Homework answers / question archive / T HR E E “as he himself puts it” The Art of Quoting H A key premise of this book is that to launch an effective argument you need to write the arguments of others into your text

T HR E E “as he himself puts it” The Art of Quoting H A key premise of this book is that to launch an effective argument you need to write the arguments of others into your text

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T HR E E “as he himself puts it” The Art of Quoting H A key premise of this book is that to launch an effective argument you need to write the arguments of others into your text. One of the best ways to do so is by not only summarizing what “they say,” as suggested in Chapter 2, but by quoting their exact words. Quoting someone else’s words gives a tremendous amount of credibility to your summary and helps ensure that it is fair and accurate. In a sense, then, quotations function as a kind of proof of evidence, saying to readers: “Look, I’m not just making this up. She makes this claim, and here it is in her exact words.” Yet many writers make a host of mistakes when it comes to quoting, not the least of which is the failure to quote enough in the first place, if at all. Some writers quote too little— perhaps because they don’t want to bother going back to the original text and looking up the author’s exact words, or because they think they can reconstruct the author’s ideas from memory. At the opposite extreme are writers who so overquote that they end up with texts that are short on commentary of their own—maybe because they lack confidence in their ability to comment on the quotations, or because they don’t fully 43 three “A S H E H I M S E LF P U T S I T ” understand what they’ve quoted and therefore have trouble explaining what the quotations mean. But the main problem with quoting arises when writers assume that quotations speak for themselves. Because the meaning of a quotation is obvious to them, many writers assume that this meaning will also be obvious to their readers, when often it is not. Writers who make this mistake think that their job is done when they’ve chosen a quotation and inserted it into their text. They draft an essay, slap in a few quotations, and whammo, they’re done. Such writers fail to see that quoting means more than simply enclosing what “they say” in quotation marks. In a way, quotations are orphans: words that have been taken from their original contexts and that need to be integrated into their new textual surroundings. This chapter offers two key ways to produce this sort of integration: (1) by choosing quotations wisely, with an eye to how well they support a particular part of your text, and (2) by surrounding every major quotation with a frame explaining whose words they are, what the quotation means, and how the quotation relates to your own text. The point we want to emphasize is that quoting what “they say” must always be connected with what you say. quote relevant passages Before you can select appropriate quotations, you need to have a sense of what you want to do with them—that is, how they will support your text at the particular point where you insert them. Be careful not to select quotations just for the sake of demonstrating that you’ve read the author’s work; you need to make sure they support your own argument. 44 The Art of Quoting However, finding relevant quotations is not always easy. In fact, sometimes quotations that were initially relevant to your argument, or to a key point in it, become less so as your text changes during the process of writing and revising. Given the evolving and messy nature of writing, you may sometimes think that you’ve found the perfect quotation to support your argument, only to discover later on, as your text develops, that your focus has changed and the quotation no longer works. It can be somewhat misleading, then, to speak of finding your thesis and finding relevant quotations as two separate steps, one coming after the other. When you’re deeply engaged in the writing and revising process, there is usually a great deal of back-and-forth between your argument and any quotations you select. frame every quotation Finding relevant quotations is only part of your job; you also need to present them in a way that makes their relevance and meaning clear to your readers. Since quotations do not speak for themselves, you need to build a frame around them in which you do that speaking for them. Quotations that are inserted into a text without such a frame are sometimes called “dangling” quotations for the way they’re left dangling without any explanation. One teacher we’ve worked with, Steve Benton, calls these “hit-and-run” quotations, likening them to car accidents in which the driver speeds away and avoids taking responsibility for the dent in your fender or the smashed taillights, as in the figure that follows. 45 three “A S H E H I M S E LF P U T S I T ” What follows is a typical hit-and-run quotation by a student responding to an essay by Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor and prominent author, who complains that academics value opposition over agreement. Deborah Tannen writes about academia. Academics believe “that intellectual inquiry is a metaphorical battle. Following from that is a second assumption that the best way to demonstrate intellectual prowess is to criticize, find fault, and attack.” I agree with Tannen. Another point Tannen makes is that . . . Since this student fails to introduce the quotation adequately or explain why he finds it worth quoting, readers will have a hard time reconstructing what Tannen argued. First, the student simply gives us the quotation from Tannen without telling us who Tannen is or even indicating that the quoted words are hers. In addition, the student does not explain what he takes Tannen to be saying or how her claims connect with his own. Instead, he simply abandons the quotation in his haste to zoom on to another point. 46 The Art of Quoting To adequately frame a quotation, you need to insert it into what we like to call a “quotation sandwich,” with the statement introducing it serving as the top slice of bread and the explanation following it serving as the bottom slice. The introductory or lead-in claims should explain who is speaking and set up what the quotation says; the follow-up statements should explain why you consider the quotation to be important and what you take it to say. templates for introducing quotations j X states, “Not all steroids should be banned from sports.” j As the prominent philosopher X puts it, “ j According to X, “ .” j X himself writes, “ j In her book, .” .” , X maintains that “ .” j Writing in the journal Commentary, X complains that “ j In X’s view, “ .” .” j X agrees when she writes, “ .” j X disagrees when he writes, “ .” j X complicates matters further when she writes, “ .” templates for explaining quotations The one piece of advice about quoting that our students say they find most helpful is to get in the habit of following every 47 three “A S H E H I M S E LF P U T S I T ” major quotation by explaining what it means, using a template like one of the ones below. j Basically, X is warning that the proposed solution will only make the problem worse. j In other words, X believes . j In making this comment, X urges us to . j X is corroborating the age-old adage that j X’s point is that . . j The essence of X’s argument is that . When offering such explanations, it is important to use language that accurately reflects the spirit of the quoted passage. It is often serviceable enough in introducing a quotation to write “X states” or “X asserts,” but in most cases you can add precision to your writing by introducing the quotation in more vivid terms. Since, in the example above, Tannen is clearly See pp. 40–41 for a list of alarmed by the culture of “attack” that she describes, action verbs for it would be more accurate to use language that reflects summarizing what other say. that alarm: “Tannen is alarmed that,” “Tannen is disturbed by,” “Tannen deplores,” or (in our own formulation here) “Tannen complains.” Consider, for example, how the earlier passage on Tannen might be revised using some of these moves. Deborah Tannen, a prominent linguistics professor, complains that academia is too combative. Rather than really listening to others, Tannen insists, academics habitually try to prove one another wrong. As Tannen herself puts it, “We are all driven by our ideological 48 The Art of Quoting assumption that intellectual inquiry is a metaphorical battle,” that “the best way to demonstrate intellectual prowess is to criticize, find fault, and attack.” In short, Tannen objects that academic communication tends to be a competition for supremacy in which loftier values like truth and consensus get lost. Tannen’s observations ring true to me because I have often felt that the academic pieces I read for class are negative and focus on proving another theorist wrong rather than stating a truth . . . This revision works, we think, because it frames or nests Tannen’s words, integrating them and offering guidance about how they should be read. Instead of launching directly into the quoted words, as the previous draft had done, this revised version identifies Tannen (“a prominent linguistics professor”) and clearly indicates that the quoted words are hers (“as Tannen herself puts it”). And instead of being presented without explanation as it was before, the quotation is now presented as an illustration of Tannen’s point that, as the student helpfully puts it, “academics habitually try to prove one another wrong” and compete “for supremacy.” In this way, the student explains the quotation while restating it in his own words, thereby making it clear that the quotation is being used purposefully instead of having been stuck in simply to pad the essay or the works-cited list. blend the author’s words with your own This new framing material also works well because it accurately represents Tannen’s words while giving those words the student’s own spin. Instead of simply repeating Tannen word for word, the follow-up sentences echo just enough of her language 49 three “A S H E H I M S E LF P U T S I T ” while still moving the discussion in the student’s own direction. Tannen’s “battle,” “criticize,” “find fault,” and “attack,” for instance, get translated by the student into claims about how “combative” Tannen thinks academics are and how she thinks they “habitually try to prove one another wrong.” In this way, the framing creates a kind of hybrid mix of Tannen’s words and those of the writer. can you overanalyze a quotation? But is it possible to overexplain a quotation? And how do you know when you’ve explained a quotation thoroughly enough? After all, not all quotations require the same amount of explanatory framing, and there are no hard-and-fast rules for knowing how much explanation any quotation needs. As a general rule, the most explanatory framing is needed for quotations that may be hard for readers to process: quotations that are long and complex, that are filled with details or jargon, or that contain hidden complexities. And yet, though the particular situation usually dictates when and how much to explain a quotation, we will still offer one piece of advice: when in doubt, go for it. It is better to risk being overly explicit about what you take a quotation to mean than to leave the quotation dangling and your readers in doubt. Indeed, we encourage you to provide such explanatory framing even when writing to an audience that you know to be familiar with the author being quoted and able to interpret your quotations on their own. Even in such cases, readers need to see how you interpret the quotation, since words—especially those of controversial figures—can be interpreted in various ways and used to support different, sometimes opposing, agendas. 50 The Art of Quoting Your readers need to see what you make of the material you’ve quoted, if only to be sure that your reading of the material and theirs are on the same page. how not to introduce quotations We want to conclude this chapter by surveying some ways not to introduce quotations. Although some writers do so, you should not introduce quotations by saying something like “Orwell asserts an idea that” or “A quote by Shakespeare says.” Introductory phrases like these are both redundant and misleading. In the first example, you could write either “Orwell asserts that” or “Orwell’s assertion is that,” rather than redundantly combining the two. The second example misleads readers, since it is the writer who is doing the quoting, not Shakespeare (as “a quote by Shakespeare” implies). The templates in this book will help you avoid such mistakes. Once you have mastered templates like “as X puts it” or “in X’s own words,” you probably won’t even have to think about them—and will be free to focus on the challenging ideas that templates help you frame. Exercises 1. Find a published piece of writing that quotes something that “they say.” How has the writer integrated the quotation into his or her own text? How has he or she introduced the quotation, and what, if anything, has the writer said to explain it and tie it to his or her own text? Based on what you’ve read in this chapter, are there any changes you would suggest? 51 three “A S H E H I M S E LF P U T S I T ” 2. Look at something you have written for one of your classes. Have you quoted any sources? If so, how have you integrated the quotation into your own text? How have you introduced it? explained what it means? indicated how it relates to your text? If you haven’t done all these things, revise your text to do so, perhaps using the Templates for Introducing Quotations (p. 47) and Explaining Quotations (pp. 47–48). If you’ve not written anything with quotations, try revising some academic text you’ve written to do so. 52