Reading Others’ Arguments

Over the course of the semester, between the examples and your research, you are going to read a great many more arguments than you will write. This ratio will also hold throughout your college experience and your professional life, even if going into some argument-heavy profession — perhaps especially so then. Because argument depends on the correct understanding of the specifics and nuances of what the opposition is claiming, it is crucially important you can really get into the mechanics of a given argument, be able to take it apart bit by bit, be able to explain how all the parts operate together. Remember, we are approaching argument as a method of incremental progress rather than moving in leaps and bounds, and those increments are often to be found in the details, examples, or specifics of an argument.

Further, by demonstrating your mastery of the various features of relevant arguments, you are enhancing your authority and credibility (see section V) and making yourself look more reliable and dependable. When you can ably summarize and fairly represent what “the other side” says, your own argument looks less biased and your counter-argument becomes more effective. Therefore, we should spend a moment thinking about good ways to read others’ arguments.

Reading arguments must be an activity more like studying for a test rather than reading for pleasure or appreciation.  While there are many good approaches to critical reading, and they go under many names or descriptions, you should learn to be an active reader of argumentative text. An “active” reader here has certain implications and elements, and you are probably already familiar with many of them. But – allowing for gaps – repetition is a useful approach to learning a skill.

Maybe you have never thought about it too much, since you have been reading since kindergarten, but reading is a truly amazing technology and skill. We make abstract symbols on the page (or tree trunk, whatever) and other people who know our symbols can make sense of it. You can encounter the thoughts of people long dead and have those thoughts be just as meaningful to you today as when they were written. You can encounter the thoughts of people thousands of miles away and have those thoughts be just a vital as anything from next door. Time and space kind of fade away in the face of reading and writing. So what? First, approach the task of reading an argument as an important act, something worthy of some reverence and effort. By reading another’s words, you are helping to create meaning. It is kind of a big deal.

Read with a pencil — or pen, or ink-dipped quill, or sharpened metallic nib, whatever makes you comfortable — but prepare to read with some writing instrument in hand. I would discourage the excessive use of a highlighter, as it is not really a “writing instrument,” is it?^[1] I once had a college roommate who loved to highlight (his chosen instrument was a pink marker, I recall). In fact, one day before a class began, the professor noticed my friend’s textbook and said to him, “Wouldn’t it be easier to take a black marker and cross out the material you don’t want?” I also still remember him looking at his book and asking out loud, “Why did I highlight that? What’s that part mean?” The trouble with a highlighter is that it provides a kind of pseudo-active reading, or gives the impression of doing something, when it is mostly a passive approach to a text. A good student can make it work – but usually in conjunction with other tactics which are more active. To this end, take your writing implement and actually write in/on the text. (Assuming you own the book, of course; please do not write in library books, for example – you are not doing future generations of scholars a favor by doing their work for them.) If you are the sort of person who simply cannot bring yourself to write in a book, then use a notebook, but please be sure you carefully and thoroughly key your comments to the right page numbers and the location on the page; “page 57” still leaves a lot of room for wondering what the important bit was.

Having settled on a useful writing tool, prepare to read the text by engaging in some deliberate pre-reading.  In modern American English, we have an annoying habit of adding “pre” to verbs where it is unnecessary or even incorrect; to “pre-heat” an oven is to heat up the oven – maybe we should call it “pre-cooking,” but if the oven is getting warmer, then it is not “pre” but “heating.” In the case of pre-reading, though, you really are to do this before you read the words in the text. When you approach a text, or an excerpt of a text, ask some questions and make some predictions:^[2] do you recognize the name of the author? If so, what kinds of things has this person written? What does the title suggest to you about the content or purpose of the text? What is the issue or context of this piece of writing? Look over the whole of the text, briefly; what can you say about its organization? Does it have sections? Of what sort? What might these units of the text suggest about the purpose?

Once you are acquainted with the big picture of the text, you are ready to begin skimming it. To skim a text sometimes has overtones of careless haste or superficiality, but not here. This skimming is done carefully and with purpose. You are not yet fully reading the text, but you are looking at it with some specifics in mind. As you lightly go through the material, look at the introduction: how does the writer begin? What are some of the rhetorical strategies employed? Look for a thesis: does it stand out clearly in the text? Is it perhaps only implied? Look for the writer’s use of evidence: is it largely testimony, examples, or statistics? What might one or another mean for the essay? Look for what is called “graphic highlighting.” Pay attention to text that might be in bold, or italics, or underlined, or in different fonts, or colors; look for graphics like charts, maps, tables, or illustrations – like pictures or crude drawings, perhaps. Look for other text that may be differentiated, like in a callout. Just as you looked at the introduction, look at the conclusion: how does the author end the work? Can you make any predictions based on how the work draws to a close? What rhetorical strategies are employed?

Now you are ready to read the text. Read carefully and primarily for meaning at this stage. You can worry about appreciating technique (“nice transitions!”) if you would like, but for the moment, make sure you literally understand what the text says and means. Check for complications or stumbling block in vocabulary, for example. If you run across a word you do not know, like “prestidigitation,” then figure it out. You could stop and look it up, you could try to use the context to approximate its meaning, you could try “chunking” or breaking the word apart into prefixes or suffixes, or any other strategy familiar to you. Maybe you write the word down in your notebook or in the margins and go back later and nail down the meaning. Remember you are writing with that pencil, so note evidence, or something that surprises you, or something you think is interesting, etc. If there are confusing or dense passages, note them, go through them slowly and thoroughly, and make sure you understand what they mean. In this manner, read the whole work.

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Whew! You have read the text now, so you are done, yes? No, not yet. Admittedly, this may seem like a cumbersome process, but it will get faster the more you practice and will eventually be second nature. There remains the very important stage of annotation and summary. It is true that not all texts need to be summarized. Essays or articles you are reading for background or context, for example, simply need to be understood for your own benefit, so prereading, skimming, and reading are probably sufficient for your needs. There are other texts, though, which will play a prominent role in your argument, either as support or as key rebuttal (more on these terms in section VII), and you need to demonstrate a command of the complexities of these arguments. For that level of use, you need to go through the text again, but with a particular object in mind: you will produce a summary of the text.

Summaries are enormously useful in several ways, and chief among them is to deploy them in your argument. Doing so proves a few things to the readers: it shows you have deeply and rigorously considered your sources, and when used for opposition argument, summary shows you are capable of balance and dispassionate evaluation. This fair and neutral approach requires a deliberate frame of mind called empathetic reading. Since “empathy” roughly means “to feel for,” empathetic reading is a mode of active reading in which you put yourself in the writer’s frame of mind. You set aside all your biases, your prejudices, your immediate contradictions, and you agree to assume the writer is correct about all the claims of the article/essay/text.  It is obviously very difficult – at least early on – to simply say, “Yep, whatever you say, boss!” It will be especially difficult when you are reading something you profoundly disagree with or something you might initially dismiss as likely to be deeply stupid. Just remind yourself that this stage of reading is temporary; you are not going to move there permanently, buy a house, and send your kids to the local school. You are a visitor, but you are a visitor who has agreed, for the sake of the complete experience, to eat what they serve you, wear what they give you, and watch whatever is performed in front of you. Ideally, at the end of this visit/process, you will have developed a better understanding and appreciation of the local culture, even if you still think the food is gross. You will get your chance to read skeptically later.

But why do you need to blend in? As explained above, summaries work best when they are fully accurate, and our judgments are likely to impair our ability to be fair. If a writer thinks an idea is flawed, that thinking may very well manifest itself in any discussion of the idea. “If the idea is flawed, don’t I want to say so?” you may very well ask.  And the answer is yes, you do want to say so, but at the proper moment.^[3] If you come in guns blazing from the beginning, it is easy to dismiss your argument. However, if you say, “You know, here’s what H has said. Let’s consider it carefully,” then, when you say, “this idea is flawed,” your audience is more likely to agree with you; your opposition will find it harder to dismiss you, and you have probably edged closer to your goal.

So you will read empathetically, and now your active reading takes on a particular form, annotation. While there are many ways to annotate a text and many schools of thought, one very common form is to take the essay paragraph-by-paragraph and to write down each paragraph’s “function” and “content.”

Your instructor may prefer a different approach altogether, so the “content” and “function” annotations do not need to be considered ex cathedra and inviolate. This technique is simply one among many that work just as well. But as the Chinese expression has it, “black cat, yellow cat, as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat,” so you can be flexible as long as your careful, active, empathetic reading leads to a fair summary of the text you can use in your own larger arguments.

In the event you or your instructor do not have a preferred system of summary prep, use the “content” and “function” system, as it has proven durable, widely applicable, straightforward, and productive.

Put yourself in the mindset of a reader who is empathetic to the writer’s argument. Think of somebody who would be the ideal reader of the text in front of you, and then imagine you are that person. In the event you are reading something you disagree with, maybe it will help to embrace this stratagem if you remind yourself that your turn to bash the text (tastefully and skillfully, of course) will come, but now is not the time. For the moment, you are an acolyte, and you are trying to preserve these ideas for distribution.

As you re-read each paragraph, ask yourself what the purpose, or organizational function, of that paragraph is. Why is it in the essay? One of the virtues of a “function” annotation is teaching you how different authors choose to build their arguments. You will find that these annotations tend to be generic, that is, the annotations will be similar across essays. For example, some functions of paragraphs are to introduce, conclude, summarize, preview, make transition, establish main points, provide evidence, address counter-argument/contrary evidence. Notice how each of these terms describes the reason for the paragraph, but not its content. That is what is meant by “generic.”

If you have just annotated a nine-paragraph essay, perhaps this is the set of “function” comments you came up with. Notice how they form a sort of implied outline or structure for the argument? This might be useful for you, and it is certainly useful for recognizing what the original author was trying to accomplish. After the opening is through, the author was alternating between making a point and dealing with rebuttal to that point. Given that ¶6 does what it does, it is easy enough to infer the author felt a pause was needed to catch the readers up, and to move into the final point, No. 3.

The “content” annotations, though, are not generic but will be unique to every essay and paragraph. Whereas the “function” is not concerned with the specifics, the ideas in the paragraph are the only business of the “content” annotations. What you want to do at this point is to try to capture the information/the point of each paragraph in a few keywords or phrases. Be sure you do not merely describe what is in the paragraph; make your notes so the claim of the paragraph is clear. So: Not “this paragraph is about the minimum wage,” but “the minimum wage is an important issue; basis of all hourly wages.” Notice how the first thing does not really tell an interested party what is in the paragraph, but the second annotation is clearer. Unless the author of the original repeats information (which, depending on the length of the whole, is possible, but unlikely) none of your “content” annotations will be the same, as each paragraph says something different.

If we go back to our sample/mock essay from above, we can see the difference between what the “function” and “content” annotations are about. The “function” notes tell us nothing about what is in the essay, but the “content” notes do cover that. Each annotation is a brief phrase or fragment to remind you what was in that paragraph; be sure you are paraphrasing by using your own words, rather than quoting, and do not try to write too much – your summary should be lean and efficient to insert usefully into your arguments, so resist the temptation to write down every statistic or supporting detail. You want the big picture at this point.  Once you have worked your way through each paragraph, you are ready for the next step.

Turn the fragment phrases into complete sentences. “Minimum wage important issue; basis of all hourly wages” now becomes “The minimum wage is an important issue because it forms the floor or the basis for all hourly wages.” Do that for each paragraph’s annotation until you have nine grammatical sentences, like this:

Once you have created the sentences, combine those sentences into a coherent paragraph made up entirely of your own language, in your own style, using connectives and transitions, and eliminating redundancies where they exist:

“The minimum wage is an important issue because it forms the floor or the basis for all hourly wages. That floor is too low, so the minimum wage should be raised because it has not kept pace with inflation and is less than it was years ago. Despite what some people say, the minimum wage doesn’t keep prices down, but it means that wages can’t keep up. Second, the minimum wage should be raised because the people who earn it will spend it, putting more money into the economy, which is how the economy grows. Raising the minimum wage will not cause a sharp rise in prices because it never has before, and prices go up anyway. Third, the minimum wage should be raised because the workers whose salaries are pegged to it are people with families, trying to get along, and they perform jobs we want done. After all, if there were no service workers, what would we do without fast food, hotel workers, custodians? Therefore, the time is right to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.”

Now you have a believer-based summary in your own words, no quotes, of less than 200 words of the article in question. You could probably pare it down to about 100 words without losing much of the three main reasons offered here. The best part is the summary is not something you had to produce from nothing; it is the natural product of the “says” annotations. Et voila. You are in a position to incorporate this summary into your own argument, either as support or as rebuttal, and your careful and thorough reading of the text put you in this advantageous spot.