Insignificant Wranglings

Today’s Plan:

• Sicart Summary Paper Details
• Crafting a Thesis and Handling Evidence
• Homework

Syllabus Change

The calendar suggests that you will start playing Walking Dead this week. I want to hold off on that until this coming weekend. The focus of this week is to draft, revise, and submit the Sicart analysis paper.

This paper serves a few different purposes:

• First, it provides me with a diagnostic, something I can use to assess your writing proficiency entering the class. Having a sense of where folks are helps me focus future instruction sessions (do I emphasize introductions/kairos? transitions? evidence? etc etc). This paper will be the most formulaic you write all year–I’ll detail pretty much everything the paper should do. That way I have a clearer picture of how well you execute the standard academic review paper (stock material: writing is not math, writing cannot be taught)
• Second, it ensures you have a deeper sense of Sicart’s theory in place *before* we start playing games

Papers will be due Friday at 10:00am. We’ll meet in the Ross computer lab on Friday, where I will ask you to construct our heuristic, the reflective tool we’ll use in the gaming journals, before we start playing TWD this weekend.

Invention/Content: What Should This Paper Do?

So our first paper is one of the most basic in academia: the academic summary paper. Sometimes this is called a review essay. Whatever you call it, the principles are fairly simple: you condense a few hundred pages of someone else’s ideas into a few thousand words. You do the reading and lay out its claims, methods, evidence, and recommendations as clearly and concisely as possible so someone else doesn’t have to read the whole thing to have a strong understanding.

Depending on your academic trajectory, you’ll write a lot of these. Scientists do a tremendous amount of academic compression when writing grant applications (and most scientific work in the public or private sector relies on grants). Before someone gives you money for an experiment or trial, they want to know why you think your new idea will work. Que 3000 pages of reading to write 4 paragraphs (not a joke).

Humanities students will do this kind of work as well. If your writing about Shakespeare, then you will have to at least gloss other major interpretations of a work before offering your own. The higher you move up the academic ladder, the more thorough your lit reviews. Virtually every academic article–be it in the sciences or humanities–will require a literature review. And, if you are planning on going to law school, they woo boy do you need to learn how to concisely summarize previous opinions.

Okay, enough blather. Let’s get to work. I’m going to break the assignment sheet down via the traditional cannons of rhetoric:

• Invention (What is this paper about? How can I generate ideas?)
• Arrangement (How should I order the material in this paper? How should I construct my paragraphs?)
• Style (For this paper, I want you to take a swing at APA formatting)

Put simply: Your task is to use our readings to identify and explain what Sicart believes makes an ethical game. Your paper needs to address at least these three overarching elements:

• Player Complicity
• Meaningful Choices / Wicked Problems
• Reflection

We can think of these elements across two different vectors: developers and players. As you are generating ideas for the paper, think about what Sicart tells us about both developer and player responsibility for all three of these elements. (And feel free to use material from our collective document!).

Also, be sure to check out those lists of questions Sicart provides on pages (I think) 108-110.

Your summary should contain a quote or paraphrase from each assigned reading (the article, 5-28, 62-77, 91-101, 104-110). It might take you several paragraphs to discuss each element above–they have many moving parts, and a paragraph should really be about one idea.

Organization / Arrangement

This first assignment checks your handle on the fundamentals of academic writing. These include:

• Argument. Does the paper’s introduction lay out a CLAIM rather than ask a QUESTION? Does the introduction lay out what the paper will conclude? Does it include specifics? I cannot stress the importance of crafting a sophisticated thesis paragraph (not a statement). Let me clarify that you are writing an evaluation of Sicart. Your purpose is to explain his theory of ethical games to someone who has not read his book. I am *not* asking you to evaluate Sicart’s theory. When you are writing academic reviews, I shouldn’t necessarily be able to tell whether you agree with the review or not. You present the information, and leave it to the reader to make her own judgement (this is obviously different from argumentative writing, where you defend a particular position). This writing has an argument only insofar as it argues for an interpretation of Sicart’s work. You will have an opportunity to challenge/respond to Sicart’s work in the next paper.
• Paragraph StructureDoes each paragraph open with a topic sentence that lays out the claim of that paragraph? Does it transition into and contextualize evidence? Does it supply evidence (quote, reason, anecdote, etc). Does it summarize and then analyze evidence? [Note summarize and analyze are two different things!] Does the closing sentence of the paragraph “end” the thought by referring the specific claim of the paragraph back to the overall argument of the paper?
• Handling of Evidence I’ll be paying closer attention to two of the elements above–how well do you transition into a quote? Do you know how to contextualize a quote [that is, briefly tell the reader where the quote falls in view of the original author’s argument]. What do you do after the quote? How deftly can you summarize the quote–putting it into your own words in a way that “opens” it up for the reader without sounding too repetitive. This is a skill, a real hard one. AND then, how well do you add something to that quote/evidence that does something with it? For instance, if you are talking about player complicity, what can you add to the quote(s) from Sicart to help me understand it more. Do you recognize what keywords in the quote require more explication? Do you have personal experience that can help illuminate the concept? Do you have something to add to the quote to amplify its argument? Extend? Examples?

Format / Style
This paper should be formatted in APA format, but it does not require an abstract. It does require a title page and a Running Head. The paper should include a References list. It is quite likely that Sicart will be the only reference on the list (I am just checking for global formatting). Information regarding APA formatting is in the Hackers and Sommers Pocket Manual or can be found at the Purdue University OWL.

Papers should include an APA Title page (just so you get some experience formatting one) and a running head (APA has really weird rules for the header/page number–I am testing whether you can find and execute these rules). Papers will need a reference list (even though I doubt there will be more than two sources).

Looking through past papers, expected length is 1200 to 1700 words.

Crafting a Thesis Paragraph

Below I articulate three important elements of writing that I will use to evaluate your first paper: developing a specific thesis, properly contextualizing and analyzing evidence, and maintaining logical development.

That said, every piece of academic writing should offer a “thesis” in the introduction. I tend to hate this word, because it comes with so much baggage. For me, a strong thesis lays out AS SPECIFICALLY AS POSSIBLE what information a paper will present. It is a kind of idea map. Let me show you a few potential thesis statements:

• I/this paper explain(s) Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment
• I/this paper explain(s) Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment, noting his key terms and summarizing his suggestions for new teachers
• I/this paper explain(s) how Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment might create problems for teachers who prioritize grammar as the central concern of writing instruction

All those examples are bad. Though not equally bad. The first one is an F. The second one is also an F. They are equally devoid of specific thought. They are a placeholder for a thought that, at the time of writing, the writer did not yet have.

The third one is better. It is in the high C, low B range. It could potentially be higher based on what comes before or after it.

Okay, so what does an A look like? Examples:

• I explain how Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment emphasizes the importance of familiarizing students with assessment rubrics, often through practice norming sessions
• I explain how Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment calls for teachers to separate grading and assessment from the act of providing feedback. When students encounter feedback alongside grades, they often receive that feedback as a justification for a (bad) grade rather than as an attempt to guide and develop their abilities. Inoue makes clear that providing distance between grades and feedback increases the likelihood that students engage and implement feedback
• I explain how Inoue’s theory of anti-racist writing assessment challenges traditional enforcement of “standard” English on the grounds that it severely and unjustly punishes students from multilingual backgrounds. The evidence Inoue presents creates problems for teachers who prioritize “proper” grammar as the central concern of writing.

Here’s the deal y’all: WRITE YOUR THESIS LAST. Trust me, I’ll know if you write the introduction before you write the paper. Pro-tip: when you are done with your rough draft compare the thesis in your intro to the conclusion. You won’t know what a paper is actually going to say until you write it!

Pro-tip #2: academic and professional writing are not mysteries. This isn’t Scooby-Doo. Don’t keep me in suspense. Make sure all the important things you find in the course of a paper appear in the first few sentences, paragraphs, or pages (depending on the length of the paper). Front load, front load, front load.

Remember that an actual, breathing human is grading your papers. Sometimes they are grading as many as 80 to 100 papers a week. I’m not supposed to say this, but very often they are formulating an attitude toward your paper from the first paragraph. If it is some lazy first-draft-think-aloud-stream-of-consciousness-bullshit, then it is highly unlikely that anything you do later in the paper is going to reverse that first impression.

Let’s talk about some examples.

Working with Sources

In the humanities, a lot of the evidence we supply for claims comes from texts. We work not only with quotes, but also ideas. So let’s talk about some fundamentals for working with sources and organizing a paragraph. Here’s what the rubric has for working with sources:

• Is the evidence in each paragraph sufficient to support claims?
• Does the writer’s transitions provide enough context to help a reader? A description of the methods to understand the value of a statistic, for instance, or enough explication of a quote’s significance? Do I feel like I know where the evidence comes from or is it suddenly thrust at me?
• Connect the evidence to the claim of the paragraph? Put the evidence in conversation with other paragraphs?
• Is it clear where a source stops thinking and the writer’s own thoughts begin? Is there an “I” that differentiates the writer from her sources/”they”? Is the writer adding something to the quote, or just leaving it there?

Plagiarism isn’t only stealing words, it is stealing thoughts, ideas. It is using someone else’s ideas without “attribution.” You can use a sample in a song as long as you pay a royalty. Even if you play the riff yourself, you have to credit the original artist. Same thing with ideas. If you paraphrase an idea from Sicart, if you use a term from his work, then be sure to make a parenthetical reference with a page number (note, you can still reference online works without page numbers in APA–remind me to show you this on Friday).

Sicart’s theory of ethical games centers around an idea of play as more than merely diversion or enjoyment. Sicart’s believes play is important because it allows us to explore ourselves and our beliefs. He refers to the ambiguity of moral rules as wiggle room, writing: “To play is to inhabit a wiggle space of possibility in which we can express ourselves–our values, beliefs, and politics” (p. 9). Play, as imaginative activity, makes possible explorations that we might never consider in our regular daily lives. Of course, not all play might meet Sicart’s notion of wiggle rooom. Playing Madden Football allows me to pretend I’m an NFL executive, but rarely does it call me to question my personal or political beliefs. But X game, however, does make me confront questions of Y and Z. When evaluating the ethical power of a game, Sicart’s notion of play asks us to think about how much wiggle space of possibility the game provides.

Next paragraph begins with some kind of transition. Then topic sentence. then context some evidence.

Even if I took the quote out, I need a reference. This is called a paraphrase: when you put someone else’s idea into your own words.

Sicart’s theory of ethical games centers around an idea of play as more than merely diversion or enjoyment. Sicart’s believes play is important because it allows us to explore ourselves and our beliefs. He refers to the ambiguity of moral rules as wiggle room, noting how play, as imaginative activity, makes possible explorations that we might never consider in our regular daily lives (pp. 8-9). Of course, not all play might meet Sicart’s notion of wiggle room. Playing Madden Football allows me to pretend I’m an NFL executive, but rarely does it call me to question my personal or political beliefs. But X game, however, does make me confront questions of Y and Z. When evaluating the ethical power of a game, Sicart’s notion of play asks us to think about how much wiggle space of possibility the game provides.

Note how a paraphrase requires a reference to the specific point in a text that contains the idea I am rewording.

Avoiding Plagiarism: Providing Contextual Information and Attributing Sources

Essentially, I consider handling sources a 4 part process. There’s the signal, the quote/evidence, the summary, and the analysis. While we’ll be using this specifically for direct quotes today and this weekend, this is essentially the underlying structure for most (academic) argumentative paragraphs: a claim, followed by evidence, and analysis. 

• Signal: who, what, where, when. Note that what/where can be a reference to a kind of media [article, book, poem, website, blog post], a genre [sonnet, dialogue, operational manual], or location/event [press conference, reporting from the steps of the White House]. The signal helps create ethos, establishing the credibility of your source, addressing their disposition toward the issue, and positioning them within the context of a particular conversation. 
• Quote/evidence: in-line citations use quotation marks and are generally three lines or less. Block citations do not use quotation marks and are indented from the rest of the text. Generally, quotes present logos of some kind–be it in the form of statistics or argumentation. Of course, quotes can also be used in an attempt to engender pathos, or a strong emotional reaction. 
• Summary: especially for block quotations, you need to reduce a block of text to a single-line. You need to put the quote in your own words. Because language is slippery, and your readers might not read the quote as you do. So, offering a summary after a quote– particularly a long one (which many readers simply do not read)–allows readers an opportunity to see if they are on the same page as you. 
• Analysis: Reaction, counter-argument, point to similar situation, offer further information, use the bridge, “in order to appreciate X’s argument, it helps to know about/explore/etc. This is where the thinking happens. 

Here’s an example; let’s say I was writing a blog on the struggles of newspapers to survive the digital transition, I might want to point to the October 15th, 2009 NYT’s article dealing with the Times Co. decision to hold on to the Boston Globe.

In his recent article, Richard Perez-Pena explains that the Times Co. has decided to hold onto the Boston Globe, at least for now. Perez-Pena explains that the Times Co. has been trying to sell the newspaper for the past month, but, since it hasn’t received what it deems a credible offer, it has decided to pull the paper off the market. He writes:

Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University who has closely followed The Globe’s troubles, said it might be better for The Globe to remain with the Times Company than to go to a new owner that might do more cutting or replace top executives. “But the company has its work cut out for it in terms of rebuilding credibility with the employees and the community,” he said.

Perez-Pena explains that the Times Co. has been involved in bitter labor disputes over the past year, as advertising revenues continue to fall: this move, as Kennedy notes above, could be a solid first move in rebuilding an important relationship with one of America’s oldest, and most significant, newspapers. However, I think we still need to be a bit skeptical here: the fact that no one even proposed a reasonable offer for a newspaper that only 15 years ago commanded 1 billion dollars, the highest price ever for a single newspaper (Perez-Pena), does not bode well for the future of the industry. Like many newspapers, the Globe was slow to adapt to the digitalization of America’s infosphere. Time will tell if recent efforts are too little too late.

If you look above, I first contextualize the quote–not only supplying where/when/who it came from, but also providing some sense of what the whole article discusses. Then I focus attention toward a particular point and supply the quote. After the quote, I first reiterate what the quote said (providing a bit of new information). This is an important step that a lot of writers skip. Always make sure you summarize a quote, so a reader knows precisely what you think it says. Then, in the final part of the paragraph above, I analyze the material. I respond to it. In this particular case, I am somewhat critical of the optimism that underlies Perez-Pena’s piece.

A few other small points:

• Notice the first time I reference an author, I use there first and last name. After that, it is sufficient to only use the last name.
• Notice that I don’t have a citation after the direct quotation: the reason here is that it is obvious where the quote came from thanks to my signal. This is an electronic source, so there is no page number citation, were it a print source I would have to include that. NEVER USE A PAGE NUMBER IN THE SIGNAL TEXT, page numbers only belong in the parenthetical reference.
• Notice in my analysis that I make a parenthetical to the author–its because I pulled the price of the Globe purchase in 1993 from his article. I don’t directly quote it, so no quotation marks.
• Finally, there’s two kinds of quotations, in-line quotations and block quotations. Each have there own rules for academic papers (the dreaded MLA and APA guidelines). We will deal with those later in the course. In terms of blogging: quotes longer than 4 lines need to be blockquoted. Blogger has a button to help you do this. Blockquotes don’t receive quotation marks.

The First (Best?) Step Toward Avoiding Plagiarism: Crafting Quality Signals

Today I want to focus a bit on the first part of what I introduce above, crafting a quality signal that introduces a reader to a source (be it a quote or statistical evidence). Here it is:

Shakespeare’s Renaissance tragedy Romeo and Juliet documents the titular characters’ intense love and foolhardy demise. Shakespeare’s play leads us to question both the sincerity of young love. 

I came up with this sentence while prepping high school students to take placement exams, hence the literary material. But the semantics of the sentence make it useful for virtually every kind of writing. I especially want to highlight the importance of the verbs in this sentence, because choosing the proper verb often reveals both our appraisal of the source and our thinking on the questions it raises. 

[Author]’s [time period] [genre] [title] [verb] [plot summary]. [Author] [verb] [theme/purpose]. 

Ok, so in reality I have two sentences here. But, when dealing with non-fiction works, they can often be combined into one:

[Author’s] [time period] [genre] [title] [verb] [purpose]. 

As I indicated above, it is the verb that is the silent star of the show here. Consider for a minute the following example:

Malcom Gladwell’s 2005 book Blink exposes how subconscious part of our brain think in ways we are not consciously aware. 

Exposes. How does the meaning of the sentence change if I use the verb:

• suggests
• argues
• questions whether
• supposes 
• explicates
• details
• offers a theory of
• explores

Each of these verb choices subtly alters the way I approach the work discussed. Exposes suggests something secret and perhaps mysterious is being uncovered. Suggests suggests that an amount of doubt surrounds the issue. Supposes implies that I am hostile or at least quite skeptical toward the idea. This subtle indicator allows my an opportunity to softly align or distance myself from the source I am using. Good authors do this all the time to subconsciously prepare readers for their arguments. 

After reviewing the first round of essays, I want to go back and revisit my previous advice for handling a source. As an example, I want to revise a portion of Jess’s essay on gun control. She writes:

“Even gun owners who have never used their guns for self-defense find solace in the fact that the gun is there if needed.” I found this relating to my situation and completely accurate to how I feel about my gun being in my home quoted by Norman Lunger in Big Bang: The Loud Debate over Gun Control.

There are many different scenarios where a child is killed because a gun was left loaded, and not hidden well by an adult and an accident death occurred. But is that really the guns fault for being loaded, is it not the adult’s fault that left it in a non-secure location that was accessible by a child? As mentioned an accident in Big Bang: The Loud Debate Over Gun Control by Norman Lunger “In Florida, two young boys found a shotgun under a bed in their grandparents’ home. A six year old pulled the trigger, and a five year old fell dead.” It seems these things happen too often and how can they be avoided.

Part of what is missing here is that I don’t have an orientation to Lunger–is this a source with which Jess agrees? Or disagrees? Part of my confusion lies from the fact that, while I understand the particular passages, I don’t have any context for them, I don’t understand the purposeful argument of which they form a part.  

Previously, her essay documented her own reasons for wanting a gun: after a terrifying attempted burglary, she wanted a weapon for home protection. She then might use this kind of transition:

Based on my own experiences, I find myself relating to Norman Lunger’s idea that “even gun owners who have never used their guns for self-defense find solace in the fact that the gun is there if needed.” Lunger, in his contemporary [time] examination [genre] Big Bang: The Loud Debate Over Gun Control [verb] [argument/purpose]. 

Without more familiarity with the book, I cannot fill out the rest of the sentence. 

Here’s a second example, from G-Lo’s post on marriage and Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages:

In the book, The 5 Love Languages, by Gary Chapman he makes it clearly evident of common mistakes that men make when trying to show their partner in life how passionately they feel for them. He illustrates our mindset that we think that we, as men, are doing so well in our efforts to please our wives but yet cannot figure out why they aren’t thanking us daily for being so wonderful. That’s because a lot of us have been oh so wrong.

The key to our puzzle is unlocked in this book. “The problem is that we have overlooked one fundamental truth: People speak different love languages,” is a clear statement made by Gary Chapman. What he is saying is that everybody feels love in different ways. This famous and successful marriage counselor describes the five “love languages” as words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.

Here we have a bit more information to work with. What I would like to do here is 1) to make the transition into the quote less wordy and 2) tighten up the summary and response to the quote. So:

Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages makes clear the common mistakes men make when trying to show their love to their partners. […] 

Chapman identifies the key to our puzzle, writing that “the problem is that we [men] have overlooked one fundamental truth: people speak different love languages.” By speaking different languages, Chapman, a famous and successful marriage counselor, means that everybody feels love in different ways. He describes five different ways, or languages, that we must familiarize ourselves with: affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. 

Notice how I am able to describe Chapman in a parenthetical phrase. Notice, too, how detailing the purpose of the work helps us to understand G-Lo’s relation to it. If done properly, I don’t have to use words like “clearly evident” or “clear statement” later. I don’t have to say that I find his writing clear if I show how clear his writing can be. 

Let’s work with a passage from Sicart:

Player complicity means surrendering to the fact that actions in a game have a moral dimension. Players use their morality to engage with and adapt to the context of the game. When playing, players become complicit with the game’s moral system and with their own set of values. That capacity of players to accept decision making in games and to make choices base on moral facts gives meaning to player complicity.

This complicity allows players to experience the kind of fringe themes that games often develop without necessarily risking their moral integrity. By becoming complicit with the kind of experience that the game wants players to enjoy, they are also critically open to whatever values they are going to enact. And the degree of their complicity, the weight that they give to their values and not to those of the game, will determine their moral behavior in the game. (p. 23)