothesising and theorising – for chapter 8, which deals with argument. Let’s deal with the nuts and bolts holding up the lower rungs first.

As previously mentioned, in writing about literature it’s first important to distinguish the two types of text you’ll be reading and borrowing from for your own writing. These two text types are firstly the original or source or primary text (the work of imaginative literature you’re studying) and secondly the critical or theoretical or secondary

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text (i.e. the text which is, like the one you’re making in an essay) about the imaginative work in question. So, you read the original text and you read texts about it in order to create your own text about the original text. (You also make use of the ideas which your teachers give you in lectures about the texts, i.e. you use your lecture notes aswell as printed materials.)

There are three valid ways to borrow these two kinds oftext for use in your essay.The three ways are quotation, paraphrase and allusion. Quotation can either be in the text, in which case you have to frame it with your own words, or it can be outside of thetext – before it – in the form of an epigraph, in which casethe reader has to do the work of understanding the relationship between the words you’ve borrowed and the argument in your essay.

Use of the two types of text – primary and secondary – requires different strategies in your writing. In critical writing you need to borrow from, and acknowledge, both typesof text. But you don’t quote them in the same way. A play has characters doing the speaking (rather than a playwright), novels and poems have personae (plural of persona) speaking. So you don’t quote a line from a Shakespeare play by saying, ‘Shakespeare says...’ Let’s take an example of how to quote from a poem. Here’s Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet, probably his most famous one. (Please memorise it.)

Sonnet 18William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed:

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And every fair from fair sometime declines, By nature's changing course or chance untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

(1108)

How to quote part of this in your text will depend on your purpose. If you intend to deal at length and in detail with this text, then it’s probably a good idea to include the whole of the poem before you begin your treatment. (Note thatthis is one of the advantages of short texts. You can show your reader the whole of the text you’re considering. You can never do this with a novel or a play.) If you quote morethan about three lines of a text (primary or secondary) you should set it off from the main body of your writing, by indenting (as above). In that case, as in the example above,you don’t need to use quotation marks because the indentation signals that the lines are a quotation. If you’re dealing with the whole of the text in this way then you’ll probably end up quoting individual lines or phrases again as your treatment progresses. Here are a few ways you could do that:

The third line of Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet, ‘Rough winds doshake the darling buds of May’, shows that...Or In Sonnet 18 the line ‘Rough winds do shake the darling budsof May’ indicates that...

If you’re already part-way through an account of the poem, and it’s clear to the reader which poem you’re referring to, then you can write:The line ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May’ indicates that...Or even:

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The third line indicates that...

Note that the words you put inside the quotation marks in your text must appear exactly as they did in the originaltext from which you are quoting. It’s very annoying to the reader when you make a copying mistake in a quotation. And it’s very obvious when the mistake is in a well known text.

***Before we move on to paraphrase, let’s take a moment to

consider some of the vocabulary that can be used for the purposes of quoting the words of others. An essay can be boring if the same words are always used to indicate a quotation, for instance: Jones writes, ‘….’ The problem isn’t justboredom, though; there’s a lack of precision suggested by the constant use of a phrase like: Jones writes, ‘….’ The point isthat, by writing as s/he did, Jones was surely developing a certain kind of argument or trying to make a particular kindof point. By introducing (or by ‘back announcing’) the quotations you need, you begin or at least point to the interpretive process; you show that you have an understanding of the argument to which you are now responding in making your own argument. Some useful verbs for introducing (or back announcing) a quotation are:

arguesasksattestsclaimscontendsdeclares

deems findshypothesisesimpliesinsists offers

opinesproposes statestellswrites

It’s not the case that these terms are interchangeable, rather they have to be chosen carefully to suit the circumstance of the quotation and the intention or effect ofthe author quoted. Look at the longer list of verbs for argument in chapter 8. Be particularly careful with the use of say. Say should in principle be restricted to the

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quotation of arguments that were delivered orally, for instance in a lecture or on radio or television. Tell is a safer, more neutral, verb that could apply to writing or speech in quotation.

A last point on quoting. Sometimes you will need to quote other author’s quotations of other authors. That couldbe because you can’t find an original source for the quote you want to use, it could be because you want to quote the original with the secondary source (i.e. source + interpretation), or it could be because you are quoting froman anthology. Quoting quotations can become a little tricky;the two verbs cites and quotes are generally the most useful for this purpose: Jones cites Smith as having written…, Jones quotes Smith… In the case of an essay in an anthology of essays edited by someone other than the author, the preposition in is necessary: e.g. (Jones in Smith, 52). More on citation or attribution techniques below.

***

Writing in your own words what is in the text borrowed is called paraphrase. Whereas a direct quotation is usually introduced with words like: Jones writes, ‘...’, in the case of a paraphrase there are no quotation marks, so we’re more likely to read: Jones writes that… or Jones gives the impression that… What comes after the ‘that’ is will be Jones’s ideas but in your words. Note that the phrase, ‘according to Jones…’ could be used with either a direct quotation or a paraphrase.

The paraphrase technique is important for the use of

primary, but more important for the use of secondary materials. Note that whether you quote or paraphrase primaryor secondary materials, you still have to give the source for the ideas you are using. Not to do so is to plagiarise. Usually this isn’t a problem with regard to the primary textmaterial. If you’re writing about Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet

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it’s clear that you’re not claiming the ideas in it as your own original thoughts. So there’s no need to keep reminding your reader that the ideas are Shakespeare’s. With referenceto secondary sources you need to be much more careful to show which ideas are yours and which ideas you have borrowedfor the purposes of your argument.

When you paraphrase it’s important to remember that you’re not only putting someone else’s ideas into your words, you’re also putting those ideas into your sentences. So you need to make the necessary grammatical adjustments toensure that the sentence you produce, combining your ideas and those paraphrased, is a grammatical sentence. Think of it this way: what’s inside inverted commas is someone else’sgrammatical responsibility. What’s outside inverted commas, in paraphrase or summary form, is your responsibility.

To quote or to paraphrase? With imaginative texts – andespecially with poetry – it’s wisest to quote the original wording because it’s the text itself (the words themselves) – and not merely the ideas that are important. Of course where there’s a story involved – especially in drama or fiction – a summary can be useful way of telling your readerenough of what s/he needs to know of the text in order to understand your argument. A synopsis is a complete summary ofthe story in a work of fiction or drama. It can be a very useful exercise for you to write a synopsis of the work you’re studying. It helps you for instance to understand thewhole of the plot. It can help you to hold the whole of the story in your head. It’s only by being familiar with the whole of the story that you can write with confidence that you understand the complete work and that what you write about the first chapter isn’t contradicted by what you’ve forgotten about the last. You may be able to use parts of your synopsis in the essay you’re writing but note that too much synopsis will make your essay too derivative, i.e. not original enough. The purpose of the essay is to put your argument, not to merely re-tell the story/ies your argument is about.

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So, summarising is useful for primary works which are long and/or plot oriented (e.g. short stories, novels, plays, epic or narrative poetry). In general though, paraphrase should be used much less with primary than with secondary sources. With critical or theoretical works paraphrase is more acceptable because the focus in more on words than on ideas. It’s from those secondary, critical works we can find models for interpretation. By agreeing or disagreeing with the interpretation of critics and theoristswe can arrive at our own interpretation of the primary work/s studied, and thus produce an essay that is sufficiently original.

How to interpret? You can interpret a line in poetry bymaking a direct claim as to what it means:This line means that, although spring is a season of new growth,...Or you can be more tentative in your claim:In this line the persona suggests that although spring is associated with new life,...

Interpretation of complete works usually requires reference to (and comparison of) specific theoretical frameworks and often refers to particular schools of literary criticism. More of this below. Remember for now that while summarising the text is an important skill and a useful step towards interpretation, interpretation demands that you demonstrate your own understanding of the text.

Attribution/citation

The general term used for acknowledging the source of the ideas and words you borrow for your essay writing is attribution. You need to properly attribute all of the wordingsand ideas in your essay which you have found rather than created yourself. You also have a duty as an essayist – and as an intellectual – to find out if others have expressed

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before the ideas that you are expressing now. If someone else has written already more or less what you have just written – even by complete coincidence – then you haven’t plagiarised but your ideas are not sufficiently original. Ifsomeone else has written already exactly what you have just written – even by complete coincidence – then your teacher/examiner has no choice but to consider your work plagiarised. The former kind of coincidence is very common, the latter is fortunately very rare.

How to attribute properly? How to cite your reference tothe text from which you’re borrowing? The MLA style, the one most commonly used, is to put a page number in brackets after the text quoted. That citation can’t be confused with any other because it refers to the entry in your bibliography which details a particular source, in this casethe edition of Shakespeare which you’re using. So the bracketed number (1108) placed after the Shakespeare sonnet above refers to a particular edition of Shakespeare, one which will be listed in the bibliography at the end of the essay, as follows:

Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. ed.W.J. Craig, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945.

If you’ve already given the page reference when you first quoted the poem then there’s no need to go on doing it over again, unless for some reason confusion might arise if you don’t.

Note that when you’re quoting from the dialogue in a play or a novel, you can quote what a particular character says or asks:Hamlet says ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ (I, ii, p. 878).You can contextualise the quote by situating it in a dialogue, i.e. by telling your reader who is talking to whom:

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Hamlet tells Horatio, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth.../Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ (I, ii, p. 878).Likewise, the dialogue can be paraphrased:Hamlet tells Horatio that his understanding of things supernatural is necessarily limited.

There’s a fine line between paraphrase and interpretation and in skilful critical writing the one shades into the other. For example if you wrote, ‘Hamlet asks Horatio to keep an open mind’ this would be an act of interpretation.

Notice how the slash (/) in the Hamlet quotation above indicates that, to save space, you’re running on what Shakespeare’s text gave as two lines. Notice that in the citation (I, ii, p. 878) here, the act and scene numbers aregiven along with a page number. This is a kindness to the reader because it will make the quotation easy to find in any edition of Shakespeare. Please note that this is an exception which applies only to particular texts famous enough to be printed in exactly the same form but in different editions, and so with the exact same text appearing on different pages. The Bible is the most conspicuous example. With the Bible you should cite chapter and verse. Notice that the text, Hamlet, above is given in italics. A book length work (a novel, play, book of poetry or long poem, likewise a book of criticism or theory) has its title cited in italics, in the body of the essay and in the bibliography. (Do not use underlining, underlining was used on typewriters to mean italics, because typewriters could not produce italic script.) Traditionally it has not been necessary to include the Bible in a bibliography because it is assumed to be the one book that everyone must have. Today, however the Bible has so many variants it may be wise to cite the particular version and edition you’re using. Note that the Bible is the only book length work the title of which should be given in Roman rather than italic type. The title of a poem (e.g. ‘Sonnet 18’) is given in inverted commas, as is a chapter or an essay title.

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If you have doubts as to properly arrange or deal with citations then some of the following web-sites may help you:http://www.mla.org/http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocMLA.htmlhttp://webster.commnet.edu/mla.htmhttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html

Google and you will find many more of these guides. You might also find it handy to have a book form guide which cansit with your other reference works next to your computer while you type. A good example is: The Little, Brown Essential Handbook for Writers, Jane E. Aaron, New York: Longman, 1999.

Interpretation

The manner in which you refer to text is a matter of subtlety and delicacy. You need to vary the words and phrases you use in reference to a text, so as to not be boringly repetitive, but also so as to make clear the way inwhich you are pointing to a particular text. This is even more important where reference to secondary or critical sources is concerned. When you refer to someone else’s interpretation you need to position yourself carefully by choosing the words which give your own opinion about the opinion you’re referring to. There’s a large inventory of words available for this purpose in English. You can write that an author claims, reasons, suggests, argues, contends, explains, misinterprets, misses the point, demands that we accept the view that... Naturally the authors you cite may agree and/or disagree with each other. In that case you need to position yourself in relation to their arguments with each other. That’s a little like butting in to a conversation. The art of critical writing is in this way like the art of interrupting. This isvery hard to begin with because you need to have something worth saying in order to justify the interruption. But it’s by learning to interrupt arguments that you find the thing

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that’s worth saying and learn to make your own interpretation.

What is interpretation? An interpretation of a text is a well informed opinion which can be backed up by evidence. It can be argued for and against. The point needs to be madevery strongly here that, in writing about culture or literature, there is never one correct answer. There are however wrong answers. Wrong answers are the ones which are based on misinterpretations or on purported facts which are actually incorrect. More common than wrong interpretations are poor or weak interpretations. Poor or weak interpretations are not well supported by evidence, textual or otherwise. A strong interpretation is one which has solidor strong evidence to back it up or support it. No one interpretation is ever the correct one. Literary texts are only worth studying because they allow (or even demand) a range of interpretation. That simple fact can be very difficult for students to accept. However, until you do accept that very different interpretations of the same text can be equally valid, you won’t really be studying literature, you’ll be playing a kind of guessing game: the kind you can’t win.

Interpretation is an endless process. As long as a textis worth spending time with, you won’t have accounted for all of its meaning. Berthold Brecht expressed this idea in his poem ‘About the Way to Construct Enduring Works’:

How long Do works endure? As long As they are not completed.Since as long as they demand effort They do not decay.

A good story or poem demands to be re-told and/or re-interpreted. As long as it is being retold or re-interpretedit is being worked on. Re-telling is itself a kind of re-interpretation. It brings a text into a new context where it

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has to work for a different audience from that for which it was originally intended.

There are two key questions in interpretation, and these questions are closely related. They are:

- what does the text mean? and- how does the text mean what it means?

All of the critical tools at your disposal should be devoted to the business of answering those two key questions. If you keep your focus on the meaning of texts in this way then youcan’t go far wrong. In discussions, consider: if there were only one correct answer to these questions above then it would be not worthwhile to spend any time with the texts concerned.

The understanding demonstrated by interpretation goes beyond knowing what happens in the plot or having basic knowledge about the characters, it means finding your own way or relating stories and characters to other stories and characters and to the contexts from which they come. It means explaining in your own way – with maximum sophistication – the meaning of the text. That maximum sophistication could be revealed in understanding how the work you’re studying fits into the history of literature, anunderstanding of its broader meaning for the culture it represents, an understanding of what the text tells us of its context. There’s sophistication also in close reading, understanding the detail of the text. Working on poetry willgive you the best practice at close reading because in poetry the words and their combination are so important thatthe big picture can never be far from the lines and the words on the page. Best of all, maximum sophistication will involve both an understanding of the detail of the text and an understanding of how the text fits into a bigger picture,an understanding of its place and importance, an understanding of what it means and, just as importantly, an understanding of how it means what it means.

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In a critical essay about literary works or other cultural products, the interpretation will either be the argument of your essay or it will be closely related to the argument. For instance, in a comparative studies essay, yourargument might come from the comparison of the two texts (ormore) you’re comparing, and of the two or more contexts you need to compare in order to compare the texts. We’ll consider some of the issues involved in the making of those kinds of comparison and the creation of those kinds of arguments over the next two chapters.

As your critical and theoretical writing progresses andbecomes stronger, dealing with secondary sources and having original insights becomes more and more important. It’s mainly on those aspects of your writing you’ll be assessed. In literature essays, in order to pass, you have to cite the opinions of other authors about the texts you’restudying. And you have to demonstrate that your ideas are original, by showing how those ideas are different from those of the authors to whom you refer. When you first startwriting about literary texts the most important thing is that you demonstrate that you have an understanding of them.But as your understanding and writing become more sophisticated it becomes more and more important to demonstrate that you understand what critics have written. You come to your own opinion of a text by understanding how others came to their opinions. You get there through the practice of speaking and writing about texts, i.e., through conversation and through the writing of essays.

A note here about judgement and the value of literature. Your objective in writing about literature is todevelop opinions and arguments and to make judgements about these. Your objective isn’t to make black and white value judgements about the quality of literary works. Proving to your reader that Shakespeare is a genius is really a waste of time. Many before you have also thought that Shakespeare was a genius, so this cannot be considered an original idea.Likewise, criticising a particular work of Shakespeare’s for

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not being as good as some others, is generally a waste of time. We know Shakespeare is a good writer, is canonic, that’s why we’re studying him. You’re not writing book reviews for a newspaper, advising a potential reader of which new books are worthwhile. When dealing with the canon of literature you should try to focus on works which you either like for some reason or about which you have some interesting insight or observation to make. Often those insights will be about the way those works refer to or are different from (or similar to) each other. So, judgement in these senses relates to the understanding of texts and theircontexts. It isn’t about absolute value. Canons of literature are in a process of constant re-assessment because people (critics, teachers, students) are constantly deciding whether to continue reading particular works. You get to make that kind of value judgement too, simply by ignoring the texts which you don’t like, or about which you have nothing to say. In writing about literature keep away from words like ‘genius’ and ‘inspired’ and ‘masterpiece’. They’re a sign of laziness. Instead of going to the trouble of engaging with the text by saying something new and worth hearing about it, when you use words like ‘genius’ you’re simply hiding behind an already accepted judgement, an orthodoxy. Telling your reader that you think great works aregreat is just a waste of paper and time, yours and theirs.

Always remember that texts are only worth spending timewith just to the extent that they are open to interpretation. The work of the essayist in interpreting is to understand the text, and that means keeping it open to interpretation, opening to debate, not shutting the book because it is now understood once and for all. Texts worth spending time with are never understood once and for all. The best texts sometimes present themselves to their readersas labyrinths for interpretation, sites in which themes and ideas are connected, paths lead ever onward and ever back, but never in ways that can be fully known in advance.

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Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a word that strikes fear into the heart of many students. The reason plagiarism is a fearful idea isthat many students aren’t exactly sure of what it is. Or rather, they’re not exactly sure what constitutes plagiarismand what doesn’t.

Let’s try to be really clear about this. Plagiarism means taking other peoples words or ideas or research findings and writing or publishing them, without acknowledgement, as if they were your own.

This definition seems straightforward enough. But thereare some grey areas and we need to try to deal honestly withthem. Your work needs to be original. But how original is original enough? That’s a very difficult line to draw. Thereare plenty of books on the market and on the library shelveswhich are not terribly original, but nor are they plagiarised. So really there are two lines to draw. There’s one line between works which are actually copied – in which the words are stolen – and works which are just boring because they’re not really telling a reader anything new. The text you’re reading right now might be an example of thesecond kind. How strikingly original can you be when you’re writing about something so many people already know about? Let’s call it a challenge. The text you’re reading now may not be terribly original but is original in the sense that Iwrote it: it’s not plagiarised. This brings us to the other line, the line which separates boring unoriginal (but unplagiarised) works from works which are really worthwhile because they contain ideas which no one has thought of before. Naturally, the hardest thing is to think thoughts and write works in this last category. And of course that should be your aim as a student. However you’re not going toget into trouble if you fall, with most of writing humanity,into the middle camp: those who are a little boring and veryderivative but honest about their work.

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So – try to formulate your own ideas and try to show honestly the source of the ideas to which you refer, the ideas which influence your thinking.

How to play it safe on the issue of plagiarism? In principle you should acknowledge all of the information you find in sources other than your own head. It doesn’t matter whether you quote it directly in inverted commas or whether you paraphrase it; you still have to acknowledge what you have borrowed in the same manner, by giving a citation in your text and a full bibliographic entry at the end of your essay. If you use someone else’s words without acknowledgingtheir source then you are stealing (i.e. plagiarising).

Think about this way. You have to quote other texts in yours. So acknowledging them properly is proof that you are doing the job properly. Borrowing is compulsory, stealing isforbidden.

But what if it’s only a few words? How many words can Iuse before I have to acknowledge them? This brings us back to the feeling that ‘none of the words are mine’. Perhaps you’re thinking: ‘I didn’t invent the English language; so in a way, every word I use is borrowed. But I can’t acknowledge a source for every word I use, can I? I’d go madif I tried to do that.’ And you would.

Here then are some practical questions and answers and rules of thumb which should help you keep out of trouble. Firstly, apply the five word rule. Very simply this means that if you take and use five or more words not your own in a row without acknowledging the source then you are certainly plagiarising. Less than five words may also be plagiarising, but five or more words certainly is. If I translate someone else’s words and include them unacknowledged in the body of my essay, is this plagiarism? The answer is yes. If I translate and then paraphrase someone else’s words and include them unacknowledged in the body of my essay, is this plagiarism? The answer is yes.

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It’s not only words that can be stolen, it’s also ideas. If you express exactly the same idea that another author has published, but in your own words, then you are certainly plagiarising. Avoid this problem by quoting or paraphrasing the idea that is close to yours, by attributing it properly,and by showing how your thinking is (perhaps quite subtly) different.

One of the grey areas with acknowledgements in an academic writing is what’s called common knowledge. Academic writing has somewhat stricter rules than for instance journalism for the attribution of facts which could be thought of as common knowledge. These have to be judged caseby case. But for example, if for some reason you needed to write in your essay ‘Humans have two arms and two legs...’:this statement is certainly in the category of common knowledge. You would appear a complete idiot (or a comedian)if you cited a source for this information. Well known historical information is also in this category, as is a lotof knowledge about literary genres and devices and the livesof authors. You should not cite a source for the birth and death dates of an author, for the beginning or end of a war (unless these are for some reason disputed). To do so makes you appear ignorant. A problem arises often because as a student you’re often learning facts which are in the category of common knowledge, but which are new to you. If in doubt, check with your teacher. Gradually – through your own reading and writing practice – you’ll get a feeling for what’s included in and excluded from the category of common knowledge.

Remember that it’s generally very easy for your teachers to tell when you’ve plagiarised. Sometimes it’s amazingly easy. Students sometimes copy from websites and drop the stolen text in mixed with their own without even changing the font. In that case the text of a different quality is highlighted for the teacher’s attention. But a teacher usually has no trouble telling when a phrase or a clause or a sentence isn’t yours. That’s because the stolen

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wordings are of a different intellectual and/or grammatical quality from those your teacher knows you to be capable of.

When you’re caught plagiarising you could be given a second chance for the first offence. Or you could simply be failed on the assignment. On a second offence you will certainly record a failing grade. Serial plagiarists are usually executed in public in some grisly manner, not of their own choosing. (Only joking.) It's not unknown for plagiarists to be expelled from universities. The moral of the story is not don’t get caught. The moral is don’t do it. Remember: plagiarised work cannot pass.

There’s a serious ethical choice to be made here. And like every ethical choice it has consequences. The plagiarist will never be a real scholar. If you want to knowhow to draw the line ethically on the plagiarism issue, think of this analogy. The parent who helps her child with her homework is a good parent, the parent who does her child’s homework for her is not a good parent.

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The bigger question to which the problem of plagiarism points is that with which the chapter began: originality andattribution. To be a scholar or researcher in any field you have to have your own ideas and you have to show where your thinking comes from. These are the key – and one might thinkcontradictory – demands of scholarly writing in the western tradition. In fact, there isn’t really a contradiction. There’s a subtle but precise demand which applies to researched writing across the disciplines. To put it as succinctly as possible: You have to have new ideas and you have to be able to show how those ideas are new by showing how those original ideas of yours are similar to and differentfrom the ideas which came before them, those prior ideas which made your ideas possible. The aim of every kind of research is to go beyond what was known before you started writing.

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Now this might seem like a very immodest aim. How can I– insignificant student – think beyond all of the great minds I’ve been studying? Let’s say it’s a challenge. Sometimes that challenge is simply impractical. And in that case it can be enough to demonstrate your own understanding of the ideas you’ve been studying. The important thing in that case is that what you yourself write should honestly beyour own understanding and not merely someone else’s words that you’ve copied. It’s rare to fail if you make that kind of genuine effort at understanding for yourself.

Take for example the kind of essay in which you comparetheories. In a literature essay you’re probably comparing various critics’ ideas about a primary text which you and the critics have read. The aim of your essay in that case will be to weigh those opinions and compare them with your own reading of the text. Your teacher won’t expect you to be a smarter or better writer than the critics you’re citing (although s/he’ll be pleasantly surprised if you are). What s/he expects you to do is to demonstrate that you yourself have formed an opinion which is different in some way/s fromthe opinions expressed in the critical texts you’ve read. What you have to show is that you’ve brought your own understanding to the piece of literature in question. From the point of view of western scholarship, if you haven’t formed your own ideas, and if you can’t demonstrate that you’ve formed your own ideas, then you’ve actually wasted everybody’s time.

Originality and attribution checklist:- Is your argument your own? (How is it different

from the other arguments you’ve studied?)- Have you applied the five word rule to everything

you’ve borrowed to make your essay?- Are enough of the words in your essay your own

words? What proportion of your essay is quotation? What proportion of your essay is paraphrase?

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- Remember that in meeting the word limit requirementsfor the essay or thesis you count only your own words and not those you have cited (i.e. paraphrase counts but quotation doesn’t).

- Have you cited the source of every wording and everyidea you have borrowed in your essay?

- Can the reader of your essay find in your bibliography (or list of works cited) every work youhave quoted, paraphrased or referred to in your text?

- Can the reader of your essay find in your text the page numbers (referenced to the bibliography) that will allow her to go directly to the original text from which you have borrowed (and without having to read – or look through – a the whole book)?

Remember: plagiarised work cannot pass.

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7opinion, judgement and point of view

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Writing comes from somewhere, writing goes somewhe6originality and attributionor how to borrow and not steal

In the last chapter I mentioned that the essayist has aduty to tell the truth: to reveal to the world what had not before been known, to show the world a new truth. Truth!?

Truth is a confusing idea. The Bible says that the truth will set you free but the fact that people may be so certain about the truth and disagree so strongly about it has been the cause of all sorts of trouble in the world. It still is the cause of all sorts of trouble. How necessary that kind of trouble is is another question. Critical thinking – and what we call argument – has a role in the resolution of conflict of this kind. Critical thought shouldhelp us to work through disagreements, to think them throughclearly. This brings us back to the duty to thought mentioned in the last chapter. The essay – as intellectual process – is dedicated to the duty to witness differences inthought. That’s how the essay can make a contribution to knowledge. It’s from that process of witnessing new truths are discovered.

How to tell the truth? Surely this is the essayist’s hardest task. The easy answer to this difficult question is that you have to find your own way. You’ll be a lot less likely to get into trouble if you can think of truth as personal and/or particular rather than universal and general. The demand for originality in an essay means that what you need to produce is your own truth, in other words you need to show the world as you personally see it, you need to make others see what you can see. Ideally that truthof yours should be one you uniquely can see. It’s yours and yours only because no one else has recognised before what you have just recognised, what you are now in your essay

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telling the world. It’s difficult though to think or write what’s never been thought before. In fact there are degrees of originality and there are degrees of its opposite, derivativeness. You can borrow a lot and still be original enough. You can have very fresh ideas but they still might be heavily influenced by particular thinkers who led you through their mindscapes (= landscape of the mind). So more realistically, the truth you reveal should reflect your own circumstances as a thinker. Truth in this sense is the aim of every kind of essay and of all critical thinking. It depends on those essentials mentioned back in chapter 2. Youneed to problematise, to contextualise, to historicise. You need to challenge, question and doubt.

Now it’s not the case that the demand for originality means that your truth shouldn’t be relevant to others. It’s important that you make sense of ideas and situations otherscan understand. It’s important that you make an argument andexplain things in such a way that others can understand. If no one can understand what you’re writing about or the way you’re writing then you have no reader. An essay without a reader – like any piece of writing without a reader – is simply not functioning. It has no use.

To have a reader – and just as importantly to keep a reader – your truth (and your essay) must serve a function, for instance one of those listed at the beginning of the last chapter: to persuade, to test, to prove, etc. Truth in the personal sense I’m advocating here can fit any of those functions. It’s through one (or more) of those functions youdeliver your truth… or think of it as revelation (something you’re revealing) to your reader.

Keeping a reader from beginning to end of any piece of writing and any type of writing is an increasingly difficulttask today in our world of multi-tasking, multi-media and multiple distractions. In the end, the truth you tell must be nobody else’s and yet a truth you’re prepared to share with the world. The flipside of that willingness to share is

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that your reader has to be able to entertain the ideas you’ve decided to share. There are good and bad readers in this sense, as well as good and bad writers.

Telling something new to someone who’ll be able to understand it is one of the many difficult balancing acts involved in good critical writing. The expression of a pointof view is clearly linked to originality. This will be the subject of the next chapter. How to be sufficiently objective and yet express your own ideas? This is another ofthose difficult tasks for a student of writing.

The truth that no one else has known before is a tall order. An essay is worth reading because, by reading it, one’s knowledge is added to, one’s understanding is improved. It’s very difficult though sometimes to draw the line between what is already and what is not yet known. It’s often difficult to say exactly what constitutes an ‘original contribution to knowledge’. How original is original enough? We’ll return tothis question. It’s very important to decide what constitutes original thought because the phrase ‘original contribution to knowledge’ is the standard key demand for a PhD thesis and the PhD – as the highest university degree – is today the worldwide licence for a scholar and for a university teacher.

Probably the easiest way to make sure that your work issufficiently original is by having an original argument. Theeasiest way, in turn, to ensure that your argument is original would be by asking a question that hasn’t been asked before, or simply by investigating a topic about whichno one has previously written. These are all things easier said than done. More on original argument in chapter 8 when we come to argument in detail.

If it’s difficult to draw the line between original andderivative thinking, fortunately it’s much easier to draw the line between plagiarism and acceptably original work.

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Writing comes from somewhere, writing goes somewhere. Writing is influenced, but we only read in the hope of learning something new, something we haven’t read before. How to meet the contradictory demands involved in knowing where you’re coming from and in going somewhere new?

Human imagination is limitless but it’s not lacking in patterns. The functions and genres of arguments and essays discussed in the last chapter, the tropic structures discussed, the metaphors for argument and essay: these have all been used before, some for thousands of years. Are they all therefore useless clichés, are you a thief if you recycle all this old stuff? Not at all. No one expects you to invent a rhetorical structure for your writing out of thin air. Originality is in the way you combine known and practised strategies and structures. It’s by practising at using the strategies and making the structures you can learnto be original. Originality is in the purposes to which you put methods already known, the ways you put them to work. It’s by adopting the right combination of methods for your writing you’ll learn to be – and get to be – original.

Often when first accused of plagiarism, students take their worries a little too far, sometimes deciding that it’simpossible for them to be original. This is not so. The teacher/marker demands that you ‘use your own words’. But noone expects you to invent the words you use to write your essay. You have to borrow well established combinations (collocations) of words and ‘turns of phrase’ in your essay.Every writer has to do this.

How then to draw the line between what is and what is not original enough? The question will be easier to answer if we understand the nature of the difficulty.

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Apart from cultural differences which might get in the way of understanding the answer to the question ‘how original is original enough (?)’, there is the fact that when one writes in a foreign language one can feel as if allof the words and all of the ways of combining them belong tosomeone else. It’s natural to feel this way. After all none of the words you’re using are yours, they’re the words of somebody else’s language. Paradoxically, it’s only when you’ve really ‘stolen’ a lot of the language you’re writing in that you’ll be able to be original. You have to have ‘stolen’ thousands of words and phrases and hundreds of grammatical and rhetorical structures in order to be able tomake the choices in thinking and writing that will allow youto be original.

So there’s a very simple solution to the problem of originality. The solution is to ‘immerse’ yourself in the language you’re using so that the words and phrases you needbecome yours. The solution is in developing fluency and extensive knowledge of the language you use. The solution isin finding for yourself the materials from which you can make the choices you need to make. These ‘answers’ are of course easy to list, much more difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, the first step towards originality is to make yourself welcome – to make yourself at home – in the language you’re using.

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Sometimes students believe that because originality is so highly prized in the western tradition, every form of copying must be wrong. The result of that thinking can be anessay which shows no knowledge of where its ideas are from. It quotes nothing and refers to no other authors. This kind of writing usually isn’t original, or at least not in a useful way, it’s usually just lost. The author doesn’t know where she’s going because she doesn’t know where she’s coming from.

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In fact copying is a very useful part of the essay writing process. Writing out – or more likely typing out – other peoples ideas and their exact wordings is a useful wayto become familiar with those ideas and to learn the writingand thinking techniques expressed in them. Copying like thisis only a problem when you either

- claim that the words or ideas thus expressed are your own

or- fail to point out to the reader that they’re not

your own (thus leaving her to assume that you are claiming them as your own).

More on plagiarism below, but note that both of these cases just described do amount to plagiarism. If you either claim others’ words as your own or fail to point out that the words of others included in your text are not your inventionthen you are plagiarising.

So – copying is a good starting point. In fact you needto do it in order to show where your argument is coming fromand how it is different from that of the writers and thinkers who have enabled your train of thought. It’s important but please remember that there are only two valid reasons for copying the words of other writers. They are to place them before you (fix them to the wall for instance) sothat you will bear them in mind (the purpose here is inspiration) or to quote them in your essay. When you use the words of others in a quotation in your essay you do so in order to develop your own argument by having an attitude to those borrowed words.

You almost always need to directly deploy the words of others in order to build a viable essay. As suggested in chapter 3, one way to create a structure for your essay or thesis is to build it around the quotations you intend to use. Spending time with famous (or at least relevant) well developed trains of thought and wordings is important for the development of your argument and it’s important for your

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long term development as a writer. One of the problems associated with Internet access and word processing technology today is that it is possible for students to cut and paste without properly reading the materials being used.At least when you had to copy by hand or by keyboard you hadto spend time with those words. For this reason you should always retype any words you intend to use in a quotation in your essay. If those words are worth repeating and commenting on in your essay then they’re worth spending timewith. Get to know the words you’re using. If you don’t understand them properly then how will you be able to advance your argument with them?

An experienced essayist is framing her own attitude andargument while she’s re-typing the words of another author. Simply having those ideas run through your head is often allthat’s needed to help you develop your own original argument, an argument for which you may or may not need to acknowledge the inspiration of another author. Even a beginning writer, in the process of retyping a quotation, may decide that her own wording would be more appropriate, in other words to paraphrase instead of quote. Or sometimes,simply spending time with the words will allow you to develop your own argument in such a way that there is no need to quote at all. In each of these case it’s only by spending the time physically copying someone else’s words it’s possible for you to work what you need to write and how. Note that plagiarism can easily occur if you make a mistake in deciding not to quote or paraphrase, rather expressing an idea as if it were your own. If your idea is not sufficiently different from the unacknowledged idea or wording of another author then you have in fact plagiarised.How to draw the line? Best to play on the safe side, especially while you’re learning the ropes.

Back to copying for the purpose of quoting: don’t think

of copying the words of others as the opposite of originality. Remember rather that you can only use those words or ideas if you acknowledge them. Think of copying as

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the first step on the ladder that leads to originality. You could imagine the steps on that ladder as follows, in terms of a task hierarchy for writing:

- copying for the purpose of quoting- paraphrase/summary- interpretation - theorising/ hypothesising

Copying and paraphrase involve direct engagement with the ideas and words of

other authors. When you copy or paraphrase you represent their words for the purpose of interpretation or of creatingyour own theory/argument. Interpretation is a higher level task, it involves deliberately creating your own text by explaining what other authors mean by their words and by explaining how they mean what they mean. Interpretation still depends though on the ideas of other authors. Hypothesising and theorising may take the reader beyond the ideas and writings of previous authors into what is clearly original (as opposed to derivative) thought.

In writing about literature, interpretation may be the highest level of critical thought. In that case interpretingis theorising and it does constitute original thought. That is to say, you can – and you should – write about the writing of others in an original way. It’s not only imaginative works that are original. Often, in theory or criticism, one goes beyond the ideas of a particular author by comparing them with those of another, by synthesising thetwo or by bearing witness to differences in their ideas or style of thought.

Note that both interpretation and theorising involve the creation of argument,

quoting and paraphrasing are by contrast steps toward (or steps in) an argument. Quoting and paraphrasing – the borrowing of ideas from other authors – are necessary to your argument, they do not constitute your argument.

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Where do draw the line between the borrowed and the original? How original is

original enough? The line between paraphrase and interpretation is the line between the borrowed and the original parts of your essay. Everything borrowed – whether quoted or paraphrased – must be acknowledged. An essay cannot consist entirely of materials borrowed. If does it fails as insufficiently original.

Before we go any further though, let’s look step by step at what’s involved

stages towards originality. Think back to our hierarchy of tasks: copying ^ paraphrasing ^ interpreting ^ theorising. It’s important to remember that in general the steps above depend on the steps below.

Avoiding plagiarism has to do with clear knowledge of what you’re doing with your words and ideas and with the words and ideas of others. It has to do with knowing how your ideas and your wordings are different from those which have enabled them. It has to do with knowing exactly which step of the ladder you’re on at any given place in your writing.

Quoting and paraphrasing

We’ll save the top rungs of the ladder – hypothesising and theorising – for chapter 8, which deals with argument. Let’s deal with the nuts and bolts holding up the lower rungs first.

As previously mentioned, in writing about literature it’s first important to distinguish the two types of text you’ll be reading and borrowing from for your own writing. These two text types are firstly the original or source or primary text (the work of imaginative literature you’re studying) and secondly the critical or theoretical or secondary

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text (i.e. the text which is, like the one you’re making in an essay) about the imaginative work in question. So, you read the original text and you read texts about it in order to create your own text about the original text. (You also make use of the ideas which your teachers give you in lectures about the texts, i.e. you use your lecture notes aswell as printed materials.)

There are three valid ways to borrow these two kinds oftext for use in your essay.The three ways are quotation, paraphrase and allusion. Quotation can either be in the text, in which case you have to frame it with your own words, or it can be outside of thetext – before it – in the form of an epigraph, in which casethe reader has to do the work of understanding the relationship between the words you’ve borrowed and the argument in your essay.

Use of the two types of text – primary and secondary – requires different strategies in your writing. In critical writing you need to borrow from, and acknowledge, both typesof text. But you don’t quote them in the same way. A play has characters doing the speaking (rather than a playwright), novels and poems have personae (plural of persona) speaking. So you don’t quote a line from a Shakespeare play by saying, ‘Shakespeare says...’ Let’s take an example of how to quote from a poem. Here’s Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet, probably his most famous one. (Please memorise it.)

Sonnet 18William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed:

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And every fair from fair sometime declines, By nature's changing course or chance untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

(1108)

How to quote part of this in your text will depend on your purpose. If you intend to deal at length and in detail with this text, then it’s probably a good idea to include the whole of the poem before you begin your treatment. (Note thatthis is one of the advantages of short texts. You can show your reader the whole of the text you’re considering. You can never do this with a novel or a play.) If you quote morethan about three lines of a text (primary or secondary) you should set it off from the main body of your writing, by indenting (as above). In that case, as in the example above,you don’t need to use quotation marks because the indentation signals that the lines are a quotation. If you’re dealing with the whole of the text in this way then you’ll probably end up quoting individual lines or phrases again as your treatment progresses. Here are a few ways you could do that:

The third line of Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet, ‘Rough winds doshake the darling buds of May’, shows that...Or In Sonnet 18 the line ‘Rough winds do shake the darling budsof May’ indicates that...

If you’re already part-way through an account of the poem, and it’s clear to the reader which poem you’re referring to, then you can write:The line ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May’ indicates that...Or even:

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The third line indicates that...

Note that the words you put inside the quotation marks in your text must appear exactly as they did in the originaltext from which you are quoting. It’s very annoying to the reader when you make a copying mistake in a quotation. And it’s very obvious when the mistake is in a well known text.

***Before we move on to paraphrase, let’s take a moment to

consider some of the vocabulary that can be used for the purposes of quoting the words of others. An essay can be boring if the same words are always used to indicate a quotation, for instance: Jones writes, ‘….’ The problem isn’t justboredom, though; there’s a lack of precision suggested by the constant use of a phrase like: Jones writes, ‘….’ The point isthat, by writing as s/he did, Jones was surely developing a certain kind of argument or trying to make a particular kindof point. By introducing (or by ‘back announcing’) the quotations you need, you begin or at least point to the interpretive process; you show that you have an understanding of the argument to which you are now responding in making your own argument. Some useful verbs for introducing (or back announcing) a quotation are:

arguesasksattestsclaimscontendsdeclares

deems findshypothesisesimpliesinsists offers

opinesproposes statestellswrites

It’s not the case that these terms are interchangeable, rather they have to be chosen carefully to suit the circumstance of the quotation and the intention or effect ofthe author quoted. Look at the longer list of verbs for argument in chapter 8. Be particularly careful with the use of say. Say should in principle be restricted to the

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quotation of arguments that were delivered orally, for instance in a lecture or on radio or television. Tell is a safer, more neutral, verb that could apply to writing or speech in quotation.

A last point on quoting. Sometimes you will need to quote other author’s quotations of other authors. That couldbe because you can’t find an original source for the quote you want to use, it could be because you want to quote the original with the secondary source (i.e. source + interpretation), or it could be because you are quoting froman anthology. Quoting quotations can become a little tricky;the two verbs cites and quotes are generally the most useful for this purpose: Jones cites Smith as having written…, Jones quotes Smith… In the case of an essay in an anthology of essays edited by someone other than the author, the preposition in is necessary: e.g. (Jones in Smith, 52). More on citation or attribution techniques below.

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Writing in your own words what is in the text borrowed is called paraphrase. Whereas a direct quotation is usually introduced with words like: Jones writes, ‘...’, in the case of a paraphrase there are no quotation marks, so we’re more likely to read: Jones writes that… or Jones gives the impression that… What comes after the ‘that’ is will be Jones’s ideas but in your words. Note that the phrase, ‘according to Jones…’ could be used with either a direct quotation or a paraphrase.

The paraphrase technique is important for the use of

primary, but more important for the use of secondary materials. Note that whether you quote or paraphrase primaryor secondary materials, you still have to give the source for the ideas you are using. Not to do so is to plagiarise. Usually this isn’t a problem with regard to the primary textmaterial. If you’re writing about Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet

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it’s clear that you’re not claiming the ideas in it as your own original thoughts. So there’s no need to keep reminding your reader that the ideas are Shakespeare’s. With referenceto secondary sources you need to be much more careful to show which ideas are yours and which ideas you have borrowedfor the purposes of your argument.

When you paraphrase it’s important to remember that you’re not only putting someone else’s ideas into your words, you’re also putting those ideas into your sentences. So you need to make the necessary grammatical adjustments toensure that the sentence you produce, combining your ideas and those paraphrased, is a grammatical sentence. Think of it this way: what’s inside inverted commas is someone else’sgrammatical responsibility. What’s outside inverted commas, in paraphrase or summary form, is your responsibility.

To quote or to paraphrase? With imaginative texts – andespecially with poetry – it’s wisest to quote the original wording because it’s the text itself (the words themselves) – and not merely the ideas that are important. Of course where there’s a story involved – especially in drama or fiction – a summary can be useful way of telling your readerenough of what s/he needs to know of the text in order to understand your argument. A synopsis is a complete summary ofthe story in a work of fiction or drama. It can be a very useful exercise for you to write a synopsis of the work you’re studying. It helps you for instance to understand thewhole of the plot. It can help you to hold the whole of the story in your head. It’s only by being familiar with the whole of the story that you can write with confidence that you understand the complete work and that what you write about the first chapter isn’t contradicted by what you’ve forgotten about the last. You may be able to use parts of your synopsis in the essay you’re writing but note that too much synopsis will make your essay too derivative, i.e. not original enough. The purpose of the essay is to put your argument, not to merely re-tell the story/ies your argument is about.

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So, summarising is useful for primary works which are long and/or plot oriented (e.g. short stories, novels, plays, epic or narrative poetry). In general though, paraphrase should be used much less with primary than with secondary sources. With critical or theoretical works paraphrase is more acceptable because the focus in more on words than on ideas. It’s from those secondary, critical works we can find models for interpretation. By agreeing or disagreeing with the interpretation of critics and theoristswe can arrive at our own interpretation of the primary work/s studied, and thus produce an essay that is sufficiently original.

How to interpret? You can interpret a line in poetry bymaking a direct claim as to what it means:This line means that, although spring is a season of new growth,...Or you can be more tentative in your claim:In this line the persona suggests that although spring is associated with new life,...

Interpretation of complete works usually requires reference to (and comparison of) specific theoretical frameworks and often refers to particular schools of literary criticism. More of this below. Remember for now that while summarising the text is an important skill and a useful step towards interpretation, interpretation demands that you demonstrate your own understanding of the text.

Attribution/citation

The general term used for acknowledging the source of the ideas and words you borrow for your essay writing is attribution. You need to properly attribute all of the wordingsand ideas in your essay which you have found rather than created yourself. You also have a duty as an essayist – and as an intellectual – to find out if others have expressed

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before the ideas that you are expressing now. If someone else has written already more or less what you have just written – even by complete coincidence – then you haven’t plagiarised but your ideas are not sufficiently original. Ifsomeone else has written already exactly what you have just written – even by complete coincidence – then your teacher/examiner has no choice but to consider your work plagiarised. The former kind of coincidence is very common, the latter is fortunately very rare.

How to attribute properly? How to cite your reference tothe text from which you’re borrowing? The MLA style, the one most commonly used, is to put a page number in brackets after the text quoted. That citation can’t be confused with any other because it refers to the entry in your bibliography which details a particular source, in this casethe edition of Shakespeare which you’re using. So the bracketed number (1108) placed after the Shakespeare sonnet above refers to a particular edition of Shakespeare, one which will be listed in the bibliography at the end of the essay, as follows:

Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. ed.W.J. Craig, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945.

If you’ve already given the page reference when you first quoted the poem then there’s no need to go on doing it over again, unless for some reason confusion might arise if you don’t.

Note that when you’re quoting from the dialogue in a play or a novel, you can quote what a particular character says or asks:Hamlet says ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ (I, ii, p. 878).You can contextualise the quote by situating it in a dialogue, i.e. by telling your reader who is talking to whom:

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Hamlet tells Horatio, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth.../Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ (I, ii, p. 878).Likewise, the dialogue can be paraphrased:Hamlet tells Horatio that his understanding of things supernatural is necessarily limited.

There’s a fine line between paraphrase and interpretation and in skilful critical writing the one shades into the other. For example if you wrote, ‘Hamlet asks Horatio to keep an open mind’ this would be an act of interpretation.

Notice how the slash (/) in the Hamlet quotation above indicates that, to save space, you’re running on what Shakespeare’s text gave as two lines. Notice that in the citation (I, ii, p. 878) here, the act and scene numbers aregiven along with a page number. This is a kindness to the reader because it will make the quotation easy to find in any edition of Shakespeare. Please note that this is an exception which applies only to particular texts famous enough to be printed in exactly the same form but in different editions, and so with the exact same text appearing on different pages. The Bible is the most conspicuous example. With the Bible you should cite chapter and verse. Notice that the text, Hamlet, above is given in italics. A book length work (a novel, play, book of poetry or long poem, likewise a book of criticism or theory) has its title cited in italics, in the body of the essay and in the bibliography. (Do not use underlining, underlining was used on typewriters to mean italics, because typewriters could not produce italic script.) Traditionally it has not been necessary to include the Bible in a bibliography because it is assumed to be the one book that everyone must have. Today, however the Bible has so many variants it may be wise to cite the particular version and edition you’re using. Note that the Bible is the only book length work the title of which should be given in Roman rather than italic type. The title of a poem (e.g. ‘Sonnet 18’) is given in inverted commas, as is a chapter or an essay title.

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If you have doubts as to properly arrange or deal with citations then some of the following web-sites may help you:http://www.mla.org/http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocMLA.htmlhttp://webster.commnet.edu/mla.htmhttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html

Google and you will find many more of these guides. You might also find it handy to have a book form guide which cansit with your other reference works next to your computer while you type. A good example is: The Little, Brown Essential Handbook for Writers, Jane E. Aaron, New York: Longman, 1999.

Interpretation

The manner in which you refer to text is a matter of subtlety and delicacy. You need to vary the words and phrases you use in reference to a text, so as to not be boringly repetitive, but also so as to make clear the way inwhich you are pointing to a particular text. This is even more important where reference to secondary or critical sources is concerned. When you refer to someone else’s interpretation you need to position yourself carefully by choosing the words which give your own opinion about the opinion you’re referring to. There’s a large inventory of words available for this purpose in English. You can write that an author claims, reasons, suggests, argues, contends, explains, misinterprets, misses the point, demands that we accept the view that... Naturally the authors you cite may agree and/or disagree with each other. In that case you need to position yourself in relation to their arguments with each other. That’s a little like butting in to a conversation. The art of critical writing is in this way like the art of interrupting. This isvery hard to begin with because you need to have something worth saying in order to justify the interruption. But it’s by learning to interrupt arguments that you find the thing

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that’s worth saying and learn to make your own interpretation.

What is interpretation? An interpretation of a text is a well informed opinion which can be backed up by evidence. It can be argued for and against. The point needs to be madevery strongly here that, in writing about culture or literature, there is never one correct answer. There are however wrong answers. Wrong answers are the ones which are based on misinterpretations or on purported facts which are actually incorrect. More common than wrong interpretations are poor or weak interpretations. Poor or weak interpretations are not well supported by evidence, textual or otherwise. A strong interpretation is one which has solidor strong evidence to back it up or support it. No one interpretation is ever the correct one. Literary texts are only worth studying because they allow (or even demand) a range of interpretation. That simple fact can be very difficult for students to accept. However, until you do accept that very different interpretations of the same text can be equally valid, you won’t really be studying literature, you’ll be playing a kind of guessing game: the kind you can’t win.

Interpretation is an endless process. As long as a textis worth spending time with, you won’t have accounted for all of its meaning. Berthold Brecht expressed this idea in his poem ‘About the Way to Construct Enduring Works’:

How long Do works endure? As long As they are not completed.Since as long as they demand effort They do not decay.

A good story or poem demands to be re-told and/or re-interpreted. As long as it is being retold or re-interpretedit is being worked on. Re-telling is itself a kind of re-interpretation. It brings a text into a new context where it

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has to work for a different audience from that for which it was originally intended.

There are two key questions in interpretation, and these questions are closely related. They are:

- what does the text mean? and- how does the text mean what it means?

All of the critical tools at your disposal should be devoted to the business of answering those two key questions. If you keep your focus on the meaning of texts in this way then youcan’t go far wrong. In discussions, consider: if there were only one correct answer to these questions above then it would be not worthwhile to spend any time with the texts concerned.

The understanding demonstrated by interpretation goes beyond knowing what happens in the plot or having basic knowledge about the characters, it means finding your own way or relating stories and characters to other stories and characters and to the contexts from which they come. It means explaining in your own way – with maximum sophistication – the meaning of the text. That maximum sophistication could be revealed in understanding how the work you’re studying fits into the history of literature, anunderstanding of its broader meaning for the culture it represents, an understanding of what the text tells us of its context. There’s sophistication also in close reading, understanding the detail of the text. Working on poetry willgive you the best practice at close reading because in poetry the words and their combination are so important thatthe big picture can never be far from the lines and the words on the page. Best of all, maximum sophistication will involve both an understanding of the detail of the text and an understanding of how the text fits into a bigger picture,an understanding of its place and importance, an understanding of what it means and, just as importantly, an understanding of how it means what it means.

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In a critical essay about literary works or other cultural products, the interpretation will either be the argument of your essay or it will be closely related to the argument. For instance, in a comparative studies essay, yourargument might come from the comparison of the two texts (ormore) you’re comparing, and of the two or more contexts you need to compare in order to compare the texts. We’ll consider some of the issues involved in the making of those kinds of comparison and the creation of those kinds of arguments over the next two chapters.

As your critical and theoretical writing progresses andbecomes stronger, dealing with secondary sources and having original insights becomes more and more important. It’s mainly on those aspects of your writing you’ll be assessed. In literature essays, in order to pass, you have to cite the opinions of other authors about the texts you’restudying. And you have to demonstrate that your ideas are original, by showing how those ideas are different from those of the authors to whom you refer. When you first startwriting about literary texts the most important thing is that you demonstrate that you have an understanding of them.But as your understanding and writing become more sophisticated it becomes more and more important to demonstrate that you understand what critics have written. You come to your own opinion of a text by understanding how others came to their opinions. You get there through the practice of speaking and writing about texts, i.e., through conversation and through the writing of essays.

A note here about judgement and the value of literature. Your objective in writing about literature is todevelop opinions and arguments and to make judgements about these. Your objective isn’t to make black and white value judgements about the quality of literary works. Proving to your reader that Shakespeare is a genius is really a waste of time. Many before you have also thought that Shakespeare was a genius, so this cannot be considered an original idea.Likewise, criticising a particular work of Shakespeare’s for

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not being as good as some others, is generally a waste of time. We know Shakespeare is a good writer, is canonic, that’s why we’re studying him. You’re not writing book reviews for a newspaper, advising a potential reader of which new books are worthwhile. When dealing with the canon of literature you should try to focus on works which you either like for some reason or about which you have some interesting insight or observation to make. Often those insights will be about the way those works refer to or are different from (or similar to) each other. So, judgement in these senses relates to the understanding of texts and theircontexts. It isn’t about absolute value. Canons of literature are in a process of constant re-assessment because people (critics, teachers, students) are constantly deciding whether to continue reading particular works. You get to make that kind of value judgement too, simply by ignoring the texts which you don’t like, or about which you have nothing to say. In writing about literature keep away from words like ‘genius’ and ‘inspired’ and ‘masterpiece’. They’re a sign of laziness. Instead of going to the trouble of engaging with the text by saying something new and worth hearing about it, when you use words like ‘genius’ you’re simply hiding behind an already accepted judgement, an orthodoxy. Telling your reader that you think great works aregreat is just a waste of paper and time, yours and theirs.

Always remember that texts are only worth spending timewith just to the extent that they are open to interpretation. The work of the essayist in interpreting is to understand the text, and that means keeping it open to interpretation, opening to debate, not shutting the book because it is now understood once and for all. Texts worth spending time with are never understood once and for all. The best texts sometimes present themselves to their readersas labyrinths for interpretation, sites in which themes and ideas are connected, paths lead ever onward and ever back, but never in ways that can be fully known in advance.

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Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a word that strikes fear into the heart of many students. The reason plagiarism is a fearful idea isthat many students aren’t exactly sure of what it is. Or rather, they’re not exactly sure what constitutes plagiarismand what doesn’t.

Let’s try to be really clear about this. Plagiarism means taking other peoples words or ideas or research findings and writing or publishing them, without acknowledgement, as if they were your own.

This definition seems straightforward enough. But thereare some grey areas and we need to try to deal honestly withthem. Your work needs to be original. But how original is original enough? That’s a very difficult line to draw. Thereare plenty of books on the market and on the library shelveswhich are not terribly original, but nor are they plagiarised. So really there are two lines to draw. There’s one line between works which are actually copied – in which the words are stolen – and works which are just boring because they’re not really telling a reader anything new. The text you’re reading right now might be an example of thesecond kind. How strikingly original can you be when you’re writing about something so many people already know about? Let’s call it a challenge. The text you’re reading now may not be terribly original but is original in the sense that Iwrote it: it’s not plagiarised. This brings us to the other line, the line which separates boring unoriginal (but unplagiarised) works from works which are really worthwhile because they contain ideas which no one has thought of before. Naturally, the hardest thing is to think thoughts and write works in this last category. And of course that should be your aim as a student. However you’re not going toget into trouble if you fall, with most of writing humanity,into the middle camp: those who are a little boring and veryderivative but honest about their work.

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So – try to formulate your own ideas and try to show honestly the source of the ideas to which you refer, the ideas which influence your thinking.

How to play it safe on the issue of plagiarism? In principle you should acknowledge all of the information you find in sources other than your own head. It doesn’t matter whether you quote it directly in inverted commas or whether you paraphrase it; you still have to acknowledge what you have borrowed in the same manner, by giving a citation in your text and a full bibliographic entry at the end of your essay. If you use someone else’s words without acknowledgingtheir source then you are stealing (i.e. plagiarising).

Think about this way. You have to quote other texts in yours. So acknowledging them properly is proof that you are doing the job properly. Borrowing is compulsory, stealing isforbidden.

But what if it’s only a few words? How many words can Iuse before I have to acknowledge them? This brings us back to the feeling that ‘none of the words are mine’. Perhaps you’re thinking: ‘I didn’t invent the English language; so in a way, every word I use is borrowed. But I can’t acknowledge a source for every word I use, can I? I’d go madif I tried to do that.’ And you would.

Here then are some practical questions and answers and rules of thumb which should help you keep out of trouble. Firstly, apply the five word rule. Very simply this means that if you take and use five or more words not your own in a row without acknowledging the source then you are certainly plagiarising. Less than five words may also be plagiarising, but five or more words certainly is. If I translate someone else’s words and include them unacknowledged in the body of my essay, is this plagiarism? The answer is yes. If I translate and then paraphrase someone else’s words and include them unacknowledged in the body of my essay, is this plagiarism? The answer is yes.

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It’s not only words that can be stolen, it’s also ideas. If you express exactly the same idea that another author has published, but in your own words, then you are certainly plagiarising. Avoid this problem by quoting or paraphrasing the idea that is close to yours, by attributing it properly,and by showing how your thinking is (perhaps quite subtly) different.

One of the grey areas with acknowledgements in an academic writing is what’s called common knowledge. Academic writing has somewhat stricter rules than for instance journalism for the attribution of facts which could be thought of as common knowledge. These have to be judged caseby case. But for example, if for some reason you needed to write in your essay ‘Humans have two arms and two legs...’:this statement is certainly in the category of common knowledge. You would appear a complete idiot (or a comedian)if you cited a source for this information. Well known historical information is also in this category, as is a lotof knowledge about literary genres and devices and the livesof authors. You should not cite a source for the birth and death dates of an author, for the beginning or end of a war (unless these are for some reason disputed). To do so makes you appear ignorant. A problem arises often because as a student you’re often learning facts which are in the category of common knowledge, but which are new to you. If in doubt, check with your teacher. Gradually – through your own reading and writing practice – you’ll get a feeling for what’s included in and excluded from the category of common knowledge.

Remember that it’s generally very easy for your teachers to tell when you’ve plagiarised. Sometimes it’s amazingly easy. Students sometimes copy from websites and drop the stolen text in mixed with their own without even changing the font. In that case the text of a different quality is highlighted for the teacher’s attention. But a teacher usually has no trouble telling when a phrase or a clause or a sentence isn’t yours. That’s because the stolen

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wordings are of a different intellectual and/or grammatical quality from those your teacher knows you to be capable of.

When you’re caught plagiarising you could be given a second chance for the first offence. Or you could simply be failed on the assignment. On a second offence you will certainly record a failing grade. Serial plagiarists are usually executed in public in some grisly manner, not of their own choosing. (Only joking.) It's not unknown for plagiarists to be expelled from universities. The moral of the story is not don’t get caught. The moral is don’t do it. Remember: plagiarised work cannot pass.

There’s a serious ethical choice to be made here. And like every ethical choice it has consequences. The plagiarist will never be a real scholar. If you want to knowhow to draw the line ethically on the plagiarism issue, think of this analogy. The parent who helps her child with her homework is a good parent, the parent who does her child’s homework for her is not a good parent.

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The bigger question to which the problem of plagiarism points is that with which the chapter began: originality andattribution. To be a scholar or researcher in any field you have to have your own ideas and you have to show where your thinking comes from. These are the key – and one might thinkcontradictory – demands of scholarly writing in the western tradition. In fact, there isn’t really a contradiction. There’s a subtle but precise demand which applies to researched writing across the disciplines. To put it as succinctly as possible: You have to have new ideas and you have to be able to show how those ideas are new by showing how those original ideas of yours are similar to and differentfrom the ideas which came before them, those prior ideas which made your ideas possible. The aim of every kind of research is to go beyond what was known before you started writing.

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Now this might seem like a very immodest aim. How can I– insignificant student – think beyond all of the great minds I’ve been studying? Let’s say it’s a challenge. Sometimes that challenge is simply impractical. And in that case it can be enough to demonstrate your own understanding of the ideas you’ve been studying. The important thing in that case is that what you yourself write should honestly beyour own understanding and not merely someone else’s words that you’ve copied. It’s rare to fail if you make that kind of genuine effort at understanding for yourself.

Take for example the kind of essay in which you comparetheories. In a literature essay you’re probably comparing various critics’ ideas about a primary text which you and the critics have read. The aim of your essay in that case will be to weigh those opinions and compare them with your own reading of the text. Your teacher won’t expect you to be a smarter or better writer than the critics you’re citing (although s/he’ll be pleasantly surprised if you are). What s/he expects you to do is to demonstrate that you yourself have formed an opinion which is different in some way/s fromthe opinions expressed in the critical texts you’ve read. What you have to show is that you’ve brought your own understanding to the piece of literature in question. From the point of view of western scholarship, if you haven’t formed your own ideas, and if you can’t demonstrate that you’ve formed your own ideas, then you’ve actually wasted everybody’s time.

Originality and attribution checklist:- Is your argument your own? (How is it different

from the other arguments you’ve studied?)- Have you applied the five word rule to everything

you’ve borrowed to make your essay?- Are enough of the words in your essay your own

words? What proportion of your essay is quotation? What proportion of your essay is paraphrase?

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- Remember that in meeting the word limit requirementsfor the essay or thesis you count only your own words and not those you have cited (i.e. paraphrase counts but quotation doesn’t).

- Have you cited the source of every wording and everyidea you have borrowed in your essay?

- Can the reader of your essay find in your bibliography (or list of works cited) every work youhave quoted, paraphrased or referred to in your text?

- Can the reader of your essay find in your text the page numbers (referenced to the bibliography) that will allow her to go directly to the original text from which you have borrowed (and without having to read – or look through – a the whole book)?

Remember: plagiarised work cannot pass.

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6originality and attributionor how to borrow and not steal

In the last chapter I mentioned that the essayist has aduty to tell the truth: to reveal to the world what had not before been known, to show the world a new truth. Truth!?

Truth is a confusing idea. The Bible says that the truth will set you free but the fact that people may be so certain about the truth and disagree so strongly about it has been the cause of all sorts of trouble in the world. It still is the cause of all sorts of trouble. How necessary that kind of trouble is is another question. Critical thinking – and what we call argument – has a role in the resolution of conflict of this kind. Critical thought shouldhelp us to work through disagreements, to think them throughclearly. This brings us back to the duty to thought mentioned in the last chapter. The essay – as intellectual process – is dedicated to the duty to witness differences inthought. That’s how the essay can make a contribution to knowledge. It’s from that process of witnessing new truths are discovered.

How to tell the truth? Surely this is the essayist’s hardest task. The easy answer to this difficult question is that you have to find your own way. You’ll be a lot less likely to get into trouble if you can think of truth as personal and/or particular rather than universal and general. The demand for originality in an essay means that what you need to produce is your own truth, in other words you need to show the world as you personally see it, you need to make others see what you can see. Ideally that truthof yours should be one you uniquely can see. It’s yours and yours only because no one else has recognised before what you have just recognised, what you are now in your essay

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telling the world. It’s difficult though to think or write what’s never been thought before. In fact there are degrees of originality and there are degrees of its opposite, derivativeness. You can borrow a lot and still be original enough. You can have very fresh ideas but they still might be heavily influenced by particular thinkers who led you through their mindscapes (= landscape of the mind). So more realistically, the truth you reveal should reflect your own circumstances as a thinker. Truth in this sense is the aim of every kind of essay and of all critical thinking. It depends on those essentials mentioned back in chapter 2. Youneed to problematise, to contextualise, to historicise. You need to challenge, question and doubt.

Now it’s not the case that the demand for originality means that your truth shouldn’t be relevant to others. It’s important that you make sense of ideas and situations otherscan understand. It’s important that you make an argument andexplain things in such a way that others can understand. If no one can understand what you’re writing about or the way you’re writing then you have no reader. An essay without a reader – like any piece of writing without a reader – is simply not functioning. It has no use.

To have a reader – and just as importantly to keep a reader – your truth (and your essay) must serve a function, for instance one of those listed at the beginning of the last chapter: to persuade, to test, to prove, etc. Truth in the personal sense I’m advocating here can fit any of those functions. It’s through one (or more) of those functions youdeliver your truth… or think of it as revelation (something you’re revealing) to your reader.

Keeping a reader from beginning to end of any piece of writing and any type of writing is an increasingly difficulttask today in our world of multi-tasking, multi-media and multiple distractions. In the end, the truth you tell must be nobody else’s and yet a truth you’re prepared to share with the world. The flipside of that willingness to share is

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that your reader has to be able to entertain the ideas you’ve decided to share. There are good and bad readers in this sense, as well as good and bad writers.

Telling something new to someone who’ll be able to understand it is one of the many difficult balancing acts involved in good critical writing. The expression of a pointof view is clearly linked to originality. This will be the subject of the next chapter. How to be sufficiently objective and yet express your own ideas? This is another ofthose difficult tasks for a student of writing.

The truth that no one else has known before is a tall order. An essay is worth reading because, by reading it, one’s knowledge is added to, one’s understanding is improved. It’s very difficult though sometimes to draw the line between what is already and what is not yet known. It’s often difficult to say exactly what constitutes an ‘original contribution to knowledge’. How original is original enough? We’ll return tothis question. It’s very important to decide what constitutes original thought because the phrase ‘original contribution to knowledge’ is the standard key demand for a PhD thesis and the PhD – as the highest university degree – is today the worldwide licence for a scholar and for a university teacher.

Probably the easiest way to make sure that your work issufficiently original is by having an original argument. Theeasiest way, in turn, to ensure that your argument is original would be by asking a question that hasn’t been asked before, or simply by investigating a topic about whichno one has previously written. These are all things easier said than done. More on original argument in chapter 8 when we come to argument in detail.

If it’s difficult to draw the line between original andderivative thinking, fortunately it’s much easier to draw the line between plagiarism and acceptably original work.

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***

Writing comes from somewhere, writing goes somewhere. Writing is influenced, but we only read in the hope of learning something new, something we haven’t read before. How to meet the contradictory demands involved in knowing where you’re coming from and in going somewhere new?

Human imagination is limitless but it’s not lacking in patterns. The functions and genres of arguments and essays discussed in the last chapter, the tropic structures discussed, the metaphors for argument and essay: these have all been used before, some for thousands of years. Are they all therefore useless clichés, are you a thief if you recycle all this old stuff? Not at all. No one expects you to invent a rhetorical structure for your writing out of thin air. Originality is in the way you combine known and practised strategies and structures. It’s by practising at using the strategies and making the structures you can learnto be original. Originality is in the purposes to which you put methods already known, the ways you put them to work. It’s by adopting the right combination of methods for your writing you’ll learn to be – and get to be – original.

Often when first accused of plagiarism, students take their worries a little too far, sometimes deciding that it’simpossible for them to be original. This is not so. The teacher/marker demands that you ‘use your own words’. But noone expects you to invent the words you use to write your essay. You have to borrow well established combinations (collocations) of words and ‘turns of phrase’ in your essay.Every writer has to do this.

How then to draw the line between what is and what is not original enough? The question will be easier to answer if we understand the nature of the difficulty.

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Apart from cultural differences which might get in the way of understanding the answer to the question ‘how original is original enough (?)’, there is the fact that when one writes in a foreign language one can feel as if allof the words and all of the ways of combining them belong tosomeone else. It’s natural to feel this way. After all none of the words you’re using are yours, they’re the words of somebody else’s language. Paradoxically, it’s only when you’ve really ‘stolen’ a lot of the language you’re writing in that you’ll be able to be original. You have to have ‘stolen’ thousands of words and phrases and hundreds of grammatical and rhetorical structures in order to be able tomake the choices in thinking and writing that will allow youto be original.

So there’s a very simple solution to the problem of originality. The solution is to ‘immerse’ yourself in the language you’re using so that the words and phrases you needbecome yours. The solution is in developing fluency and extensive knowledge of the language you use. The solution isin finding for yourself the materials from which you can make the choices you need to make. These ‘answers’ are of course easy to list, much more difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, the first step towards originality is to make yourself welcome – to make yourself at home – in the language you’re using.

***

Sometimes students believe that because originality is so highly prized in the western tradition, every form of copying must be wrong. The result of that thinking can be anessay which shows no knowledge of where its ideas are from. It quotes nothing and refers to no other authors. This kind of writing usually isn’t original, or at least not in a useful way, it’s usually just lost. The author doesn’t know where she’s going because she doesn’t know where she’s coming from.

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In fact copying is a very useful part of the essay writing process. Writing out – or more likely typing out – other peoples ideas and their exact wordings is a useful wayto become familiar with those ideas and to learn the writingand thinking techniques expressed in them. Copying like thisis only a problem when you either

- claim that the words or ideas thus expressed are your own

or- fail to point out to the reader that they’re not

your own (thus leaving her to assume that you are claiming them as your own).

More on plagiarism below, but note that both of these cases just described do amount to plagiarism. If you either claim others’ words as your own or fail to point out that the words of others included in your text are not your inventionthen you are plagiarising.

So – copying is a good starting point. In fact you needto do it in order to show where your argument is coming fromand how it is different from that of the writers and thinkers who have enabled your train of thought. It’s important but please remember that there are only two valid reasons for copying the words of other writers. They are to place them before you (fix them to the wall for instance) sothat you will bear them in mind (the purpose here is inspiration) or to quote them in your essay. When you use the words of others in a quotation in your essay you do so in order to develop your own argument by having an attitude to those borrowed words.

You almost always need to directly deploy the words of others in order to build a viable essay. As suggested in chapter 3, one way to create a structure for your essay or thesis is to build it around the quotations you intend to use. Spending time with famous (or at least relevant) well developed trains of thought and wordings is important for the development of your argument and it’s important for your

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long term development as a writer. One of the problems associated with Internet access and word processing technology today is that it is possible for students to cut and paste without properly reading the materials being used.At least when you had to copy by hand or by keyboard you hadto spend time with those words. For this reason you should always retype any words you intend to use in a quotation in your essay. If those words are worth repeating and commenting on in your essay then they’re worth spending timewith. Get to know the words you’re using. If you don’t understand them properly then how will you be able to advance your argument with them?

An experienced essayist is framing her own attitude andargument while she’s re-typing the words of another author. Simply having those ideas run through your head is often allthat’s needed to help you develop your own original argument, an argument for which you may or may not need to acknowledge the inspiration of another author. Even a beginning writer, in the process of retyping a quotation, may decide that her own wording would be more appropriate, in other words to paraphrase instead of quote. Or sometimes,simply spending time with the words will allow you to develop your own argument in such a way that there is no need to quote at all. In each of these case it’s only by spending the time physically copying someone else’s words it’s possible for you to work what you need to write and how. Note that plagiarism can easily occur if you make a mistake in deciding not to quote or paraphrase, rather expressing an idea as if it were your own. If your idea is not sufficiently different from the unacknowledged idea or wording of another author then you have in fact plagiarised.How to draw the line? Best to play on the safe side, especially while you’re learning the ropes.

Back to copying for the purpose of quoting: don’t think

of copying the words of others as the opposite of originality. Remember rather that you can only use those words or ideas if you acknowledge them. Think of copying as

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the first step on the ladder that leads to originality. You could imagine the steps on that ladder as follows, in terms of a task hierarchy for writing:

- copying for the purpose of quoting- paraphrase/summary- interpretation - theorising/ hypothesising

Copying and paraphrase involve direct engagement with the ideas and words of

other authors. When you copy or paraphrase you represent their words for the purpose of interpretation or of creatingyour own theory/argument. Interpretation is a higher level task, it involves deliberately creating your own text by explaining what other authors mean by their words and by explaining how they mean what they mean. Interpretation still depends though on the ideas of other authors. Hypothesising and theorising may take the reader beyond the ideas and writings of previous authors into what is clearly original (as opposed to derivative) thought.

In writing about literature, interpretation may be the highest level of critical thought. In that case interpretingis theorising and it does constitute original thought. That is to say, you can – and you should – write about the writing of others in an original way. It’s not only imaginative works that are original. Often, in theory or criticism, one goes beyond the ideas of a particular author by comparing them with those of another, by synthesising thetwo or by bearing witness to differences in their ideas or style of thought.

Note that both interpretation and theorising involve the creation of argument,

quoting and paraphrasing are by contrast steps toward (or steps in) an argument. Quoting and paraphrasing – the borrowing of ideas from other authors – are necessary to your argument, they do not constitute your argument.

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Where do draw the line between the borrowed and the original? How original is

original enough? The line between paraphrase and interpretation is the line between the borrowed and the original parts of your essay. Everything borrowed – whether quoted or paraphrased – must be acknowledged. An essay cannot consist entirely of materials borrowed. If does it fails as insufficiently original.

Before we go any further though, let’s look step by step at what’s involved

stages towards originality. Think back to our hierarchy of tasks: copying ^ paraphrasing ^ interpreting ^ theorising. It’s important to remember that in general the steps above depend on the steps below.

Avoiding plagiarism has to do with clear knowledge of what you’re doing with your words and ideas and with the words and ideas of others. It has to do with knowing how your ideas and your wordings are different from those which have enabled them. It has to do with knowing exactly which step of the ladder you’re on at any given place in your writing.

Quoting and paraphrasing

We’ll save the top rungs of the ladder – hypothesising and theorising – for chapter 8, which deals with argument. Let’s deal with the nuts and bolts holding up the lower rungs first.

As previously mentioned, in writing about literature it’s first important to distinguish the two types of text you’ll be reading and borrowing from for your own writing. These two text types are firstly the original or source or primary text (the work of imaginative literature you’re studying) and secondly the critical or theoretical or secondary

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text (i.e. the text which is, like the one you’re making in an essay) about the imaginative work in question. So, you read the original text and you read texts about it in order to create your own text about the original text. (You also make use of the ideas which your teachers give you in lectures about the texts, i.e. you use your lecture notes aswell as printed materials.)

There are three valid ways to borrow these two kinds oftext for use in your essay.The three ways are quotation, paraphrase and allusion. Quotation can either be in the text, in which case you have to frame it with your own words, or it can be outside of thetext – before it – in the form of an epigraph, in which casethe reader has to do the work of understanding the relationship between the words you’ve borrowed and the argument in your essay.

Use of the two types of text – primary and secondary – requires different strategies in your writing. In critical writing you need to borrow from, and acknowledge, both typesof text. But you don’t quote them in the same way. A play has characters doing the speaking (rather than a playwright), novels and poems have personae (plural of persona) speaking. So you don’t quote a line from a Shakespeare play by saying, ‘Shakespeare says...’ Let’s take an example of how to quote from a poem. Here’s Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet, probably his most famous one. (Please memorise it.)

Sonnet 18William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed:

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And every fair from fair sometime declines, By nature's changing course or chance untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

(1108)

How to quote part of this in your text will depend on your purpose. If you intend to deal at length and in detail with this text, then it’s probably a good idea to include the whole of the poem before you begin your treatment. (Note thatthis is one of the advantages of short texts. You can show your reader the whole of the text you’re considering. You can never do this with a novel or a play.) If you quote morethan about three lines of a text (primary or secondary) you should set it off from the main body of your writing, by indenting (as above). In that case, as in the example above,you don’t need to use quotation marks because the indentation signals that the lines are a quotation. If you’re dealing with the whole of the text in this way then you’ll probably end up quoting individual lines or phrases again as your treatment progresses. Here are a few ways you could do that:

The third line of Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet, ‘Rough winds doshake the darling buds of May’, shows that...Or In Sonnet 18 the line ‘Rough winds do shake the darling budsof May’ indicates that...

If you’re already part-way through an account of the poem, and it’s clear to the reader which poem you’re referring to, then you can write:The line ‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May’ indicates that...Or even:

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The third line indicates that...

Note that the words you put inside the quotation marks in your text must appear exactly as they did in the originaltext from which you are quoting. It’s very annoying to the reader when you make a copying mistake in a quotation. And it’s very obvious when the mistake is in a well known text.

***Before we move on to paraphrase, let’s take a moment to

consider some of the vocabulary that can be used for the purposes of quoting the words of others. An essay can be boring if the same words are always used to indicate a quotation, for instance: Jones writes, ‘….’ The problem isn’t justboredom, though; there’s a lack of precision suggested by the constant use of a phrase like: Jones writes, ‘….’ The point isthat, by writing as s/he did, Jones was surely developing a certain kind of argument or trying to make a particular kindof point. By introducing (or by ‘back announcing’) the quotations you need, you begin or at least point to the interpretive process; you show that you have an understanding of the argument to which you are now responding in making your own argument. Some useful verbs for introducing (or back announcing) a quotation are:

arguesasksattestsclaimscontendsdeclares

deems findshypothesisesimpliesinsists offers

opinesproposes statestellswrites

It’s not the case that these terms are interchangeable, rather they have to be chosen carefully to suit the circumstance of the quotation and the intention or effect ofthe author quoted. Look at the longer list of verbs for argument in chapter 8. Be particularly careful with the use of say. Say should in principle be restricted to the

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quotation of arguments that were delivered orally, for instance in a lecture or on radio or television. Tell is a safer, more neutral, verb that could apply to writing or speech in quotation.

A last point on quoting. Sometimes you will need to quote other author’s quotations of other authors. That couldbe because you can’t find an original source for the quote you want to use, it could be because you want to quote the original with the secondary source (i.e. source + interpretation), or it could be because you are quoting froman anthology. Quoting quotations can become a little tricky;the two verbs cites and quotes are generally the most useful for this purpose: Jones cites Smith as having written…, Jones quotes Smith… In the case of an essay in an anthology of essays edited by someone other than the author, the preposition in is necessary: e.g. (Jones in Smith, 52). More on citation or attribution techniques below.

***

Writing in your own words what is in the text borrowed is called paraphrase. Whereas a direct quotation is usually introduced with words like: Jones writes, ‘...’, in the case of a paraphrase there are no quotation marks, so we’re more likely to read: Jones writes that… or Jones gives the impression that… What comes after the ‘that’ is will be Jones’s ideas but in your words. Note that the phrase, ‘according to Jones…’ could be used with either a direct quotation or a paraphrase.

The paraphrase technique is important for the use of

primary, but more important for the use of secondary materials. Note that whether you quote or paraphrase primaryor secondary materials, you still have to give the source for the ideas you are using. Not to do so is to plagiarise. Usually this isn’t a problem with regard to the primary textmaterial. If you’re writing about Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet

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it’s clear that you’re not claiming the ideas in it as your own original thoughts. So there’s no need to keep reminding your reader that the ideas are Shakespeare’s. With referenceto secondary sources you need to be much more careful to show which ideas are yours and which ideas you have borrowedfor the purposes of your argument.

When you paraphrase it’s important to remember that you’re not only putting someone else’s ideas into your words, you’re also putting those ideas into your sentences. So you need to make the necessary grammatical adjustments toensure that the sentence you produce, combining your ideas and those paraphrased, is a grammatical sentence. Think of it this way: what’s inside inverted commas is someone else’sgrammatical responsibility. What’s outside inverted commas, in paraphrase or summary form, is your responsibility.

To quote or to paraphrase? With imaginative texts – andespecially with poetry – it’s wisest to quote the original wording because it’s the text itself (the words themselves) – and not merely the ideas that are important. Of course where there’s a story involved – especially in drama or fiction – a summary can be useful way of telling your readerenough of what s/he needs to know of the text in order to understand your argument. A synopsis is a complete summary ofthe story in a work of fiction or drama. It can be a very useful exercise for you to write a synopsis of the work you’re studying. It helps you for instance to understand thewhole of the plot. It can help you to hold the whole of the story in your head. It’s only by being familiar with the whole of the story that you can write with confidence that you understand the complete work and that what you write about the first chapter isn’t contradicted by what you’ve forgotten about the last. You may be able to use parts of your synopsis in the essay you’re writing but note that too much synopsis will make your essay too derivative, i.e. not original enough. The purpose of the essay is to put your argument, not to merely re-tell the story/ies your argument is about.

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So, summarising is useful for primary works which are long and/or plot oriented (e.g. short stories, novels, plays, epic or narrative poetry). In general though, paraphrase should be used much less with primary than with secondary sources. With critical or theoretical works paraphrase is more acceptable because the focus in more on words than on ideas. It’s from those secondary, critical works we can find models for interpretation. By agreeing or disagreeing with the interpretation of critics and theoristswe can arrive at our own interpretation of the primary work/s studied, and thus produce an essay that is sufficiently original.

How to interpret? You can interpret a line in poetry bymaking a direct claim as to what it means:This line means that, although spring is a season of new growth,...Or you can be more tentative in your claim:In this line the persona suggests that although spring is associated with new life,...

Interpretation of complete works usually requires reference to (and comparison of) specific theoretical frameworks and often refers to particular schools of literary criticism. More of this below. Remember for now that while summarising the text is an important skill and a useful step towards interpretation, interpretation demands that you demonstrate your own understanding of the text.

Attribution/citation

The general term used for acknowledging the source of the ideas and words you borrow for your essay writing is attribution. You need to properly attribute all of the wordingsand ideas in your essay which you have found rather than created yourself. You also have a duty as an essayist – and as an intellectual – to find out if others have expressed

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before the ideas that you are expressing now. If someone else has written already more or less what you have just written – even by complete coincidence – then you haven’t plagiarised but your ideas are not sufficiently original. Ifsomeone else has written already exactly what you have just written – even by complete coincidence – then your teacher/examiner has no choice but to consider your work plagiarised. The former kind of coincidence is very common, the latter is fortunately very rare.

How to attribute properly? How to cite your reference tothe text from which you’re borrowing? The MLA style, the one most commonly used, is to put a page number in brackets after the text quoted. That citation can’t be confused with any other because it refers to the entry in your bibliography which details a particular source, in this casethe edition of Shakespeare which you’re using. So the bracketed number (1108) placed after the Shakespeare sonnet above refers to a particular edition of Shakespeare, one which will be listed in the bibliography at the end of the essay, as follows:

Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. ed.W.J. Craig, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945.

If you’ve already given the page reference when you first quoted the poem then there’s no need to go on doing it over again, unless for some reason confusion might arise if you don’t.

Note that when you’re quoting from the dialogue in a play or a novel, you can quote what a particular character says or asks:Hamlet says ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ (I, ii, p. 878).You can contextualise the quote by situating it in a dialogue, i.e. by telling your reader who is talking to whom:

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Hamlet tells Horatio, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth.../Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ (I, ii, p. 878).Likewise, the dialogue can be paraphrased:Hamlet tells Horatio that his understanding of things supernatural is necessarily limited.

There’s a fine line between paraphrase and interpretation and in skilful critical writing the one shades into the other. For example if you wrote, ‘Hamlet asks Horatio to keep an open mind’ this would be an act of interpretation.

Notice how the slash (/) in the Hamlet quotation above indicates that, to save space, you’re running on what Shakespeare’s text gave as two lines. Notice that in the citation (I, ii, p. 878) here, the act and scene numbers aregiven along with a page number. This is a kindness to the reader because it will make the quotation easy to find in any edition of Shakespeare. Please note that this is an exception which applies only to particular texts famous enough to be printed in exactly the same form but in different editions, and so with the exact same text appearing on different pages. The Bible is the most conspicuous example. With the Bible you should cite chapter and verse. Notice that the text, Hamlet, above is given in italics. A book length work (a novel, play, book of poetry or long poem, likewise a book of criticism or theory) has its title cited in italics, in the body of the essay and in the bibliography. (Do not use underlining, underlining was used on typewriters to mean italics, because typewriters could not produce italic script.) Traditionally it has not been necessary to include the Bible in a bibliography because it is assumed to be the one book that everyone must have. Today, however the Bible has so many variants it may be wise to cite the particular version and edition you’re using. Note that the Bible is the only book length work the title of which should be given in Roman rather than italic type. The title of a poem (e.g. ‘Sonnet 18’) is given in inverted commas, as is a chapter or an essay title.

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If you have doubts as to properly arrange or deal with citations then some of the following web-sites may help you:http://www.mla.org/http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocMLA.htmlhttp://webster.commnet.edu/mla.htmhttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html

Google and you will find many more of these guides. You might also find it handy to have a book form guide which cansit with your other reference works next to your computer while you type. A good example is: The Little, Brown Essential Handbook for Writers, Jane E. Aaron, New York: Longman, 1999.

Interpretation

The manner in which you refer to text is a matter of subtlety and delicacy. You need to vary the words and phrases you use in reference to a text, so as to not be boringly repetitive, but also so as to make clear the way inwhich you are pointing to a particular text. This is even more important where reference to secondary or critical sources is concerned. When you refer to someone else’s interpretation you need to position yourself carefully by choosing the words which give your own opinion about the opinion you’re referring to. There’s a large inventory of words available for this purpose in English. You can write that an author claims, reasons, suggests, argues, contends, explains, misinterprets, misses the point, demands that we accept the view that... Naturally the authors you cite may agree and/or disagree with each other. In that case you need to position yourself in relation to their arguments with each other. That’s a little like butting in to a conversation. The art of critical writing is in this way like the art of interrupting. This isvery hard to begin with because you need to have something worth saying in order to justify the interruption. But it’s by learning to interrupt arguments that you find the thing

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that’s worth saying and learn to make your own interpretation.

What is interpretation? An interpretation of a text is a well informed opinion which can be backed up by evidence. It can be argued for and against. The point needs to be madevery strongly here that, in writing about culture or literature, there is never one correct answer. There are however wrong answers. Wrong answers are the ones which are based on misinterpretations or on purported facts which are actually incorrect. More common than wrong interpretations are poor or weak interpretations. Poor or weak interpretations are not well supported by evidence, textual or otherwise. A strong interpretation is one which has solidor strong evidence to back it up or support it. No one interpretation is ever the correct one. Literary texts are only worth studying because they allow (or even demand) a range of interpretation. That simple fact can be very difficult for students to accept. However, until you do accept that very different interpretations of the same text can be equally valid, you won’t really be studying literature, you’ll be playing a kind of guessing game: the kind you can’t win.

Interpretation is an endless process. As long as a textis worth spending time with, you won’t have accounted for all of its meaning. Berthold Brecht expressed this idea in his poem ‘About the Way to Construct Enduring Works’:

How long Do works endure? As long As they are not completed.Since as long as they demand effort They do not decay.

A good story or poem demands to be re-told and/or re-interpreted. As long as it is being retold or re-interpretedit is being worked on. Re-telling is itself a kind of re-interpretation. It brings a text into a new context where it

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has to work for a different audience from that for which it was originally intended.

There are two key questions in interpretation, and these questions are closely related. They are:

- what does the text mean? and- how does the text mean what it means?

All of the critical tools at your disposal should be devoted to the business of answering those two key questions. If you keep your focus on the meaning of texts in this way then youcan’t go far wrong. In discussions, consider: if there were only one correct answer to these questions above then it would be not worthwhile to spend any time with the texts concerned.

The understanding demonstrated by interpretation goes beyond knowing what happens in the plot or having basic knowledge about the characters, it means finding your own way or relating stories and characters to other stories and characters and to the contexts from which they come. It means explaining in your own way – with maximum sophistication – the meaning of the text. That maximum sophistication could be revealed in understanding how the work you’re studying fits into the history of literature, anunderstanding of its broader meaning for the culture it represents, an understanding of what the text tells us of its context. There’s sophistication also in close reading, understanding the detail of the text. Working on poetry willgive you the best practice at close reading because in poetry the words and their combination are so important thatthe big picture can never be far from the lines and the words on the page. Best of all, maximum sophistication will involve both an understanding of the detail of the text and an understanding of how the text fits into a bigger picture,an understanding of its place and importance, an understanding of what it means and, just as importantly, an understanding of how it means what it means.

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In a critical essay about literary works or other cultural products, the interpretation will either be the argument of your essay or it will be closely related to the argument. For instance, in a comparative studies essay, yourargument might come from the comparison of the two texts (ormore) you’re comparing, and of the two or more contexts you need to compare in order to compare the texts. We’ll consider some of the issues involved in the making of those kinds of comparison and the creation of those kinds of arguments over the next two chapters.

As your critical and theoretical writing progresses andbecomes stronger, dealing with secondary sources and having original insights becomes more and more important. It’s mainly on those aspects of your writing you’ll be assessed. In literature essays, in order to pass, you have to cite the opinions of other authors about the texts you’restudying. And you have to demonstrate that your ideas are original, by showing how those ideas are different from those of the authors to whom you refer. When you first startwriting about literary texts the most important thing is that you demonstrate that you have an understanding of them.But as your understanding and writing become more sophisticated it becomes more and more important to demonstrate that you understand what critics have written. You come to your own opinion of a text by understanding how others came to their opinions. You get there through the practice of speaking and writing about texts, i.e., through conversation and through the writing of essays.

A note here about judgement and the value of literature. Your objective in writing about literature is todevelop opinions and arguments and to make judgements about these. Your objective isn’t to make black and white value judgements about the quality of literary works. Proving to your reader that Shakespeare is a genius is really a waste of time. Many before you have also thought that Shakespeare was a genius, so this cannot be considered an original idea.Likewise, criticising a particular work of Shakespeare’s for

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not being as good as some others, is generally a waste of time. We know Shakespeare is a good writer, is canonic, that’s why we’re studying him. You’re not writing book reviews for a newspaper, advising a potential reader of which new books are worthwhile. When dealing with the canon of literature you should try to focus on works which you either like for some reason or about which you have some interesting insight or observation to make. Often those insights will be about the way those works refer to or are different from (or similar to) each other. So, judgement in these senses relates to the understanding of texts and theircontexts. It isn’t about absolute value. Canons of literature are in a process of constant re-assessment because people (critics, teachers, students) are constantly deciding whether to continue reading particular works. You get to make that kind of value judgement too, simply by ignoring the texts which you don’t like, or about which you have nothing to say. In writing about literature keep away from words like ‘genius’ and ‘inspired’ and ‘masterpiece’. They’re a sign of laziness. Instead of going to the trouble of engaging with the text by saying something new and worth hearing about it, when you use words like ‘genius’ you’re simply hiding behind an already accepted judgement, an orthodoxy. Telling your reader that you think great works aregreat is just a waste of paper and time, yours and theirs.

Always remember that texts are only worth spending timewith just to the extent that they are open to interpretation. The work of the essayist in interpreting is to understand the text, and that means keeping it open to interpretation, opening to debate, not shutting the book because it is now understood once and for all. Texts worth spending time with are never understood once and for all. The best texts sometimes present themselves to their readersas labyrinths for interpretation, sites in which themes and ideas are connected, paths lead ever onward and ever back, but never in ways that can be fully known in advance.

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Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a word that strikes fear into the heart of many students. The reason plagiarism is a fearful idea isthat many students aren’t exactly sure of what it is. Or rather, they’re not exactly sure what constitutes plagiarismand what doesn’t.

Let’s try to be really clear about this. Plagiarism means taking other peoples words or ideas or research findings and writing or publishing them, without acknowledgement, as if they were your own.

This definition seems straightforward enough. But thereare some grey areas and we need to try to deal honestly withthem. Your work needs to be original. But how original is original enough? That’s a very difficult line to draw. Thereare plenty of books on the market and on the library shelveswhich are not terribly original, but nor are they plagiarised. So really there are two lines to draw. There’s one line between works which are actually copied – in which the words are stolen – and works which are just boring because they’re not really telling a reader anything new. The text you’re reading right now might be an example of thesecond kind. How strikingly original can you be when you’re writing about something so many people already know about? Let’s call it a challenge. The text you’re reading now may not be terribly original but is original in the sense that Iwrote it: it’s not plagiarised. This brings us to the other line, the line which separates boring unoriginal (but unplagiarised) works from works which are really worthwhile because they contain ideas which no one has thought of before. Naturally, the hardest thing is to think thoughts and write works in this last category. And of course that should be your aim as a student. However you’re not going toget into trouble if you fall, with most of writing humanity,into the middle camp: those who are a little boring and veryderivative but honest about their work.

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So – try to formulate your own ideas and try to show honestly the source of the ideas to which you refer, the ideas which influence your thinking.

How to play it safe on the issue of plagiarism? In principle you should acknowledge all of the information you find in sources other than your own head. It doesn’t matter whether you quote it directly in inverted commas or whether you paraphrase it; you still have to acknowledge what you have borrowed in the same manner, by giving a citation in your text and a full bibliographic entry at the end of your essay. If you use someone else’s words without acknowledgingtheir source then you are stealing (i.e. plagiarising).

Think about this way. You have to quote other texts in yours. So acknowledging them properly is proof that you are doing the job properly. Borrowing is compulsory, stealing isforbidden.

But what if it’s only a few words? How many words can Iuse before I have to acknowledge them? This brings us back to the feeling that ‘none of the words are mine’. Perhaps you’re thinking: ‘I didn’t invent the English language; so in a way, every word I use is borrowed. But I can’t acknowledge a source for every word I use, can I? I’d go madif I tried to do that.’ And you would.

Here then are some practical questions and answers and rules of thumb which should help you keep out of trouble. Firstly, apply the five word rule. Very simply this means that if you take and use five or more words not your own in a row without acknowledging the source then you are certainly plagiarising. Less than five words may also be plagiarising, but five or more words certainly is. If I translate someone else’s words and include them unacknowledged in the body of my essay, is this plagiarism? The answer is yes. If I translate and then paraphrase someone else’s words and include them unacknowledged in the body of my essay, is this plagiarism? The answer is yes.

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It’s not only words that can be stolen, it’s also ideas. If you express exactly the same idea that another author has published, but in your own words, then you are certainly plagiarising. Avoid this problem by quoting or paraphrasing the idea that is close to yours, by attributing it properly,and by showing how your thinking is (perhaps quite subtly) different.

One of the grey areas with acknowledgements in an academic writing is what’s called common knowledge. Academic writing has somewhat stricter rules than for instance journalism for the attribution of facts which could be thought of as common knowledge. These have to be judged caseby case. But for example, if for some reason you needed to write in your essay ‘Humans have two arms and two legs...’:this statement is certainly in the category of common knowledge. You would appear a complete idiot (or a comedian)if you cited a source for this information. Well known historical information is also in this category, as is a lotof knowledge about literary genres and devices and the livesof authors. You should not cite a source for the birth and death dates of an author, for the beginning or end of a war (unless these are for some reason disputed). To do so makes you appear ignorant. A problem arises often because as a student you’re often learning facts which are in the category of common knowledge, but which are new to you. If in doubt, check with your teacher. Gradually – through your own reading and writing practice – you’ll get a feeling for what’s included in and excluded from the category of common knowledge.

Remember that it’s generally very easy for your teachers to tell when you’ve plagiarised. Sometimes it’s amazingly easy. Students sometimes copy from websites and drop the stolen text in mixed with their own without even changing the font. In that case the text of a different quality is highlighted for the teacher’s attention. But a teacher usually has no trouble telling when a phrase or a clause or a sentence isn’t yours. That’s because the stolen

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wordings are of a different intellectual and/or grammatical quality from those your teacher knows you to be capable of.

When you’re caught plagiarising you could be given a second chance for the first offence. Or you could simply be failed on the assignment. On a second offence you will certainly record a failing grade. Serial plagiarists are usually executed in public in some grisly manner, not of their own choosing. (Only joking.) It's not unknown for plagiarists to be expelled from universities. The moral of the story is not don’t get caught. The moral is don’t do it. Remember: plagiarised work cannot pass.

There’s a serious ethical choice to be made here. And like every ethical choice it has consequences. The plagiarist will never be a real scholar. If you want to knowhow to draw the line ethically on the plagiarism issue, think of this analogy. The parent who helps her child with her homework is a good parent, the parent who does her child’s homework for her is not a good parent.

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The bigger question to which the problem of plagiarism points is that with which the chapter began: originality andattribution. To be a scholar or researcher in any field you have to have your own ideas and you have to show where your thinking comes from. These are the key – and one might thinkcontradictory – demands of scholarly writing in the western tradition. In fact, there isn’t really a contradiction. There’s a subtle but precise demand which applies to researched writing across the disciplines. To put it as succinctly as possible: You have to have new ideas and you have to be able to show how those ideas are new by showing how those original ideas of yours are similar to and differentfrom the ideas which came before them, those prior ideas which made your ideas possible. The aim of every kind of research is to go beyond what was known before you started writing.

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Now this might seem like a very immodest aim. How can I– insignificant student – think beyond all of the great minds I’ve been studying? Let’s say it’s a challenge. Sometimes that challenge is simply impractical. And in that case it can be enough to demonstrate your own understanding of the ideas you’ve been studying. The important thing in that case is that what you yourself write should honestly beyour own understanding and not merely someone else’s words that you’ve copied. It’s rare to fail if you make that kind of genuine effort at understanding for yourself.

Take for example the kind of essay in which you comparetheories. In a literature essay you’re probably comparing various critics’ ideas about a primary text which you and the critics have read. The aim of your essay in that case will be to weigh those opinions and compare them with your own reading of the text. Your teacher won’t expect you to be a smarter or better writer than the critics you’re citing (although s/he’ll be pleasantly surprised if you are). What s/he expects you to do is to demonstrate that you yourself have formed an opinion which is different in some way/s fromthe opinions expressed in the critical texts you’ve read. What you have to show is that you’ve brought your own understanding to the piece of literature in question. From the point of view of western scholarship, if you haven’t formed your own ideas, and if you can’t demonstrate that you’ve formed your own ideas, then you’ve actually wasted everybody’s time.

Originality and attribution checklist:- Is your argument your own? (How is it different

from the other arguments you’ve studied?)- Have you applied the five word rule to everything

you’ve borrowed to make your essay?- Are enough of the words in your essay your own

words? What proportion of your essay is quotation? What proportion of your essay is paraphrase?

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- Remember that in meeting the word limit requirementsfor the essay or thesis you count only your own words and not those you have cited (i.e. paraphrase counts but quotation doesn’t).

- Have you cited the source of every wording and everyidea you have borrowed in your essay?

- Can the reader of your essay find in your bibliography (or list of works cited) every work youhave quoted, paraphrased or referred to in your text?

- Can the reader of your essay find in your text the page numbers (referenced to the bibliography) that will allow her to go directly to the original text from which you have borrowed (and without having to read – or look through – a the whole book)?

Remember: plagiarised work cannot pass.

re. Or let’s put that another way. Writing is written by someone and, hopefully, it’s read by someone else. The people involved in these processes – writers and readers – are individuals, they have their own perspectives on life and on what they see and how they think. They witness the world in their own way. The world they witness doesn’t just consist of landscapes with people in them. Those landscapes and people are full of ideas and arguments, conflicts and emotions. Essays are in general much more concerned with argument and emotion than they are with the landscape in which the conflicts take place. Landscape, as we saw in chapter 5, is a way of providing the reader with a way of seeing what’s been shown in the essay.

When people – subjects – speak and write, their points of view are naturally reflected in the words they choose andin the way they deal with the subjects they discuss. This isunavoidable, but the fact that point of view can’t be avoided needn’t mean that all writing subjects are fully

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aware of their point of view, nor need it mean that they make any effort to make visible their own position as writers.

Still, perspective in the personal sense is essential; you can’t write without it. If the purpose of an essay or thesis is to publish an argument, in the broadest sense of the term, then clearly essays are all about point of view and opinion. An essay can do many things but in general it has a point it’s trying to prove. Persuasion assumes a pointof view, if you don’t have your own point of view then what could you have to persuade a reader of?

So, there’s potentially quite a gap between what the essay has to do and what the essayist has to know or show that s/he’s doing. It’s curious, given how obviously essential opinion and point of view are, that the conventional point of view strategy for the essay in Englishhas been the for the author to hide, to pretend that she simply doesn’t exist at all. Traditionally it’s been thoughtbad form for author to appear at all in the essay.

We can say that the author has been the invisible man of the essay in English, a ghost in the machine. This may seem mysterious until we realise that there’s a very simple reason for this. The logic behind making the writing subjectof the essay invisible is that the less emotional and less personal a claim is the more effective it will be, the more force it will have as argument. Objectivity is highly valuedand it is valued because it is viewed as being more persuasive than a subjective approach.

For these reasons the traditional point of rules for the essay, though rarely spoken were to

- try wherever possibility to avoid the use of pronouns that would imply that there were people involved in writing or reading the essay

- where necessary pronoun aversion might take the formof an agentless passive construction (e.g. ‘It can

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be seen that…). In the agentless passive construction, no one is responsible for holding the opinion expressed in the argument. It could be anyone’s opinion and so it becomes the opinion of anyone who is sensible. The agentless passive construction gives the reader no one with whom to disagree, and this makes it feel easier and safer for the reader to agree and not be troublesome

- where it is necessary to use a pronoun, we is favoured. We makes the reader feel as if she alreadyhas the same opinion as the author

- avoid addressing the reader by using you. This mightencourage the feeling that there was a dialogue happening or at least possible. This would be altogether too casual for a serious essay.

- at all costs avoid the use of the pronoun I. Use of Iwould have the effect of revealing yourself as the author and the argument in your essay as therefore merely your opinion.

Today these traditional conventions with regard to point of view are regarded with distrust and increasingly under attack. They’re mainly attacked for being dishonest and for being cowardly.

Subject and subjectivity

There’s a certain amount of confusion associated with the fact that the word subject has two distinct meanings in the world of theory and criticism. The subject is what you are studying, the subject is also the person doing the studying. This second kind of subject comes from the grammatical concept of subject, the ‘doer’ in the clause, asopposed to the object, or the ‘done-to’ of the clause.

The subject in the latter personal sense is the character in the text who has a point of view. There’s also a subject outside of the text, likewise with a point of

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view: that’s the reading subject. Remember that in poetic texts and in fiction and drama we have a number of words to account for or describe subjects. These include antagonist and protagonist, narrator and persona. Subject position in the imaginative text usually has to do with the point of view from which the story is told. Look in the literary terms glossary at the back of the book for an account of point of view in this sense.

In the contemporary essay in English it’s thought that the voice in the essay is that of the authorial subject, not so much of the person in particular who wrote the essay, ratherof the character the reader has to imagine that person to be. The important change from tradition here is in the acknowledgement that there is a voice in the essay, and thatthat voice has to belong to someone, must come from somewhere. The assumption today is that writing, no matter how objective seeming, no matter how careful a distance it keeps from its subject matter, nevertheless does come from apoint of view.

Subjectivity like subject has two senses in the modern essay. Traditionally subjectivity was thought to be something negative in a piece of argumentative writing. It indicated that there’s too much opinion involved. But today subjectivity generally has a more neutral meaning: it takes account of the fact that the writer writes from somewhere, that her position in writing is invested and motivated. Moreon these terms below.

Let’s look at the traditional contrast between two notionally opposite terms: objectivity and subjectivity. Traditionally it was thought that the essayist’s duty was tobe entirely objective, subjectivity in the treatment of the topic was a flaw in style and compromised the argument because it indicated bias. This kind of thinking entailed – and still entails – a genre paradox. The paradox is that thegenre that typically persuades and expresses an argument hasto appear not to.

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You can see subjectivity and objectivity as something like a seesaw in the essay and in the history of the essay genre. There have been and there continue to be demands thatyou reveal yourself as a writer, there have been and there continue to be demands that you forget yourself as an authorin order to deal fairly with your material. As with originality and attribution the seesaw is a good image to keep in mind in working out just how much subjectivity and how much objectivity you need to be demonstrating in your writing. Think of it this way: being too objective can be a problem because it’s simply not believable (it seems dishonest), being too subjective means your opinion is not worth listening to/reading: you’re simply too biased.

Intention, Investment and Motivation

The key difference – the dividing line – among these terms is concerned with awareness or consciousness. Intention means knowing what you want. Intentions are what you avow in your writing. If you express an intention you’replanning to do something and you’re telling the reader what your plan is. The places where intention is unavoidable are the abstract and the introduction: ‘This essay investigates the … by …’ The abstract is worded either as an expression of intention of what you plan to do or a description of whatyou have done. In either case you show your reader that you are aware of the function and method of your argument and your essay.

The problem with trying to lay your cards on the table like this is that you can avow all you like, you still mightnot be aware of what your motivates your strategy in argumentor how your position is invested.

What’s investment? Investment is closely related to interest in the sense of that which is advantageous to a

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subject. Everyone has interests in this sense. Some obvious examples: it’s not in your interest that someone should deprive you of your income or your property or your boyfriend or your happiness. Much the same principle appliesto certain ideas, which seem to be less tangible but which may have very real effects. Imagine if someone argues that you’re not entitled to be happy, that you don’t deserve whatyou have. That kind of argument could be very threatening. A subject position is interested or invested in particular assumptions, ideas or arguments: the assumptions, ideas and arguments most likely to promote the position of the subject, those least likely to interfere with or upset that position.

Let’s take a now clichéd, but still pertinent, example.Most of the world’s published English language essays are written by white heterosexual men with paid positions at universities and who come from comfortably well off backgrounds. This has been the case for a long time and it’sdifficult to see why the situation should change suddenly. That is to say, the proportion of streetsweepers writing essays is by comparison extremely low, as is the proportion of the Chinese or African population publishing essays in English. How does the style and content, the argument and the kind of witnessing we read in the white middle class male academic’s essay reflect these ‘background factors’? The answer is that all of these influences on style and content are difficult to see for the simple reason that these are the people who normally write essays and so their investments and motivation are unmarked or normative for the genre, essay. We expect an essay to do what their essays do. The result of white male heterosexual discourse being normative is to privilege the subject position and so the interests and investments of white male heterosexuals who teach in universities. When women write, when gay men write,when black people or Asians write, when people from impoverished backgrounds write, their writing often has a different quality, because these writing subjects have a different investment from the norm. Often that kind of

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writing is refreshing because it’s different and often it’s clumsy because these people may have had less time and less opportunities to learn to write well.

Note the operation of the circle here and how it may work to make itself invisible. The stronger the investment of a particular subject position, the more interested the subject. The more interested the subject the harder it will be to argue against the interests in which the subject is invested. When the weight of assumption and common sense arebehind that position, then it becomes difficult to argue with because it is normative. The less marked or more normative the position the harder it will be for anyone to notice that it is a position at all. So we can say that the most potent defence of powerful subject positions (for instance those of white male middle class academics) is thatof making themselves invisible. It’s very difficult to argueagainst what you cannot see.

Please note that making the observation that ‘publishedEnglish language essays are mainly written by white heterosexual men with paid positions at universities…’ does not imply that you think that these people are bad or that you are their enemy or that their time has come or their turn is over or anything of that nature. It just means making an effort to understand the background of the words these people write. Knowing what motivates the authorial subject helps you to decide your own position as a reader and again, in turn, as a writer. It’s important to recognisethat as writers we are formed, yes by class and ethnicity and by various socio-economic factors, but perhaps more importantly we are formed by what we have read. As a writer,as an intellectual, you can’t help your sex or the colour ofyour skin or where you were born, but you do have some choice in what you read and in the opinions you therefore form.

Motivation is a term mid-way between intention and investment. As an essayist your argument is motivated by

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opinions you have formed, not merely by the aspects of your background that can’t be helped. An argument in an essay is motivated the way plot or character in a story are, that is to say in a story characters do things for a reason, the story happens (for reasons) because characters do things (for reasons). In an essay likewise the argument unfolds fora reason. The reason is that the writing subject is trying to prove or to show something. What and why is s/he trying to prove? However we answer that question, we can always askit again. In other words, tracing motivation leads us into alimitless regression which reminds us of the child continually asking ‘why?’ no matter what answer s/he is given. That regression takes us from deliberate and conscious motivation back to unconscious investment. Becausemotivation covers all that territory, it’s a usefully (and dangerously) vague term.

Reflexive duties

It’s useful to understand what motivates the authorial subject – the writer – because it helps you to decide what to think about that subject’s opinions. If you know where s/he’s coming from then it’s easier to work out where s/he’sgoing. The same thing applies to you as a writer. You need to know where you’re coming from in order to work out where you’re going. And you have a duty to share some of this self-knowledge with your reader. This is what’s called a reflexive duty: a duty to identify the position from which you write, to account as well as you can for your investments and for your motivation.

The danger of not performing your reflexive duty as a thinker, as a writer, is that you will be, not arguing for your position, but rather merely assuming that your reader should already agree with you. That kind of failure to thinkseriously weakens your position and your argument. Assuming your reader already agrees with you is a characteristic danger of universalising discourse, that is of the kind of

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speech or writing which assumes that only one opinion – or only one kind of thinking – is possible on a particular topic. Perhaps a bigger related danger of not identifying your position is that you won’t have a position of your own at all. In that case your voice will have been subsumed in alarger chorus of voices agreeing with each other, agreeing with each other because they too have foregone the opportunity to think. Universalising discourses are ones in which the loudest voice drowns out all the others around it.The tyranny of the universalising discourse is probably the greatest danger of representative democracy: the people whose voices represent 51% of the people may prevent every other voice from having a proper hearing.

The most common kind of universalising discourse in theworld today is that which takes for granted the generally shared opinions of white heterosexual men with paid positions at universities… Again, the point in making this observation is not to suggest that these people are wrong. Rather, the point is that there are other possibilities, there are other ways of thinking and these other ways of thinking deserve attention and respect too. Because certain discourses tend to be universalising or hegemonic (i.e. dominating of others), it is necessary to give other discourses, other voices, a chance to be heard.

That process, of listening for and to voices which might otherwise not be heard, is an essential function of intellectual activity in general and of the essay in particular. Remember the duty to witness the differences in thought. The danger is that if you can’t hear any other voice or argument then you won’t be able to witness any difference. In that case your thinking will not progress because you will no longer be part of a conversation, you’lljust be listening to the sound of your own voice or to the sound of a single voice larger than your own and with which you have already decided to identify.

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The essayist has a reflexive duty to make herself aware of the manner of her investments and of the nature of her motivation in writing. The danger is that without that effort at self-awareness, one won’t be able to tell the difference between one’s own voice and anyone else’s. The danger of universalising and hegemonic discourses is that they kill off all differences of opinion. They prevent you as writer from making any difference, from forming a different opinion, because they prevent you from thinking outside of a narrow box. Common sense and common knowledge, ideas and values assumed to be shared by all, the most obvious things in the world: these items which help to make thought possible also stand in its way. They carry the danger of drowning any opinion different from the norm, different from the mainstream. It’s for this reason common sense and common knowledge, ideas and values assumed to be shared by all, the most obvious things in the world, all need to be problematised, contextualised, historicised. The intellectual’s and the essayist’s duty is to challenge and to question and to doubt all that is taken for granted.

Honesty depends on the reflexive duty of revealing the author’s investments and motivations to the reader. But how much of this kind of self-revelation is necessary on the part of the writer? After all, your essay probably has much more important and immediate goals than saying who you the author are. Some kinds of work require much more in the way of authorial presence or self-recognition or self-revelationthan others. But there is a bottom line – a minimum amount of effort that should be made – to show yourself as an author. Every essay should strive to at least have a reflexive moment, a point of self-revelation in which the investments of the author are open to the scrutiny of the reader. Many essays need several such moments or better still, a reflexive rhythm: a pattern of self-disclosure the reader can follow through the essay. The easiest places for the essay’s reflexive moment are the introduction and/or the conclusion.

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A tour of the pronouns – pros and cons

An essay may only have a few reflexive moments, perhapsonly one. But there’s still a voice behind the words on the paper. That voice might be far away and difficult to make out, it may be deliberately hard to recognise, there nevertheless remains a point of origin for the opinions and assumptions, the arguments and tropes that shape the words areader receives. The clearest and most constant indication of the investments and motivation of that voice will be in the choice of pronouns. How you reveal or conceal yourself in your writing has a lot to do with how you use or don’t use pronouns. So which ones should you use? And for which purposes? Each has advantages and disadvantages.

I is the most honest and straightforward choice, or seems to be. It’s also the most egotistical, the most opinionated. Part of the old objection to I was that it seemed to be so arrogant and subjective. How could you claimobjectivity if you were only ever speaking for yourself? At the other end of the spectrum there’s another, completely different kind of objection to I, simply expressed in this question: are you really who you say you are, how sure can you be? Have you sufficiently accounted for your investment and motivation in order to call yourself I in your essay? It’s easy to see there’s a little logical trap here. If you’re not entitled to reveal yourself in your essay, shouldthat then mean you’re allowed to go on hiding. The best solution in the case of I is to use this pronoun sparingly, rarely, to use it to indicate a reflexive moment.

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We seems to indicate an inclusive mode: you’re speakingwith the reader. We is then an expression of solidarity, you theauthor and your reader are in this work together. But with can easily turn into for. The problem is that we in this way has tended to be used to universalise and subsume the readerin the voice of the essay’s (unspoken) I. For this reason the use of we is often resented by readers as a pompous andclumsy attempt to speak for others. It’s associated with theroyal plural: when the Queen says we she means I (in the sense that she is the individual speaking for the nation). Still, there are places in the essay where we is the most appropriate pronoun to use. The best place for we is usually when you’re leading the reader step by step through an argument, it’s a way of insisting that she should keep upwith your pace in the argument (= path) because you’re on the same road together.

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You is another apparently honest mode of address. The essay is like a letter. You, the author, are speaking/writing personally to your reader. But an essay isn’t a personal letter, so there’s a question as to how honest this you business really is. The more letter-like or conversational, the more chatty (informal) your essay is themore acceptable the use of you will be. In a very formal piece of writing the use of you can seem prescriptive (you’re telling your reader what to think) or aggressive or even accusing.

One is a pronoun characteristic of the traditional essay which makes little or no reflexive effort, or which onthe contrary works to conceal the subject position implied by its investments. The one usually means anyone or no one in particular. What’s suggested this way is a kind of neutral reading/writing position. The intention is to keep personality, as often implied by pronouns, out of the picture. No one is addressed, no one is addressing, there’s no need for anything as personal as a pronoun. There’s no I,there’s no you, there’s no we. In fact though, one can see that… thus means anyone can see that… The implication is often then that you would have to be a bit silly or stupid not to see that… In this way the use of one can actually be a little intimidating to the reader.

A step even further away from the avowal of authorial investment is the use of the agentless passive construction,which usually features the ‘dummy it’, as in It can be seen that…In this form of words attention is drawn completely away from point of view. Nobody is speaking, nobody in particularis listening. Through this means a piece of writing may succeed in appearing to be absolutely objective. A careful reader – the kind who challenges and questions and doubts – will not be taken in by this strategy but rather judge the argument in the writing on its own merits, knowing that it could probably have been delivered using any combination of the pronominal (pronoun based) strategies outlined above.

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The one strategy and the agentless passive constructionare often combined in writing that strives to create an impression of objectivity. By such means the author and her investments can remain well hidden from the reader. In fact these are the strategies of the subject working to make herself invisible. Often the magic has worked perfectly on the writing subject as well asthe reader, with the result that the writer can’t even see that s/he has made herself invisible.

In choosing your pronouns, try to weigh the value of a varied approach against the demand for stylistic consistency. Be careful too not to bore your reader with toomany reflexive moments or too many attempts to avow your investment, unless of course your essay is about reflexive investment or motivation or the use of pronouns. Remember tofocus primarily on your topic, whatever that is, rather thanon reflexive questions.

Point of view checklist:- Is your work sufficiently objective, i.e. is it not

overly biased? - Can your reader clearly identify your position as a

writer or does s/he have the feeling that you’re hiding somewhere, i.e. is there a reflexive moment in your essay?

- How honest are you about your own investments, interests, motivations and intentions in your essay?

- How much effort have you made to be aware of your own position as a reading and writing subject?

- Is point of view in your essay clear enough, consistent enough? …e.g. check that you’re not switching pronouns in the middle of a sentence by mistake.

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8Argument

The point of arguing, the point of writing essays, is to voice a different opinion, to look at the world in a different way, to make a difference by expressing a point ofview which hasn’t been heard before. The point of argument is to show your reader something s/he hadn’t known or seen or understood before, to persuade her of an opinion s/he didnot hold before. Argument changes the world by changing people’s minds. To succeed, argument needs to make a difference. That difference could be a different angle on a subject, a different opinion about it, it could be revealinga point of view not previously heard or known. The demand for originality (see chapter 6) is closely related to this difference making or difference witnessing function of argument and of essay.

How easy is it to make a difference to the world? How easy is it to make a really original argument? These things are not easy at all. It’s particularly difficult to be original or to make a difference when you’re just learning how to make an argument. There’s a danger that your efforts to be original will only reveal that you’re ignorant, and likewise ignorance can easily lead you into repeating someone else’s argument: you’re saying what they’ve already said, you’re saying it because you haven’t heard or read their argument. Odds are, the argument has been expressed better than by you.

Argument is essential to the essay. But what is an argument, in the sense that an essay has to have one? The simplest way of thinking of an argument is as a claim that isreasoned. That is to say, an argument makes a claim and it gives reasons to back that claim up. Its aim is to persuade the reader or the listener that the claim is justified, correct, that there’s truth in it. Usually the reasoning and

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backing up of the argument has a coherent logical structure and relies on evidence.

It’s useful at this point to distinguish between two fundamentally different types of argument, the descriptive and the prescriptive. The descriptive argument or essay explains how something is (or how some things are), the prescriptive argument or essay tells its reader how the world should be. The essay in cultural studies is almost always of the descriptive kind, it accounts for texts and contexts, critically but without telling the reader how to act. It persuades the reader of an interpretation rather than telling her what to do. Prescription exceeds the scope of the cultural studies essay and is therefore usually considered a serious flaw. The reader of the essay in culture or literature should have the opportunity of making up her own mind from the evidence presented. Providing an interpretation is not the same as telling a reader what to do or how to be.

In the case of the literature essay the evidence is usually at least partly from the texts that are studied, in the case of the cultural studies essay, the evidence usuallyconcerns either texts or else other artefacts or processes of material culture, i.e. observable cultural phenomena.

The persuasiveness of an argument is often based on an appeal to either the emotion of the reader/listener (pathos)or else on an appeal to the reader/listener’s sense of rightand wrong (ethos). While these kinds of appeal are obvious in the prescriptive essay they do also apply in interpretivework and sometimes at a fundamental level: texts or processes are chosen for study because they are exemplary interms of pathos or ethos or both.

The argument is the backbone of the essay. The most common reason for failure in essays is simply ‘not having anargument’. The argument is also the part of essay writing where the possibilities are the most numerous and varied, so

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it’s probably where this book is of least help to you. The purpose of this chapter isn’t to explain, in any comprehensive way, how to argue. That would be a subject foran encyclopaedia. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce some of the most common kinds of argument, some ofthe most useful strategies and ‘moves’ in argument and some of the most important terminology needed to discuss arguments.

If you have a serious interest in studying argument as a subject in its own right then the best places to look for examples and discussion will be in the history of philosophy. The two Greek words that give us our modern world philosophy mean love of wisdom, but one can think of philosophy down through the ages as a battle of the best arguments over the most important territories of human thought. A number of the key principles of this book come directly from some of the most famous thinkers in the history of western philosophy. These include Socrates’ claimthat ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’, Kant’s ideasabout universal judgement as expressed by his ‘categorical imperative’, Hegel’s conception of ‘natural consciousness’ as the pathway of doubt, Marx’s idea that the purpose of critical thinking is to change the world and not merely to be understand it, and much more recently Jean-François Lyotard’s contention that the vocation of thought is to bearwitness to the differences of opinion between parties who cannot understand each other.

Anyone who is seriously interested in learning to arguewell should be a student of philosophy and likewise of history and historiography (the study of the study of history). The broader field though is cultural studies. The discussion of every kind of cultural artefact or process entails what we can broadly call argument. Curiously, the artefact and the process most specifically devoted to argument – the political speech or report – may not be very useful to the student for the simple reason that political debate is often impoverished by a desire to win in the here

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and now. Of course, if you want to become a politician or understand how their scheming works then it will be extremely useful for you to discover what politicians do with arguments.

War and battle or game and sport metaphors are generally foregrounded when we think of argument as the focus of the thinking that goes into the creation of an essay or thesis. That’s because argument entails strategy. But these aren’t the only relevant metaphors. We’ve also got the landscape/picture metaphor: argument entails viewingthe world in a different way, or even imagining a different world altogether.

There’s an important personification in force here too:an argument needs to know where it’s going, what it’s doing.A blind stumbling argument will fail, is already a failure. I’ll foreshadow the end-of-chapter checklist here, so that this overview of argument commences with what is most fundamental for the essay writer. An argument needs:

- to be logically sound and - to deploy appropriate evidence - in order to prove a contention or to test an

hypothesis. An argument needs above all to be convincing – along the way– and more importantly, in the end.

Induction and deduction

Before we look at various types of argument and their strategies, it’s useful to consider a fundamental differencebetween what are considered the two most essential styles ofreasoning, induction and deduction. You could think of theseas the two directions in which an argument can go.

Inductive reasoning moves from the particular to the general. From the experience of particular instances or

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cases at particular places and particular points in time it may be possible to generalise, to form an hypothesis for testing and/or even to promote a theory accounting for the phenomena observed. Through inductive reasoning a general conclusion may be reached from particulars.

Deductive reasoning moves in the opposite direction, from the general to the particular, or one might say, from a general theory to the prediction of particular instances in which the theory ought to apply. Deduction means reasoning from a general proposition to a specific application.

In chapter 1 we looked very briefly at the contrasting demands of theory and observation, or of theoretical as opposed to empirical styles of research. Induction and deduction correspond generally with empirical (or experiential) and theoretical methods. Inductive methods suit empirical or experiential research, i.e. research whichemphasises the value of observation. Deductive reasoning is well suited to theory based research.

In practice, most critical/theoretical writing (and argument making) in the humanities needs to skilfully combine these approaches.

Dialogue and dialectic

Thinking back to the history of philosophy, an important thread in that story is from the dialogic to the dialectical. The dialogic idea is very easy to understand: it’s that argument is like a conversation. People discuss, people disagree, through the to and fro of the conversation people come to an agreement (or one side concedes the other’s point of view or two sides agree to disagree or disagree to dis/agree).

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Think back to the fundamental duties of the essay/argument, the duties to question, to challenge and to doubt. Dialogue is extremely useful for all of these purposes. It allows progression through question and answer,it allows ideas to be challenged directly through the askingof the right questions. It allows doubts to be cast over ideas that would otherwise go unchallenged. An essay, takingdialogue as its model, can do all of these things too.

The best kind of dialogue is the one in which it isn’t simply a case of one party teaching the other, rather both sides learn. Now naturally an essay on paper or on the screen is more monologue than dialogue, so the question is: how can the dialogic progression of a conversation help to provide a structure for an essay? The answer is that the dialogic style of argument simulates a conversation for the reader. Thinking and speaking provide models for each other.When we think aloud, it’s often as if we were having an argument with someone else. So it isn’t difficult to imaginethe writing of an argument to resemble a conversation between people. In the case of the Socratic dialogues we have actual conversations written down (like a playscript), not by Socrates himself (he couldn’t write) but by his students, Plato and Xenophon. An essay may not be conventionally written in script form, it can nevertheless deliver its argument using the same kind of question and answer or turn-taking structure.

The key word to note with the dialogic conception of argument is progression. The metaphor here is, as already mentioned, of forward movement. The argument goes forward through the conversation, likewise through the essay. The question is: how does the argument go forward?

Dialectical progression is derived from the idea that an argument has regular and definable steps or stages. To understand that progression we need first to understand the construction of the most basic type of argument: the syllogism. The simplest form of syllogism consists of two

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premises leading to a logical conclusion. Here’s one of the classic examples.

First premise: Socrates is a man.Second premise: All men are mortal.Conclusion: Socrates will die.

Just in case you’re tempted to think that the syllogism is too simple or ancient to be of much use today, let’s look ata more recent example which demonstrates how it can be used for complex reasoning. This is the syllogism generally knownas Pascal’s wager. It was proposed by the seventeenth century French philosopher Blaise Pascal in his Pensées.

First premise: The chances of God existing are infinitely small.Second premise: The benefits accruing to believers in God, upon death, are purported to be infinitely great.Conclusion: One would be foolish not to believe in God.

In Pascal’s opportunistic argument, one would be foolish notbe believe in God, because although his existence remains unlikely, the believer might have everything to gain and certainly has nothing to lose, by believing. These ideas arecomplex and nuanced, but they fit easily into the form of a syllogism.

A note on terminology here. Both of the premises and the conclusions above can be considered as propositions in an argument. That simply means that they are declarative statements of purported truth. You can agree or disagree with them. (Yes, Socrates is a man; no, I don’t believe thatSocrates is man.) Whether a proposition is indeed true or not is something one might test through various means, for instance as we’ve noted before by problematising, by contextualising, by historicizing. For instance from a twenty first century point of view we might well ask if Socrates really is a man. Might we not better consider him afictional character, invented by Plato and others? Or could

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we consider him as a kind of god of philosophy, today more of a textbook example than a historical person?) On the other hand, Socrates is very likely a computer game.

The reverse of a proposition is a question (Is Socratesa man?/Does God exist?). Both proposition and question are extremely useful forms for the development of argument. The combination of question and answer was the basis of the dialogic method Socrates used. It’s traditionally been a basis for all kinds of teaching. In between the proposition and the question we have a third equally useful sentence form, the hypothesis. The hypothesis usually adopts an if ^ form: if a then b. In the writing of fiction this kind of hypothesis is usually thought of as a premise, e.g. in Shakespeare’s Macbeth: if ambition is blind it will lead to self-destruction; in Molière’s Tartuffe: if you dig a hole you’ll fall into it. But whereas a work of fiction is usually dedicated at some level to the proving of such an hypothesis, an essay, while it may come to such conclusions in the end, is dedicated to testing rather than proving the hypothesis. Think back to Pascal’s wager. This is easily expressed in hypothesis form: If God exists then the benefits accruing to believers, on death, are so great that one would be a fool not to believe. In fact Pascal’s wager in hypothesis form needs to be a little more complex than that. Really it’s: However unlikely the existence of God maybe, if God does exist then the benefits accruing to believers, on death, are so great that one would be a fool not to believe. That extra bit at the beginning is a caveat, a warning attached to a proposition or hypothesis. In this case, Pascal’s warning is that God probably does not exist.

People tend to think of hypothesis as high powered intellectual activity of the kind reserved for rocket scientists. It’s true that Pascal’s wager does present us with a complex form to think through. But in fact hypothesismaking is a fundamental human activity. Gardeners and cooks are always testing hypotheses; it’s something children do inorder to learn a language.

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The hypothesis form of argument suggests to us the experimental nature of argument and of the essay. It may take a lot of reading and a lot of writing before one finds the best hypothesis to test. Usually that experimental process (of trying out ideas) involves an inner dialogue or a dialectical progression inside the mind of the essayist. More of this below in the section on claims later in this chapter.

Dialectic has a long history, starting with Aristotle and culminating in the nineteenth century philosophy of Hegel. The Hegelian dialectic is based, like the syllogism above on a three part structure as follows

Thesis^ Antithesis^ Synthesis

There is a contradiction between the thesis and the antithesis of the argument, that is to say these represent opposed positions or opposite propositions. The idea is thatargument progresses by resolving the contradiction between thesis and antithesis in a new synthesis. The synthesis of thesis and antithesis transcends (or passes beyond) either previous term.

Two examples Hegel gives are: 1. Thesis = Being ^ Antithesis = Non-being ^ Synthesis = Becomingand 2. Thesis = Subjective ^ Antithesis = Objective ^ Synthesis = Absolute

In practice, dialectical argument often brings two syllogisms into opposition. The idea is that synthetic process takes argument to a next and higher stage than what either syllogism had previously offered, e.g. the Absolute is what is beyond the subjective and the objective. Let’s

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take an example that is less abstract and hopefully easier to understand. For instance, in the current debate on abortion or a woman’s right to choose whether or not to havea baby, one side has an argument that runs more or less as follows:

1st premise: The taking of human life at any age is wrong, that’s why we call it murder. 2nd premise: Life begins at conception.Conclusion: Those who kill human foetuses in the womb are murderers.

The other side’s syllogism is more like this:

1st premise: Women have the right to control their own bodies.2nd premise: The foetus is part of a woman’s body untilthe baby is born.Conclusion: A woman must have a right to choose whetheror not to give birth.

Take the conclusions of these syllogisms as thesis and antithesis of a new argument

Thesis: Those who kill human foetuses in the womb are murderers.Antithesis: A woman must have a right to choose whetheror not to give birth.

What kind of synthesis could take us beyond the antitheticalarguments we have above? There are several possibilities. There could be a compromise (e.g. A woman must have a right to choose until she is four months or six months pregnant). There could be concessions made according to circumstances (e.g. A woman who is raped and becomes pregnant must always have the right to terminate a pregnancy, a woman whose foetus is deformed in some way must have such a right.) Morecareful definition/s could be made, thus defining the

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circumstances in which one or the other of the two argumentswould apply.

One way towards a synthesis would be to see the two sides of the argument as part of a wider context. From a religious point of view that wider context might take in God’s will, from a feminist point of view it might include acritique of patriarchal power or the system of male domination in the world.

Remember that the opposite of synthetic argument, as expressed in a dialectical progression, is analytic argument. How to distinguish between the functions of these two types of argument? Synthetic arguments are generally used for prescriptive purposes (or for the purpose of transcending particular prescriptions), in order to say how things should be. Analytic arguments are more generally usedfor descriptive purposes, in order to say how things are.

Analysis may generally be more important for the essay about culture, the essay which aims to explain what the textmeans and how it means what it means. But it’s important to recognise synthesis and analysis as part of a cycle necessary to argument. Think back to Hegel’s examples above and you’ll see that these could just as easily apply to the analysis of culture as to the formulation of a theory about it.

In the case of debates (like the abortion debate) whereethos and pathos are strongly invested – i.e. where people have strong emotions about the rights and wrongs of the situation – it often seems that one side has to win and thateverything in between (any compromise) is too weak to be worth considering. Fence sitting is unacceptable. One simplyhas to decide which side one is on. That may be true and yetthe dialectical principle and the need to resolve contradictions, through compromise or through transcendence,often does provide the way forward out of an unacceptable situation. Consider the problem facing China today with

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regard to the contradiction between overpopulation and humanrights. We could express the problem dialectically as follows:

Thesis: Reproduction (having children) is a basic humanright.

Antithesis: China’s population is already at an unacceptably high level, drastic measures must be adopted toreduce the population in order to make it sustainable.

Synthesis: ?

Or take another – more abstract and more universal – example.

Thesis: The universe is created by God.Antithesis: The universe is self-ordering (or self-

chaos making).Synthesis: ?

Argument and analysis

It’s important to recognise at this point that the wordargument has two distinct though closely related senses. Thedistinction is nicely illustrated by the examples above. Each of the opposed positions in the abortion debate above is illustrated by its own syllogism, constituting an argument; that is to say it is a claim that can be backed upwith reasons in the form of logical propositions and/or evidence. But if we imagine those two views being put together, one against the other, then we imagine an argument. It’s this other kind of argument for which the fight or war or race or other competitive sports metaphors are apt. So we can say that each side of an argument in thissense is an argument in the other sense. These two kinds of argument in fact enable each other, one comes from the other. The generation of new arguments out of old ones is anendless and often dialectical process.

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The process of dialectical progression is endless because the synthesis formed from the resolution of the contradiction between thesis and antithesis may become the thesis for a new dialectical progression, a new thesis whichagain will have an antithesis, and lead to a contradiction to be resolved by a new synthesis, and so on, ad infinitum (toinfinity).

For Hegel and for Marx after him this dialectical progression described not only the structure of argument butas well the structure of history, and the possible shape of the future.

Marx’s thesis in The Communist Manifesto was that the history of all hitherto existing societies was the history of class struggles. He claimed that the interests of classescontradicted in each other in ways that inevitably led to conflict. Those conflicts in the past were invariably resolved by the creation of new classes, in turn in conflictwith each other. History was in this way a series of dialectical progressions, conceived in terms of class conflict. Contradictions of an old synthesis (the class relations in society) would be resolved through the creationof a new synthesis which would, in turn, in time break down.In his world – and I think Marx would say in the world today– it is the bourgeois (capitalist) class which oppresses theproletarian (working) class. If the capitalist class and thecapitalist system could be overthrown then a classless society could be created and the contradiction of class could be resolved.

Naturally there’s been a lot of debate over these ideasin the last century and a half. The most important legacy that remains to us today – from all of the thinkers before and since Socrates, before and since Marx – is the idea thatthinking progresses through conversation, through the challenges brought to thinking by doubt, by evidence, by rigorous methods. The three metaphors which dominate the field of argument in this sense are

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- the conversation metaphor - the battle or sporting competition metaphor- the path or vehicle metaphor

An argument progresses, it goes forward, if it stalls there’s a problem. That means the argument has stopped.

***

It’s easy to see how argument in the school debate sense of proving a contention or thesis fits into the synthetic pattern implied by a dialectical progression. Arguments which aim to prove or propose (rather than to discuss or analyse) usually have clear antecedents in terms of previous arguments. They come from previous arguments which enabled them, there will be arguments in the future which they enable. In this way we can see dialectical progression, not merely in any particular argument, but in the forward historical motion from argument to argument.

We can easily divide up the different kinds of contention proving arguments. For instance arguments used indebating tend to restrict themselves to one of the functionslisted below.

Defining A is or is not B.e.g. China is a capitalist and not a communist country.Australia is an Asian country.

Showing cause and effectA causes or doesn’t cause B; B is or is not caused by/the effect of A.e.g. The First World War was caused by Germany’s fears of encirclement. The Second World War was caused by the unfair treaties whichconcluded the Great War.

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Showing similarity or differenceA is or is not like B.e.g. The United States and China are both abusers of human rights. A vast and widening income gap between the rich and the pooris characteristic of both the Chinese and the United States’economies.

Evaluating or judging A is or is not a valid or effective or adequate or good BModern representative democracy is a pale shadow of its classical predecessor.Chinese jokes are not funny.

Proposing action or ethicsWe should do A. It is right or wrong to A.e.g. All drugs should be legally available on prescription to those who demand them.Sex before marriage should be made compulsory.It is better to marry than burn.Who is without sin should cast the first stone.

Note that there are all kinds of ways of complicating and combining these contention proving argument forms. Consider these examples of contentions which might serve foressay or debating topics:

Australia is becoming an Asian country.The gulf between the rich and the poor is widening faster in China than in the United States.Democracies cannot function properly unless they compeltheir citizens to vote.Questions of ethics can only ever be subjectively answered.

For various reasons, each of these contentions derives from,but won’t quite fit, in the synthetic argument categories listed above.

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In each of these cases though, as in those just previously listed, contention focuses on a proposition whichcan be argued for or against. Each of these propositions provides the thinker with a framework for a synthetic argument.You could use evidence from texts or from cultural phenomenaor processes in order to advance a position for or against oneof these propositions. But you wouldn’t need to do that in order to argue effectively, and even if you did use that kind of evidence your argument would still be a synthetic one about the proposition in question.

The argument about a cultural process or a text is by contrast usually an analytic argument. That is to say, its purpose is to analyse and explain the phenomenon/ phenomena and/or the text/texts in question: to use a now familiar phrase, its purpose is to understand what the text means andhow it means what it means. The essay analysing cultural phenomena usually attempts also to understand the contexts of texts, to understand text in context. And very often it compares texts and contexts in order to achieve this. In recent decades many of these techniques in essay writing andargument have gone under the aegis of deconstruction. Deconstruction is a complex theoretical procedure for engaging with texts, it’s at the centre of the practice of Jacques Derrida, perhaps the most important living theorist of culture and criticism in the world today. At its base though is a very simple metaphor. The critic takes apart (deconstructs) what the maker of a literary work previously put together. On first appearance then, the analytic argument takes apart what the synthetic argument (or creative process) puts together.

The analytic argument is differently directed than the synthetic: it’s directed at text, rather than at a proposition. This is not to say that analytic arguments haveno propositions or that they don’t synthesise ideas or that they don’t progress dialectically. But you could say that, whereas the basic orientation of the synthetic argument is propositional and forward, the basic orientation of the

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analytic argument is one of looking back at an already existing text or texts. It’s focus is on understanding textsalready made.

Why then deal with synthetic modes of argument in a guide to writing essays about culture? The answer is that, just as one needs to be able to combine deductive and inductive reasoning in the creation of an argument, so the synthetic modes are essential for every type of analytical argument. The argument needs to move forward even if its object is already past. A good analogy would be in the courtroom. Judge or jury make a decision about events that have happened in the past, but their decisions have a bearing on the future (for instance on whether or not someone must go to gaol). A good essay deftly switches between analytic and synthetic modes. Even if its aim is solely to analyse text, it still needs to synthesise its ownargument.

Analysis and witnessing of differences

For the purposes of cultural criticism the general synthetic argument types listed above are unlikely to be used by themselves, or in so simple a fashion as stated in the examples given. More likely they will be combined in various ways. Let’s look at the list again:

Defining Showing cause and effectShowing similarity or differenceEvaluating or judging Proposing action or ethics

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It’s easy to see these as phases or stages or macro-strategies in an essay or argument which analyses texts or cultural phenomena. For instance, most essays do some defining, often in their introductions, in order to establish the parameters of the topic. Showing cause and effect is commonly necessary in describing the relationship of texts to contexts or to each other. Showing similarity ordifference is essential wherever texts or contexts are beingcompared. Also common are evaluation, ethical or otherwise, and the proposal of future action or investigation. So instead of thinking of the five synthetic argument types above as clear choices for the essay writer, it makes more sense to think of them as both possible emphases and as strategies for combining. That is to say, a particular essaymay be mainly directed at defining or at comparing or at proposing an ethical position, it will nevertheless combine various of these key strategies in order to synthesise a complex argument.

Let’s take two examples of essay topics, one of text comparison and one about the comparison of cultural practices.

Text topic: Compare the role and character of the protagonist in Homer’s Odyssey and Wu Cheng En’s Journey to the West.

Cultural practice topic: A comparison of Chinese and Western Chess.

How might each of the key strategies above be deployed in this kind of essay?

Example 1:Text topic: Compare the role and character of the protagonist in Homer’s Odyssey and Wu Cheng En’s Journey to the West.

Defining: key terms: role, character, protagonist

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Showing cause and effect: relationship between character andplot: How do the protagonist characters ‘cause’ the events in the plot? Why are the characters the way they are?Showing similarity or difference: comparison and contrast ofthe two protagonists, the two texts and the two contexts from which they emergeEvaluating or judging/Proposing action or ethics: both textsmake moral judgements, how were/are these appropriate/inappropriate in their original contexts of culture, in the modern contexts of culture in which we read today?

Example 2:Cultural practice topic: A comparison of Chinese and WesternChess.

Defining: Chinese, western, chess, board games and/or other pastimes more generally Showing cause and effect: Is one of these games the forerunner of the other, or do they both have a common origin elsewhere than in China or the West?Showing similarity or difference: compare and contrast the games themselves but also their contexts of origin and the history of eachEvaluating or judging/Proposing action or ethics: What do each of these games teach us about right modes of conduct, ways of being in the world? How were/are these appropriate/inappropriate in their original contexts of culture, in the modern contexts of culture in which we read today?

On face value the argument type most suited to culturalcriticism would appear to be evaluating or judging. After all, it’s on the basis of cultural judgements works of the imagination go on being read or not. Works that survive in the canon of literature, works that survive as important or popular or both over hundreds of years, have been judged by generations of readers or listeners or viewers. Judging of this kind is difficult to avoid. When one finishes a novel

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or steps out of a cinema one has an opinion, for better or worse, of the cultural product one has just witnessed. Most people wish to share that kind of opinion.

This kind of judging may be the most common but it is not the most important or the most valued of critical responses to culture. There are two reasons for this. The first is that a good/bad judge is inevitably subjective, thesecond is that there is little to learn from this kind of judgement because it lacks subtlety.

In fact, what is valued in the critical response to cultural products and processes is the argument which avoidsblack and white or yes/no or value judgements in favour of explaining the meaning of the text and context and likewise their means of meaning. The essay which makes comparisons across cultures should therefore work carefully not to valueone culture’s productions or processes over that of another.In practice that kind of objectivity may be difficult to achieve, so the essayist is advised to perform sufficient reflexive duties in order to account for her own position and its investments (cf chapter 7 for a detailed account of these). Note that each of these activities – cultural comparison, the effort at objectivity, reflexive duties – requires judgement, but not of the black and white kind.

Reflexive gestures are helpful, but, difficult as it isto be objective, a dispassionate, disinvested approach remains the one most valued in the essay on culture. The dispassionate, disinvested kind of judgement is what we hopefor from a judge in a court. But whereas a judge or a jury usually has to weigh arguments and evidence and decide one way or the other, the essayist has a lot of grey territory of which s/he can make use in order to make a judgement subtle and nuanced. Claims and arguments can be limited or conditioned, and can be combined, in all kinds of ways in order to make them more plausible and more pertinent. Remember that in writing about culture you’re generally not dealing with guilt or innocence, you’re dealing with meaning. Subtle

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and nuanced, along with dispassionate and disinvested, plausible and pertinent, are desirable qualities for your argument and/or essay. They’re not necessarily easy to achieve however.

Suppose you are writing an essay comparing Chinese and Western funerals or marriages. It may be very difficult for you not to make a value judgement which betrays your own cultural bias.

But whatever value your comparative argument has will be undermined by a drift into unanalysed judgement of your own as opposed to ‘the other’ culture. It’s important to realise that, tedious as reflexive gestures can be, the failure to see bias in one’s own judgement seriously weakensa comparative argument. So it’s better to account for your own position, its investments and motivation as well as you can in commencing your argument. ‘Know thyself’ is a useful motto for the essayist.

The best things the comparative essay can do is to witness difference, to explain that difference, to contextualise it, to historicise it, to problematise it. Judgement is involved in all of these processes but it’s notthe judgement of one culture or of its worth relative to another culture. The essay on culture fails where it judgescultural productions or processes as good or bad, better or worse. The problem is that we come to texts with those kindsof assumptions. Often the assumption is that our own cultureis superior in some way; sometimes though there’s an assumption that everything from the other culture is better.When Chinese people compare their culture with the West and when westerners compare their culture with China’s, there are often complicated patterns of unanalysed assumption involved. These constitute an important research area in their own right (orientalism, and more recently occidentalism, colonial and post-colonial studies). A good essay comparing culturesmakes the effort to examine assumptions, to problematise them. Again, remember the value of knowing thyself. Careful

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thought does not allow its own assumptions to go unanalysed.In doing so it brings into practice the Socratic dictum: theunanalysed life is not worth living. Acknowledging the difficulty in witnessing or judging one’s own position is a first step in that direction.

In recognising the grey areas in the theorising of culture and of cultural differenceOne should recognise the different functions and directionsof synthetic and analytic argument. It’s important also to understand the relationship between the two, one nicely borne out in George Santayana’s dictum, ‘those who do not understand the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes.’ Texts written and the contexts from which they come require analysis, but the future is like a book still being written,yet to be written. It is therefore natural that we should wehave a different attitude in writing of the past from that which we have in thinking of the future. The past may be read from various angles, its interpretation is never complete, never finished, nevertheless the past is past and if we see it as a book then that book cannot be rewritten.

So the fact that analytic argument is not decisive in the way of a synthesis does not make it weak kneed or a fence sitting exercise. The analysis of past texts and events and circumstances has the function of helping us to understand who we are and where we are and how it is we cometo be in our present circumstances and with our present choices.

What could be more important than to witness who we ourselves are, how we came to be as we are, how we are different from others? It’s by understanding these things weunderstand our options for the future: who and how we can be. In the twentieth century that kind of work – the kind started by Socrates and encouraged by Marx – has come to be seen as an onerous duty. Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre expressed the problem in the following terms: ‘We are condemned to freedom.’ We are duty bound that is to

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do the difficult work entailed in understanding ourselves soas to decide how and who to be.

What could be more important? Here we come to what seems the most fundamental contradiction of critical and of scholarly writing. What’s generally valued in scholarly writing is the dispassionate and disinvested approach to a topic, in short, objectivity. But how can one truly engage with a subject or a question if one lacks passion, if one lacks involvement? Perhaps it’s better to think of this as aparadox. A scholar needs to be passionately involved in her subject, but passionate involvement needs to be tempered with critical distance. It’s by achieving an appropriate distancefrom her subject the thinker can manage the other balances we’ve already highlighted: between objectivity and subjectivity, between originality and attribution, between theory and observation.

If you feel sometimes in writing of texts that your arguments aren’t earth shattering enough, consider this: yes, Marx said that the point of philosophy was to change the world, not merely to interpret it, but he would have been the first to admit that the analytic process was essential to the work of changing the world.

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Naming and taming and framing your claim

At this point I think it should be possible for you to see that there’s a simple reason why writing essays about texts and their contexts seems so difficult and so complicated. It is! The arguments such essays need in order to succeed are usually complex and therefore difficult.

Think back to our original definition of argument. Argument is claim supported by reasons and hopefully by somekind of evidence. Probably the hardest part of making an argument is in what would appear (from the finished essay) to be the starting point: finding a claim that is workable. A workable claim has to meet many criteria. It has to be

- worth arguing: that is to say sufficiently contentious

- based on accurate and sufficient background knowledge of the subject in question

- plausible or credible prima facie: that is to say it must at least seem possible to the observer on a first examination

- one involving definable terms: that is to say able to be made specific enough to be proved or disproved

- logically able to be proved, able to be argued- able to be supported by evidence: for instance there

should be certain kinds of fact or circumstance, theobservation of which would help to prove the argument

- falsifiable: that is to say, logically able to be disproved with evidence

For the purposes of the essay in Cultural Studies, the claimshould also be sufficiently original. The key demands of theclaim are that it be original and arguable. I shall expand on these below.

In the case of analytic arguments focused on texts and their cultural contexts, finding an arguable or workable claim is rarely a starting point. Look back to chapter 3 and

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you’ll see that honing or refining the central argument comes typically about half way through the essay writing process. The process of writing an essay may begin with the effort to define a claim, but it’s only through a detailed understanding of the subject (e.g. the relevant primary and secondary sources) and through long and careful thought, that a sound or workable argument can be found. It’s not unusual for the claim to go on being refined until the end of the writing process. Although an essay needs to make claims in order to progress an argument, often the work’s most important contribution is to frame a question or an hypothesis which others can test. In that case, the experimental – and often dialogic/dialectical work – of question and hypothesis making goes on beyond the life of the one essay. It becomes part of a larger dialogue, part ofa community of ongoing critical thought.

There’s a simple reason why topics are given to students at lower levels and have to be created by students at higher levels, for instance for theses. Essay titles or topics – whether in the form of propositions or hypotheses or questions – serve to define the scope of claims. It’s always easier to have this work done for you than to have todo it yourself. On the other hand, developing a workable claim for an argument is an important intellectual task and one of which a serious scholar must be capable.

Let’s briefly consider the three elements of the rhyming section title immediately above. Naming your claim means defining it, in the sense of choosing the precise terms that will describe the specific subject and topic and proposition/hypothesis/question with which you are dealing. Taming your claim means deciding how to limit it so as to make it plausible and provable. Framing your claim means establishing its territory or the parameters of the investigation you are undertaking.

Think back to the conflicting demands of originality and attribution. An argument should be original but the

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creation of original arguments depends on an understanding of the texts and contexts concerned. If you don’t know what’s already been written about the subject (in primary and secondary sources) then you won’t be in a position to make an original argument because you won’t know what your claim would be different from. You need to create your own argument but you can’t create it out of thin air, your claimneeds to be made with reference to the texts and contexts concerned. It needs to demonstrate an awareness of the important thinking and writing that has already happened in relation to your subject.

It is difficult to make a unique argument; it’s important to see though where the potential sources of originality lie. Originality in argument comes from combining the major strategies of argument (e.g. defining, showing cause and effect, showing similarity or difference, evaluating, judging, proposing) in new ways. It comes from applying these strategies to new materials and more importantly to new combinations of materials, and it comes from attempting the work from a new point of view. It’s unlikely and unnecessary for the essayist to be original on each of these points, the demand is that you be sufficientlyoriginal in their overall combination. It’s in this global sense that you need to be developing your own perspective – your own angle or spin – on the topic you’re investigating.

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Key questions and a key difficulty in the framing of arguments concern how strong to make your claim and how broad its scope should be. As suggested above it’s limiting your claim and defining its territory that will make it arguable. Let’s take some examples:

Claim: Those who stand in the way of powerful emotions always cause tragedy.

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The glaring problem with this claim is that its territory istoo large. Which emotions? Which people in which contexts? The claim is too strong. Who causes tragedy? It’s all those who… and always… and it applies to all emotions. A claim like this could almost stand as a plot premise for a tragic story, but it’s still too broad. ‘Those who stand in the wayof true love cause tragedy’: you could say that that is the premise of many tragic love stories. Note that the premise awork of fiction proves need only stand for the purposes of that story. Yes, it should have broader relevance, but unlike the claim in an essay, a story’s premise need not be intended to be true in all circumstances for all time.

So the claim above could never work for an essay about texts. Could we convert it into a workable claim? Try ‘Tragic love stories are invariably driven by a conflict between faithful lovers and those who would stand in their way.’ This is very probably a provable claim, if a little toeasy to make. The problem remains that its scope is so broad. There are so many tragic love stories to read and write about, how can one by sure one has enough evidence to prove the proposition?

One way around the problem of territory – the claim framing problem – is to make the scope of the claim finite, e.g. ‘Shakespeare’s tragic love stories are invariably driven by a conflict between faithful lovers and those who would stand in their way.’ Here we have a claim that is not only provable, it can only apply to a relatively limited number of texts and characters; Shakespeare wrote only so many tragic love stories, he has only so many tragic lovers and thwarters. Again, the claim is if anything, a little tooeasily made. Let’s try, ‘Shakespeare’s tragic love stories are invariably driven by a conflict between faithful lovers and those – usually parents or rivals – who would stand in their way.’ How strong should the new material in the claim be? Should it be ‘usually parents or rivals’ or ‘always parents or rivals’ or ‘especially parents or rivals’? The choice is of emphasis but it could also help both to limit

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the claim and to get its strength right. How to decide? Study the plays and find out whether it always is parents orrivals who stand in the way of true love in Shakespeare.

The problem with a subject like Shakespeare is that hiswork has been written about so much that most of the possible claims have already been worn out. For instance thefollowing claim is quite plausible. The territory is finite,the claim would not be hard to define.

Claim: All of Shakespeare’s villains have fatal flaws and tragic endings.

This may well be true but do you want to go to the trouble of proving the claim through reference to all of Shakespeare’s villains? The problem is that the arguments for and against this proposition have been done to death. Todo the claim justice – and to refer to the critical works relevant – you would need to write a thesis, but the proposition lacks the originality that would justify a thesis. That is to say, you will not make an original contribution to knowledge by proving this proposition. One might be better to focus on a more specific claim with a regard to a sub-set of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes, but eventhen the danger will be that every angle you can think of has already been covered.

One angle that usually hasn’t been covered when every other has is the cross-cultural one. Writing about Shakespeare’s villains from the point of view of an other than European reader/viewer could be very interesting and original. Comparing Shakespeare’s villains with some villains from Chinese literature might likewise provide an opportunity for original work. But Shakespeare is at the centre of the canon of English and western literature. The further you move from that centre the easier is to be original.

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Let’s consider for a moment the kind of claim that would be characteristic of an essay about cultural processes, rather than texts per se.

Claim: All of the varieties of chess have a common origin.

Obvious questions one would wish to ask before pursuing thisclaim, (i.e. deciding to argue it) would include: Is this a well established fact which you are discovering for the first time? Remember that common knowledge (cf chapter 6) is not restricted to what you yourself already know. Is there any serious contention (disagreement) about the claim?If so, will you as a researcher be in a position to discoverevidence that will either contribute to or undermine the claim? Consider these two dangers:

1. The claim is beyond dispute and so there is no point proving it, nor would it be possible to disprove it.

2. The claim is not beyond dispute but it will not be possible for you – with the resources available to you – to contribute to the debate.

So the problem for your essay could be that the claim is tooeasy to prove, that in fact it’s already proven, or conversely that it’s impossible for you personally to make any progress in relation to it. If either of these problems applies, then you will need to either find a different angleor else a different topic.

If you’re facing these kinds of problem, it’s highly likely that at the time you first thought of this topic you didn’t know whether you were likely to run into Dangers 1 or2 immediately above. If you can’t answer the questions above– about contention and about the possibility of making a contribution – then you will have to do the initial reading to find out the answers. This gives us an excellent example

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of how the essay outline may need to be converted into a study plan before it can progress. In this case, you simply need to know more about your subject before you can find an arguable claim.

So the essay or talk titled ‘A comparison of Chinese and Western chess’ or ‘A comparison of the varieties of chess’ might need to look elsewhere than to origins for claim that can confidently be argued.

Consider the ant

Now a claim needs to be original and it needs to be arguable. It’s not difficult to imagine claims that are original but unarguable. For example:

Claim: All men have three heads.

With some of the Shakespeare claims above we had the opposite problem: the claim is arguable but unoriginal. The problem with our common origin of chess claim is that it turned out to be neither original nor arguable. The claim had already been made and it did not seem likely that we would be in a position to collect evidence which could advance or refute the claim.

Often a little extra complication or distance is all that is needed to make a claim both arguable and original. Let’s look at our common origin of chess claim again

Claim: All of the varieties of chess have a common origin.

Consider some examples of the way in which the topic could be complicated. One way would be to accept that the unarguable is unarguable, and yet might still be the basis

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for an interesting claim, in this case one based on a contrast:

Claim: The common origin of chess in all its varieties belies the varied social/cultural functions of the game.

The contrast assumed in this claim is between a remote and inaccessible past in which there is known to be a common origin and a present which cultural differences are available for scrutiny. To argue the claim you would have todecide whether the assumption was correct: Do the varieties of chess have different social functions in different cultures? How could you investigate that question?

Sometimes a safer approach is to find an appropriate distance from a claim. Usually that means taking a step backin order to look at perception, i.e. to look at the claim assomebody else’s and not as your own. For example:

Claim: Chinese and Westerners both commonly perceive chess to be their own invention. This conflict in perceptionis symptomatic of larger conflicts both in self-perception and in the imagination of other cultures.

Hopefully, you’ll recognise this claim as pointing in the direction of that very important field for East-West investigation, orientalism. But let’s make the distance approach a little easier to imagine. Take another example, one rather too controversial to argue academically (unless you’re a serious psychologist with lots of rats and stats atyour disposal).

Claim: Women have no sense of direction.

As is, this isn’t even a claim in Cultural Studies. That’s because it refers to no texts and it refers to no cultures. It’s not an original claim, nor is it arguable. Added to allthat is the fact that it’s in the form of an hyperbole. It’san example of casual exaggerated opinion that many people in

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many cultures hold. That opinion would be better expressed as: Women’s sense of direction is not as good as men’s. Thiscorrection doesn’t make the claim more arguable or original.Those who regard the claim as sexist will still to object toit. And yet the claim could still be true. This is a good example of a dangerous claim. One can however easily imagineadding the distance and the context that would help to create an arguable and original claim.

Distanced claim: The claim that women have no sense of direction…

Or more likely: The assumption that women have no senseof direction…

The claim for an argument in Cultural Studies needs to be about cultural processes or about texts. The opinions andassumptions of people are apt for such claims. There’s an important distinction that needs to be understood here with regard to opinion and distance. The less analysed the opinions you’re studying the easier it will be for you to make original observations about them. The less analysed your own opinions are the weaker your work will be.

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The best essays in Cultural Studies ask questions that haven’t been asked before. Asking what hasn’t previously been asked would appear to be the easiest way of being original. But it isn’t necessarily easy at all.

The most obvious way to find an original arguable topicis to make connections others haven’t made before. Looking from a different angle – or from another culture – is one ofthe best and most straightforward ways to achieve this. If you’re not a native speaker of English then you have to be looking at the products of English language culture from a different perspective already. That fact of coming from elsewhere usually seems like a disadvantage when it comes towriting, for instance in grammar and word choice, but when

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it comes to thinking of an original argument it’s actually abig advantage.

It’s easiest to be original across cultures and across disciplines. Put aside claims for the moment, and think in terms of topics, questions, areas to investigate. It’s from these claims must emerge. We’ve seen how difficult it could be to write anything original about Shakespeare. But Shakespeare in China might be a different story altogether. There’s probably plenty of room to conduct original researchon such topics as the reception of Shakespeare’s work in China, its imitation by or influence on Chinese literature, the teaching of Shakespeare’s works in China, the use of Shakespeare as a measure of western cultural literacy in China, and so on. One can imagine any of these as potential Ph.D. thesis topics.

Finding the right distance, finding the right angle, mixing the kinds of skill or knowledge base you need to makeyour investigation: these are the means by which you can both decide your topic and hone the claim about that topic which you need to make. Consider too the interdisciplinary aspect of your investigation. It’s rare that one discipline provides you with all the tools and techniques you’ll need for your study. The study of poetry, for instance, seems to be the province of literary criticism, pure and simple. But in facta great many disciplines are vital to the study of poetry. Some of the most obvious ones are linguistics, semiotics, history, psychology. The most interesting territory for research is always the territory disputed, in the territories beyond known territories. That’s where there aredifferences of opinion worth witnessing. The art of being original often consists in finding the unexpected place where two lines of thought intersect.

Just a single point, a dot on the map, something tiny, at the intersection of big ideas: the single point illuminated by vastly different worlds of knowledge may be

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an ample target for investigation. Through this metaphor it’s easy to see how research in the humanities conforms to the dictum: Act locally, think globally. It’s by having command of the big picture, in terms of both knowledge and skill, one can know how to apply one’s knowledge and skill to the object yet to be properly investigated.

Ideally, one looks for the object that hasn’t been researched at all. New texts and new cultural phenomena processes are the most obvious targets in these terms. Has anyone written an essay or a thesis about the mobile phone in literature? Or if so, about the mobile phone in Chinese literature? Or about the mobile phone in Hong Kong films, orliterature, or in Hong Kong culture more generally? Or has anyone written comparing the role of the mobile phone in Hollywood and Bollywood films?

Sometimes finding the research target previously missedmay involve looking for something invisible, invisible because it’s not there, or something barely visible. It might involve asking why that object is barely visible. Gay love stories: why have there traditionally been so few of them? Things that aren’t there, or that science won’t allow to be there? The study of things not there in multiple cultures – e.g. ghosts, unicorns, dragons, phoenixes – is ofparticular interest for cultural comparison. In these cases there’s no objective truth about an object ‘out there’ to get in the way of comparing the imaginations of different cultures.

In seeking topics and in framing claims, make your motto the biblical injunction: ‘Consider the Ant’ (Proverbs 6:6). In following this dictum the obvious questions will be– how to consider the ant, from whose point of view, for what purpose? What kinds of tools and techniques would be appropriate for the consideration of this tiny creature? Andwhose ant is it anyway? The example is not so frivolous as it seems. Ants are often taken as metaphorical for society or work, particularly of the boring, mindless kind. Ants –

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like dogs, like rats – are often seen (pejoratively) as symbolic of someone else’s way of life, the kind you’d rather not have to put up with yourself. The ant in Chinese in and Western literature: this would be a very viable essaytopic for an investigation.

Another good motto for the researcher is: don’t bite off more than you can chew. If you take time to consider theant when you create your topic and frame your claim then you’ll have a good chance of being able to chew what you bite off.

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A last word on claims and how strong to make them. Remember the three part series we considered earlier: question/hypothesis/proposition? It’s easy to say a questionisn’t a claim, but it may be an important step in the direction of one. One shouldn’t be afraid to ask a pertinentquestion just because one lacks the evidence to make the claim (hypothesis or proposition) which would re-state the question in more definite terms. It’s best to think of the three terms in the following way: Proposition is the strongest form and question is the weakest. By choosing among question, hypothesis and proposition forms, one has appropriate flexibility to shape and to stage a complete argument, for instance by first asking a question then by testing an hypothesis and lastly by proving a proposition. This kind of argument progresses by becoming more definite as it goes. It gains momentum and certainty as it accumulates evidence.

Why ask questions at all if one’s goal in the end is toprove propositions? This question takes us back to our most fundamental purposes: to question, to challenge and to doubt. An essay which only asks questions may be dissatisfying for its reader, but an essay which fails to ask questions has forgotten its most fundamental purpose.

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Modes, strategies and moves in argument

Once one’s claims are established along with the structure of the essay/argument, it’s important to be original in the detail as well: of the argument and also of the writing.

It’s easy to think of these things as impossible because every possible kind of argument has already been made. There’s nothing original, surely, about a ‘nevertheless’ or a ‘moreover’. There would appear to be no new ways to argue. But as with language more generally, so with argument and with writing: the miracle of language is that out of finite materials the infinite may be thought, said, written. Or at least that’s an optimistic view of the situation. Another way of looking at the story would be to say that the limited number of words in any language and thelimited ways of combining them, gives us a highly patterned and predictable product, we can refer to as text. It’s that pattern and that predictability – in culture generally, as much as in language – which should be the object of culturalstudy. In other words, when we study culture we study the patterns of meaning in human relations.

Whether the possibilities are finite or infinite, they are certainly extensive. In this section I hope to list someof the most important or useful modes, strategies and moves in argument. By mode and strategy I refer to the overall pattern of the essay or argument, sometimes referred to as its generic structure.

Earlier we listed several synthetic genres of argument:Defining, Showing cause and effect, Showing similarity or difference, Evaluating or judging, Proposing action or ethics. Each of these we saw could also be regarded as a mode or macro-strategy for an analytic argument. Other macro-strategies would include: surveying a field of ideas

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(or of texts), explaining texts and their relation to context, analysing arguments by other authors, interpreting texts, formulating critique. Each of these strategies is likewise able to define a genre in its own right, e.g. the survey essay is one which is focused on considering the range of literature in a particular field. Our list of modesor macro-strategies now looks something like this:

Defining SurveyingExplaining (for instance a sequence of events)Showing cause and effectShowing similarity or differenceAnalysing other arguments Interpreting texts and contextsEvaluating or judging Formulating critiqueProposing action or ethics

Most essays in Cultural Studies will adopt at least several of these macro-strategies even if they focus on one in mode particular. For example the survey essay may adopt one or more or even all of the other strategies listed. It’salso true that these strategies overlap in various ways, so you shouldn’t be too worried if you for instance start out defining your topic but find yourself surveying its field. These are closely related tasks and, to some extent, one necessitates the other.

Beyond and beside these major strategies for the essay,we can list many strategies essential to the development of particular arguments:

Claiming: Abstracts, introductions and conclusions typicallysomewhere contain the claim which is the basis of the essay’s argument. Contending is a useful synonym.

Advancing: Pushing the argument forward. Advancing can mean making a claim, it can mean making a claim and contributing

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evidence, it can mean developing the argument (for instance making it more subtle), or it can mean any combination of these.

Testing: A claim can be tested often through weighing evidence against an hypothesis.

Establishing: Once a particular claim is established as logically sound and with sufficient evidence to support it, then it may be possible to make further claims consequent upon what the argument has already established.

Positioning: Or adopting a position, this always at least partly reflexive move is the means by which you show how your claim is motivated or invested (cf ch 7).

Refuting: Refuting is the opposite of advancing an argument.It is arguing against. If an argument is a claim with reasons then a refutation is an objection with reasons or withan argument behind it. In order to advance your own argumentyou may need to refute arguments of others. In order to protect your argument from attack you may need to anticipatethe refutations of others.

Rebutting: Rebutting means answering the attacks or criticisms or refutations your argument faces or which it may anticipate. A nice form for the rebuttal in anticipationis: ‘The reader may at this point object that… However…’

Conceding: Conceding means weakening your argument in some way to take account of an objection or of inconsistent evidence or of the fact that evidence or information is lacking. Concessions can be made in anticipation of difficulties yet to be faced.

Playing devil’s advocate: Playing devil’s advocate means taking an opposite point of view in order to test an argument or for the sake of the intellectual exercise. Playing devil’s advocate involves imagining another point of

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view (usually an unlikely one) for the sake of argument. It can mean imagining extreme kinds of circumstance (hypothetical situations) which would make it difficult for a particular claim to stand. Imagining worst case scenarios often falls into this category.

Entertaining the other side of the argument: Trying to see the other person’s point of view is an important life skill,a duty of thought in general, and in an essay it can be the key to the survival of your argument. ‘X argues that… and there is strong evidence to support this view. For example… However…’ Again, what’s at stake here is anticipating opposing arguments so as to refute them or anticipating the opposition to one’s own argument so as to rebut it. Sometimes it is convenient to entertain parts of an oppositional argument, rather than the whole. In that case forms such as ‘If for the sake of argument, we were to concede… then…’ can be useful.

Deducing: To use deductive reasoning (see above), to argue from a general proposition to a specific application.

Inferring: To arrive at as a logical conclusion, for instance (as in the classic syllogism) to bring (or to work from) premises to a conclusion. Infer can also mean to entail or imply.

Implying: Implying is one of those strategies one rarely admits to. You will rarely read the sentence beginning, ‘I wish to imply that…’ in an essay. That’s because implicationis indirect and therefore seems dishonest. However implication is a common strategy, and being able to detect implications in your analysis of other people’s writing is important. Along these lines, one commonly reads in essays analysing the arguments of others, ‘The implication here is that…’

Suggesting: Making a suggestion may be similar to implying. The strategy here is to lead the reader to look at things a

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certain way but without needing to make a specific claim along those lines.

Speculating: Much weaker than a claim, a speculation allows you the possibility of trying out a train of thought (for aninstance a possible explanation of causes and effects) without committing yourself to having to prove it. Through speculation you can show the reader the work of building an hypothesis through reference to the available evidence.

Entailing: When arguing one claim necessitates another, thatsecond claim can be said to be entailed. This may be useful for your argument or it may be a problem for it, depending on circumstances. That secondary claim may be taken as already proved when the primary claim is proved, on the other hand it may be necessary to prove both in order that either claim may stand.

Deploying: Can mean making use of and/or placing claims or evidence towards them in your argument. Likewise particular authorities (in the form of quotes or paraphrases) can be deployed in order to advance an argument.

Sequencing: Explaining the order in which events happened orin which texts need to be read.

Referring or pointing: Letting the reader know which arguments, authorities or texts will be referred to or givenauthority in the essay.

Signposting: Suggesting to the reader the way the argument may develop or the kinds of evidence to expect as the argument unfolds.

Foreshadowing: Indicating to the reader the argument or the territory ahead in the essay.

Foregrounding: Drawing attention to a particular aspect of an argument, to a particular piece of evidence, context or

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circumstance.

Re-visiting: Returning to a previous part of the argument ortext already discussed, for instance with the purpose of looking at those earlier mentioned materials from a new point of view or in the light of new evidence.

Re-iterating: Repeating a point previously made, often for the purpose of summarising or re-visiting an earlier part ofthe argument or discussion.

Distilling: Bringing the various parts of an argument together in summary form.

Re-capping or summarising: Reviewing the argument thus far, or part of it, in order to help the reader remember where she is up to in the essay.

Moves in argument are many and varied. You can think ofthese as micro-strategies. Often they’re indicated by a single word or phrase, sometimes referred to as a discourse marker. The most common of these – and, but, because, so, since – are the basic building blocks of any argument or story, of any kind of conversation. Those simple conjunctions are verycommon, very useful and very versatile for the purposes of argument. You’re already familiar with the use of many more of these, e.g. as, however, although, moreover, therefore, furthermore, in contrast with, in order to, on the one hand… on the other hand, firstly, secondly, lastly, to conclude and so on. (Note that of the list above moreover is the one word conspicuously overused in this partof the world.) It’s through these already familiar markers you’re able to pursue the macro-strategies in essay and argument mentioned above, for instance to show cause and effect, to compare and contrast. It’s through these well worn words and phrases you already know how to lead your reader from premises to a conclusion or to form a simple dialectical argument.

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A problem for most non-native essayists is that they work with too limited a stock of moves or micro-strategies. To improve as an essayist you should be constantly expandingyour repertoire of moves. Below are listed some moves you may wish to include in your repertoire. Notice that some moves are characteristic only of written English:

Notwithstanding the evidence/fact that…Taking into account…Insofar as we can ascertain…In order to develop the argument/ develop this line of thought/ this reasoning further…

Many of these phrases are of the ‘moreover’ kind, in other words, you’ll never hear native speakers saying them aloud unless for some reason the speakers in question are trying to sound like an essay. But there are many more spoken movesavailable to the essayist. Note that the metaphorical content is often to the fore in these: if you can’t see what’s pictured you’ll have trouble understanding what’s meant.

I’d like to turn now to…I want show that…/My intention is to show that…I want to argue that…To make this point it is necessary to…At this point/at this juncture it must be …Bearing in mind that…Let us consider/Please consider… Let’s make a detour now in order to consider…Dealing with…/In order to deal with…Before we can… we should/need to…Conversely… Contrary to expectation…Beyond what has already been established, it will be possible to show…Further afield…

Consider some of the many verbs available with which the essay can declare to the reader what it is doing or what it

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will do/is intending to do. If you’re not sure what your essay is meant to be doing at any particular point, chances are one of the verbs from the list below may be helpful to you. Note that many of the moves indicated by the verbs and phrases below could constitute strategy for your essay or argument at the macro- or at the micro- level or both. We’vemet many of them already, they’re here in the one list now for your convenience:

acceptacknowledgeaddressadvance amplify analyseargueassessassumecanvaschallenge claim compare/contrastcritiquecomplicateconcedeconfoundconsidercontextualise contribute toconvincedeal with deconstructdeducedemonstratedeploydetract fromdiscoverdiscussdistil

draw attention to emphasiseentailentertainexemplifyexplorefindfollowfor argument’s sake point toforegroundforeshadow form an opinionform a conclusionframehistoriciseillustrate imagineimply informinstanceinstantiateinterrogatenod to nuanceoverviewpaintpersuade

pick up the threadpictureplay withpoint to point upportraypositpositionpretendproblematiseprogress from proposeprovidepurportput into contextrebut recap/recapitulaterecogniseredefineredressrefer toreformulate refutereinterpretreiteratereject repeatrephrase

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re-statereturn toreveal revisitscrutiniseseekshow

signpostspeculatespell outstudysuggestsummarisesupport

surveytake for grantedtestunwrap/unpack/unravelweigh argumentsweigh evidence

Clearly, there are many well rehearsed moves available for the creation of arguments and the writing of essays. Again, it’s interesting to note how many of the verbs and phrases in the list above are metaphorical in their application in arguments and work, as such, as means of making a reader picture an image which shows her how to think of the subject in question. It’s the manner in which you combine these moves or micro-strategies in writing with your own reading, your own experience, your own background and ultimately your own opinions, that will make your work original.

Looking back over your argument, judging the shape of your essay

When your essay is drafted and you look back over it with a view to studying the structure and the effectiveness of the argument it contains, it will be helpful for you to consider the following questions of balance:

- How strong or weak are the claims you make over the course of the essay? Do they develop logically and in such amanner that the reader can follow them?

- How consistent is the level and style of investment and/or point of view through the essay?

- How balanced is the metaphoric structure of the essay? For instance, are there

too many different metaphors in use?

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One of the most fundamental choices you’ll need to makewith regard to strategy

is whether you should commence your essay by telling the reader the original part of your argument or whether should you work up to that, leading your reading by stages from what she already knows and could expect to what she couldn’thave known or expected.

Does your essay move from survey to contention (i.e. inductively) or does it begin by establishing an hypothesis and testing this against evidence (i.e. deductively). Does it move from evidence to the formulation of a theory (i.e. empirically or experientially) or does it move from theory in general to conclusion in particular? Does your essay testevidence and/or hypothesis against a field of existing theories or assumptions? Does it entertain the opposition, and if so does it do so in order to offer concessions or reformulate an hypothesis, or is rather just going through the motions? Which of these strategies does your essay combine and how does it combine them?

In thinking through the overall shape of your argument and essay you should look back over the metaphor choices listed in chapter 5. Are you painting your reader a picture?Are you taking your reader on a journey? What combination ofsuch tasks do you imagine?

An essay has a shape, an argument is a motion. How original and how appropriate that shape and that motion willbe, in the case of your essay, will have to do with the way you match your topic and evidence to available metaphors forand strategies in argument as well as to the point of view you adopt to show your reader

Does your argument move in a straight line from the beginning of your text to the end? Or does it have somethingmore like a wave motion, building up evidence towards a contention, reiterating an earlier claim and passing onto a new one. Is the structure of your essay sequential (a^b^c^d)

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or is it more cumulative (a+b+c+d)? Is its motion discrete (for instance drawing separate conclusions) or synergistic (where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts)?

All speech and all writing has rhythm. But what kind ofrhythm does the text you’re creating have? How does the rhythm of your argument match the rhythm of your prose? Forinstance does the length of sentence in your essay suit the development of the argument, the deployment of the evidence?Is it the case that the sentences in your essay are generally so long and cumbersome, so awkward and meandering,that only a genius would be able to remember by the end of one what had been happening at the beginning of… what was it?… a sentence? Let’s rephrase that: Are your sentences toolong? Can your reader remember the beginning of one by the time she gets to the end? Observe the moral illustrated here: Never be afraid to re-write. Never be afraid to simplify what is (or has become) unnecessarily complex.

Consider the role of temporal progression in the development of your essay. If your essay deals with the works of a particular author, it may be best to deal with them in chronological order, likewise if your essay deals with a particular story it may be convenient to discuss the events of the story in the order in which they are told. On the other hand this kind of ordering might not suit the argument you need to make. It might suit you better to contrast the order of argument in the essay with the order of the evolution or development of the ideas the essay drawson. The essay can use reference to parts of a story or otherprimary source then in much the way a film uses flashbacks. The simplest way to answer the question of temporal progression would be to decide whether the argument follows the order of the text or texts with which it deals, or on the other hand if the argument orders the evidence which will be used to support it.

How does your essay order and organise the macro-strategies or modes in argument which it adopts? How does that kind of organization inform its overall purpose

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For example if your essay adopts the following sequence of strategies – survey ^ compare and contrast ^ contend/claim ^sum up – how will you describe the essay’s genre? A survey? A comparison or contrast? Or will you avoid the question by leaving these kinds of words out of the title?

Particular kinds of essay do have particular generic structures, but the most interesting essays are those that invent the method best suited to the material with which they are dealing and the argument they are putting. Just as the best ideas are often between disciplines, so the best essay structures are often between genres.

In developing and supporting your claim through the course of your essay, remember that a proposition is stronger than an hypothesis is stronger than a question. A good essay orargument juggles all of these forms in order to get the bestpossible configurations, to be provocative, to be cautious where necessary. Remember that while you need to choose at different stages between making stronger or weaker claims, you need to always have as strong an argument as you can make. If your essay is moving in the general direction of speculation to certainty then it’s likely you’ll tend to usequestion ^ hypothesis ^ proposition.

Note that questions can play a valuable role in the development of an argument and also help to give the essay more of a dialogic feel. Through the use of questions it’s possible both to direct an argument and to suggest alternative answers. Questions can help you to speculate as to the direction the argument ought to take. Is it the case that…?Or is it rather that…?

Two points to stress last. Firstly, good writing is beautiful, a pleasure to read. This applies to the essay as much as it applies to poetry or to a story. Secondly, an essay can only be as strong as the conviction behind it. In the case of the descriptive, analytic essay about culture orcomparing cultures, conviction means deep interest in – or

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passion for – the topic, for the question, for the proposition canvassed. Without belief argument is only practice, an empty exercise, useful perhaps but only an exercise. Remember, the point of arguing is to voice a difference of opinion, to change the world by changing people’s minds.

Argument checklist:An argument needs:- to be logically sound and - to deploy appropriate evidence - in order to prove a contention or to test an

hypothesis,- to progress logically and in such a way that the

reader can follow it without any unnecessary difficulty.

An argument needs above all to be convincing – along the way – and more importantly, in the end. Ask yourself howconvincing and how friendly your argument is to your reader.

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9Traps and flaws

This chapter looks briefly at some of the common problems found in essays in Cultural Studies. These include flaws and traps in argument, stylistic flaws, bad moves and various other ways of not delivering your argument to the reader in an efficient and easily readable fashion. In shortwhat this chapter intends to offer is a pathology of the essay: a list of ways in which your essay might be sick and need some healing.

Before we go any further, it’s important for the student to recognise some of the phrases that are commonly used to criticise essays and arguments. These will be italicised throughout the chapter. A first step towards acting on the criticism of your work is to recognise pejorative terms as such, that is to understand when your workis being criticised. Cant, dogma, myopia, casuistry, sophistry: these are all accusations against an argument. Among the more easily recognized pejoratives are words and phrases like subjective, biased, unbalanced, unclear, unnecessarily complicated, over-generalizing, universalizing, weak, aggressive. Other specific problems with arguments include being too vague, too general, failing to define the scope of the claim, being too opinionated, having no opinion, failure to argue, assuming that the reader simply agrees, assuming that the reader is hostile to the claim being made. Notice that many of these problems are to do with balance, e.g. it’s a problem to haveno opinion but it’s also a problem if the essay is too opinionated.

Specific bad (or risky) moves include eliding or ignoring or omitting or failing to

deal with or failing to take into account evidence important for the formation of a judgement on the topic you are investigating or the hypothesis you are testing. That is to say, your reader may well notice if you ask a question but choose not to see certain evidence, which might tend to disprove the

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claim you wish to make or the conclusion you wish to come to. It is incumbent upon the essayist to deal with, rather than ignore, evidence unfavourable to the argument being put. Failing to deal with opposing arguments or to entertain the opposition is indicative of a lack of rigour on the part of the essayist.

We can add to the pejoratives list a range of metaphorical terms and phrases too. If your essay or argument fails to bite the bullet, or make the leap, or carry through, or to deliver the goods, then it has a problem. If it stalls there’s a problem. It means the argument has stopped. Likewise if its wheels have come off. An argument needs to be on the way, and it needs know where it’s going, what it’s doing. A blind stumblingargument will fail, is already a failure. Likewise the argument going round in circles, chasing its tail. Naturally these images are very helpful for thinking through the ways in which an argument might not be working.

Recognising the phrases and terms listed above as criticisms will be a useful first step towards improving thequality of your arguments and of your writing in general.

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To give yourself a clear idea of the main ways in whichan argument can fail, all that’s needed is to negate everything on the checklist at the end of the previous chapter. An argument can fail

- by being illogical (for instance where its conclusion does not logically follow from its premises)

- by not being supported by proper evidence, or by being inadequately supported

- by failing to prove the contention it set out to prove or by failing to test the hypothesis it set out to test

- by failing to progress logically - by being too difficult to follow

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- by proving too little to justify the reader’s effortin reading

- by progressing so slowly as to not be worth following

- by being unoriginal (i.e. proving/showing nothing new and or being plagiarised)

- by failing to convince its reader

We’ll turn to some specific flaws and fallacies in a moment. Let’s look first at

some of the most fundamental problems. After plagiarism (thesimple theft of an argument) the most serious problem an essay can have is not having an argument at all. The next most serious problem is not getting there, i.e. there is a claimand it could be proven but the evidence presented is either insufficient or not well enough connected for anything to beproven. These problems occur more commonly than one might think. That’s because the absence of a workable claim is much less obvious in the case of analytic as opposed to synthetic arguments. A point form outline may not alert the writer to the fact that a workable claim is lacking. Writinga summary of the argument in the form of an abstract will help to determine whether there is a viable claim in the work as it stands. For this reason, it’s useful to work on abstract (i.e. sentence and paragraph form) summaries while the essay is still progressing in draft form.

Let’s look briefly at some of the ways in which an essay fails to get there. Assumption is one of the biggest problems: the essayist fails to argue the case because s/he assumes that her reader already agrees, already shares the same opinion, and therefore does not need to be convinced. The reason assumption of this nature is such a serious problem is that it is usually invisible to the writer, it’s unconscious. A common result of unconscious assumption is that the claim needing to be made is simply never put. The writer fails to notice this because everything seems to makesense, all the evidence is in place, all the heads are nodding as they should. The conclusion is known

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unconsciously and so being too obvious to argue, never gets argued. It’s a kind of emperor’s new clothes problem: everyone thinks they’re seeing the same thing but in fact there’s nothing to see at all. Again, this is the kind of problem that can be picked up through rigorous abstract drafting and by remembering that one of the functions of thecritical thinking expected of the essay is that of making the invisible visible, i.e. revealing assumptions rather than concealing them.

Bear in mind that if your reader already agrees with what you’ve not yet said then there isn’t much point in saying it. The point of the essay is to persuade, not to congratulate each other on the fact that you already agree or that you’ve already read the same books. Much name-dropping writing falls into this latter trap. Who you’ve readis certainly important but when it comes to the creation of an argument, it’s what you know that counts.

Another specific assumption related problem for argument is black and white (or shi-fei) thinking, i.e. the assumption that there is only one way to look at a question or hypothesis or proposition and that your reader already shares this one point of view with you. Black and white thinking is anathema to the critical process to which the essay as genre is dedicated. That is to say, when you write an essay it is your duty not to think in a black and white way.

Another way of not getting there is through logical failure. Probably the most obvious example of this is a faulty syllogism, e.g.

First premise: All Chinese have dark hair and brown eyes.Second premise: No Chinese are Americans.Conclusion: So no Americans have dark hair or brown eyes.

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What’s wrong with this syllogism? Forget for the moment thatboth premises are unreliable (i.e. not all Chinese have…., i.e. some Chinese are Americans), the important point is that, if we accept the premises as valid, the conclusion does not follow logically from them. Note that an invalid argument, such as the one above, is inconclusive, regardlessof whether the conclusion happens to be true or not.

Again, abstract writing should help to test whether your essay has this kind of problem. By putting your argument in sentences in summary form you can study the arrangement of the various propositions on which your claim/s rely/ies and you can test whether your premises do lead logically to the conclusions you hope to hope to draw.

A certain amount of bravery is required for this self-critical work, quite simply because it means exposing yourself to the possibility of being wrong, of having failedto have an argument. It’s best to be brave from the beginning and to be equally brave all along, to test your argument as you work by building the abstract form of it step by step.

It’s annoying to discover that what you’ve written hasn’t worked but you’ll lose more face later when your reader/examiner tells, at the end of the process when you think you’re finished, that you you didn’t have an argument and therefore cannot pass. This is not the sense in which you wish to be finished.

A common way in which the absence of a viable argument is concealed from the writer is through unnecessary complication. Things can become so complicated in the way that you’ve written them that you can’t actually see the fact that there isn’t an argument in there, or that there isn’t a claim sufficiently original or interesting to be worth making. If this is the case then you need to apply Occam’s razor. William of Occam was a fourteenth century English philosophy, famous for the idea that: ‘All other things being equal, the simpler of two theories, is

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preferable.’ The razor needs to be applied to the unnecessarily complex theory or explanation. The moral of the story is: keep it simple, or better, keep it as simple as you can.

Now, when you’ve reduced your argument to the simplest possible terms, you should stand back and ask yourself if it’s as clever or useful or original as it seemed to you when it was complicated. You should ask yourself if it stillseems to work as an argument. You should be applying Occam’srazor every time you add to the draft of your abstract.

If unnecessary complexity is a problem then so is its opposite: unwarranted simplification. Usually called reductionism (a definite pejorative) this means making claims or data or other evidence fit more neatly together in your argument than they do in reality. Reductionism may involve or rely on an assumption along these lines, an assumption that things fit together neatly and easily when in fact theydon’t. Challenging, questioning, doubting, likewise problematising, contextualising, historicizing all run counter to reductionism. Those critical activities will tendto make your claim or theory more subtle and better able to cope with an appropriate range of evidence.

Reductionism, it should be remembered is a relative sin. I’ve probably given you a nice example in reducing Occam’s razor above to such an easy-to-follow maxim. In factwhat Occam wrote seven hundred years ago was ‘Pluralitas nonest ponenda sine neccesitate’, which might better be translated from the Latin as ‘Plurality should not be posited without necessity’ or ‘Don’t suppose more things than are necessary.’ My point is that my original and subsequent treatment of Occam’s razor would be inadequate ifI were writing an essay on William of Occam, or comparing his philosophy with someone else’s or if I were tracing the influence of Occam’s razor; for my purposes on this page however, the reduction was, I believe, permissible.

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Between unnecessary complexity and over-simplification,again what is required is an appropriate balance; and again,it’s by summarising your argument in the simplest most straightforward sentences you’ll best test whether it’s working or not.

Let’s turn now to some specific flaws in argument.

Specific flaws in argument (or logical fallacies):

Argument is incomplete: for instance, when premises fail to lead the reader to a conclusion, or when only one premise isstated and the other is assumed without argument, or likewise when the conclusion is assumed rather than argued.

Argument is circular: The argument only appears to progress,in fact it never reaches any conclusion, but rather restatesits premises (or assumptions) in different terms so that it seems to be progressing. Occasionally this flaw is intentional, more often the writer is unaware of the fact that her argument is going nowhere. Circular argument is a particular danger where the essayist passionately holds a particular view prior to the research process. The danger there is that, in reiterating a belief or assumption alreadyheld, the argument cannot progress because it has nothing tochallenge. The circular argument is, generally tautological. Itrepeats itself without intending to do so. Begging the question is the classic example of this flaw. The statement, ‘Abortion is murder because it involves killing an unborn human’ begs the question about the legal human status of thefoetus. We know already that murder is murder, the question is whether – and/or at what point – we should consider the human embryo or foetus to have the legal rights of a person.

Argument is opportunistic: This occurs when the argument makes convenient use of evidence in a manner that may not appear to be, but is, biased; for instance when evidence is

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used selectively so as to exclude from the reader’s consideration facts or texts which might contradict the argument.

Equivocation (or having your cake and eating it too): Using two different definitions of the same term, as suits, in order to further an argument under false pretences. Equivocation is an example of opportunistic argument.

Non-sequitur: The conclusion is not supported by the premises as stated or the claim is not supported by the evidence as presented, so that although it may seem to, the purported argument, in fact does not follow.

Appeal to force: Your argument depends on the idea that powerful people or countries or companies must be right because they are powerful. Also known as ‘might is right’ the appeal to force is a sure way to perpetuate inequity in the world and help conceal the fact of it from those whom itoppresses. A claim should be supported by reasons and evidence rather than fists or guns.

Appeal to authority or doctrine: This is the intellectual equivalent of the appeal to force rather than reason or evidence. A good example of this is in the appeal to theory alone, which evidence cannot be allowed to challenge. Copernicus and Galileo faced this problem in attempting to show that the universe was not geo-centric. Many of the mostpowerful thinkers of their day would simply not accept any challenge to the theory they accepted and assumed to be eternally true. They simply wouldn’t allow or look at the evidence that contradicted a truth they already knew.

Appeal to (or against) character: The claim must be right because it is made by a good man, the claim must be wrong because it is made by a bad man. If the bad guys are wrong because they’re bad and bad because they’re wrong, then it will be much more sensible to give them enough rope to hang themselves, or let them dig their own graves. Appeal to character

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leads to circular argument. Your argument should focus on claims and evidence and the logic connecting them, not on personality.

Appeal to false authority: A person is claimed to be knowledgeable about the subject in question but is in fact only appealed to because s/he is famous for some other reason, and actually has no authority in the discipline concerned. Appeals to common sense or traditional wisdom: Common sense may not be so sensible, e.g. everyone knows that…men are smarter than women. Does everyone know that? Traditional wisdom may be surpassed, e.g. the world is no longer commonly thought to be flat. Closely related are the unconscious or unanalysed use of cliché or truism.

Appeals to popular prejudice or popular opinion: Opinions popularly held by Germans during the Nazi regime are usuallygiven as a convenient example of this fallacy.

Appeal to ignorance: This is where an author relies on the fact (or the hope) that his readers will not know some particular thing (or things) that would contradict her argument. The parochial appeal is a good example: the writerrelies on her reader having no experience of the place or people or phenomenon of which s/he writes, and so s/he can praise or denigrate without much fear of evidence being found to contradict her. Orientalism commonly functions on this basis. Stereotyping (e.g. ‘they’re all the same’) and value judgements (‘they’re all bad’) often depend on an appealto ignorance.

Those who disagree with me must be wrong: This is a good example of a self-serving circular argument.

Straw dog: The straw dog is an opponent created for the sakeof argument. This is a move designed to paint opposition to an argument into a corner. In the case of a straw dog the

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opposition is credited with holding a set of opinions or with making certain claims, but these are only for the convenience of your argument, i.e. they are easily demolished. Straw dogs usually depend on a kind of reductionism, pretending, for the sake of argument that the opposition is much simpler than it is. It’s very easy to detect a straw dog in an argument; it’s usually indicated by an un-sourced paraphrase, often accompanied by an agentless passive construction: ‘It is commonly believed that …’ It may be more troublesome but it is much more responsible to attribute all of the views you wish to criticise to real people. (Don’t confuse straw dogs with paper tigers. Paper tigers are apparent threats which evaporate when scrutinised.)

Complex incriminating question: This is the kind of questionthe court should not allow to be asked because it is designed to put the witness in a bad light however s/he responds. For example, if asked ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ you are already assumed to be a wrongdoer. Complex questions are used in this way to create straw dogs,in other words, to lump together forces or parties claimed to be in disagreement.

False dilemma: This is a specific kind of reductionism in which the reader is led to believe that only two choices areavailable when in fact many may be possible.

Red herring: Useful in a story (especially in a detective or mystery story), the red herring is an unnecessary digression in an essay, it leads the reader away from the claims and evidence and argumentation that would lead the reader to the right conclusion.

Confusing co-incidence (or co-relation) for cause: It is possible for events to co-occur without there being any cause-effect relationship between them. The argument which confuses co-incidence with cause and effect often makes use of the fact that a careless reader might accept an easy

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explanation rather than making a stronger effort to get to the truth. Confusing co-incidence for causation is thus often away of concealing from a reader the true causes of events. When done intentionally this move may be viewed as opportunistic.

Slippery slope/Domino theory: This fallacy is based on the idea that one step down a particular path will lead inevitably to complete disaster. If we push over one domino,then all the rest will fall down. If we allow one more illegal immigrant into Macao, the city will be overrun.

Faulty analogy: The false assumption that because two thingsare alike in some respect they must be alike in all.

Note that many of the logical fallacies listed above are practised accidentally, that is to say, their authors are – like the authors of spelling or punctuation errors – not aware of the mistake at the time they’re making it. On the other hand many of these flaws in argument are the result ofdishonest or ethically flawed thinking.

Note that, apart from the problems listed above with argument, and apart from grammatical flaws, there are numerous possible stylistic problems in the essay. These areoften referred to as solecisms, and include mixed metaphor, tautology and self-contradiction.

Traps and flaws checklist:Is your argument: - tired?- half baked?- flimsy?- unoriginal? - unnecessarily repetitive?- unnecessarily complex?- oversimplified?- illogical?

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- too slow?- too hasty?- unconvincing?

If you’ve had to answer yes to any of these questions or if you recognise that you’ve committed any of the other sins listed above then it’s time to go back and work on the problem you’ve identified. You shouldn’t feel too bad about finding these kinds of problems. In fact, finding them is a very good sign. It means that you’re aware of them and that you can identify them. Identifying problem is the most important step in the direction of fixing them in your present work and – perhaps more importantly – in the direction of eliminating them from your future writing. Learning to critique and correct your own work is probably the most valuable reflexive skill you can acquire.

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A few last words on argument and on getting it right and getting it wrong. One of the best virtues of argument isthat it provides means by which authority can be challenged.The argument and the essay are important contributions the university makes to society. This is particularly true with regard to the study of culture because it’s through the ongoing processes of doubt and critique that a society renovates and improves itself, rights its wrongs, becomes fairer and one might say, more intellectually open, or even culturally prosperous.

The point is that strong, effective argument does require some bravery. Bravery carries some clear dangers. The bolder you are in your approach, the bigger the risks you take, the more likely you are to be wrong. But as with language learning in general, and as with many other kinds of learning and human experience, it’s only by being wrong along the way you get to be right in the end.

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Bravery is necessary to argument because conviction is important. If you don’t believe in your argument then how can you hope to convince others? Argument with no conviction– argument for the sake of argument, or argument made for instance because you are paid to argue – is mere sophistry. Yes, it’s true there are those who can persuade others of things they themselves do not believe. This behaviour, however richly rewarded, is ethically flawed or morally wrong, whichever of those descriptions you prefer.

Conviction is important and bravery is indicated and ingeneral, it is well to note that the more nuanced or subtle the claim, the more stridently or strongly it can be made. If your argument is well constructed and takes account of all the available evidence then it should be possible to press your claim with enthusiasm.

In the last chapter I wrote that good writing is beautiful, a pleasure to read. In this chapter we have barely touched on the many ways in which writing can be other than beautiful. Writing and arguing well, as we’ve seen in most chapters so far, means finding various balances, for instance balancing stylistic consistency and continuity in argument against the need for variation, interest, surprise. Those things are important in a story and in every kind of writing, so they are important in an essay as well. Perhaps the best rule of thumb to adopt in terms of style is simply this: avoid boredom. Being boring is the quickest way to stop your reader. As with conviction,you yourself will be the first and most important judge of your work on this score. If you find your writing boring then there’s not much chance anyone else will find it of interest.

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10Reading to write Where to start? Which way to go?

You learn to read to write, to make arguments, to produce essays just as you learn to walk and talk. You learnto do all these things through constant practice, through constant exposure to good models, through careful thought onyour own account and probably most importantly of all, through being expected to do all of these things. If you don’t have the confidence of those around you who could be encouraging you, then it will be very difficult for you to make progress. This last is often one of the non-native learner’s greatest obstacles, especially in a foreign language learning context: she’s simply not surrounded by the people who could encourage her onto better and greater things. The best way to simulate that kind of community is through reading.

Where to start reading? In which direction to read? These are difficult questions.

It’s a mistake to only read old books. It’s a mistake to only read the latest literature. You can’t really start at the beginning of the canon and read to the end. You can’tstart at the end and read your way back to the beginning. There isn’t a first magical book which gets you into the canon. There isn’t a final book towards which you’re reading.

One book sends you to another. Sometimes you need to read a second book to find out how or why things happened inthe first one. Sometimes you need to read a second book to find out what happens next. That’s the case with a sequel: asequel tells you the next story in a series. The history of literature is full of sequels and re-writes. Think of Homer’s Odyssey, the story of the adventures of the warrior Odysseus on his way home from the Trojan wars. (cf the

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appendix on Mythology at the back of the book.) You need to understand that three thousand year old story in order to understand two very different but very important works of twentieth century literature: James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece Ulysses and Kenneth Grahame’s masterpiece of children’s literature, The Wind in the Willows. The canon may be difficult to imagine in the singular but it does have these kinds of unity over vast stretches of time. You need to keepreading the old stuff to keep understanding the new stuff.

We need metaphors to help us conceptualise the canon. For instance, it might be useful to think of the canon as a web in which works are connected with each other in various ways and by various routes in reading. You need to follow particular threads to find out which threads interest you orare useful for you. If you’ve only read the works in one corner of the web then it will be difficult for you to know what to read next to make the connections which you need to make. So you need to read widely, especially at first, when you’re getting to know what all the world’s literature has to offer you as a reader.

A popular metaphor for the world’s literature is ‘a great conversation’. It’s always hard to join a conversation. The conversations of great minds of the western world and the Chinese world have been going for thousands of years. Very few people in a particular generation get to make any lasting contribution. It’s natural to begin by listening to the conversation. By listening to the tried and tested ideas of others you may come to formulate your own. The difficulty in listening – and especially in beginning to listen – has to do with the fact that the ideas preserved in the conversation are agreedby authorities to be the best ideas. The best ideas are not necessarily the easiest. Naturally for the non-native the work of beginning to listen to another world’s (e.g. the western world’s) conversation is harder again. Understandingthe works of the western canon means understanding the ideas

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and the values and the language of the western world. That’swhy it’s so difficult. That’s why it’s so worthwhile.

Whether you think of it as a web or as a conversation, the western canon is a long term vehicle for the developmentof ideas. Now a native speaker is born into a particular culture of ideas, knowing nothing of it, but with the opportunity to explore that culture from the inside. The non-native has to find a way in from the outside. That is hard work. The easy looking ways in are often dead-ends. Youcan’t start at the beginning or the end. You can’t just readin one direction. As you go on reading you need a way to keep what you’ve already read in mind. You need easy access to the reading and thinking you’ve already done.

Building a personal library:

Reading in general – and research in particular – involves reading in several (or perhaps many) directions at once. You follow several paths. In each situation of reading(and writing) you find what you need to find. You bring the materials you need together to find the path you need to make in your own writing.

Different books have to be read differently. For instance different books need to read at different speeds. You can probably read Harry Potter a lot faster than you canread a book of philosophy or a Shakespeare play. Some books require re-reading before they can be understood properly. Most books need to be re-read before they can be written about. Or, more often, certain passages need to be re-read, in order to be used in an essay. When you read a second time, sometimes you see a text in a completely different light; sometimes you’ll see completely different connectionsbetween that text and others. The text may come to mean something quite different for you, personally.

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Never be afraid of annotating (writing marginal notes) in your own books. These will guide you later when you return to the text. Annotations are like those pebbles whichHansel and Gretel left in the forest to help them find theirway back. (To go further back, they’re like Ariadne’s threadthat guided Theseus through the Labyrinth when he faced the Minotaur under the Palace of Knossos.) Annotations are a wayof reminding yourself of the connections and directions thatare important for you, the ways between this particular textand others, and between this text and your other ideas. Ideas bounce off each other in books. Making notes is important because you can’t remember all of your ideas. Writing was invented as a technology to solve this problem of memory.

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Books which survive over long periods of time are particular works with particular histories. It’s difficult to generalise about how to read them because each requires adifferent approach. Books which are worth reading teach you how to read them. And they teach you how to read other books; they tell you which other books you need to read.

A library – for instance the university library – is a valuable resource. You need to spend time there – browsing in the catalogue and browsing on the shelves – in order to discover your interests. (You can and should treat book shops in this way, too. Take time when in you’re in Hong Kong to visit the good bookshops: for instance Swindons or Page One.) But however much of your life you devote to reading, the library will go on intimidating you for a very simple reason. Every time you walk into a library you walk into a collection of books, only a tiny fraction of which are familiar. For any human capable of humility this is a humbling feeling. Please take comfort from the fact that your professors feel the same way in the library. Or perhapsthey feel more humble, knowing they have less time left in which to contribute.

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Humility may be good for your character but it’s also important to have a feeling that you’re progressing and thatyou know where you’ve been. A personal library is your own canon: it’s the collection of books to which you personally need to return. You need to be able to go back to books to allow their ideas and phrases to rub up against each other. To become a scholar (and/or to become an effective teacher of English) you need to be able to look at a shelf of books and think I’ve read them, I know what’s in them and I have some understanding of the conversation between them. You need to be able tothink I can explain these books. For these reasons you should not give away or sell the books you’ve read for your studies. They’re the beginning of your professional library. If you have a degree in English then you should have a professionallibrary of books in the English language: reference books, literature, books you’ve read, books you’re going to read.

As mentioned earlier, the fundamental processes in text-based research are analysis and synthesis. Analysis meansunderstanding the texts which concern your subject. Synthesis means bringing your understanding of a subject and related texts together in order to express your own original ideas in your own writing. Scholarship demands that you have original ideas and that you know and demonstrate where your ideas come from. So reading is absolutely vital to the processes of research and writing.

Having your own books with your own annotations is important because it reminds you of the paths in reading andthinking which work personally for you. Relying solely on alibrary for all of your reading needs would be like never having your own clothes to wear.

Dictionaries, the Internet, and other reference works:

At the centre of every personal library – along with your Complete Works of Shakespeare and the other books at the

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centre of the canon – is a set of reliable reference works. This set should include a good dictionary, a thesaurus and some kind of encyclopaedia. The foreign learner’s personal library should probably also include a grammar, and dictionaries of idioms and quotations.

All of these reference works are available in great variety now on-line, so in a sense the centre of every scholar’s library today is a computer. As Internet materials become better and more readily available, it’s becoming harder to justify having a book-form encyclopaedia in your library. An encyclopaedia takes up a lot of space but a computer doesn’t get bigger just because you’re finding more information with it.

One of the most important ways to use your computer as a tool for research is through the many search engines whichare available on the Internet, for instance http://www.google.com/. You simply type in the topic or author or word which interests you and then links to the relevant materials on-line appear in summary form on your screen. Usually there are many more such ‘results’ than you could possibly go to and read in full. Much of the information available will be completely useless for your purposes. So you need to make judgements for yourself about which links to follow. With experience you become skilled atguessing which information is likely to be useful for you. As a general rule though if you’re working on-line there aremany sorts of general information which you’ll find more easily in an encyclopaedia. Those categories of information would include biography, history, explanations of how thingsfunction, basic geographical and political information, established scientific ideas, and many kinds of ‘facts’. Butfor up-to-date information on something which won’t yet havebeen included in an encyclopaedia then you can’t beat a search engine like google.

It is important to also have paper works to refer to because there are times when you have no Internet access

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(sitting in a chair, in an exam) and because sometimes you need to look at a dictionary while you’re working on a document on the computer screen, but without wishing to losethat screen. Watch one your professors writing. S/he’s generally sitting at the computer but with a number of booksopen on the desk around her.

You can use electronic dictionaries for these purposes and while these have a number of advantages (for instance pronunciation features) they generally keep bringing you back to a meaning in Chinese. If the definition in Chinese is your only source of information about a new word in English then your understanding of that word will be seriously limited. While an English-Chinese/Chinese-English dictionary is useful, especially for quickly gaining a roughunderstanding of a new word, beyond a certain level you willbe making things more difficult for yourself if you try to understand new words through Chinese translations. You’re better off trying to understand an unknown word by means of words you already know in English. Think of it this way: every time you find the meaning of an English word in English, you’re taking a step further into the English language; every time you look for the meaning in Chinese, you’re taking a step away from the English language.

Your best long term dictionary resource is a book-form dictionary, probably an Oxford for British English and/or a Webster’s for U.S. English. Other varieties of English now also have excellent dictionaries available, for instance theMacquarie for Australian English. (Note that you need to be able to read each of these varieties of English and that youcan use whichever spelling system suits you, provided that you use that system consistently.) There are many dictionaries – for instance by Collins and Longmans as well as by Oxford and Cambridge – which have been designed specifically for the non-native learner of English. There’s certainly no need for every student in a class to have the same dictionary. In fact the more different dictionaries in

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a classroom the more angles on a word will be available to everyone.

Lexicons and picture dictionaries (or dictionaries with some diagrams) can also be very useful resources because they organise the words you need into semantic fields which help you to conceptualise relationships between words and the things to which they refer. If you’re reading a novel which includes a sea voyage then it might be very useful to see a diagram of a sailing ship with named parts, rather than having to look up each part of the ship as a separate dictionary entry.

A thesaurus helps you find the right word in your own writing and helps you to vary your language through the use of synonyms so that you do not become too repetitive in yourword choices. It also helps you to find the word which is more appropriate to the context in which you’re writing. Youneed to use a thesaurus with a dictionary to check that the word you’ve found in the thesaurus really means what you want it to mean. You may find a paper thesaurus useful for the same reason that you need a dictionary in book form: so that you can look at your own writing on the screen and leafthrough the thesaurus to make your word choice without goingto another screen. Don’t forget though that in Word you can right-click on any word on screen and immediately see a listof synonyms as you work. Please don’t however rely on that list as being complete; a large printed thesaurus will offeryou many more choices.

Grammars and dictionaries of idioms and quotations are useful because they help to explain phrases and sentences which otherwise seem inscrutable. It’s usually more efficient to use such dictionaries than an Internet search engine becausethese dictionaries are designed to give you a general explanation. A web-site which uses an idiom or a quotation may be adapting it for a purpose – for instance advertising – which doesn’t cast much light on the meaning which you need to discover. Dictionaries of idioms and phrasal verbs

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are particularly useful because they’re written with your needs as a non-native of English in mind. Using a paper version of these kinds of reference is useful because it’s more personal. It’s easy for you to see where you’ve been ina book to which you’ve been referring regularly. Being able to retrace your steps is a very important for a scholar. Bookmarks on the internet help you to do this but at this stage in the history of technology there’s something more user-friendly about a ‘real’ bookmark in a real book. While on the subject of revisiting old books, don’t forget those old English textbooks which taught you all the sentence making tricks you know. Keep them for reference if you can fit them on your shelves. They’ll help you when there aren’tany more grammar lessons.

To be a responsible student of literature:

Responsibility for your own reading means making reading a part of your everyday life. To be a serious student of literature you need to spend a part of EVERY day sitting comfortably reading. You need a quiet place where noone can distract you. You need to remove potential distractions (turn off your radio and your mobile phone!). You need to concentrate on the text in front of you. Books do not read themselves. Reading requires your active participation. It requires concentration.

The main thing to do when you’re sitting in that comfortable chair is to read. Constantly thinking about yourshopping or what you’re going to say to your boyfriend won’thelp you. You need self-discipline to protect yourself from distractions. Likewise, constantly referring to the dictionary can be very frustrating. The more you read the bigger your vocabulary will be and the less you’ll need to look in the dictionary. Of course you do need to use a dictionary to understand exactly what a word means. But it’sonly by meeting a word in several contexts that you’ll learn

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how to use it for your own purposes. Words become your servants when you’re widely read.

Being widely read will reward you in many ways. It willmake you a better and more interesting user of English. It will allow you to understand other cultures, and especially western cultures, in more depth. Best of all it will make you a better person because you will know a lot more of whatbeing human is about, because you will have experienced someof humanity’s best and most interesting ideas and stories and ways with words.

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Appendices

1. Glossary of terms in argument

Analogy: A comparison used for the purposes of argument or illustration, e.g. one can make an analogy between the humanbrain and a computer.

Analysis: To analyse means taking someone’s argument or text apart in order to understand it, in order to understandhow it works, in order to show others how to understand it and how it works.

Argument: Argument has several related meanings but the mostimportant of these in this book is that of a claim which is reasoned. That is to say, an argument makes a claim and it gives reasons to back that claim up. Its aim is to persuade the reader or the listener that the claim is justified, correct, that there’s truth in it. Usually the reasoning andbacking up of the argument has a coherent logical structure and relies on evidence.

Caveat: A warning that comes attached to an argument, for instance of the conditions in which the argument might not apply, or in which certain kinds of evidence might be inadmissible.

Deconstruction: A form or method of cultural criticism/literary analysis pioneered by French theorist Jacques Derrida, one may crudely think of deconstruction as suggesting the critical or exegetic process as the reverse ofthe process by which imaginative texts are constructed.

Deduction: Deductive reasoning moves from the general to the particular, from a general theory to the prediction of particular instances in which the theory ought to apply.

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Deduction means reasoning from a general proposition to a specific application.

Dialectic: The kind of reasoning pioneered by Aristotle in the ancient world and most closely associated with Hegel in the modern world, a dialectical argument progresses from thesis through antithesis to synthesis.

Ethos: The ethical dimension of argument, or the appeal to moral sense (for instance of right and wrong) of the reader.

Evidence: Evidence is constituted by text or other information which could contribute to or detract from an argument.

Exegesis: The explanation or interpretation of texts. Like the terms hermeneutics, exegesis suggests methods descended from those used for Bible study.

Hypothesis: Generally stronger than a question and weaker than a proposition, an hypothesis is a form of claim designed for testing. The hypothesis usually takes the form of an If ^… sentence.

Induction: Inductive reasoning moves from the particular to the general. From the experience of particular instances or cases at particular places and particular points in time it may be possible to generalise, to form an hypothesis for testing and/or even to promote a theory accounting for the phenomena observed. Through inductive reasoning a general conclusion may be reached from particulars.

Investment: Closely related to interest and motivation, investment refers to the stake a subject has in a particularissue or argument or outcome (cf chapter 7).

Motivation: Closely related to interest and investment, motivation refers to the reasons behind the actions, opinions or assumptions of subjects.

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Parameters: Parameters are the imagined abstract boundary within which a certain discipline or topic or argument applies.

Pathos: Pathos is the appeal to emotion or feeling in argument.

Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the theft of other people’s words or ideas. Plagiarism occurs wherever the words or ideas of aparty (other than the purported author) are used without proper acknowledgement.

Plausible: Of a proposition or argument: able to be considered as possible.

Point-of-view: Point-of-view refers to the imagined place from which a particular subject (usually reader or writer) views the premises, claims or related evidence in an argument (cf position).

Position: In most cases, a near synonym for point-of-view, e.g. the imagined place from which the subject reads or acts.

Premise: A proposition created for the purpose of building an argument, a premise is one of the first two steps leadingto a conclusion in a syllogism.

Proposition: A claim in the form of a statement, a proposition can be used as a premise or as a conclusion in an argument.

Solecism: A solecism is a stylistic flaw or indiscretion in writing. Tautology is an example.

Synthesis: To synthesise means putting your own text or argument together from the materials available to you.

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2. Glossary of literary terms

Action – Action refers to the events in a story through which the plot and characters are developed. Action can takeplace off or on stage. It can be reported or referred to or shown directly. Rising action occurs when the plot and suspense are building towards a crisis and/or climax and/or resolution. Falling action occurs after a crisis of some sort, when the plot is cooling down. Forward action is action that progresses the plot (i.e. takes us further into the story); circular action establishes the routines in the story (and especially of characters) against which the complications of a story will be set. We can contrast the action of the story with exposition. Exposition is the description of the plot occurring offstage.

Allegory – An allegory is a story with a clearly defined deeper level of meaning than appears on the surface. For instance in a medieval mystery play the characters on the stage are allegorical representations of general human attributes, e.g. Faith and Hope and Charity. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress andGeorge Orwell’s Animal Farm are examples of allegory in prose fiction form.

Allusion – An allusion is a reference to another text. For instance Shakespeare’s plays contain many allusions to classical mythology. Allusions help readers to picture what’s needed in reading a story because they remind the reader of a story s/he already knows. Allusions are obscure when not many readers can recognise them. Allusions are a principal site of cultural capital in texts. You have to be well read to understand highly allusive texts.

Ambiguity – Ambiguity means meaning more than one thing at atime. This can be a fault in style or a deliberate feature of a text, as in much modern poetry.

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Aphorism – A short statement bearing some general or popularadvice. Proverbs and wise saws are examples. ‘Look before you leap’ is an example. A Chinese example (from the Tao Te Ching)is ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’.

Apostrophe – An apostrophe is a speech in which someone not present (or an abstract idea, like truth) is addressed as ifthey were.

Archetypes – Archetypes are original models from which others are copied. So Adam is the archetypal man. Cain is the archetypal murderer. The sharp stick is the archetypal weapon. The term original can also be used as a noun with thisrange of function.

Bathos – Bathos is the failure of pathos. How to tell the two apart? If the audience laughs when it should weep, thenyou have bathos.

Character – A character is a person in a story. There are many ways of classifying them. A flat character is one who has little depth or complexity and doesn’t really get to make decisions. A static character is one who doesn’t change. Flat and static characters may be stereotyped. A round character is complex and difficult to analyse or predict, makes her own decisions. A dynamic character changes during a story so that the plot develops with her.

Cliché – a cliché is a worn out or over-used phrase, or idea, sometimes called a hackneyed expression

Collocation – A collocation is a group of words which commonly occur together. Over-used, a collocation can becomea cliché.

Dialogue – Dialogue is the speech of characters in a literary text. A play generally consists mainly of dialogue.

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Didactic – Didactic means having the purpose of teaching, asin for instance providing a moral for a story. This kind of didacticism is obligatory for certain types of children’s story or for a medieval mystery play, but generally thought a stylistic fault in contemporary poetry or fiction.

Deus ex machina – Literally ‘God out of the machine’. When there is no clear plausible solution to the difficulties in a story then something like a miracle is used to save the day. God parting the waters of the Red Sea to let the Jews pass out of captivity is a biblical example. Today deus ex machina means any forced (non-credible) solution of a plot.

Empathy – Empathy is the ability to identify with the thoughts or emotions of a person or character and so understand their experience. Sympathy, closely related, is simply the ability to share another’s emotions or feelings.

Epigraph – Literally, an inscription, an epigraph is a quotation from another work given at the beginning of a story or poem, as acknowledged inspiration and allusion.

Epiphany – An epiphany is a sudden realisation on the part of a character. Seeing the light is an everyday expression whichconveys this idea. Satori in Zen Buddhism is a similar concept.

Exposition – The development of the story offstage, usually given to the reader in summary or synopsis form.

Flashback – A flashback is the telling of a past story framed by a present one. In a flashback one goes back to a previous sequence of events which explains how things came to be the way they are in the present of a story. A story may also backtrack to explain events which led to a present situation.

Foreshadowing: The ‘setting up’ of events in a story, so that while not expected, they will be credible when later

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they occur.

Genre – All discourses may be classified into genres. In thecase of literature the main generic divisions are usually drama,poetry and prose. Each of these is in turn able to be divided into sub-genres, which are usually referred to as genres in their own right. For example the main genres of poetry are the lyric and the epic. A minor genre of poetry is the dramatic monologue. In cinema, horror, science fiction, the western, the romantic comedy, are all genres. Different critics may use different systems of generic classification for the texts with which they deal.

Identification – Identification is effected when the reader or audience sympathises or empathises strongly with a character. You don’t want anything bad to happen to the character with whom you identify. Her pain is your pain.

Imagery – Imagery refers generally to what the text makes the reader imagine or experience. It’s easiest to think of this in visual terms. The imagery in a poem is what you see when you read. The reader of a poem has to do a lot more of that kind of imaginative work than does the viewer of a film. When you view a film most of the visual imagining workis already done for you. But imagery is by no means exclusively visual. It may operates on any or all of the senses. Imagery is often delivered through the use of tropes.For instance a metaphor makes you see something or some aspect of the world differently. The glossary of tropes following this glossary will give you some useful vocabularyfor understanding and writing about imagery and how it works.

Investment – Authors, characters and readers have investments in a text, related to their positions. This means that certain events or outcomes are desirable, and certain others undesirable, from their point of view. It’s not necessarily the case that authors, characters or readers are

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conscious of their investments or able to admit them to themselves.

Invocation – An invocation is a prayer to a god or gods for help. At the beginning of an epic poem an invocation is a request for inspiration.

Metre – Metre is the measure of the rhythm in a line of poetry. For instance the most common traditional metrical form in English poetry is iambic pentameter or heroic verse (see Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 above for an example). There are five feet to this line, each foot consisting of an unaccented followed by an accented syllable: Shall I/compare/thee to/a sum/mer’s day? If the words chosen fit the metre of the line then line scans.

Motivation – Motivation usually refers to the reasons why characters behave in a particular way in a story. Characters have motives for doing what they do. But motivation also refers to the background reasons for the wayin which a particular reader approaches a text. Likewise an author’s position is motivated. Motivation and investment areclosely related.

Myth – Myth is a word with a wide range of meanings and applications. Most commonly it refers to an ancient story containing ancient beliefs, in other words to events which are too far in the past or too dimly recalled to be historicor accurate.

Narration – Narration is the act of telling a story. Narrativeis another name for a story or for a more general kind of account, of events or other things. Parody – A parody is a mocking imitation. It’s often satirical and it often converts pathos to bathos.

Pathos – Pathos is the quality which arouses pity or sadnessin the reader. The adjective pathetic properly referring to

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this quality more often today is used colloquially to mean ‘of poor quality’.

Period – Periods of literature may be classified in various ways. The reading list at the beginning of this handbook classifies some lists by period. Broadly, the history of English may be divided into three major time frames: Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English and Modern English.In Modern English the main periods generally referred to arethe Shakespearean or Elizabethan and Jacobean, the Restoration, the Augustan age, the Romantic period, the Victorian period, the twentieth century and/or Modernist andPostmodernist periods. The classification of periods overlaps with the classification of movements in literature.In this way Modernism could be considered a movement or a period.

Persona – The persona is the I or the voice in the story or poem. It’s the personality which the author presents to the reader; it’s not necessarily the author’s personality.

Plant – A plant is a plot device in which the reader or audience is given a piece of information vital to the story,but which will be forgotten until an appropriate moment. Forexample, if you want a character to have a heart attack in the last act of the play then you show that character takingheart pills in the first act. Often thought of as heavy handed foreshadowing, a plant is the opposite of a red herring.

Plot – The plot is the story line of the play. It may be summarised in a synopsis.

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Point of view – The point of view or perspective or vantage point is the place from which reader or viewer sees or experiences the action of a story. In cinema it’s very easy to conceptualise this. The point of view (what the viewer sees) is where the camera is shooting from. There are four main types of point of view:

First person: The story is told by an ‘I’. That is, one ofthe characters is telling the story.Third person omniscient: The story is told by a god-like narrator who knows everything that is happening in the story and who tells the reader what the reader needs toknow. A third person omniscient narrator can read the minds of all the characters. Nothing can be concealed from her.Third person with limited omniscience: This narrator usually takes on the viewpoint of one (or perhaps two or several) characters. In other words this narrator may know what one or more character knows, but s/he doesn’tknow everything. A guardian angel could give this kind of narration, staying a step ahead of the character s/he’s looking after.Objective: This is like the narrative style of a documentary. Events are reported without comment or feeling so that the reader has to make up her own mind about the story.

Protagonist – The protagonist is the hero or heroine (or anti- hero/ine) or character with whom the reader identifiesin the story. The protagonist may have to fight in some manner against an antagonist or villain.

Reading position – The reader of a text comes from somewhereand that origin affects the manner in which s/he reads. For instance a woman’s experience is different from that of a man and so she reads differently. Someone from Macao might read a text very differently than someone from Beijing or someone from Portugal. A non-native’s reading of a text may be very different from that of a native speaker.

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Red herring – A red herring is a deliberately misleading element in a plot. A red herring makes the reader suspect something or someone, but those events or persons will turn out to not be important in the outcome of the story. A red herring throws a reader off the scent.

Reflexivity – A reflexive gesture or move is made when the text points to itself or accounts for itself in some way, for instance when the reader is reminded by some means that s/heis reading fiction.

Satire – A satire is a work of literature which mocks the folly or hypocrisy of ideas, individuals, systems or institutions.

Setting – In a story the setting is where the action takes place. Setting encompasses both the time and the place of a story.

Sign – Sign is a term with very broad reference. Words, traffic signals and animal tracks are all signs of sorts. Inthis sense every trope, symbol, image, motif and again everyword, is either a sign or a combination of signs. In literary texts sign is often used as a synonym for hint or symptom, to indicate the likelihood of something happening or the presence of a clue in a story.

Stanza – A stanza is the unit of text in a poem equivalent to that of a paragraph in prose. A stanza consists of lines in the same manner that a paragraph consists of sentences.

Stereotypes – Stereotypes are characters or things regarded as conventional, as types, rather than as individuals. The process of stereotyping is often associated with simplifyingcharacteristics, for example for the purpose of pigeon holing someone or painting them into a corner. The practice is widely regarded as unfair and the use of the word stereotype usually indicates the discovery of such an unjust labelling

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or name-calling process or the claim that a particular characterisation is unfair in this sense.

Suspension of disbelief – In fiction things happen which couldn’t or wouldn’t happen in real life. When these things happen the reader has to suspend her disbelief in order to stay with the story. When it becomes impossible to do so thestory has a credibility problem. Resort to a deus ex machina demonstrates that sort of problem.

Symbol – Symbols are signs (usual visual) which stand for something in particular, often an abstract idea, sometimes for a story, or sometimes for a range of associated things. For instance a flag may symbolise a country or a red rose may symbolise love. Symbols are specific to cultures. Black may symbolise death or mourning in western cultures, where white symbolises these in Chinese culture. Note the range ofmeaning which one symbol may carry: e.g. in Christianity the cross might represent the passion of Christ, the suffering ofhumanity, the Christian church in general, a church in particular.

Text – A text is any piece of language, spoken or written, looked at for the purposes of analysis or explanation. Also referred to as the work. Discourse usually means text lookedat as process, rather than as product. Note however that both text and discourse are nouns.

Theme – The theme is the central idea or subject of the text. It’s what the text’s about.

Trope – A trope is a rhetorical figure or a figure of speech. Metaphor is the most common example. See the next glossary below.

Voice – The voice in a text is the persona’s speech. It carries the point of view of the work.

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An excellent source for much more detailed information on literary terms is the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.

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3. Glossary of Tropes or Figures of Speech

The tropes or figures quite rightly called figures of speech because they’re used in everyone’s everyday language.They’re not something unique to literary language. But as understanding literature involves looking closely at the language in texts, the tropes or figures do help us to talk about the language of literature. The tropes are also referred to as rhetorical figures because they can be used deliberately to create particular effects with words, for instance to persuade a listener or reader. We can discuss the operation of tropes in every kind of language, whether they are being used deliberately or not. We don’t always know what we’re doing with words or how words achieve their effects! Here’s a list of some of the most important tropes.

Simile The use of like or as to make a comparison. A simile is an explicit metaphor.

Examples: Robert Burns: My love is like a red, red rose. William Wordsworth: I wandered lonely as a cloud.

MetaphorMetaphor is saying something is what it isn’t. For example: ‘the sky is a blanket’. Everyone knows that the sky isn’t a blanket but when you say it is, your reader or listener has to think again, has to use her imagination to bring ideas orimages together. Metaphor is simile with the like or as taken out. Instead of claiming or arguing for a comparison a metaphor tells you to see what you can’t.

Metaphor could be defined as a word given a new context, a word made to refer where it would not normally be used. For example, in the phrase ‘food for thought’ the idea of nourishment is taken from its usual field of reference,

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concerned with the body, and applied to the mind. Metaphors like this one often point to important conceptual frameworksin a language or culture.

Metaphor is used constantly in everyday speech. If someone insults you by saying ‘You’re a clown’ or ‘You’re a dog’ or ‘You’re an elephant’, s/he’s using metaphor. If someone declares their love for you by saying ‘You’re my sun and my moon’ then likewise s/he’s using metaphor. Metaphor is used extensively in literary writing and especially in poetry.Example: Henry David Thoreau: ‘I am a parcel of vain strivings tied/By a chance bond together’

Metaphors in poetry are often very alive. They’re meant to surprise the reader and they often do this by throwing two unlikely worlds together. Those kinds of difficult image marriages are often just as difficult for the native as for the non-native of English. Poetry – and other kinds of verbal play – often depend of bringing dead metaphors back tolife. Dead metaphors are associated with the process which the Russian Formalist critics called automatisation. Bringing them back to life can be thought of as de-automatisation or de-familiarisation. In this process the reader is made to see whateveryone had taken for granted. If you make your reader see tables and chairs dancing then you’ve drawn their attention to the dead metaphor in their legs. A dead metaphor (e.g. the table leg, a branch of government) is a metaphorical expression in which no one is aware of the metaphor any more.

Note that metaphor can be fitted into any sentence form or utterance type:Be a rat!Are you going to haunt her? (i.e. be a ghost)

Metaphor can be negative as in John Donne’s ‘No man is an island’.

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Metaphor can be hypothetical: O that I were a … I wish you were…

Metaphors can be extended, applied beyond their initial application, in which case they’re usually called extended metaphors. The sky is a blanket. The stars are moth holes. It’s heaven’s darkness warms us here below.

A conceit is a complex and extended metaphor, popular with the Metaphysical poets (in the seventeenth century) and which is especially associated with John Donne.

Personification A personification is a metaphor in which other than human things (animals, objects) are given human attributes or qualities or treated as if they were sentient (i.e. thinkingor human) subjects. Like other kinds of metaphor, personification is commonly used in everyday language.

Examples:This music spoke to me.This painting told me a wondrous tale.

A poetic example is in William Wordsworth’s poem ‘The InwardEye’:

When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

The daffodils are personified as forming a crowd and as dancing. Personification was an important device for the Romantics because of their pantheistic ideas which connectedhumans with the natural world.

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Anthropomorphism and zoomorphism are closely related concepts. To anthropomorphise means to give animals or things the qualities of humans. This is very common in children’s and in fantasy literature, where animals often have the ability to speak. To zoomorphise means to give humans or things the qualities of animals.

Metonymy Metonymy is a figure which involves relationships of association or contiguity (next-to-ness). Something which isassociated or next to something stands for that thing. ‘Are you the red bike?’ thus means ‘Are you the person who rides the red bike?’ The crown can stand for the king because the crown is something closely associated with the king, i.e. something he wears. Likewise the throne is a metonymy: it’sassociated with the monarch because the king or queen sits on it.

In poetry metonymy can evoke complex patterns of association, as in Gray’s ‘drowsy tinklings of the sheep’ (tinkling is the noise which the bells hung around the sheep’s necks make), or as for instance in Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘Fern Hill’ where the phrase ‘tunes from the chimneys’ suggests imagery both inside and outside of the house which the reader needs to picture.

Synecdoche Synecdoche is usually considered a type of metonymy; it’s the type of metonymy where one thing is associated with another on the basis of containment or part-whole relations.When we say ‘the kettle’s boiling’ we do not mean that the metal container (the kettle) on the stove has become a lump of molten metal; we mean that the contents of the kettle (the water in it) has boiled. ‘Fifty head’ in this way can mean fifty cattle. ‘Twenty sail’ can mean twenty sailing ships. Washington can mean the United States, Beijing can

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mean China. In each case part of the thing stands for the whole of the thing.

Hyperbole Hyperbole is the rhetorical name for exaggeration. Hyberboleis often delivered in the form of a simile, i.e. using like or as or some other form of comparison.

Examples: This pain is killing me. He’s the size of an elephant. She’s as fast as a rocket. He eats like a horse.

The opposite of hyperbole is litotes or understatement. Example: J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye: It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumour on the brain.

ParadoxA paradox is a statement which appears to be self-contradictory but which contains or leads us to some kind oftruth. A paradox is a contradiction (disagreement of ideas)which has a way of resolving itself. A paradox leads the reader or listener to a new way of thinking or seeing things.

Example: in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Though this be madness, there’s method in it.

In philosophy probably the most famous paradoxes are those of the pre-Socratic thinker, Zeno. He claimed for instance that an arrow couldn’t move because if it were travelling from A to B it would first have to reach a point half way inbetween, and to reach that point another point half way between the start and the middle point would have to have been reached. And so on. The paradox being, that while you were talking about how the arrow couldn’t move at all it hadlong since hit its target. Zeno might have been showing us among other things that we humans weren’t necessarily very

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good at accounting for even the simplest of everyday things that we see and do. Probably the favourite paradox of all time is that of Epimenides, the Cretan liar:

1. Epimenides is a Cretan. 2. Epimenides states, ‘All Cretans are liars’.

How could you know whether or not Epimenides could be believed, about statement 2 or anything else for that matter?

Oxymoron Oxymoron is a paradox in two words or a phrase. Examples: a monstrous insect, cold fire, honest politician (?). Shakespeare has lots of them: ‘O heavy lightness!’, ‘bright smoke’, ‘cold fire’.

IronyIrony means meaning the opposite of what you seem on the surface to be saying. It’s probably the trickiest trope. That’s why it’s often hard to recognise. When you spot an irony you realise that the world you saw before was upside down.

Example: Someone looks out her window and says ‘Great weather’. Now if you can see that it’s raining outside then you know that this is an ironic statement. If you can’t see the rain, for instance because you’re reading the sentence in a book, then you mightn’t see any irony at all. In fact you’d expect it to be a sunny day. Let’s take the example further. Stay on the printed page. So you can’t see the weather. Someone says ‘Great weather’ and someone else replies ‘For ducks’. We know that ducks like water, so the ironic implication here is that the weather is bad, i.e. it’s raining. Irony in this case is demonstrated to the reader by introducing another point of view. We know from the second statement that the first statement was ironic.

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This new point of view (the ducks’) turns the world upside down, because humans imagine (or some humans imagine) that from a duck’s point of view bad weather is good weather.

Understanding an irony always depends on understanding the context in which it occurs. It depends on point of view, on what you can see or understand about the context you’re in or watching. In the example above, if you can’t see the weather yourself and you aren’t given any ducks to imagine then it will be difficult for you to guess that there’s anything ironic happening at all. That means you will expectthe weather to be fine. Irony also depends on interpreting or judging some aspect of that context. An irony is interpretive. (We don’t really know what ducks think about the weather! The suggestion that we do is an anthropmorphism.) Sarcasm is a type of irony, usually in speech, in which the person listening is taunted. You can of course make that person yourself, as when you say to yourself, having forgotten something: ‘I’m a genius’ meaning ‘I’m an idiot’.

EuphemismA euphemism is a mild way or a roundabout way saying something which someone would rather not have to say. Instead of saying ‘She died’ one says ‘She passed away’. Instead of saying ‘toilet’ one says ‘bathroom’ (even though there is no bath in the room referred to). Some language varieties are more euphemistic than others because some people (and peoples) are less direct than others. Circumlocutionis the rhetorical term for roundabout expressions in general.

Tautology A tautology is an unintended repetition. Tautology is an example of a fault in style. There’s sometimes a fine line in rhetoric between what’s said or written intentionally and

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uses of words which show a lack of control on the part of the speaker or writer. One person’s careful repetition or reiteration might be another’s tautology.

Examples: It was dark in the room and there was no light. This product is free and it won’t cost you anything.

Another example of a fault in style is a non-sequitur (a conclusion which does not logically follow from evidence given). Faults in style are also sometimes referred to as solecisms or offences against good manners in language. Cant (insincere talk) and jargon (words difficult for outsiders tounderstand, for instance, scientific jargon) are terms used to criticise other people’s language. These terms always have a negative connotation.

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These are just a few of the hundreds of figures which have come down to us from classical times, passed on as part of the heritage of western thought. Silva Rhetoricae (The Forest of Rhetoric) http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm is a good site to visit if you want to know more about tropes or figures ofspeech.

It’s important to remember that the point of knowing about the tropes is not so that you can impress your friends by naming them, but so that you can explain how texts mean whatthey mean. Naming the tropes is a means to that end.

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4. MythologyIn ancient Greek (and Roman) mythology the earth and

order were formed out of chaos. There were four ages (the golden, the silver, the bronze and the iron) with everythinggetting worse from one age to the next. And there were generations of gods. The ruling generation, the Olympians (gods who live on Mt Olympus), came to power by defeating their parents, the Titans, of whom Cronos (Roman Saturn), son of Uranus, was the king. The king of the Olympians is Zeus (Roman Jupiter). Zeus is married to his sister, Hera (Juno) but he is frequently unfaithful to her and she gets very angry about this, often punishing defenceless mortal women whom Zeus has either seduced or raped (e.g. Io, Europa). Zeus’ and Hera’s sibling gods include Poseidon (Neptune) the god of the sea, Hades (Pluto), god of the underworld (or hell) and Demeter (Ceres) the earth goddess. In the next generation are Ares (Mars) the god of war, Hephaestos (Vulcan), the god of iron and fire and volcanos, Apollo (Phoebus), the sun god and the god of music, and Artemis (Diana) the virgin huntress. Apollo’s oracle at Delphi was the most important place in the classical world at which to receive advice (or oracles) about the future. Athena, goddess of wisdom and arts, is a little harder to place in the genealogy than the other gods, because she was born fully armed from Zeus’s head. Later gods include Hermes(Mercury), the messenger and Aphrodite (Venus), goddess of love and mother of Cupid (the winged boy who shoots love’s arrows). The infidelity and promiscuity of the gods was notorious. In one famous story Hephaestos makes an iron net to catch his wife Aphrodite in bed with Ares. Once caught inthis manner the other gods can laugh at them for their follyin being caught. Other important gods are Dionysus (Bacchus), god of wine and merriment, and Nike, goddess of victory (and running shoes). Zeus had nine daughters, calledthe muses, who inspired the arts and especially poetry. The muses lived on Mt Helicon.

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As well as the gods, Greek and Roman mythology is full of demi-gods, giants and heroes. Some of the important ones are: Atlas, a giant who was once king of the legendary Atlantis (a land which was lost under the sea) but who challenged Zeus and was then punished by having to hold up the world. Prometheus was a Titan who stole fire from the gods to give to man; he was punished by Zeus by being chained to a mountain with an eagle or vulture perpetually eating his liver (until Heracles rescued him).Sisyphus was the wicked son of a king, punished in hell by having to push a boulder up to the top of a hill only to have it roll down again, and then to have to push it up again, for all of eternity.Tantalus was a son of Zeus who abused the sacred guest-host relationship and so for all eternity in hell had to be tantalised by food and drink. He was stuck at a banquet where he could neither lift his head up far enough to eat, nor could he bend down far enough to drink. While we’re in hell, or the underworld, we should mention some of its most famous characters. Charon is the ferryman who takes the souls of the dead across the river Acheron to Hades. You have to pay him an obol and this coin is traditionally placed under the tongue of the corpse before burial. Cerberus is the three-headed dog who guards hell’s gates. There were five rivers in hell, Acheron - the river of woe, Cocytus - the river of lamentation, Phlegethon - theriver of fire, Lethe - the river of forgetfulness and Styx -the river of hate. Styx is important because it’s the river which the gods swear or make their oaths by. Lethe is important because souls must pass through these waters priorto re-incarnation in order to forget what they knew in theirpast lives. Note that Danté borrowed all of this imagery forhis Inferno in The Divine Comedy. The queen of the underworld wasPersephone (Roman Proserpine), daughter of Demeter, stolen away by Hades, who fell in love with her. Her mother was so grief stricken at the loss of her daughter that she appealedto Zeus and eventually a deal was struck where Persephone would spend part of the year in the underworld and part of

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the year in the land of the living. Note that the pagan conception of an underworld was not as totally negative as the Christian one later based on it. Elysium or the Elysian fields was where the spirits of good people could abide in the underworld.Note that a key concept in Greek mythology is hubris, or thesin of pride against the gods. Hubris is often the cause of human disasters.

Homer’s Odyssey: Odysseus (Ulysses), a Greek, was the king of Ithaca and wentto fight in the ten year Trojan war. That war was fought over Helen, the wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, because Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, had stolen Helen away to be his wife. The Greeks won the war, razed Troy to the ground and took Helen back. Odysseus, who had ingeniously brought about the Greek victory through the stratagem of the Trojan horse (a huge wooden gift with Greeksoldiers inside), had incurred the wrath of certain gods, and especially Poseidon. The result was that he had a very hard time getting home, but finally did so after ten years, with the help of Athena. Odysseus’ journey is the most important (and archetypal) in western literature, and so it is given a little detail here.Perils Odysseus faced on his journey (or odyssey) included: - freeing his men from the pleasure-giving drugs of the Lotus-Eaters- rescuing them from the man-eating Cyclops, Polyphemos (a one-eyed giant)- rescuing them from the enchantment of Circe who had turnedthem all into pigs.- going to hell and back (In hell Odysseus meets various characters he had known in life and also the seer Tiresias, who is famous for his multiple sex-changes, and who can foretell the future)- passing the perils of Scylla and Charybdis- getting past the Sirens, who enchanted men to death with their sweet singing. (Odysseus has his men stop their ears

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with wax but tie him to the mast of the ship so that he can hear the Sirens’ song.)Odysseus’ men made the terrible mistake of slaughtering and eating the cattle of Apollo. Only Odysseus survived the shipwreck that followed as a punishment, but he was washed ashore on the island of the nymph Calypso, who made him her lover and refused to let him leave for seven years. When Odysseus finally got away he was shipwrecked again but was finally helped to get home by the Phaeacians, to whom he told his story as a flashback. When Odysseus gets home he finds that although his wife Penelope has remained faithful to him, suitors for her hand,assuming him to be dead, have taken over his palace and are acting arrogantly and abusively. Odysseus teams up with his son, Telemachus and slaughters all the suitors, thus restoring his family and kingdom to the order in which he had left it twenty years earlier.

While Odysseus was getting home to Ithaca, the Trojan Aeneashad escaped the ruined city and set out on a long journey very similar to (copied from) Odysseus’, a journey which took him to Italy where he founded the city of Rome. This story is told by Virgil in the Aeneid.

Some other key stories and characters from classical mythology: Deucalion and Pyrrha (comparable to Noah and his wife in theBible) were the virtuous couple who survived the Flood by building an ark and staying afloat. After the rains stopped they landed their boat on Mt Parnassus. They asked the oracle of Themis how to restart the human race and were advised to throw the bones of their mother behind them. Worrying that this might be sacrilegious they finally correctly interpreted the oracle to mean that the bones of their mother must be the stones of the earth (the earth being everyone’s mother) and so, following the oracle, they re-peopled the world.

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Phaethon was the son of the sun god Apollo. When he first met his father he asked to have a wish granted as proof thathe was his father’s son. Apollo granted his son’s wish but quickly regretted it because Phaethon’s wish was to drive the sun’s chariot for a day. Phaethon couldn’t control the horses or the chariot and caused great disasters, setting fire to the earth and singeing heaven, before he was eventually killed by a thunderbolt from Zeus.

Jason was the leader of the Argonauts. His quest was to bring back the golden fleece from Colchis. Arriving in Colchis the king there, Aeetes, set Jason a series of tasks he had to complete in order to win the fleece. He had to yoke a team of fierce, fire-breathing oxen and plough a field with them, he had to sow the teeth of a dragon in a field, andthen deal with the warlike men who grew from these teeth, and he had to fight the sleepless dragon who guarded the Fleece. Jason managed to do all of these things with the help of Medea, Aeetes’ daughter, who had fallen in love withhim. After getting the Golden Fleece, Jason and Medea fled, pursued by the king’s men. Many of Jason’s adventures coincide with those of Odysseus or Aeneas. Jason’s quest forthe golden fleece provides a model for the medieval knight’squest, for instance for the Holy Grail.

Perseus was sent on a quest to bring back the head of Medusa, a snake-haired maiden and one of three sisters called the Gorgons, who turned all who saw them into stone. To get to them he had to get past the Graeae, sisters who shared an eye, which Perseus was able to steal while they were passing it from one to the other. Perseus would only return the eye to them on the condition that they helped himin his quest. He managed to withstand the danger of the Medusa, and to cut off her head, by only looking at her reflection in his shield. On his way home with Medusa’s headhe turned Atlas to stone (thus the Atlas Mountains) and freed the maiden Andromeda from the clutches of a sea monster. Killing the monster he got to marry the girl but

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her old boyfriend, Phineus, showed up the wedding for a terrific fight, which Perseus won by using Medusa’s head to turn his many opponents to stone. Oedipus was the tragic king of the city of Thebes. His parents were Laius and Jocasta. Apollo’s oracle made a prophecy that Laius’ son would kill his father, so Laius sent the baby Oedipus into the mountains to die. The baby survived, brought up by a shepherd, and when he reached adulthood, mocked as to his doubtful parentage by his peers,he decided to travel to Delphi to consult the oracle and find out who his real parents were. He unwittingly killed his father at a crossroads on the way, taking him to be a rude and arrogant stranger. Thebes at this time was being terrorised by a monster called the sphinx. The sphinx would kill anyone who could not answer her riddle. But Oedipus could answer the riddle and thus saved the city. So he came to Thebes as a hero, was made king and married the bereaved queen whom he did not know to be his mother. They had four children together. Then a plague struck Thebes and the oracle was sought for advice. The advice was that the city was suffering because of an unpunished murder. Oedipus askedthe blind prophet Tiresias for advice. Tiresias’ advice was that Oedipus was the murderer. Jocasta said this was nonsense. But when Oedipus was told where Laius was killed he remembered the crossroads where he himself had killed an arrogant stranger many years earlier, before ever coming to Thebes. With a little investigation he found that he was indeed his father’s murderer. When Jocasta realised that shehad married her son, she hanged herself. Oedipus blinded himself and went into exile at Colonnus.

Oedipus’ two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, were to rule Thebes in alternate years. But they fought over the city andboth died in the battle. Creon, who took over as king, decreed Eteocles’ could be properly buried because he was fighting for Thebes but that Polynices, could not be buried because he was attacking the city. Their sister Antigone could not bring herself to obey the order and went to bury her brother Polynices herself. She was punished by being

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sealed in a cave. By the time Creon’s anger cooled and the cave was opened it was discovered that Antigone had already hanged herself. The stories of Oedipus and Antigone are bestknown from Sophocles’ Theban Plays.

Heracles (Roman Hercules) was a son of Zeus driven mad by his jealous step-mother, Hera. In his madness he killed his wife and then exiled himself. To redeem himself he performedtwelve labours, which included killing the Nemean Lion and the nine-headed snake known as the Hydra, capturing a wild boar that terrorised the city of Mycenae, cleaning the Augean stables (housing thousands of cattle) in a day (by diverting rivers through them), capturing man-eating horses,getting the girdle of the Amazon queen, capturing a monster,stealing the golden-apples of the Hesperides (by tricking Atlas) and bringing Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding hell, up to the earth’s surface. The twelve labours took himtwelve years.

Orpheus was a talented musician and poet. On the day of his wedding his bride Eurydice was bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus was grief stricken and went to Hell to ask for his wife back. Hades was so impressed with Orpheus’ singing thathe granted the request on one condition, namely that Orpheusnot look back on his way up to the world of the living. Juston the threshold of world of mortals, Orpheus looked back and his bride was again, and this time permanently, snatchedback to hell. This time Orpheus was inconsolable and though his songs charmed women, he detested them. His attitude maddened women so much that they finally tore him to pieces.Echo and Narcissus were two love struck youths, a girl and aboy. Echo fell in love with Narcissus but pined away waitingfor him to requite her love. Narcissus fell in love with hisown reflection in a pool of water, and could never drag himself away from his own image.

Pentheus resisited the introduction of the new god Dionysus (Roman Bacchus, god of wine) and Bacchus and was punished by

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being torn to pieces by a revelling crowd who thought that he was a wild animal.

Theseus was the son of Aegeus and became a king of Athens. His most famous exploit was at the palace of Knossos, the palace of King Minos of Crete. Minos had a monstrous son, half man, half bull, called the Minotaur. The Minotaur livedin a maze under the palace, known as the labyrinth. As a result of losing a war with Crete, every nine years the Athenians had to send Minos a tribute of seven maidens and seven youths whom he fed to the Minotaur. Theseus was one ofthe unlucky youths selected but he promised that if he survived he would return to Athens flying a white flag instead of the expected black flag of mourning. Helped by Minos’ daughter Ariadne, Theseus does defeat the Minotaur, but on his way home forgets to switch the black sails to white. His grief stricken father watching from the Acropolisof Athens, hurls himself to his death. The labyrinth was built by a famous architect and inventor, Daedalus. Daedelus helped Ariadne and Theseus by giving thema thread which they could use to find their way back throughthe labyrinth after killing the Minotaur. After Ariadne and Theseus had escaped. Minos punished Daedalus by locking him and his son Icarus in the labyrinth. The father and son escaped by building wings for themselves and flying away, but Icarus, ignoring his father’s advice, flew too high and so the sun melted the wax holding the feathers of his wings together, with the result that he fell into the sea and was drowned.

Stories from the Bible:

According to the Old Testament God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. He created the archetypal humans, Adam, the first man, and Eve, the first woman (from Adam’s rib). God created the paradise in which

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they lived, the Garden of Eden. In the garden Adam and Eve lived innocently and happily, not even knowing they were naked. God allowed them to eat the fruit of every tree in the garden but one. They were forbidden to eat from the treeof knowledge. But the serpent in the garden tempted Eve withan apple from the forbidden tree. Eve offered the apple to Adam. Having eaten of the fruit both then realised that werenaked and so they tried to cover up their nakedness (i.e. their genitals). God realised from their behaviour that theyhad eaten the forbidden fruit and so he expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. This event – the expulsion fromparadise – is often referred to as the Fall. In Jewish tradition the expulsion from Eden marks the beginning of a new kind of relationship – a dialogue – between humans and God. In Christian tradition it demonstrates the sinful and corrupt nature of humans, who must wait to be redeemed by the coming of Christ.Adam and Eve’s first two sons were Cain (a farmer) and Abel (a shepherd). When they had to make God an offering, God accepted Abel’s (an animal) but not Cain’s (the fruits of the earth). In anger Cain killed his brother and this was the first murder. When God asked Cain where his brother was he denied the crime, saying that he was not his brother’s keeper. Cain became a fugitive.

Many long-lived generations passed after Adam’s and God saw how wicked the earth was becoming, so he decided to destroy it by means of a Flood. Noah was the only virtuous man and he made a deal (or covenant) with God which helped him to survive the Flood (along with his family and two of every kind of animal.) God told him to build an ark (or ship) and by staying on this ark until the Flood was over Noah and hisfamily and the male and female of each animal were able to repopulate the earth. Noah himself lived to the age of 950. After his generation, the human life span was similar to that which we know today. (Note that some archaeologists link the Biblical story of the Flood – along with that of Deucalion and Pyrrha and the legend of Atlantis – to the volcanic eruption which devastated the island of Thera

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[Santorini] around 1450 B.C.E. The tidal wave resulting fromthat eruption flooded much low lying land around the Aegean Sea and probably destroyed the Palace at Knossos in Crete.)

Up until this time everyone on earth spoke one language. Butwicked men decided to build a tower which would reach to heaven. God confounded the construction of this Tower of Babel, confusing the builders by making them speak many different languages so that they could not communicate or cooperate with each other.

Abraham is the ancestor of Israel (or the Jewish people). The long journey he takes at God’s command brings him to Sodom, a city so sinful that only it’s most virtuous inhabitant, Lot is saved by God. Having left the city, Lot’swife turns around to look at the destruction and is turned into a pillar of salt. Abraham is later tested by God who commands him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Because he obeys, God lets Isaac live and promises Abraham numerous descendants. Isaac’s son Jacob had a famous dream about a ladder from earth to heaven, which angels passed up and down. And Jacob’s favourite son, Joseph, though given a powerful coat of many colours by his father, is sold into slavery by his brothers, because of dreams he has foretelling his own power. Taken to Egypt as a slave Joseph is the only one who can interpret the Pharaoh’s (King’s) dreams and so he is given an important government post by Pharaoh. Later Joseph’s ten hungry brothers arrive and Joseph feeds them, although they don’t recognise them until he plays a trick on them and reveals himself. From the time of Joseph the Jewish people are exiled in Egypt until God chooses Moses to lead them out of Egypt to the Promised Land (Israel). This is the Exodus. (Note that Israel is the Holy Land to both Christians and Jews. It is also holy to Muslims. Moses was lucky to survive into childhood because he was born at a time when Pharaoh had ordered all of the male children of the Israelites killed. His parents hid him in the bullrushes where he was rescued

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by Pharaoh’s daughter. Because Pharaoh won’t allow their people to escape, Moses asks for plagues from God to afflictthe Egyptians. These plagues do not harm the Jews because God is protecting them. Finally Moses and his people are able to escape from Egypt with the aid of a miracle: the waters of the Red Sea are parted to allow Moses and the Israelites through, but closed on the pursuing Egyptian forces. On their way to the Promised Land the Israelites wander in the wilderness and, when there is nothing to eat, are fed by manna (heavenly food) from God. During this time Moses receives the ten commandments (rules of behaviour) from God and God gives Moses instructions for the building of a tabernacle or portable place of worship. When Moses comes back down from the mountain where God had spoken to him he has to deal with the idolaters among his people who have taken to worshipping a Golden Calf. Here are the ten commandments. In both Christianity and Judaism they are the basis of God’s expectations for humans:

1.I am the Lord thy God... Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 2.Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God invain. 3.Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them. 4.Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 5.Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days maybe long. 6.Thou shalt not kill. 7.Thou shalt not commit adultery. 8.Thou shalt not steal. 9.Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

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10.Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.

After Moses’ death Joshua continued the conquest of the Promised Land and is most famous for the story of the takingof the town of Jericho, the walls of which are supposed to have collapsed at the blast of a ram’s horn (trumpet) and the shout of the word ‘Israel’.

Samson and Delilah is one of the stories of the Judges. Samson was famous for his strength and his weakness for (enemy) Philistine women, including Delilah. His strength was alleged to come from the fact that he never cut his hair. Delilah betrayed him, his hair was cut and he lost hisstrength. But he grew his hair back in gaol, regained his strength and destroyed the Philistine’s temple by pushing out its pillars, dying himself in the process.

The story of Ruth, a good foreigner who becomes a Jew, is also a tale from the time of the Judges. Ruth is an ancestorof King David, who is supposed to have written the Psalms. David was the second king of Israel after Saul (around 1,000B.C.E.) and is famous for defeating the giant Goliath by firing a stone at him from a slingshot. David was succeeded by King Solomon (the Wise) who built the First Temple of Jerusalem, was visited by the Queen of Sheba and is supposedto have written the Song of Songs (also therefore known as theSong of Solomon).

Elijah was an early prophet in the time of King Ahab. (Note that prophets are famous for both foretelling [or prophesying] the future and for having visions. Often the two are connected. Prophets also give warnings of what will happen if God is not obeyed. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, much later, are probably the most famous.) Now Elijah lived at a time when there was a lot of idolatry. In other words,

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the Jewish God or Jahweh had to compete with pagan idols forthe worship of the Israelites. Three years into a drought, Elijah was accused by King Ahab of creating problems for Israel, and so in order to defend himself Elijah organised acompetition with the Prophets of the pagan God, Baal. Whoever’s altar caught fire would be proven to be worshipping the right God. Not only did Elijah’s altar catchfire but rains came later in the same day, proving that God and not Baal, had power to end a drought. Elijah was plottedagainst by the king’s wife, Jezebel¸ who is the biblical archetype of a woman not to be trusted. Elijah was finally taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot.

In the sixth century B.C.E. the Jewish people were forced into Exile in Babylon, after an unsuccessful revolt against the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar. The city of Jerusalem was razed and the First Temple destroyed. Note that the worddiaspora refers to the dispersion of the Jewish people from the land of Israel after this period. The Exile lasted aboutseventy or eighty years and transformed the Jewish religion and sense of identity. After the Exile, the Second Temple was built in Jerusalem (around 515 B.C.E.).

The story of Job is about one man’s struggle with God and faith. Job is a good and innocent man who suffers because ofa dispute between God and Satan. Job loses his wealth and his health and suffers terribly in numerous ways, despite being more righteous than those around him. It appears that God has forsaken him and that nothing can restore his previous condition. His wife urges him to ‘curse God and die’. But eventually Job’s forbearance is rewarded and Job’sfortunes are restored, demonstrating that God’s ways are beyond human understanding.

There are three famous stories from the Book of Daniel. Two concern the power of faith. Daniel’s companions refuse to worship an idol and survive in the ‘fiery furnace’ where they are sent to die. Daniel himself is similarly able to survive in a den of lions. Also in the Book of Daniel is an

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episode where the Babylonian king Belshazzar arrogantly brings vessels from the Jews’ temple in Jerusalem. A hand appears and writes on the wall, that the king’s days are numbered. This is the origin of the phrase ‘the writing’s onthe wall,’ meaning that someone’s or something’s end is coming soon.

God had made Jonah a prophet and told him to prophesy against Nineveh. Jonah disobeyed God and tried to escape hisresponsibility by taking a ship for Tarshish. A terrible storm overcame the ship and Jonah was asked to pray to God to save the ship. The sailors cast lots to find out who among them had brought the evil curse on the ship. The lot fell on Jonah and when his shipmates asked what to do with him, Jonah told them to throw him into the sea, and they didso. Immediately the sea calmed down. God sent a whale to swallow Jonah and Jonah prayed and gave thanks to God from the belly of the whale. Then the whale spewed Jonah up and he went on to complete his original mission, but continued arguing with God till the last.

A note on Judaism (the Jewish religion) and its relation to Christianity. The Jews as monotheists (believers in one God only) have regarded themselves as the chosen people, down from times in which monotheism was rare. The Jews do not accept that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament (which to Jews is therefore the whole of the Bible). The persecution of the Jews and Christian anti-semitism is associated with the refusal of the Jews to accept Christ and with blame for the crucifixion (see below). This is ironic given that Jesus was a Jew. Aspects of the persecution have included forcing Jews into despised occupations forbidden to Christians (such as money lending),forcing Jews to living in ghettoes, pogroms, and in the twentieth century, the Nazi Holocaust, in which it is estimated that six million Jews died in concentration camps (along with a similar number of Gypsies, homosexuals, communists and others hated by the Nazis).

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Note that the Islamic religion accepts many of the Bible stories and makes Moses and Solomon (Sulamein) and Jesus important characters. But Islamists recognise only the Koranas the source of knowledge for their religion and, like the Jews, do not acknowledge the divinity of Christ. Rather, Islam regards Jesus as a prophet.

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Jesus Christ is the central figure in the Christian religion which is based on belief in Christ. Jesus is also the main character in the New Testament. The coming of Christor the Messiah is foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament. The four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, tell Jesus’ story from slightly different perspectives. But essentially the story is as follows.

God decided to have a human son in order to redeem man from sin and to fulfil the prophecies. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, has a unique relationship to God. God sent an angel to Mary to tell her that she was to bear God’s child. This event is known as the Annunciation. Although Mary was betrothed to Joseph, a carpenter, she was a virgin when Jesus was born. This virgin birth was a result of the immaculate conception: Mary was pregnant because she was with child from the Holy Spirit. An angel had already explained all of this to Joseph in a dream.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem because this was Joseph’s town and the couple had travelled there in order to be registered for the census imposed by the Emperor Augustus. When they arrived in Bethlehem there was no room at the inn and so the baby Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger. Three wise men had come from the East to Jerusalem following a star and bearing gifts to bring to the new Messiah. Their journey alerted King Herod to what he saw as a threat to his kingship and so the king ordered all children under the age of two to be killed. Joseph and Mary

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escaped with Jesus to Egypt and returned to Nazareth after Herod had died.

Jesus was brought up in the Jewish religion and was baptised in the river Jordan by his cousin, John the Baptist. John the Baptist was a preacher who lived in the wilderness (desert) and prepared the way for the coming of Jesus. He was executed publicly for criticising the marriageof Herod Antipas to his sister-in-law, Herodias. Herodias had her daughter Salome ask for and receive John’s severed head on a platter.

After his baptism Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days, and there was tempted by Satan in various ways, all of which he resisted. Returning from the wilderness Jesus called together his twelve disciples who followed him and his teachings. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God had come, and he emphasised that God’s commandment was love. In the Sermon on the Mount he taught the beatitudes (e.g. ‘Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth’), the Lord’s prayer (‘Our father which art in heaven...’) and railed against materialism and hypocrisy.

Much of Jesus’ preaching was in the form of parables. The parables were stories which taught people how to behave righteously by illustrating moral dilemmas. One famous parable is that of the prodigal son. The prodigal was the younger son in a family who demanded his share of inheritance from his father and then went away and squandered it in a distant country. That country was struck by a famine and the prodigal son, finding himself in a desperate situation returned home and offered to be his father’s slave. Despite the resentment and complaints of hisolder brother (who had never disobeyed his parents) his father forgave him and held a great feast to welcome him home. In the parable of the sheep and the goats Jesus tells how after the Resurrection when God judges the nations, people will be separated into those who will have eternal life and those who will suffer eternal punishment. In the

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parable of the Good Samaritan a Jew is attacked and beaten on the road but none of the Jewish people who pass by will help him. Rather he is helped by a Samaritan, a traditional enemy of the Jews.

Jesus also performed numerous miracles which proved hisdivinity. Among these the most famous are walking on the water, feeding of multitudes, turning water into wine and the raising of Lazarus. Jesus and his disciples travelled from Galilee through Judea to Jerusalem. Just before the Jewish festival of Passover Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. In Jerusalem Jesus knew that his messianic claims would be tested. Crowds celebrated Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem by spreading palm branches or their cloaks on the road before him. (This Sunday before Easter is known today as Palm Sunday.) In Jerusalem Jesus drove the money changersout of the Temple. He taught in the Temple to great crowds. By this time many people in positions of authority had been antagonised by Jesus’ preaching and claims and his powerful effect on those around him. Jesus had though been careful not to challenge the temporal power of Rome, the rulers of Judea at that time. Referring to the Roman emperor Jesus said, ‘Render unto God what is God’s, render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.’

After praying in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus was betrayed by Judas, one of the disciples, for thirty pieces of silver. Judas repented, returned the money, and then hanged himself. On the night before Jesus’ arrest, at the last supper, Jesus had told the disciples that one of them would betray him. At the last supper Jesus broke the bread and blessed it, telling the disciples that it was his body. Likewise he told them that the wine they were drinking was his blood. (This event establishes the sacrament of the Eucharist in Christian doctrine: the idea that the bread andwine partaken of by worshippers are the body and blood of Christ.) In John’s account Jesus also washes the disciples’ feet at the last supper.

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Jesus was tried by Jewish authorities and then by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. Before the Jewish authorities Jesus admitted what they considered the blasphemous claim that he was the Messiah. Pontius Pilate wished to exercise a right of clemency for the Passover in order to free Jesus. But the crowd called for the release ofa murderer, Barabbas, instead. Pilate then washed his hands publicly to show that it was not his decision that Jesus be executed. Jesus was then crowned with thorns as King of the Jews and led away to be crucified by mocking soldiers. Jesuswas crucified on Good Friday, along with two thieves, on a hill named Golgotha.

Three days after Jesus died he was resurrected (on Easter Sunday) and then appeared again among his disciples before being taken up to heaven to be with God, his Father. That moment when Jesus leaves earth for heaven is known as the Ascension.

According to Christian doctrine, Jesus Christ died for the sins of man and through his death humans are redeemed inthe eyes of God. Christians believe that God’s forgiveness is obtained through penitence and through belief in Christ and his teachings.

It’s important to remember that in Christian theology, God has three aspects: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Ghost. There is nevertheless only one God according to this doctrine. Remember also that Jesus is bothhuman and divine.

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Most of the rest of the New Testament is concerned withthe preaching of Jesus’ word throughout the Holy land and the Roman Empire, especially by the Apostle Paul. The last book of the Bible, Revelations, is devoted to visions of the Apocalypse or end of the world, including the final battle between good and evil, known as Armageddon.

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A brief note on heaven and hell, as presented in Danté’s fourteenth century classic The Divine Comedy. In the afterlife the souls of the virtuous get to heaven or paradise by doing penance in purgatory (conceived by Danté as a mountain leading to heaven, Mt Purgatory). The damned by contrast are doomed to suffer in hell (the inferno) forever. Hence the sign hung over the gates of hell: Abandonhope all ye who enter here. The first circle of hell or limbo is reserved for the virtuous unbaptised, and for the virtuous pagans who could not be redeemed because they livedbefore Christ.

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