Chapter 1: Time is on Your Side
Your Turn!
Activity
Write down what you’ve chosen as your two best pieces of evidence that you feel most clearly support the author’s complex argument. For each of those pieces of evidence, write one sentence explaining why you chose that piece of evidence, and what portion of the author’s argument that specific piece of evidence is supporting.
Now that you have two pieces of evidence and justification for why you are using those specific pieces of evidence, you are ready to move to the next stage of pre-writing and draft an observational paragraph. The goal of an observational paragraph is to
- Explain why you’ve chosen each piece of evidence
- Link your two pieces of evidence together
- Explain how that evidence supports a specific complex argument that the author is making within the text.
This is not your thesis, but, rather, a pre-writing activity that is meant to be an initial gathering of ideas that you will begin to shape into a more concrete close reading in the coming chapters. Do not worry about getting it all “correct” or “perfect.” Just get your ideas out and be willing to edit! While this paragraph will not be your exact thesis, it will contain elements that you can use later to write a strong thesis statement that proposes your analysis of the author’s complex argument.
When linking evidence into the author’s complex argument you should consider:
- How does the author’s specific language in the evidence I’ve chosen speak to the argumentative position the author is taking? In a basic way, consider whether the words that the author is choosing pointing towards a negative or positive attitude towards their general subject?
- Why has the author made the deliberate choice to use the words that you have chosen as specific evidence? What do those words mean? Why would the author choose those words and not an alternative?
- In what ways is the evidence that I have chosen a small compact example of the larger argument the author is making? In other words, how does the small specific piece of evidence chosen expand out to the author’s larger complex argument?
Let’s begin with an example and, after you read it, you can use it as a model to write your own observational paragraph. Here is the observational paragraph we wrote using 2 key pieces of evidence we found in our analysis of the essay given in the introduction to this textbook, David Bollier’s “The Plot to Privatize Common Knowledge.”
Examples
Though he is quick to clarify that he “straight-up” believes in copyrights and patents, Bollier is also equally quick to establish his claim that contemporary corporations have converted these property rights and claims into “crude, anti-social instruments of control and avarice.” He very clearly establishes a binary between these greedy corporations rushing to privatize, manage, and outright own songs, words and even prefixes, and the public who seek only to share “fundamental knowledge” for the sake of the “common