The Five Analytical Moves

The  Five  Analytical  Moves   Move  1:  Suspend  Judgment  (understand  before  you  judge)   Move  2:  Define  Significant  Parts  and  How  They’re  Related     Move  3:  Look  for  Patterns  of  Repetition  and  Contrast  and  for  Anomaly   The  Method:   • Step  1:  List  all  details  (or  words)  that  repeat  exactly  and  the  number  of repetitions  of  each. • Step  2:  List  all  strands—groupings  of  the  same  or  similar  kinds  of  words, details. • Step  3:  List  organizing  contrasts—binary  oppositions  (e.g.,  open/closed, round/pointed). • Step  4:  Select  and  list  the  two  most  significant  repetitions,  the  two  most significant  strands,  and  the  two  most  significant  binaries. • Step  5:  Select  and  list  the  one  repeated  detail,  or  one  strand,  or  one  binary that  you  take  to  be  the  most  significant  for  arriving  at  ideas.  Write  one paragraph  explaining  your  choice. Move  4:  Make  the  Implicit  Explicit  (convert  to  direct  statement  meanings  that  are   suggested  indirectly)   Move  5:  Keep  Reformulating  Questions  and  Explanations   Six  Steps  for  Making  a  Thesis  Evolve:   1. Formulate  an  idea  about  your  subject—a  working  thesis. 2. See  how  far  you  can  make  this  thesis  go  in  accounting  for  (confirming)  evidence. 3. Locate  complicating  evidence  that  is  not  adequately  accounted  for  by  the  thesis. 4. Make  explicit  the  apparent  mismatch  between  the  thesis  and  selected  evidence, asking  and  answering  So  What? 5. Reshape  your  claim  to  accommodate  the  evidence  that  hasn’t  fit. 6. Repeat  steps  2,  3,  4,  and  5  several  times. Five  Kinds  of  Weak  Theses  and  How  to  Fix  Them:   Weak  thesis  statements:     1. make  no  claim The  Fix:  Raise  specific  issues  for  the  essay  to  explore. 2. are  obviously  true  or  are  a  statement  of  fact The  Fix:  Find  some  avenue  of  inquiry—a  question  about  the  facts  or  an  issue  raised  by them.  Make  an  assertion  with  which  it  would  be  possible  for  readers  to  disagree. 3. restate  conventional  wisdom The  Fix:  Seek  to  complicate—see  more  than  one  point  of  view  on—your  subject.  Avoid conventional  wisdom  unless  you  can  qualify  it  or  introduce  a  fresh  perspective  on  it. 4. offer  personal  conviction  as  the  basis  for  the  claim The  Fix:  Try  on  other  points  of  view  honestly  and  dispassionately;  treat  your  ideas  as hypotheses  to  be  tested  rather  than  obvious  truths. 5. make  an  overly  broad  claim The  Fix:  Convert  broad  categories  and  generic  (fits  anything)  claims  to  more  specific, more  qualified  assertions;  find  ways  to  bring  out  the  complexity  of  your  subject.