"What effect has 'They Say' had on my students' writing? They are finally entering the Burkian Parlor of the university. This book uncovers the rhetorical conventions that transcend disciplinary boundaries, so that even freshmen, newcomers to the academy, are immediately able to join in the conversation."
—Margaret Weaver, Missouri State University
"It's the anti-composition text: Fun, creative, humorous, brilliant, effective."
—Perry Curabie, Durham Technical Community College
"This book explains in clear detail what skilled writers take for granted." —John Hyman, American University
"The ability to engage with the thoughts of others is one of the most important skills taught in any college-level writing course, and this book does as good a job teaching that skill as any text I have ever encountered."   —William Smith, Weatherford College
"Students find this book tremendously helpful—they report that it has 'demystified' academic writing for them."
—Karen Gocsik, University of California at San Diego
"1 love 'They Say /1 Say,' and more importantly, so do my students."
—Catherine Hayter, Saddleback College
" 'They Say / I Say' reveals the language of academic writing in a way that students seem to understand and incorporate more easily than they do with other writing books. Instead of a list of don'ts, the book provides a catalog of do's, which is always more effective."
—Amy Lea demons, Francis Marion University
"This book makes the implicit rules of academic writing explicit for students. It's the book I really wish I'd had when I was an undergraduate."
—Steven Bailey, Central Michigan University
FOURTH EDITION
"THEY SAY/I SAY1
The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing
GERALD GRAFF CATHY BIRKENSTEIN
both of the University of Illinois at Chicago
153
w.W NORTON & COMPANY NEW YORK i LONDON
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION
They Say / I Blog. Updated monthly, this hlog provides up-to-the-minute readings on the issues covered in the hook, along with questions that prompt students to literally join the con-versations. Check it out at theysayiblog.com.
Instructor's Guide. Now available in print, the guide includes expanded in-class activities, sample syllabi, summaries of each chapter and reading, and a chapter on using the online resources, including They Say / I Blog.
Ebook. Searchable, portable, and interactive. The complete textbook for a fraction of the price. Students can interact with the text—take notes, bookmark, search, and highlight. The ebook can be viewed on—and synced between—all computers and mobile devices.
InQuintive for Writers. Adaptive, game-like exercises help students practice editing, focusing especially on the errors that
matter.
Coursepack. Norton resources you can add to your online, hybrid, or lecture course-—all at no cost. Norton Coursepacks work within your existing learning management system; there's no new system to learn, and access is free and easy. Customizable resources include assignable writing prompts from theysayiblog. com, quizzes on grammar and documentation, documentation guides, model student essays, and more.
Find it all at digital.wwnorton.com/theysay4 or contact your Norton representative for more information.
PREFACE
Demystifying Academic Conversation
-Hgr-
Experienceo writing instructors have long recognized that writing well means entering into conversation with others. Academic writing in particular calls upon writers not simply to express their own ideas, but to do so as a response to what others have said. The first-year writing program at our own university, according to its mission statement, asks "students to participate in ongoing conversations about vitally important academic and public issues." A similar statement by another program holds that "intellectual writing is almost always composed in response to others' texts." These statements echo the ideas of rhetorical theorists like Kenneth Burke, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Wayne Booth as well as recent composition scholars like David Bartholomae, John Bean, Patricia Bizzell, Irene Clark, Greg Colomb, Lisa Ede, Peter Elbow, Joseph Harris, Andrea Lunsford, Elaine Maimon, Gary Olson, Mike Rose, John Swales and Christine Feak, Tilly Warnock, and others who argue that writing well means engaging the voices of others and letting them in turn engage us.
Yet despite this growing consensus that writing is a social, conversational act, helping student writers actually participate in these conversations remains a formidable challenge. This book aims to meet that challenge. Its goal is to demystify academic writing by isolating its basic moves, explaining them clearly, and representing them in the form of templates.
X i II
PREFACE
In this way, we hope to help students become active participants in the important conversations of the academic world and the wider public sphere.
HIGHLIGHTS
Shows that writing well means entering a conversation, summarizing others ("they say") to set up one's own argument ("I say").
Demystifies academic writing, showing students "the moves that matter" in language they can readily apply. Provides user-friendly templates to help writers make those moves in their own writing.
Shows that reading is a way of entering a conversation—not just of passively absorbing information but of understanding and actively entering dialogues and debates.
HOW THIS BOOK CAME TO BE
The original idea tor this book grew out of our shared inter' est in democratizing academic culture. First, it grew out of arguments that Gerald Graff has been making throughout his career that schools and colleges need to invite students into the conversations and debates that surround them. More specifically, it is a practical, hands-on companion to his recent book Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind, iri which he iooks at academic conversations from the perspective of those who find them mysterious and proposes ways in which such mystification can be overcome. Second,
Demystifying Academic Conversation
this book grew out of writing templates that Cathy Birkenstein developed in the 1990s for use in writing and literature courses she was teaching. Many students, she found, could readily grasp what it meant to support a thesis with evidence, to entertain a counterargument, to identify a textual contradiction, and ultimately to summarize and respond to challenging arguments, but they often had trouble putting these concepts into practice in their own writing. When Cathy sketched out templates on the board, however, giving her students some of the language and patterns that these sophisticated moves require, their writing—and even their quality of thought—-significantly improved.
This book began, then, when we put our ideas together and realized that these templates might have the potential to open up and clarify academic conversation. We proceeded from the premise that all writers rely on certain stock formulas that they themselves didn't invent—and that many of these formulas are so commonly used that they can be represented in model templates that students can use to structure and even generate what they want to say.
As we developed a working draft of this book, we began using it in first-year writing courses that we teach at U1C. In classroom exercises and writing assignments, we found that students who otherwise struggled to organize their thoughts, or even to think of something to say, did much better when we provided them with templates tike the following.
► In discussions of____________, a controversial issue is whether
__________, While some argue that__________, others contend
that________.
► This is not ta say that__
X I V
Demystifying Academic Conversation
One virtue of such templates, we found, is that they focus writers' attention not just on what is being said, but on the forms that structure what is being said. In other words, they make students more conscious of the rhetorical patterns that are key to academic success but often pass under the classroom radar.
THE CENTRALiTY OF "THEY SAY / I SAY"
The central rhetorical move that we focus on in this book is the "they say / I say" template that gives our book its title. In our view, this template represents the deep, underlying structure, the internal DNA as it were, of all effective argument. Effective persuasive writers do more than make well-supported claims ("I say"); they also map those claims relative to the claims of others ("they say").
Here, for example, the "they say / I say" pattern structures a passage from an essay by the media and technology critic Steven Johnson.
For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the "masses" want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But . . . the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less.
Steven Johnson, "Watching TV Makes You Smarter"
In generating his own argument from something "they say," Johnson suggests why he needs to say what he is saying: to correct a popular misconception.
I Even when writers do not explicitly identify the views they
J -are responding to, as Johnson does, an implicit "they say" can
% often be discerned, as in the following passage by Zora Neale
f Hurston.
i I remember the day I became colored,
I Zora Neale Hurston, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"
■fe.
; In order to grasp Hurston's point here, we need to be able to
§ reconstruct the implicit view she is responding to and question-
1 ing: that racial identity is an innate quality we are simply born
| with. On the contrary, Hurston suggests, our race is imposed
| on us by society—something we "become" by virtue of how
I we are treated.
\ As these examples suggest, the "they say / I say" model can
; improve not just student writing, but student reading compre-
5 hension as well. Since reading and writing are deeply recipro-
- cal activities, students who learn to make the rhetorical moves
- represented by the templates in this book figure to become more adept at identifying these same moves in the texts they read. And
; if we are right, that effective arguments are always in dialogue
\ with other arguments, then it follows that in order to understand
\ the types of challenging texts assigned in college, students need
= to identify the views to which those texts are responding.
\ Working with the "they say / I say" model can also help
: with invention, finding something to say. In our experience,
students best discover what they want to say not by thinking
\ about a subject in an isolation booth, but by reading texts,
« listening closely to what other writers say, and looking for an
\ opening through which they can enter the conversation. In
' other words, listening closely to others and summarizing what
they have to say can help writers generate their own ideas.
X V f
x v I i
THE USEFULNESS OF TEMPLATES f
l
Our templates also have a generative quality, prompting stu* |
dents to make moves in their writing that they might not oth- |
erwise make or even know they should make. The templates %
in this book can be particularly helpful for students who are \
unsure about what to say, or who have trouble finding enough I
to say, often because they consider their own beliefs so f
self-evident that they need not be argued for. Students like this \
are often helped, we've found, when we give them a simple tern- \
plate like the following one for entertaining a counterargument |
(or planting a naysayer, as we call it in Chapter 6). \
*■   Of course some might object that__. Although I concede !
that........_______________,! stilt maintain that___. *
What this particular template helps students do is make the :*
seemingly counterintuitive move of questioning their own \
beliefs, of looking at them from the perspective of those who 1
disagree. In so doing, templates can bring out aspects of stu- 1
dents' thoughts that, as they themselves sometimes remark, ;
they didn't even realize were there. -k
Other templates in this book help students make a host of -
sophisticated moves that they might not otherwise make: sum- :
marizing what someone else says, framing a quotation in one's '-,
own words, indicating the view that the writer is responding to, = marking the shift from a source's view to the writer's own view, offering evidence for that view, entertaining and answering counterarguments, and explaining what is at stake in the first
place. In showing students how to make such moves, templates >\ do more than organize students' ideas; they help bring those
ideas into existence. j
'■■\
■
Demystifying Academic Conversation "OK —BUT TEMPLATES?"
We are aware, of course, that some instructors may have reservations about templates. Some, for instance, may object that such formulaic devices represent a return to prescriptive forms of instruction that encourage passive learning or lead students to put their writing on automatic pilot.
This is an understandable reaction, we think, to kinds of rote instruction that have indeed encouraged passivity and drained writing of its creativity and dynamic relation to the social world. The trouble is that many students will never Seam on their own to make the key intellectual moves that our templates represent. While seasoned writers pick up these moves unconsciously through their reading, many students do not. Consequently, we believe, students need to see these moves represented in the explicit ways that the templates provide.
The aim of the templates, then, is not to stifle critical thinking but to be direct with students about the key rhetorical moves that it comprises. Since we encourage students to modify and adapt the templates to the particularities of the arguments they are making, using such prefabricated formulas as learning tools need not result in writing and thinking that are themselves formulaic. Admittedly, no teaching tool can guarantee that students will engage in hard, rigorous thought, Our templates do, however, provide concrete prompts that can stimulate and shape such thought: What do "they say" about my topic? What would a naysayer say about my argument? What is my evidence? Do I need to qualify my point? Who cares?
In fact, templates have a long and rich history. Public orators from ancient Greece and Rome through the European Renaissance studied rhetorical topai or "commonplaces," model passages and formulas that represented the different strategies available
X i X
PREFACE |
I
to public speakers. In many respects, our templates echo this f classical rhetorical tradition of imitating established models.
The journal Nature requires aspiring contributors to follow I
a guideline that is like a template on the opening page of their j|
manuscript: "Two or three sentences explaining what the main =|
result [of their study] reveals in direct comparison with what was :4
thought to be the case previously, or how the main result adds to %
previous knowledge." In the field of education, a form designed * by the education theorist Howard Gardner asks postdoctoral fellowship applicants to complete the following template: "Most
scholars in the field believe______.....____. As a result of my study,
__________." That these two examples are geared toward post- %
doctoral fellows and veteran researchers shows that it is not ; only struggling undergraduates who can use help making these key rhetorical moves, but experienced academics as well.
Templates have even been used in the teaching of personal s
narrative. The literary and educational theorist Jane Tompkins I
devised the following template to help student writers make the j
often difficult move from telling a story to explaining what it \
means: "X tells a story about_________to make the point that
___......_______. My own experience with____....._________yields a point |
that is similar/different/both similar and different. What I take |
away from my own experience with_____________is_________. As 4
a result, I conclude____.....__." We especially like this template 1
because it suggests that "they say / I say" argument need not be 1
mechanical, impersonal, or dry, and that telling a story and mak- [
ing an argument are more compatible activities than many think. I
WHY IT'S OKAY TO USE "l" ]
But wait—doesn't the "1" part of "they say / I say" flagrantly \
encourage the use of the first-person pronoun? Aren't we aware %
Demystifying Academic Conversation
that some teachers prohibit students from using "I" or "we," on the grounds that these pronouns encourage ill-considered, subjective opinions rather than objective and reasoned arguments? Yes, we are aware of this first-person prohibition, but we think it has serious flaws. First, expressing ill-considered, subjective opinions is not necessarily the worst sin beginning writers can commit; it might be a starting point from which they can move on to more reasoned, less self-indulgent perspectives. Second, prohibiting students from using "I" is simply not an effective way of curbing students' subjectivity, since one can offer poorly argued, ill-supported opinions just as easily without it. Third and most, important, prohibiting the first, person tends to hamper students' ability not only to take strong positions but to differentiate their own positions from those of others, as we point out in Chapter 5. To be sure, writers can resort to various circumlocutions—-"it will here be argued," "the evidence suggests," "the truth is"—and these may be useful for avoiding a monotonous series of "I believe" sentences. But except for avoiding such monotony, we see no good reason why "1" should be set aside in persuasive writing. Rather than prohibit "I," then, we think a better tactic is to give students practice at using it well and learning its use, both by supporting their claims with evidence and by attending closely to alternative perspectives—to what "they" are saying.
HOW THtS BOOK IS ORGANIZED
Because of its centrality, we have allowed the "they say / I say" format to dictate the structure of this book. So while Part 1 addresses the art of listening to others, Part 2 addresses how to offer one's own response. Part 1 opens with a chapter on
PREFACE
"Starting with What Others Are Saying" that explains why it is generally advisable to begin a text by citing others rather than plunging directly into one's own views. Subsequent chapters take up the arts of summarizing and quoting what these others have to say. Part 2 begins with a chapter on different ways of responding, followed by chapters on marking the shift between what "they say" and what "I say," on introducing and answering objections, and on answering the all-important questions: "so what?" and "who cares?" Part .3 offers strategies for "Tying It All Together," beginning with a chapter on connection arid coherence; followed by a chapter on academic language, encouraging students to draw on their everyday voice as a tool for writing; and including chapters on the art of metacommentary and using templates to revise a text. Part 4 offers guidance for entering conversations in specific academic contexts, with chapters on entering class discussions, writing online, reading, and writing in literature courses, the sciences, and social sciences. Finally, we provide five readings and an index of templates.
WHAT THIS BOOK DOESN'T DO
There are some things that this book does not try to do. We do not, for instance, cover logical principles of argument such as syllogisms, warrants, logical fallacies, or the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. Although such concepts can be useful, we believe most of us learn the ins and outs of argumentative writing not by studying logical principles in the abstract, but by plunging into actual discussions and debates, trying out different patterns of response, and in this way getting a sense of what works to persuade different audiences and what
Demystifying Academic Conversation
doesn't. In our view, people learn more about arguing from hearing someone say, "You miss my point. What I'm saying
is not _....._________, but ________________or "I agree with you that
_____________, and would even add that__________," than they do
from studying the differences between inductive and deductive reasoning. Such formulas give students an immediate sense of what it feels like to enter a public conversation in a way that studying abstract warrants and logical fallacies does not.
ENGAGING WITH THE IDEAS OF OTHERS
One central goat of this book is to demystify academic writing by returning it to its social and conversational roots. Although writing may require some degree of quiet and solitude, the "they say / 1 say" model shows students that they can best develop their arguments not just, by looking inward but by doing what they often do in a good conversation with friends and family— by listening carefully to what others are saying and engaging with other views.
This approach to writing therefore has an ethical dimension, since it asks writers not simply to keep proving and reasserting what they already believe, but to stretch what they believe by putting it up against beliefs that differ, sometimes radically, from their own. In an increasingly diverse, global society, this ability to engage with the ideas of others is especially crucial to democratic citizenship.
Gerald Graff Cathy Birkenstein
INTRODUCTION
Entering the Conversation
Think about an activity that you da particularly well-, cooking, playing the piano, shooting a basketball, even something as basic as driving a car. If you reflect on this activity, you'll realize that once you mastered it you no longer had to give much conscious thought to the various moves that go into doing it. Performing this activity, in other words, depends on your having learned a series of complicated moves—moves that may seem mysterious or difficult, to those who haven't yet learned them.
The same applies to writing. Often without consciously realizing it, accomplished writers routinely rely on a stock of established moves that are crucial for communicating sophisticated ideas. What makes writers masters of their trade is not only their ability to express interesting thoughts but their mastery of an inventory of basic moves that they probably picked up by reading a wide range of other accomplished writers. Less experienced writers, by contrast, are often unfamiliar with these basic moves and unsure how to make them in their own writing. Hence this book, which is intended as a short, user-friendly guide to the basic moves of academic writing.
One of our key premises is that these basic moves are so common that they can be represented in templates that you can use right away to structure and even generate your own
1
INTRODUCTION
Entering the Conversation
vvriring. Perhaps the most, distinctive feature of this hook is its presentation of many such templates, designed to help you successfully enter not only the world of academic thinking and writing, but also the wider worlds of civic discourse and work.
Instead of focusing solely on abstract principles of writing, then, this book offers model templates that help you put those principles directly into practice. Working with these templates will give you an immediate sense of how to engage in the kinds of critical thinking you are required to do at the college level and in the vocational and public spheres beyond.
Some of these templates represent simple but crucial moves like those used to summarize some widely held belief.
►   Many Americans assume that____.
Others are more complicated.
►   On the one hand,
. On the other hand,
► Author X contradicts herself. At the same time that she argues _______.....she aLso implies_______.
► I agree that__,_________.
► This is not to say that__
It is true, of course, that critical thinking and writing go deeper than any set of linguistic formulas, requiring that you question assumptions, develop strong claims, offer supporting reasons and evidence, consider opposing arguments, and so on. But these deeper habits of thought cannot be put into practice unless you have a language for expressing them in clear, organized ways.
STATE YOUR OWN IDEAS AS A RESPONSE TO OTHERS
The single most important template that we focus on in this
book is the "they say__________; I say__,_____" formula that
gives our book its title. If there is any one point that we hope you will take away from this book, it is the importance not only of expressing your ideas ("I say") bur of presenting those ideas as a response to .some other person or group ("they say"). For us, the underlying structure of effective academic writing—and of responsible public discourse—resides not just in stating our own ideas but. in listening closely to others around us, summarizing their views in a way that they will recognize, and responding with our own ideas in kind. Broadly speaking, academic writing is argumentative writing, and we believe that to argue well you need to do more than assert your own position. You need to enter a conversation, using what others say (or might say) as a launching pad or sounding board for your own views. For this reason, one of the main pieces of advice in this book is to write the voices of others into your text.
In our view, then, the best academic writing has one underlying feature: it is deeply engaged in some way with other people's views. Too often, however, academic writing is taught as a process of saying "true" or "smart" things in a vacuum, as if it were possible to argue effectively without being in conversation with someone else. If you have been taught to write a traditional five-paragraph essay, for example, you have learned how to develop a thesis and support it with evidence. This is good advice as far as it goes, but it leaves out the important fact that in the real world we don't make arguments without being provoked. Instead, we make arguments because someone has said or done something (or perhaps not said or done
INTRODUCTION
Entering the Conversation
something) and we need to respond: "I can't see why you like the Lakers so much"; "I agree: it was a great film"; "That argument is contradictory." If it weren't for other people and our need to challenge, agree with, or otherwise respond to them, there would be no reason to argue at all.
"WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS?"
To make an impact as a writer, then, you need to do more than make statements that are logical, well supported, and consistent. You must also find a way of entering into conversation with the views of others, with something "they say." The easiest and most common way writers do this is by summarizing what others say and then using it to set up what they want to say.
"But why," as a student of outs once asked, "do I always need to summarize the views of others to set up my own view? Why can't I just state my own view and be done with it?" Why indeed? After all, "they," whoever they may be, will have already had their say, so why do you have to repeat it? Furthermore, if they had their say in print, can't readers just go and read what was said themselves?
The answer is that if you don't identify the "they say" you're responding to, your own argument probably won't have a point. Readers will wonder what prompted you to say what you're saying and therefore motivated you to write. As the figure on the following page suggests, without a "they say," what you ate saying may be clear to your audience, but why you are saying it won't be.
Even if we don't know what film he's referring to, it's easy to grasp what the speaker means here when he says that its characters are very complex. But it's hard to see why the speaker feels the need to say what he is saying. "Why," as one member
1
m
%
lift
w  q«« a>5THIS?.
of his imagined audience wonders, "is he telling us this?" So the characters are complex—so what?
Now look at what happens to the same proposition when it is presented as a response to something "they say":
SOME SAY THAT THE CHARACTERS IN THE FILM ARE SEXIST STEREOTYPES. IN FACT, HOWEVER, THE CHARACTERS IN THE /L   FILM ARE VERY COMPLEX!
Httm-CrOOD POINT! _
GG
GEE, NEVER v THOUGHTA THAT!
4
5
INTRODUCTION
Entering the Conversation
We hope you agree that the same claim—"the characters in the film are very complex"—becomes much stronger when presented as a response to a contrary view: that the film's characters "are sexist stereotypes." Unlike the speaker in the first cartoon, the speaker in the second has a clear goal or mission: to correct what he sees as a mistaken characterization.
THE AS-OPPOSED-TO-WHAT FACTOR
To put our point another way, framing your "I say" as a response to something "they say" gives your writing an element of contrast without which it won't make sense. It may be helpful to think of this crucial element as an "as-opposed-to-what factor" and, as you write, to continually ask yourself, "Who says otherwise.'1" and "Does anyone dispute it.7" Behind the audience's "Yeah, so?" and "Why is he telling us this?" in the first cartoon above lie precisely these types of "As opposed to what?" questions. The speaker in the second cartoon, we think, is more satisfying because he answers these questions, helping us see his point that the film presents complex characters rather than simple sexist stereotypes.
HOW IT'S DONE
Many accomplished writers make explicit "they say" moves to set up and motivate their own arguments. One famous example is Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which consists almost entirely of King's eloquent responses to a public statement by eight clergymen deploring the civil rights protests
he vvas leading. The letter—which was written in 1963, while King was in prison for leading a demonstration against racial injustice in Birmingham—is structured almost entirely around a framework of summary and response, in which King summarizes and then answers their criticisms. In one typical passage, King writes as follows.
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.
Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from Birmingham jail"
King goes on to agree with his critics that "It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham," yet he hastens to add that "it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structute left the Negro community with no alternative." King's letter is so thoroughly conversational, in fact, that it could be rewritten in the form of a dialogue or play.
King's critics: King's response: Critics: Response:
Clearly, King would not have written his famous letter were it not for his critics, whose views he treats not as objections to his already-formed arguments but as the motivating source of those arguments, their central reason for being. He quotes not only what his critics have said ("Some have asked: 'Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?'"), but also things they might have said ("One may well ask: 'How can
6
7
INTRODUCTION
you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?'")—all to set the stage for what he himself wants to say.
A similar "they say / 1 say" exchange opens an essay about American patriotism by the social critic Katha Pollitt, who uses her own daughter's comment to represent the patriotic national fervor after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the former World Trade Center, thinks we should fly the American flag out our window. Definitely not, 1 say: the flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. She tells me I'm wrong—the flag means standing together and honoring the dead and saying no to terrorism. In a way we're both right. . . .
Katha Poi.litt, "Put Out No Flags"
As Pollitt's example shows, the "they" you respond to in crafting an argument need not be a famous author or someone known to your audience. It can be a family member like Pollitt's daughter, or a friend or classmate who has made a provocative claim. It can even be something an individual or a group might say—or a side of yourself, something you once believed but no longer do, or something you partly believe but also doubt. The important thing is that the "they" (or "you" or "she") represent some wider group with which readers might identify—in Pollitt's case, those who patriotically believe in flying the flag. Pollitt's example also shows that responding to r   _ the. views of others need not always involve unquali-
See Chapter ' 1
4 for more   tied opposition. By agreeing and disagreeing with her
on agreeing,       .       1 . ,,   . 1 ,,
but with a   daughter, rolhtt enacts what we call the yes and no difference,    response, reconciling apparently incompatible views. While King and Pollitt both identify the views they are responding to, some authors do not explicitly state their views
Entering the Conversation
out instead allow the reader to infer them. See, for instance, if you can identify the implied or unnamed "they say" that the following claim is responding to.
I like to think I have a certain advantage as a teacher of literature because when I was growing up I disliked and feared books.
Gerald Graff, "Disliking Books at an Early Age"
In case you haven't figured it. out already, the phantom "they say" here is the common belief that in order to be a good teacher of literature, one must, have grown up liking and enjoying books.
COURT CONTROVERSY, BUT...
As you can see from these examples, many writers use the "they say / I say" format to challenge standard ways of thinking and thus to stir up controversy. This point may come as a shock to you if you have always had the impression that in order to succeed academically you need to play it safe and avoid controversy in your writing, making statements that nobody can possibly disagree with. Though this view of writing may appear logical, it is actually a recipe for flat, lifeless writing and for writing that fails to answer what, we call the "so what?" and "who cares?" questions. "William Shakespeare wrote many famous plays and sonnets" may be a perfectly true statement, hut precisely because nobody is likely to disagree with it, it goes without saying and thus would seem pointless if said.
But just because controversy is important doesn't mean you have to become an attack dog who automatically disagrees with
8
9
INTRODUCTION
everything others say. We think this is an important point to underscore because some who are not familiar with this book have gotten the impression from the title that our goal is to train writers simply to disparage whatever "they say."
DISAGREEING WITHOUT BEING DISAGREEABLE
There certainly are occasions when strong critique is needed. It's hard to live in a deeply polarized society like our current one and not feel the need at times to criticize what others think. But even the most justified critiques fall flat, we submit, unless we really listen to and understand the views we are criticizing:
_, my own view
►   While I understand the impulse to is
Even the most sympathetic audiences, after all, tend to feel manipulated by arguments that scapegoat and caricature the other side.
Furthermore, genuinely listening to views we disagree with can have the salutary effect of helping us see that beliefs we'd initially disdained may not be as thoroughly reprehensible as we'd imagined. Thus the type of "they say / 1 say" argument that we promote in this book can take the form of agreeing up to a point or, as the Pollitt example above illustrates, of both agreeing and disagreeing simultaneously, as in:
►  WhiLe I agree with X that all conclusion that
_, I cannot accept her over-
►   While X argues we're both right.
_, and I argue
, in a way
Entering the Conversation
Agreement cannot be ruled out, however: ►   I agree with__________that___._.
THE TEMPLATE OF TEMPLATES
There are many ways, then, to enter a conversation and respond to what "they say." But our discussion of ways to do so would be incomplete were we not to mention the most comprehensive way that writers enter conversations, which incorporates all the major moves discussed in this book;
►   In recent discussions of______a controversial issue has
been whether______________. On the one hand, some argue
that____. From this perspective,______. On the other
hand, however, others argue that_______- In the words of
___, one of this view's main proponents, "________..."
According to this view,
whether______or _
My own view is that
. In sum, then, the issue is
. Though I concede that
________. For example,
, I would
_______, I stilt maintain that______
____. Although some might object that______
reply that_____■ The issue is important because
This "template of templates," as we like to call it, represents the internal DNA of countless articles and even entire books. Writers commonly use a version of it not only to stake out their "they say" and "I say" at the start of their manuscript, but—just as important—to form the overarching blueprint that structures what they write over the entire length of their text.
INTRODUCTION
Taking it line by line, this master template first helps you open your text by identifying an issue in some ongoing
conversation or debate ("In recent discussions of_......,
a controversial issue has been__________________"), and then to map
some of the voices in this controversy {by using the "on the one hand / on the other hand" structure). The template then helps you introduce a quotation ("In the words of"), to explain the quotation in your own words ("According to this view"), and—in a new paragraph—to state your own argument ("My own view is that"), to qualify your argument ("Though 1 concede that"), and then to support your argument, with evidence ("For example"). In addition, the template helps you make one of the most crucial moves in argumentative writing, what we call "planting a naysayer in your text," in which you summarize and then answer a likely objection to your own central claim ("Although it might
be objected that________.........., I reply _______________________"). Finally,
this template helps you shift between general, over-arching claims ("In sum, then") and smaller-scale, supporting claims ("For example").
Again, none of us is born knowing these moves, especially when it comes to academic writing. Hence the need for this book.
BUT ISN'T THIS PLAGIARISM?
"But isn't this plagiarism?" at least one student each year will usually ask. "Well, is it?" we respond, turning the question around into one the entire class can profit from. "We are, after all, asking you to use language in your writing that isn't your
■h
St
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it
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Entering the Conversation
own—language that you 'borrow' or, to put it less delicately, steal from other writers."
Often, a lively discussion ensues that, raises important questions about authorial ownership and helps everyone better understand the frequently confusing line between plagiarism and the legitimate use of what others say and how they say it. Students ate quick to see that no one person owns a conventional formula like "on the one hand . . . on the other hand. . . ." Phrases like "a controversial issue" are so commonly used and recycled that they are generic-community property that can be freely used without fear of committing plagiarism. It is plagiarism, however, if the words used to fill in the blanks of such formulas are borrowed from others without proper acknowledgment. In sum, then, while it is not plagiarism to recycle conventionally used formulas, it is a serious academic offense to take the substantive content from others' texts without citing the author and giving him or her proper credit.
"OK—BUT TEMPLATES?"
Nevertheless, if you are like some of our students, your initial response to templates may be skepticism. At first, many of our students complain that using templates will take away their originality and creativity and make them all sound the same. "They'll turn us into writing robots," one of our students insisted. "I'm in college now," another student asserted; "this is third-grade-level stuff."
In our view, however, the templates in this book, far from being "third-grade-level stuff," represent the stock-in-trade of
INTRODUCTION
Entering the Conversation
sophisticated thinking and writing, and they often require a great deal of practice and instruction to use successfully. As for the belief that pre-established forms undermine creativity, we think it rests on a very limited vision of what creativity is all about. In our view, the templates in this book will actually help your writing become more original and creative, not less. After all, even the most creative forms of expression depend on established patterns and structures. Most songwriters, for instance, rely on a time-honored verse-chorus-verse pattern, and few people would call Shakespeare uncreative because he didn't invent the sonnet or the dramatic forms that he used to such dazzling effect. Even the most avant-garde, cutting-edge artists like improvisational jazz musicians need to master the basic forms that their work improvises on, departs from, and goes beyond, or else their wotk will come across as uneducated child's play. Ultimately, then, creativity and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms but in the imaginative use of them.
Furthermore, these templates do not dictate the content of what you say, which can be as original as you can make it, but only suggest a way of formatting how you say it. In addition, once you begin to feel comfortable with the templates in this book, you will be able to improvise creatively on them to fit new situations and purposes and find others in your reading. In other words, the templates offered here are learning tools to get you started, not structures set in stone. Once you get used to using them, you can even dispense with them altogether, for the rhetorical moves they model will be at your fingertips in an unconscious, instinctive way.
But if you still need proof that writing templates need not make you sound stiff and artificial, consider the following opening to an essay on the fast-food industry that we've included at the back of this book.
If ever there were a newspaper headline custom-made for Jay Leno's monologue, this was it. Kids taking on McDonald's this week, suing the company for making them fat. Isn'c that like middle-aged men suing Porsche for making them get speeding tickets? Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
I tend to sympathize with these portly fast-food patrons, though. Maybe that's because I used to be one of them.
David Zinczenko, "Don't Blame the Eater"
Although Zinczenko relies on a version of the "they say / I say" formula, his writing is anything but dry, robotic, or uncreative. While Zinczenko does not explicitly use the words "they say" and "1 say," the template still gives the passage its underlying structure: "They say that kids suing fast-food companies for making them fat is a joke; but I say such lawsuits are justified."
PUTTING IN YOUR OAR
Though the immediate goal of this book is to help you become a better writer, at a deeper level it invites you to become a certain type of person: a critical, intellectual thinker who, instead of sitting passively on the sidelines, can participate in the debates and conversations of your world in an active and empowered way. Ultimately, this book invites you to become a critical thinker who can enter the types of conversations described eloquently by the philosopher Kenneth Burke in the following widely cited passage. Likening the world of intellectual exchange to a never-ending conversation at a party, Burke writes:
You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated
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for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. . . . You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you pat in your oar, Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you.. . . The hour grows iate, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form
What we like about this passage is its suggestion that stating an argument (putting in your oar) can only he done in conversation with others; that entering the dynamic world of ideas must be done not as isolated individuals but as social beings deeply connected to others.
This ability to enter complex, many-sided conversations has taken on a special urgency in today's polarized, Red State / Blue State America, where the future for all of us may depend on our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of those who think very differently from tis. The central piece of advice in this book—that we listen carefully to others, including those who disagree with us, and then engage with them thoughtfully and respectfully—can help us see beyond our own pet beliefs, which may not be shared by everyone. The mere act of crafting a sentence that begins "Of course, someone might object
that_________" may not seem like a way to change the world;
but it does have the potential to jog us out of our comfort zones, to get us thinking critically about our own beliefs, and even to change minds, our own included.
Exercises
1. Write a short essay in which you first summarize our rationale for the templates in this book and then articulate your own
Entering the Conversation
position in response. If you want, you can use the template below to organize your paragraphs, expanding and modifying it as necessary to fit what you want to say.
In the Introduction to 'They Say // Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein provide templates designed to_____________. Specifically, Graff and Birkenstein
argue that the types of writing templates they offer_____________. As
the authors themselves put it."__________." Although some people
believe __________________, Graff and Birkenstein insist that____________.
In sum, then, their view is that__________________.
I [agree/disagree/have mixed feelings]. In my view, the types
of templates that the authors recommend_______.-------■ For
instance,_______________In addition______________. Some might object,
of course, on the grounds that _.______________________■ Yet I would argue
that_______________. OveraLl, then, I believe .____________.....-an important
point to make given_________.
2. Read the following paragraph from an essay by Emily Poe, a student at Furman University. Disregarding for the moment what Poe says, focus your attention on the phrases she uses to structure what she says (italicized here). Then write a new paragraph using Poe's as a model but replacing her topic, vegetarianism, with one of your own.
The term "vegetarian" tends to be synonymous with "tree-hugger" in many people's minds. They see vegetarianism as a cult that brainwashes its followers into eliminating an essentia! part of their daily diets for an abstract goal of "animal welfare." However, few vegetarians choose their lifestyle just to follow the crowd. On the contrary, many of these supposedly brainwashed people are actually independent thinkers, concerned citizens, and compassionate human beings. For the truth is that there are many very good reasons
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INTRODUCTION
for giving up mear. Perhaps the best reasons are to improve the environment, to encourage humane treatment of livestock, or to enhance one's own health. In this essay, then, closely examining a vegetarian diet as compared to a meat-eater's diet will show that vegetarianism is clearly the better option for sustaining the Earth and all its inhabitants.
"THEY SAY"
Starting with What Others Are Saying
Not long ago we attended a talk at an academic conference where the speaker's central claim seemed to be that a certain sociologist—call him Dr. X—had done very good work in a number of areas of the discipline. The speaker proceeded to illustrate his thesis by referring extensively and in great detail to various books and articles by Dr. X and by quoting long passages from them. The speaker was obviously both learned and impassioned, but as we listened to his talk we found ourselves somewhat puzzled: the argument—that Dr. X's work was very important—was clear enough, but why did the speaker need to make it in the first place? Did anyone dispute it? Were there commentators in the field who had argued against X's work or challenged its value? Was the speaker's interpretation of what X had done somehow novel or revolutionary? Since the speaker gave no hint of an answer to any of these questions, we could only wonder why he was going on and on about X. It The two-was only after the speaker finished and took questions lu^encein from the audience that we got a clue: in response to   the figure on
p. 5 reacts
one questioner, he referred to several critics who had similarly.
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