As you move toward completing your final papers, I wanted to spend some time considering introductions. As I’ve said repeatedly throughout class, the introduction is always the last thing you should write: its primary job is to provide a reader with an overview of what is coming and you won’t know yourself what is coming until after you have written the paper. Today I want to break introductions down into three primary parts: kairos, the thesis “statement,” and road mapping.
Kairos
In your reading for last night, Booth et al. urge you “to adopt the role of someone who knows what others need to know and to cast your reader as someone who doesn’t know but needs to” (19). In a sense, they are providing a cursory introduction to an ancient rhetorical concept: kairos. Literally, kairos translates as “opportune moment,” the right time to do or say something.
Scholars debate the implications of kairos–generally, there’s two schools of thought. First, there are those who frame kairos as a kind of recognition: a talented writer will be able to recognize a moment of opportunity and act accordingly. Second, there are those who frame talent with kairos as the ability to create moments of opportunity; for these scholars kairos isn’t merely a matter of chance, but rather one of skill and force.
Either way, when it comes to writing or communicating, you want your audience to have a sense of why now is the opportune moment for action. The best writers are able to do this subtly. This is one thing your introduction needs to address: why are you writing this now? Why am I reading this now? What can be done now that either/both couldn’t be done yesterday or/and tomorrow? As Booth et al address, there is the question of “why care about this?” In short, attending to kairos means making the relevance of your writing apparent. What is the problem or opportunity this writing seeks to address.
The Thesis “Statement”
The reason I highlight statement here is because I want to emphasize that the thesis isn’t always a stand alone sentence. Rather, it is the section of the introduction that makes clear the claim that the paper will argue. What are you trying to prove?
What specifically are you trying to prove? This is the point of the Booth et al reading–the best paper’s are able to narrow their focus as much as possible. As Booth et al explain, a focused thesis can rarely be explained in five words. Examining his example topics (page 43), we see how he recommends focusing on one event. Don’t study “the history of commercial aviation.” Rather, examine “the crucial contribution of the military in the development of the DC-3 in the early years of commercial aviation.”
Note that the second topic narrows its scope in terms of who (the military), the what (only the DC-3), and the when (the early years of aviation). My hope is that, as you have been writing this semester, you have discovered “just one thing” worthy of more attention and research. As you’ve been writing your book reviews and your medium.com essays, I have left you free to explore a number of different avenues. Now I will ask you to focus on just one. And I would advise you to follow the advice that Booth et al. provide on pages 46-47 by addressing the questions they offer (this week’s quiz in Canvas).
Road Mapping
Booth et al comment that you should be prepared to do a lot of writing as you figure out what you are trying to say. Essentially, everything you have written thus far this semester is this kind of inventive writing, “writing to understand” (38). Not all of this writing should be in the final draft, because much of it is there to help you discover your thoughts.
As you move into the final drafts of a paper, then you are ready to organize or arrange it in a way that makes sense. Only after you have done all that work are you ready to craft a road map for your introduction. To get a sense of what I mean by road mapping, look at the introduction to this article I wrote with my grad students. Or the final paragraph of the introduction to the “Postpedagogy and Web Writing” article you read early in the semester. Or, for a “softer” version, look at the very short introduction to my essay on ethics, social media, and my experiences with my daughter’s cancer. I end the introduction to these works by laying out the major sections of the essay, letting the reader know where we will go, and often giving a sense of why I am going in that order. This provides a reader with a sense of direction and purpose–two things that help them digest and engage your writing. (Nigel did a great job of this in his third medium essay).
Of course, you can’t road map a paper like this unless you have written it in a way that makes purposeful, rhetorical sense (first I need to x, then I can argue y, finally I suggest z). As you synthesize the material you have already read this semester, and add more (I hope) into the mix, you will need to think about how those things fit–what is the narrative trail you want, or need, your readers to follow?
Booth’s The Craft of Research nd Refutation
A final thought before I ask you to finish drafting your final paper: the quality of a piece of writing is often directly related to the consideration and care of its refutation. Ancient Roman rhetoricians conceptualized a speech in seven parts. Here I am concerned with the fifth part, refutation, in which a speaker/writer addresses the arguments of her opponents. It is not only the content of your counterarguments, but also their character, that often determine how an audience reacts to your writing. In short, if you are a jerkface, then you can expect harsh criticism (even when your audience largely agrees with you).
Booth reminds us that all writing is part of a conversation of voices and sources. Often, our judgement of a writer is a measure of three questions: “do they listen carefully? make claims thoughtfully? answer questions directly?” (17). In other words, how fair are you to your opponents? Does your writing indicate that you know their arguments intimately? Are you able to concede that they make worthy points requiring address? Or do you present “straw man” versions that exist only to be knocked down?
Let’s say I wanted to argue that conservatives do not support racial diversity. Who do I select as representing conservatives? This is a meaningful choice. If I end up selecting only the most radical of the voices (say Ted Nugent), then have I fairly depicted my opponents? If I wanted to argue against liberal economics, and I chose Elizabeth Warren as representative of the democratic party, then have I fairly depicted my opponents? In either case, I would say that you have chosen someone from the fringe who by and large does not resemble the “mainstream.” Part of being fair is reading sources carefully. But part of being fair is making sure that you are choosing the right representatives in the first place.
