Critical Thinking
        Philosophy

DRAFT - 01/04/2007 - Copyright - Chris Storer

WRITING ESSAYS

Chris Storer

We write to accomplish many things: to record events, to remind ourselves of past thoughts and plans, to express our joy, love, or sorrow, to entertain, to pass on to others that which we have learned, to ask or demand action of others not present, to convince others of the truths we think we know, to clarify to ourselves or others complex thoughts that have become too large and entangled for our conscious minds to grasp all at once, etc.

As for all discourse, we can usefully classify writing by three major functions that fulfill the dominant purpose of the author: expressive, directive and discursive. Discursive writing may be subdivided into expository and persuasive writing. Expository writing may be descriptive or explanatory while persuasive writing may be rhetorical or argumentative.

These classifications refer to the main function the author intends overall. Thus, a piece of written discourse might be dominantly argumentative because the author's purpose is to convince the reader that something is the case, but it may contain paragraphs or sentences that are descriptive of facts that are not at issue, or explanations that clarify what one assumes the reader does not understand, or commands that direct the reader to activity or thought, etc.

We can clarify these relationships by creating a conceptual tree. Thus, the main concept, Writing, is the trunk of the tree, and the the first three divisions may be seen as major branches. Further subdivisions are smaller branches on the branch of discursive writing. Each level of branching maintains the level at which the distinction was drawn. We can represent the conceptual tree in a schematic form that keeps the levels clear:

In the following, we will focus on discursive writing in general and on argumentative writing in particular. These form the heart of essays. We leave expressive and directive writing to the study of novels, poetry, and song (though these forms can be used discursively).

Essays

The word "essay" came into the English language from the French verb meaning "to try" (essayer). However, it was chosen by Francis Bacon to entitle a collection of his writings (1597) because he liked the modest sense it imparted when he saw the French writer, Montaigne, use it for a similar purpose (1580). The idea was to distinguish between brief pieces of written discourse and formal writing of complete books on a single subject.

Since that time the word has come to mean less an attempt (or draft) than a written work of limited scope, one that tries to deal usefully with a single topic in a unified manner. The sense of unity or completeness is a part of the guiding force of any author's attempt to put what is in her or his mind down on paper, but the essay form, like the short story form in fiction, has carried the principle of unity to the extreme (every part should clearly contribute to the whole). This is possible because the limited focused goal of an essay allows for a manageable size. (An essay may be anything from a one paragraph response to an exam question, to an argument or research paper of 20 pages or more.) The author who knows what she/he wants to say can grasp the whole (the main point) at once through a structured understanding, which can then be developed for an audience in a manner that leads the thinking of the reader from some common ground, shared by author and audience, to a reasonable understanding and, one hopes, acceptance of this main point. Within the modern academic community, "essay" retains both the sense of an attempt and of a limited, but clearly defined, scope.

When professors ask students to "write an essay," their concern is that the student try to write what they know about a question or topic, but they also want them to put their ideas in a structured form with clear expression that deals with the subject in a complete, unified composition. Because the success or failure of an essay's content is the easiest part of the student's writing to point out, students get the idea that this is most important and often fail to understand the importance of structural unity and other formal aspects of composing essays. Essays then degenerate into simple lists of ideas with no focus, integrity, or common purpose. To compose is "The action of putting together or combining; the fact of being put together or combined; combination (of things as parts or elements of a whole)." (1)

Writing as Communication

Let's look a bit more closely at just what the purpose of writing is. After all, if we want to do something easily and well, it certainly helps to have a clear idea of the purposes behind what we are doing. Understanding purposes can guide our actions so that we attain our goals.

Writing is first of all communication. While we may have other subsidiary goals like entertainment or persuading someone to vote in a particular way, none of these other goals can be attained if the writing fails to communicate the main idea of the author to the reader. Superficially, any act of communication would seem to look something like this:

It is certainly the case that we do write words down because they correspond to the ideas in our mind, and it is equally clear that words cause ideas to be thought in the mind of a reader, but it is also the case that language is notoriously ambiguous and that much of the meaning of anything said, written, heard, or read, is a function of the intention, background experiences, interests, purposes, values, assumptions and other dimensions of the context or point of view in the mind that interprets the linguistic symbols.

While simple words like names and purely abstract words like mathematical symbols are fairly unambiguous and communicate much like this model, abstract words that refer to our important ideas about the world ("love," "democracy ... .. good ... .. beautiful," "friendship," "marriage", "life," "death", to mention a few) cause real problems, and we write essays to communicate just such ideas. Even simple general words such as "table" of "car" have a vagueness that becomes ambiguity if pushed too far without qualification.

Names communicate most clearly, when they communicate at all, because they refer to specific individual things. The audience either knows the thing referred to and the communication is successful or she/he does not and the communication fails. You say "Sam" and, if I know Sam, then I will think the right thought. Of course, there are probably extensions to your thought of Sam that differ from mine, you think he is a jerk while I admire him, but such connotations of our language symbols only become problematic when we try to say more than the simple naming attempts (that Sam is my friend, or some such).

The pure abstractions of mathematics communicate clearly for quite another reason. The meanings of a mathematical symbol do not relate directly to our experiences of the world, and it is the uniqueness of our individual experiences that allows most linguistic symbols to be ambiguous since they are our way of referring to general characteristics of that unique experience. Mathematical symbols refer to formal, purely abstract relations within the systems of mathematics. If one has learned the system, the meanings of particular symbols are not dependent on the particular experiences individuals have of the world. Rather, the meanings come from one's thinking about the correlations among the parts of the abstract system. (Actually, the system is these correlations. The parts and structures of a mathematical system exist only as such abstract correlations.)

The more abstract the meaning of a natural language symbol, the more it is dependent on a set of correlative ideas that form a correlative system similar to mathematical systems. When I use the word "democracy," the meaning emerges out of my desire to call attention to a particular distinction that refers to a specific subset of another idea. For example, I may be referring to the more inclusive idea (genus) of "types of political organization," and a distinction among various members (species) which recognizes democracies as different from other types of political organization (those who administer the state are elected to their positions of power by the general population).

These various species, as abstract ideas, only make sense to the extent that they are correlated with the genus of which they are parts and the other species from which each is differentiated. I will understand more about the meaning of the word "democracy" by coming to understand why a democracy is not an oligarchy or a monarchy or a dictatorship, just as I come to know more about the meaning of "1" by coming to recognize that "1 + 1= 2." That is, the meaning of abstract symbols is always a function of such correlatively.

However, where mathematics makes no pretense of a reference to the world of experience, natural language does. When you add one drop of water to another and find that you still have only one drop, you don't say that mathematics is wrong or that you misunderstood mathematics. Rather, you reinterpret your application of the mathematical system to your experience and stop adding drops and begin adding quantities measured in terms of volume or weight. On the other hand, when you find that a correlative system of ideas in natural language fails to fit your experience, you modify or throw out the correlative system. For example, many arguments have been based on a correlative system of ideas that attempts to understand communism and democracy as species of political systems, yet a little study of the world shows that, while most existing communist states, and those no longer existing, have been totalitarian political systems, this is an accidental characteristic caused by particular historical circumstances. If we recognize that the word "communism" was first used to refer to a type of economic system, we come to recognize that, in fact, it would be quite possible for a democratic political system to choose, democratically, to institute a communist economic system. Thus, through our engaging real problems in the world, we allow the systematic structures of language and thought to evolve so that they reflect our actual experiences.

With this understanding of the the nature of language and communication, we can develop a deeper understanding of the nature of writing as a form of communication. As an author who has something important to say to an audience, one's obvious task is to get the audience to think the thoughts one wants to communicate. As we have seen, since there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence, through language, between the ideas of the author and those caused in the mind of the reader, this task becomes complicated where significant ideas are involved. This is particularly the case in argumentative essays where our real (intended) audience is made up of just those people who disagree with the main point we are attempting to communicate. (2) The ideas we believe in are the result of our particular experiences, values, and thoughts, and we can assume that, if someone disagrees with one of our ideas, either their experience, their values, or their thought has led them to this contrary belief. Thus, to get someone else to understand and consent to the main point our essay is trying to communicate, we must lead them through a thought process that will get them from the ideas they have to the ideas we want to communicate.

We are therefore faced with two major problems. We must know how people think so we can use language to guide their thinking to the understanding we want to share with them, and we need to know who our audience is so that we may begin with ideas they already understand and believe in.

How do people think?

The Oxford English Dictionary argues that the root of our verb, "to think," might have meant, "to cause (something) to seem or appear (to oneself)." This is quite instructive since it is this sense of an action that the thinker can control, and that results in some idea which the thinker comes to know through the thinking activity, that differentiates thinking from other mental processes like perceiving, desiring, enjoying, etc.

Actions differ from reactions primarily in the sense that the latter are caused by the past while the former are purposeful. That is, we act in as much as we direct our behavior toward the attainment of some goal, some desired future. Thus, if thinking is an action, we need to know what its purpose is.

In general, while we are living our lives, our consciousness is filled with the on-going stream of perceptions that emerge out of our body's sensitive (empirical) interaction with the world around us. We only begin to think about our perceptions when our attention is drawn to one which we single out as a subject for reflection, for thought. While often we are not quite sure what it was that grabbed our attention, it is clear that it is often because we have encountered some conflict between our expectations and our experience. It is certainly the case that all our important thoughts are directed toward resolving such conflicts.

Even thoughts that follow from curiosity and wonder may be understood as a response to our mind's natural tendency to arrive at a significant unification of experience. We each have a basic understanding of the world and when we perceive something that does not clearly fit with our understanding, we often feel compelled to think it through to resolve the tension created by the conflict. Thus, curiosity and wonder are also examples of resolving conflicts.

The occasion for many (if not all) thought processes is an awareness of such a conflict, and the conclusion of such a thought process is the resolution of the conflict. If we take this as a model of thinking, then we can define "thinking" as "a mental process that is directed toward the resolution of a conflict between expectation and experience."

The beginning of the action of thought is thus our attempt to determine just what the conflict is that has attracted our attention. Often this is quite simple and the solution is found before thinking can do more than begin. Perhaps you are walking along the sidewalk, talking with a friend without looking where you are going. Suddenly you step off a curb. The expectation you had that your foot would hit ground comes into brief conflict with your experience and your attention is yanked away from the conversation for an instant as you stumble, but quickly, your foot hits the ground in the gutter and you recover your balance before you have time to really think. With a bit of adrenalin, and perhaps a comment, you return to the interrupted conversation.

But the situation might have been a bit different. Suppose that the gutter is full of water and that a glint from the sun on the surface catches your eye, and your attention, so that you stop your conversation and stop walking at the edge of the curb. Your expectation of the dull gray of the concrete was in conflict with the experience of the bright glint of the sun on the smooth surface of the water remaining in the gutter from the morning's rain. Your rapid understanding of this conflict concludes a brief thought but it brings you into an awareness of another conflict. Your expectation that you would be able to continue walking across the street toward your destination is now felt to be in conflict with the water in the gutter. Your judgment that you could not easily step across the puddle brought your walk and the conversation to a halt since this conflict requires more time to think through.

The first part of your thinking should be to get clear about just what the conflict is. The term "problem" means, "A difficult or puzzling question proposed for solution;" (3) not the object or event that raises the question. Thus, we need to turn the conflict (and our focus on the conflicting experience) into a problem, a question we put forth for a solution.

How we ask this question (how we raise the issue) has a great deal to do with the remainder of the thinking that follows it and with the solution that is finally decided on. If you ask the question as, "How will I get to the other side of the water here?" you may end up with a quite different series of steps than if you asked the question, "How will I get to the other side of the street?" A third question, "How will we continue our walk?" may yield yet a different solution through still different steps. Before you can be sure what the best question to ask is, you need to decide just what is at issue, that is, you need to decide what is the importance of the conflict, what values are involved and why they are involved. If you don't do this, you may find yourself like Sir Walter Raleigh, laying your coat in the mud when it really missed the point. The process model presented in Diagram 3 offers a schematic analysis which captures much of the thought process. Assuming, that the model is fair, we may use this understanding to guide our decision making during the composition of essays.

Diagram 3 (link - Slide this new page to the side so you can refer to it while continuing to read)

To avoid the possibility that your audience misses the main point you want to communicate, you need to begin by making them feel the conflict as a real conflict for them, and then you need to focus their attention on the issue you think to be important. The goal of composition becomes to lead the reader's thinking to a resolution of the focused conflict you initially establish in their mind. This leading is accomplished through repetitive cycles of presenting problems, Clarifying issues, analysis, and synthesis, all of which yield judgment and understanding in the mind of the reader. The tension established in the mind, through its confrontation of conflict between expectation and experience, is replaced in the critical reader by a tension between the mind's natural demand for consistency, and its social (moral) commitment to Charity (fairmindedness). Resolution of this tension is obtained through judgment that reestablishes a more Complete and Coherent sense of the world; the reader makes sense of what she/he has read.

Who is our audience?

Now that we have an idea of what thinking is and how it relates to the compositional task, we can turn our attention to the second question raised by our analysis of communication. That is, because an author recognizes the dependence of an individual's interpretation of language on that individual's background and values (his or her expectations), the author must make some determination of who his/her audience is to know what can be assumed and what must be written. There are really two elements of this problem. As a writer of an important idea, you not only want to expose your readers to your idea, you want to win their assent to it as an accurate understanding of the world.

Exposition involves opening the reader's mind to a possible understanding of the world, while argumentation leads them to rational acceptance of that possibility. (Persuasion, such as propaganda or advertising, does not particularly care whether the ideas being communicated are true or not. Persuasion is concerned more with influencing behavior, and influencing the mind is merely one means to this end.)

The problems of exposition relate to the ambiguity of language and its tendency to cause different ideas in different minds, or in the same mind under different circumstances. The closer any abstraction is to immediate experience, and the larger and more coherent the web correlative concepts in which it is embedded, the less problematic ambiguity is for communication. (4)

To take a simple example, I might write that, "The sky was red." and you will have a fairly clear idea of what I mean. As a primary color, red is clearly not blue or yellow. But perhaps I want to communicate to you the abstract understanding of how the ash from a volcanic eruption is causing the particular red sunset Californians experienced during some specific time. If you do not already know the science of atmospheric refraction and the effects of suspended particulates, I am going to have to do a fair amount of groundwork, explaining these abstractions and tying them to more concrete experiences which you may have had, before I can describe the particular effects of a particular eruption. I might assume that I am writing to an audience which has had a basic high school science course and therefore understands a bit about how a prism bends light and causes a separation of different colors of light, in which case I could begin my exposition at that level of analysis.

Much of the real world writing we do makes just such assumptions about our audience. A letter to the editor of a local paper usually assumes a common level of experience and a high school education. An article for Time or Newsweek might expect an audience with a bit stronger education, while an article in Scientific American would expect a four year degree and some specialized education in the sciences. Writing for your colleagues at work would assume the same level of specialized knowledge you have except for those personal experiences and thoughts which led you from this common base to the particular ideas you need to communicate to them.

Thus, knowing who our audience is in respect to exposition is not problematic as long as you are aware of who you are and how you came to think the thoughts you need to communicate. You can adjust your language and style to a reader much like yourself as you are now or as you remember yourself to have been.

The more difficult problem emerges when you recognize that many in your audience are people who, for one reason or another, may actually be antagonistic to your ideas. In order for them to make personal sense of your words in a way that does not threaten their understanding of the world, they may use (unconsciously) the ambiguity of language to distort their interpretation in ways that reinforce and support their own ideas of the world rather than clarifying the ideas you wish to communicate. Or they may interpret your claims accurately, but believe that these claims are false, distorted or mistaken. Your real task as a writer is to communicate successfully with this part of your audience for, if you are successful with them, then you can be quite sure that you will be successful with the others.

You need to know who this part of your audience is:

1. so that you can include the information they don't know but need,
2. so that you can support the claims they need to believe on their way to thinking the thought which is your main point,
3. so you can clarify what they may find unclear and exemplify what they may find too abstract, and
4. so you can lead them through the logic of the ideas so that when you lay claim to your main point in the conclusion, they readily nod their head in excited agreement.

At first this may seem an impossible task. How can anyone know these things about people they have never met? Part of the difficulty is solved much like the way we come to know the audience for our expository writing. That is, by knowing ourselves and our past. If you are aware of who you are and how you came to believe your main point, you can remember who you were before and what information and thinking it took to get you to where you are now.

But the other part of this problem is more difficult because it involves characteristics of your audience which distinguish them from the person you are and have been in the past. This recalcitrant reader has different values from yours, different beliefs, different experiences, and s/he has probably formed quite different understandings of the world.

The only real choice we have at this point is to do some research, talk to people who, like our audience, disagree with us on the issue about which we want to write. And we should read what others have written about these issues. If there are any people out there who think these issues are important, then they have probably written about their ideas on the subject. If no one has written anything about these issues expressing an opposing idea, we should begin to wonder whether there really is an audience out there at all. Important issues get written about because thoughtful people want to understand them. Thus, while one takes a stand in an argumentative essay, one also recognizes that the completed essay is really one statement in a dialogue. While we hope we can convince the reader of the truth of what we have to say, we equally hope that, if we are wrong, our reader will correct our mistakes so that we may improve our understanding of the issues and their possible resolution. The real goal behind communication in an essay is understanding, not winning.

The important thing about research into the opposition and their writing is that, beyond getting a simple statement of their position as a counter-thesis to our own main idea (and thereby clarifying the issue), we can discover their reasons for their beliefs and the values, assumptions and presuppositions which have led their thinking to this position that is contrary to our own. Knowing this foundation for their thinking gives us the understanding of our audience we need to provide a common ground from which we can begin our essay, and it tells us where we will have trouble in guiding our audience to our conclusion. We gain insight into the information the reader may be lacking, and we come to know where we need to build arguments to convince the reader of important subsidiary points we need to use as stepping stones along the path toward establishing our main point.

COMPOSITION STRUCTURE

A good essay should have an Introduction that tells the reader what the essay is about (the subject), why it is worth reading (the issues and the values that make it important) and what the specific focus of the essay will be (the question at issue or Focal Issue).

The second major element of an essay's structure is the Body that develops the information and thinking required to support and understand the main idea (the Thesis) you want to communicate to the reader.

In the third element, the Conclusion, the author should try to present the main idea in a brief statement, utilizing the concepts and ideas the body has developed, to provide the reader with a clear, compact vision of the whole discussion, and particularly of its importance in regard to the common ground established in the Introduction, thus providing a sense of completion and overall unity. But before we explore each of these parts in some detail to understand how they can accomplish the tasks they must if our writing efforts are to succeed, lets think a bit about the content, the ideas an essay tries to communicate to the reader.

Getting Started

How does one decide what to write about? How does one come to know what it is that she/he wants to say? At first these may seem like much the same thing, but there is a vast difference between having something to say and being clearly aware of what that is. Before you get started composing an essay, you can save yourself a great deal of time if you first set about developing a clear and conscious idea of just what you want to communicate to your audience.

Usually, at this stage of your academic career, there are certain constraints placed on your writing by your professor. You are asked to respond to a specific question on an exam or you are asked to write an essay on a topic that has specific relevance to the material being covered in the class. Students often see such constraints as limitations on their freedom but this can be more of a help than a hindrance. We all have some ideas about almost any topic if we understand the language being used. The problem one faces lies in formulating ideas in a manner useful to oneself and then communicating them to another, the reader. Specific assignments should thus be seen as guideposts that offer assistance in focusing your ideas rather than hurdles to be jumped on your way to some other goal. When we go into the woods where there are no signs to guide us, we are likely to wander aimlessly and get lost.

Consider again the diagram, "The Critical Thinking Process ," presented in diagram 3. The application of this model can be as useful in clarifying our own ideas as it was in clarifying the basics of composition. Assuming this is the case, the task of clarifying our ideas is the task of clarifying the thinking that generates those ideas. Previously, we applied the model to understand the relationship between a piece of written communication and the audience. Now we need to apply it to the process a writer needs to go through before beginning the task of composition.

If you are going to think your way through to an idea worth writing about, our model says you should begin by developing a statement of the problem. In this case, it is probably your instructor's assignment that caused the initial conflict. However, the fact of that assignment is not relevant to the ideas assigned as a subject for your essay so you need to look for a conflict within the parameters set out by the assignment. For example, suppose your professor has asked you to, "Discuss the effects of the United States Constitution on contemporary society." The assignment almost gives you the subject and an analysis that tells you where issues may lie. You have to decide whether your subject will be the U.S. Constitution or contemporary society, but probably the course context will tell you which is more appropriate. If it were a sociology course or a twentieth century history course, the latter may be best, but if you were dealing with early U.S. History, then the former might be better. Relevant issues involve causal relations between them, but this is far too broad and unclear as it stands. Books could be written about any of a number of relationships that might be at issue in regard to these two ideas. You need to find a more specific conflict within this relation so that you can formulate a more specific question as a problem that is important enough to be worth writing about.

You could talk about law or economics or religion or education. These are all parts of social structure, and are thereby involved in causal relations over time, but they are still pretty complex. While you are thinking about this you might remember that something you were reading was discussing the individualism of U. S. culture. If U. S. culture is known for its individualism, and the Constitution was set up to define the nature of the relations between government and individuals, you might want to focus in on some issue in this area.

With these thoughts about the subject, you might begin to remember some ideas you had while reading or during class discussion. There was that discussion last week about how they fought during the Constitutional Convention over the question of slavery and it seemed like the fight was never really resolved but just ignored. That sort of seemed like the way psychologists describe how schizophrenics deal with conflict. They bury it. This is starting to turn into an interesting problem. "How might the individualism of our constitution and its failure to deal with the problem of slavery be related to the egoism and racism in modem America?" A tentative answer could be "The Constitution's schizophrenia is the cause of the racism in modern America."

OK! If you can get a thesis statement that is as clear as this, you have a place to start. You have something to say that is interesting and is concerned with the subject that was assigned. You may not be absolutely clear about what you want to say, but you have "a good idea," and the thesis statement can easily be modified along the way as you think out the problem, clarify the issues, do further research about the historical situation and about what others have to say, and while you discover who your opposition is. Having something to aim at will help you gather the specific information, explanations and support you need; and it will guide you as you construct a structured whole, where each part, each paragraph, each sentence and each word can be put in its proper place, leading the reader to an understanding and, perhaps, to an acceptance of the thesis.

THE INTRODUCTION

Keep in mind that you have a purpose in writing. You want to communicate something to the reader. Communication requires the willing participation of your audience. You can not force someone to pay attention and the reader's attention is required because the reader must think the thoughts you are trying to express.

People pay attention to what they think is important. While your audience for an assigned essay is, in a sense, a captive audience, your teacher is going to pay closer attention if you take some simple steps to show why what you are writing about is important enough to write about. It is probably best if you envision your reader as someone other than your professor, since then you can more realistically feel your responsibility to touch the interest of your audience and bring to the surface her or his sense of the importance of the subject or issue you are writing about. And most instructors will read and mark your essay as though he or she is that anonymous reader. After all, you are leaning to write because you will have real writing to do, not because this is some useless part of the curriculum that someone made up to torture students. People who write well succeed in this world because the complex work the world requires of people requires clear communication and a consensus built through well reasoned argument in social dialogue, and these tasks are largely accomplished through writing,

Thus, if you are writing a simple expository essay, answering a question on an exam, or writing a research paper for a history class, your introduction has two primary tasks to accomplish.

(1) Tell the reader what you are going to write about.

(2) Give the reader some reason for feeling the importance of your subject.

You can do this in a single sentence, a paragraph, or in an extended analysis of a complex issue. The trap many students fall into at this point is to begin with their thesis, and many instructors encourage this. After all, don't they say something like, "Tell the readers what you are going to say and then say it, and then tell them what you have said." But, your introduction should not try and say it all. If you could write a thesis statement which would communicate to the audience your main point (your thesis) you would not need to write a paper about it.

Your thesis statement makes sense to you because it is backed up by the thinking that led you to believe it. It will serve you well as a goal to guide the process of composition, but it belongs in the conclusion of your essay if it appears at all. To begin, you only need to provide a pointer that distinguishes what will be discussed from the context that gives it meaning and value. And this must be accomplished with language that is clear to you and your audience.

Thus, in response to your instructor's question about the effects of the U. S. Constitution on contemporary society, one might begin:

Within the history of our nation, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 can be seen as having shaped the personal identity of contemporary American citizens more completely than any other single event.

This does not just repeat the question but gives it a particular focus within the question's generality. It provides a context (this will be an historical, psycho-social essay), tells the reader the subject of the essay (the Constitutional Convention of 1787), and suggests to the readers that this will be personally interesting because it will give them insight into themselves as American citizens. Within the boundaries laid out by this introduction one could write a thorough essay developing the historical context of the Constitution and the dynamics of the principal issues and people involved. One could then go on to show how the particular characteristics of American individualism were fostered. (Notice that this introduction does not challenge the readers critical awareness by making a bold claim. Rather, it suggests a possibility which implies a promise to discuss this thought, filling it out so the reader will be able to make their own judgments.)

However, this introduction takes an authoritative stance. It has already staked out its claim, though in properly hesitant terms since the claim has not yet been discussed at all. But, if your readers have their own ideas about personal identity that conflict with even this weak general statement (perhaps they think religion is far more formative than politics), you may have already alienated them.

Your essay can get beyond this problem and even take a more aggressive stance by not simply presenting an exposition from an authoritative point of view, but rather, by developing an argumentative essay. For example, you might modify and add to the above:

Within the history of our nation, the Constitutional Convention of 1787 can be seen as having influenced the personal identity of contemporary American citizens as well as the Structure of their social interaction. While few would doubt the economic and political success of the nation created during that summer in Philadelphia, the increasing racial tensions of the past forty years raise a question whether the failure of the Convention to deal with the conflict between slave owners of the South and abolitionists of the North did not plant the seeds of a national schizophrenia that still plagues the attempts of our country to achieve a truly pluralist society.

Such an introduction would provide the foundation for a more sharply focused argumentative essay that would allow you to deal with your professor's question while providing a deeper analysis of the issues raised. This introduction has weakened further the claim which establishes the subject ("can be seen") . Consequently, those who might disagree with the claim will not find it so objectionable. The subject is then analyzed into general subdivisions while rejecting economic and political concerns as not of immediate interest. As it stands, the jump to the question in the last sentence is a bit abrupt and could stand another sentence or two preceding it to explain where this particular sentence came from, but you could postpone this since you will want to revise the introduction at least once more when you have finished the first draft of the whole.

By ending, the introduction with a question, you establish the focus or "question at issue," and you involve the reader in the argument you plan to develop. You pose a problem for him/her that should engage his/her active thoughtful participation. And while you have hinted at the conclusion for which you plan to argue, you have not directly challenged your opposition, the real audience you need to address.

Much academic writing is primarily argumentative because, in the reasoned confrontation of ideas with one another within a respectful dialogue of minds, people grow in understanding and knowledge. Argument embeds reason in our ideas about the world, forcing us to attempt to avoid contradiction and bias since the presentation of an argument recognizes that the conclusion is at issue and needs support to be believed.

THE BODY

Whether you are writing an argumentative essay or an expository essay, the Body is the explication (5) of the idea you have introduced. It develops the idea and its context in sufficient analytic detail for your audience to understand more specifically the generalizations of the introduction, and it interprets the idea in its relations to the context from which it derives its relevance (its importance). As an analysis, the body expands on the main idea by dividing the whole into a set of interrelated topics, each dealing with a part of the idea. In a short essay, this may correspond to a series of sentences, while in a longer piece, each subsidiary topic may deserve an entire paragraph. (6) In both cases, the unity and completeness of the essay derive from the adequacy of the analysis which provided the parts.

Consider our Introduction example. The nature of the causal relations between the "Constitutional Convention" and "personal identity" is not obvious, or is at best, ambiguous. We need a clear understanding of these two concepts to clarify their relations. One might provide an analysis by recognizing that it was the deliberations of the people at the Convention that created the US Constitution, and that the Constitution determines the structure of the institutions of government. These institutions define the relations between government and the citizens. (7) Thus, the structure of the body of your essay might begin with a paragraph about the framing of the Constitution, proceed to a discussion of particular details that create relevant institutions, and develop a clear understanding of how the Constitution makes these institutions part of public life (a paragraph with a good example might clarify, your abstract thoughts at this point). A final paragraph (or series of paragraphs) could then present a picture of your contemporaries in terms linked to these institutional structures. For example:

Since the Constitution placed the rule of law and the role of the courts above the authority of the Administration (or Congress, short of a two thirds vote), Americans are loathe to give up when they feel wronged by other citizens, or even by the government itself. Few will hesitate to sue their doctor, their neighbor, or a business if it appears a wrong has been done. Cost is the only real limitation and the popularity of LA Law, The Peoples Court, and a host of other television shows attests to a fascination with the courts that has given us an international reputation as an "adversarial society."

Since your analysis of the main idea is complete and clear at this level of detail, the structure it provides to the essay will allow for rational transitions between the paragraphs. The reader will never have that feeling of being lost, asking, "How did I get here?" The unity of the essay's parts will be the unity of the single idea from which the parts were derived.

Structuring the body of an argumentative essay is exactly parallel to this structuring of an expository essay. The difference is that the analysis needs to go a step further. That is, not only do you need to show that the Convention is related to the personal identity of the citizens through description and exposition, but you need to argue that there is a connection, through the Constitution, between the two conflicting forces of personal development which have led to the "schizophrenia" of a racist culture valuing pluralism.

Thus you might note that the fear of tyranny that created the separation of powers and the dominance of the courts was the same fear that created republican federalism which retained many of the state's rights, especially the right to determine who should vote. While the Constitution was a revolutionary document, fear was creating counterrevolutionary forces that blocked the Convention from achieving a rational consensus. The institutionalization of states rights allowed the South, with voting rights limited to property holders, to continue slavery, and to justify it based on a deliberate racism. All men were created equal but only white males were men. (8)

In short, while citizens stand before the court and the law as individuals, the institutions of the Administration and Congress at state and federal level can lump people together in groups defined by somewhat arbitrary principles of categorization. In developing your argumentative essay, you could maintain the same structure as I previously detailed for the expository essay, simply bringing in the role of fear (9) in the framing of the Constitution, showing how the Courts and the Administration have differed in their development and how their relations with the citizens are differently defined. The body could then be brought to a close with the example of the individual standing, before the courts contrasted with the group seeking group protection from the Administration and Congress through the will of the "majority" (represented by fearful special interest groups, PACs, etc.) with strong and privileged power derived from the federalist and republican institutions of the Constitution.

THE CONCLUSION

The Conclusion must provide the reader with a sense of completion, an assurance that this is the end and that there really isn't anything more to say about the Focal Issue. To accomplish this you want to reach back to the beginning of the essay to satisfy the interest you created there and clearly present your main point. This should be more than a restatement of the Introduction. You have developed more precise and powerful language during your exposition, clarifying key concepts that you needed to express the full import of your thesis. Your use of this language in the statement of your thesis will remind your reader of the path you followed, reinforcing the points you have made and the unity of your idea. Do not let yourself fall into the trap of repetition. Make the conclusion do something with the ideas you have developed, following out implications of your main point in respect to the values that created the importance of the issue in the first place. Thereby the reader will feel the value of the time spent reading your words.

Since the analogy to schizophrenia has played a role in reminding the reader of the original question raised in the introduction to the argumentative form of the essay, one might use it well in the conclusion also:

Individuals are dominated by two strong forces. On the one hand there is the ego, striving to expand its control of the world around it, while on the other hand there is fear of the unknown world just outside its control. Governments are established to help the citizens in both: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on one hand, and security on the other. But the security of the schizophrenic is bought by denial, particularly the denial of our fellow human beings for it is they who are the most difficult parts of our world to know and understand. We seldom fear what we really know and understand. The opposition of states rights to civil rights has tended to thwart the progress of understanding and social stability ever since the closing gavel of the Constitutional Convention.

GENERAL RULES FOR WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS

The following guidelines should be used for the written essays assigned in this class. The rules given are specific but the ideas behind them are general. You may vary the rules if you wish but understand the goals they seek to implement and do not thwart them without justification. These guidelines should serve you well for assignments in other classes if your teacher does not provide a specific style sheet for assignments.

Rule Number One - Every decision you make as a writer is subservient to the goal of communication. (This rule is the guiding principle of all aspects of writing.)

Rule Number Two - Type if at all possible, and be sure your print ink is dark enough to read easily. (The greatest benefits you will derive from your assignments are from rereading what you have written and from reading the comments your teacher or other readers make. If she/he or you have to struggle to read the text, you will both be much more likely to misunderstand both the bad that needs correcting and the good that needs to be rewarded.)

Rule Number Three - Leave large margins all the way around each page, 1.5" on the top, sides, and on the bottom. Use space and a half or double space for all text excepting indented quotations of two lines or more. (White space is restful for the reader's eyes and your instructor cannot write you useful comments if there is no convenient place to write. Staple pages in the upper left hand corner and put your name in the upper right hand corner of the first page. No binders or folders please.)

Rule Number Four - Reference all quoted material, data and paraphrases, either in the text or with footnotes. Have a proper bibliography of the references you cite (Besides giving the reader some sense of security about the accuracy of what you are saying, there is the possibility that one might want to verify what you have claimed. Use a standard form of reference and bibliography from any good English style manual.)

Rule Number Five - Proofread your writing for spelling, punctuation, grammar, intelligibility. paragraph transitions, and structural unity. (Things that seem like small errors to you, since you know what you mean, may well make your intention impenetrable to your reader. Once the mechanics are good, try to read your essay as though you were seeing it for the first time. If a sentence needs something that is said in the next sentence in order to be understood, then the later ideas should probably be presented first, or, at the very least, you should put it in the same sentence.)

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1. The Oxford English Dictionary. "Compose" is from the Latin verb, poser, to place, to put down or to lay down, with the prefix, com, Latin for together.
2. It does not make much sense to argue with those who already understand and agree with the point we are trying to communicate.
3. The Oxford English Dictionary. Literally, the Greek root of the word "problem" means, "to throw out or put forth." (It is interesting that our English words, "purpose" and "propose," both derive from the Latin root, propositum, which also means "to put forth.")
4. Linguists have discussed for some time the role of redundancy in the grammar of languages, but I am unaware of any discussion of the role of semantic redundancy as an element of composition and its role in achieving clarity.
5. "Explication" is another of those French words that found its way into the English language because of the power and clarity French writers developed in their use of language while the English were still finding their native language somewhat inadequate for the purposes of abstract thought. The French root verb, explicare, meant, "to fold out," "to display," "to develop what is explicitly contained in something," but the earliest use in English seems to be in 1528 as "explication," meaning "The action or process of stating or describing in detail." [OED]
6. You should note that each paragraph may be viewed as a mini essay, dealing with a discrete part of the larger whole. However, since such paragraphs do not have to stand alone, they can gain their context from the larger work in which they are embedded. Thus, their introductory and concluding sentences must create transitional links to the preceding and following paragraphs rather than the open ended links of an essay's introduction and conclusion which first attract the reader's attention and later release the reader with a sense of satisfied completion.
7. In a small essay, your analysis will probably only be obvious to the reader from the structure of the essay it creates and the ideas it generates. However, in a longer essay, the basic analysis should probably be presented as part of the introduction so the reader will have a premonition of the transitions you will be developing as the essay progresses.
8. Of course, even the good abolitionists of the North saw women as undeserving of full citizenship. Article XV gave the right to vote to all races in 1870 but women were not granted full citizenship until Article XIX became a part of the Constitution in 1920.
9. A paragraph discussion of fear and the nature of schizophrenia might fit in well, either right at the beginning of the body or as a second or third paragraph. This would be fitting because the Introduction had implied to the reader that this concept would play a key role in the essay and because it will tie the beginning of the body (the framing of the Constitution) with the end of the body (why we are failing to achieve a pluralist society.)

DRAFT - 01/04/2007 - Copyright - Chris Storer