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You come late.

When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and


they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for
them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. You listen for a
while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the
argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers, you answer
him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against
you. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with
the discussion still vigorously in progress.
- Kenneth Burke

Notes on They Say / I Say:


The Moves that Matter in
Academic Writing
By Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

The central claim of the authors: It is our belief that the they say / I
say pattern cuts across different disciplines and genres of writing,
including creative writing. Although students must eventually master
the specific writing conventions of their majors, we believe that there is
no major or discipline that does not require writers to frame their own
claims as a response to what others before them have said. Indeed,
students who master the elemental moves prompted by the templates
in this book should actually become better able to appreciate the
differences between disciplines and genres (xviii).
They say / I say is the internal DNA of all argumentation. Coming
to recognize the way these moves work in their own writing are
positioned to become better readers, too, since the templates help
them to recognize the ways that authors are positioning themselves in
relationship to other arguments.
The book provides templates not to stifle critical thinking but to be
direct with students about the key rhetorical moves that comprise it
(xv); the forms dont dictate content but provide a way of formatting
how you say it (11).

Part I. They Say


The simplest template for academic writing is this one: They say ____;
I say ____. In other words, writingall writingis about listening to
others, summarizing their views, and responding with your own idea.
Its about more than asserting your own positionits about placing
that position within the conversation thats already been taking place.
The conversation doesnt have to be a response to great authors or
experts or some well-known personit can be a response to some
interior struggle, or to your sister. But theres got to be some tension:
When I was a kid, I thought that all people could succeed if they
just tried hard enough. The older I get, though, the more I see
that our chances for success are greatly restricted by our
location, our upbringing, and the institutions we participate in.
The goal of writing like this is NOT to play it safe. Good persuasive
writing is not about repeating the truths that are already accepted by
your audience; instead, persuasive writing can only have a purpose if it
challenges some belief your readers hold. However, this expectation
doesnt mean that you have to make ridiculous claimsand in some
cases, agreement can be a part of persuasive writing, if you have
something NEW to add to the accepted view:
Her argument that _____________ is supported by new
research/my own experience/changing attitudes that
______________.
Changing the world begins with a sentence like this: Of course,
someone may object that ________.
This structure works well for academic writing, but its not only about
the academyits also a good model that helps us realize we need to
listen to others different from us and find ways of engaging with them
thoughtfully and respectfully.
According to Graff and Birkenstein, argumentative writing needs to
identify WHO its responding to, early in the writing: To keep an
audience engaged, a writer needs to explain what he or she is
responding toeither before offering that response or, at least, very
early in the discussion. Delaying this explanation for more than one or
two paragraphs in a very short essay, three or four pages in a longer
one, or more than ten or so pages in a book-length text, reverses the
natural order in which readers process material (18).
So, start with what they say. (Then follow up with what an indication of
what you saywhat you intend to ADD to the topic. Otherwise it feels
like youre just going to deliver the party line.)

An illustrative quotation, a surprising fact/statistic, a personal


experience can work as a way of introducing what they say, as long as
it illustrates the view that youre addressing.
Templates for introducing the standard view
Americans today tend to believe that ____.
Conventional wisdom is that ____.
The standard way of thinking about ___ is that _____.
My whole life I have heard it said that _____.
Many people have agreed with ____, who claims that ______.
Presenting the standard view as your own
Ive always believed that ______.
When I was a child, I used to believe that ___________.
Presenting an argument that is often implied
Although none of them have ever said so directly, my teachers
have often given me the impression that ________
Though they may not admit it, _______ often take for granted that
________.
Setting up sides of an issue
In discussions of ___, one controversial aspect has been ______.
On the one hand, ______ argues __________. On the other hand,
_________ suggests that ___________. [Because of ________,] My
view is ___________.
When it comes to the topic of ______________, most of us agree
that ____________. But the agreement usually ends when we
reach the question of ____________. While some believe that
______________, others feel that ____________.
As you write, you should return to the view that youre responding to,
which helps maintain a sense of purpose and significance for the
writing. And it helps your readers see that youre honestly responding
rather than just presenting information about a topic.

Summarizing the positions of others


A summary is not your response, your opinion, or your griping about
the topic. And its also not just a string of quotations from the text.
Its tricky: A good summary requires balancing what the original
author is saying with [your] own focus. Generally speaking, a
summary must be at once true to what the original author says while

at the same time emphasizing those aspects of what the author ways
that interest you.
If you do an honest job of summarizing, your reader shouldnt be able
to tell whether you agree or disagree with the authors position.
Dont fall into the closest clich trapthats when what gets
summarized is not the view the author in question has actually
expressed, but a familiar clich that the writer mistakes for the
authors view. This is reducing an argument to a trope or clich or
truism that is much simpler than the real argument presented.
Since a text will often provide relevant information about a variety of
topics, youll want to summarize it in relationship to the topic that
youre addressing. This is not simplifying in the dishonest or reductive
sense but merely stressing those elements/points which are most
relevant to your argument. Also, summarizing the text in terms of the
topic that youre focused on will help you work from the big picture
down to the relevant detailsrather than just providing a list
summary of points with no main focus. (List summaries are typically
joined by and then, next, after that, etc. A list summary is what
your four-year-old nephew gives you when he summarizes his trip to
the museum: We saw bears! And then we went to a room that had a
bunch of igloos in it! And then we saw a dinosaur bone! And then
there was a room that had dead people in it! In a summary like this,
its not clear why the speaker is choosing to summarize specific points
of the experience.)
Balance objectivity with accuracy. In persuasive writing, most authors
are not merely stating somethingtheyre also participating in a
conversation by agreeing and disagreeing, providing examples,
challenging claims, etc. As a result, a good reader will recognize the
stance of the author and provide phrasing to indicate that stance in
their own summary.

Words to show that the author is making a claim: argue, assert,


believe, claim, emphasize, insist, observe, suggest
Words to show that the author agrees with someone elses idea:
acknowledge, admire, agree, corroborate, endorse, extol, praise,
do not deny, verify
Words to show questioning or disagreement: complain,
complicate, contend, contradict, deny, disavow, refute,
challenge, question,

Words to show that the author is making a recommendation:


advocate, call for, demand, encourage, implore, plead, urge,
warn

For example, in most persuasive writing, the authors arent just


talking about an idea. Instead, you might summarize by writing that
Jones disagrees with authorities on _______ by providing evidence to
support his claim that _________, and he wants to encourage his readers
to ___________ as a result of his assertions.

Crafting quotations to support your argument


When building on ideas from others, the biggest danger is not in
avoiding quotations altogether, nor is it in using too many of them;
instead, the biggest danger is assuming that a reader will understand
how the quote supports your argument. Avoid this danger by building
quotation sandwichesthe top slice gives the reader information to
understand the quote, and the bottom slice helps the reader
understand how the quotation is relevant to your own ideas.
Templates for setting up and following up on quotations.
Basically, X is saying ____________.
In other words, X believes ____________.
In making this comment, X argues that ______________.
Some quotations may not need a lot of set up. But those that are long
and complex, or filled with details or jargon, or that require additional
complexities (like metaphors), are especially likely to require a good bit
of front-loading before you insert the quotation.

Part II. I Say


Okay, so youve figured out how to fairly restate what somebody else is
saying. But thats just the beginning. For persuasive writing, you also
want to be able to add something to the conversation.
There are three basic ways to respond: I agree. I disagree. I both
agree and disagree.
Though these ways to respond seem pretty basic, in fact they become
even more important as your writing becomes more complex: readers
need a way to see how your ideas fit on the roadmap they already
have: are you going in the same direction as they are? Are you going
in a different direction? Are you taking a new route to get to the same
place? And why?
Merely agreeing, or merely disagreeing, is not enough. Youve also got
to say why it matters.
Templates for disagreeing:
I think X is mistaken because she overlooks ____________.
Xs claim that _____________ rests upon the questionable
assumption that ___________.
In light of recent research showing __________________, I disagree
with X that _______________.
X contradicts himself. On one hand he seems to suggest that
__________ while at the same time he also asserts that
_________________.
By focusing on ___________, X distracts from the real problem of
_______________.
Templates for agreeing
I agree with X that ________________ because my own experience
________________ confirms it.
Recent studies about _______________ support Xs point that
_____________.
Xs writing about _________________ helps to shed light on the
difficult/unrelated topic of ________________.
Since I agree with X that _______________, we need to reassess the
popular belief that ___________.
Most persuasive writing, then, walks a line between texts that line up
with the authors viewpoint and those which complicate or contradict
it. Usually, agreeing with some perspective also means disagreeing
with some other way of looking at things.

Templates for agreeing and disagreeing


Although I disagree with Xs main point, I concede that his point
about ____________ is persuasive.
Although I agree with X up to a point, I cannot accept her overall
point that ____________.
Whereas X provides ample evidence that __________________, X
and Zs research on _________________ convinces me that
_______________ instead.
A template for speculative exploration
I have mixed feelings about the text. On one hand, I agree with
X that _______________. On the other hand, I find his claim that
__________________ is problematic.

Placing yourself clearly in the writing


The danger of incorporating the ideas of other writers is that it can
become hard for readers to tell where your summary of others ideas
ends and your own stance begins. As a result, its important for you to
provide markers that help to indicate where you are beginning your
own argument.
Templates for marking off your own claims
My own view, however, is that _______________.
I believe, as X may not, that _________________.
Xs assertion that __________________ does not fit the facts.
Rather, the evidence shows that __________________. [In this
sentence youre using a claim to distinguish your ideas from
source X, and then youre letting the evidence establish your
perspective.]
You can also distinguish your claims from others by embedding their
idea within a sentence. This helps to attribute the idea to its source
while also providing your position on that ideaall within the same
sentence. Tricky, but smart.
Templates for embedding [Note that one template helps to distinguish
ideas that are different from your own while the other helps you
distinguish an idea that supports your own.]
I assert that what X calls ______________ is in fact
_________________.
Xs conclusion that __________________ adds weight to my claim
that ___________.

Acknowledging naysayers
Since persuasive writing is about persuading people to believe
something different than they already do, those people will have
different attitudes, values, priorities, or interpretations than you do.
Thats why youre writing. And you can build credibility by
acknowledgingrather than dismissing or ignoringthe beliefs of your
audience. Those beliefs are sometimes counterarguments, and if
you dont address counterarguments then you run the risk of being
seen as close-minded. You can even allow yourself to act as a
naysayer in a text.
Templates for introducting counterarguments
At this point I want to raise some objections inspired by the
skeptic in me. She feels that I have been ignoring the issue of
_________. ______, she says to me, ____________________.
Some readers, however, may challenge my view that
_______________. After all, many believe that
_____________________. In truth, my argument about _________
does seem to ignore _____________.
But is my idea realistic? What are the chances of it actually
being adopted?
Does the evidence Ive provided compellingly show ___________-?
Templates for introducing counterarguments held by a specific group of
people (liberals, Christians, capitalists)
Here many feminists may object that ______________.
Biologists, of course, may dispute my claim that _____________.
Though not all Christians think alike, a fairly common perspective
they hold, in opposition to my own, may be that
__________________.
Though labeling groups introduces a level of generalization that may
be uncomfortable, it also allows for the possibility of connecting your
ideas to the larger interaction of ideas. The third example shows a way
to avoid overgeneralization while still ascribing a view to a certain
group.

Answering objections
Its not enough just to acknowledge the views of othersyou also need
to answer them. And you need to answer them fairly, without mocking
or oversimplifying. And your response to the counterargument needs
to be more persuasive than the counterargument. Thats just wrong
is not persuasive, since its not backed up with any research or logic or

example. And, often, youll discover that finding a way to effectively


address a counterargument will allow you to refine your own position
by giving it greater depth and precision.
Giving up group while still holding position
Although I admit that ___________, I still maintain that __________
since __________.
Proponents are right to point out that _______________. But they
exaggerate/misrepresent the evidence when they say
________________.
While it is true that _________________, this fact does not
necessarily cause/indicate/show that __________________.
What if you discover that a counterargument is more persuasive than
your stance? Well, this discovery probably means you need to do
some major revision. One goal of writing is to help you extend your
own thinking, and a fair investigation of the evidence may mean that
you learn something new that changes your view. Thats not a bad
thing.

Part III. Some Additional


Considerations
Establishing significance
If it isnt clear why your audience should care about your writing, they
probably wont. Since youre writing to persuade someone to revisit
their position on some topic, one of the easy ways to help a reader see
the significance of your writing is by helping them see how your claim
may differ from their own. If youre writing about something that
everyone already accepts, theres not much reason to be writing about
it.
A thesis statement is not a bad place to establish significance by
identifying the tension between a groups current view and the position
that you advocate.
__________ used to think that ____________. But a shifting focus on
___________ has meant that _______________.
This position challenges the work of critics who have assumed
that ___________________.
Recent studies shed new light on __________, which previous
studies had not addressed.
If sports enthusiasts stopped to think about it, they might simply
assume that most athletes _____________. However, new
research/events show that ____________.
At first glance teenagers might say __________________. But on
closer inspection they might realize _______________________.
In addition to identifying which groups of people might care about the
topic, you probably also want to explain why they should care.
______ matters because _________.
Although ______ may seem unimportant, it is a crucial factor in
our societys investigation of ________________.
My discussion of ______________ is in fact addressing the larger
matter of ____________.
Hey, you might even be able to say that a good thesis statement
generally identifies your position in relationship to other positions and
then explains why your position on the topic matters.

Metacommentary
Metacommentary is the stuff in writing that tells the reader how to
interpret the ideas you present. Its a way of guiding the reader

through your ideas. In some ways many of these templates provide


ways to build metacommentary into your writing. But here are some
other places for metacommentary.
Templates to clarify and elaborate. You use these because, no matter
how clear your argument, sometimes readers will end up on a
sideroad. Generally writers assume that the reader is more familiar
with the topic than he or she really is.
In other words, _____________________.
What _______ really means is that __________________.
To put it another way, ___________________.
Template to prevent misunderstanding
My point is not that we should __________________, but that we
should ____________.
Template to provide a roadmap to your structure
The first section provides __________________ while the second
section _____________.
Having just argued that _________________, let us now turn our
attention to ___________.
Given this information about ______________ we can now begin to
investigate the dispute in more detail.
Thus, the position of ____________ is ______________. In contrast,
the position of ________________ is _________________.
Moving from general claims to specific examples
For example, _____________________.
________, for instance, shows that _____________.
____________ provides a specific illustration of _____________.

Improving the flow


Most of these templates are based on some recurring ways of relating
ideas to one another. In general you can establish a clearer flow of
ideas if you try to show the way that each is connected to the previous
idea and to the idea that follows. The words that help you show these
connections are called transitions. The most common relationships
indicated by transitions are
Addition: also, and, besides, additionally
Exemplification: after all, for example, to illustrate, specifically
Elaboration: by extension, that is, to put it another way,
ultimately
Comparison: along the same lines, likewise, similarly
Contrast: on the other hand, although, but, in contrast, despite
the fact that, however, nonetheless

Cause and effect: as a result, because, since, so, then,


therefore, thus
Concession: admittedly, although it is true, granted, of course
Conclusion: in short, in sum, to sum up, overall, ultimately

Another way to create connection among ideas is by using the


pointing words, like these, this, such, that, those; and like
his, her, its, and their. Of course, if you use pointing words,
make sure your reader can figure out what youre pointing to! An easy
way to do this is by following up words like this and those with a
phrase to rename whatever it is that youre talking about.

Useful exercises from the book (matched to the


1st edition)
I.1 --- Identify the positioning phrases that the student writer
uses.
1.1 --- Developing plausible they says for each claim.
2.1 --- Write two summaries of the same excerpt, for two different
purposes/focuses.
3.1 --- Identify top slice and bottom slice in someone elses
quotation sandwich.
4.1 --- Identify how the author of the excerpt positions herself in
relationship to the stances of those who have come before her.
5.1 --- Identify the markers the author of the excerpt uses to set of
her ideas from those of the sources shes building from.
6.1 --- Plant a naysayer in an excerpt from Schlosser.
p. 126 --- Identify the metacommentary tags in the Postman
excerpt.

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