Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Patricia B Arinto
Communication Skills II
By Patricia B. Arinto
ISBN 978-971-767-149-4
The development and preparation of this module was made possible by a grant
from Metrobank Foundation, Inc.
Table of Contents
Unit I The Report, 1
Module 1 Selecting Your Sources, 3
Objectives, 3
Locating Your Sources, 3
Evaluating Your Sources, 5
Annotating Your Sources, 9
Module 2 Recording information, 13
Objectives,13
Summarizing, 14
Working with levels of generality, 16
Coming up with high level names, 17
The note-taking strategy, 19
Paraphrasing, 22
Quoting, 25
Direct Quotations, 27
A Note About Notecards, 29
Recap, 30
Module 3 Writing the Report, 31
Objectives, 31
Reported Speech: A Basic Feature of Academic Writing, 31
Beginning Your Report: Introducing Your Source, 33
Organizing Your Report: Coming Up With a Strong Topic, 36
Making Connections: Coherence in a Report, 41
Documenting Your Report, 42
Source notes, 42
Bibliographic/reference list entries, 43
Unit II The Critical Essay, 45
Module 4 Developing a Critical Stance, 47
Objectives, 47
Going beyond summarizing, 47
Strategies For Taking a Critical Stance, 48
Examining the evidence, 48
Looking at connections, 49
What about the other side?, 50
Assessing generalizability, 50
Some examples, 51
Appendix 4-1 Statements of Fact vs. Statements of Opinion, 55
Appendix 4-2 Statements of Convention vs. Statements of Preference, 61
Appendix 4-3 Fallacies, 67
Some common fallacies, 71
Unit 1
The Report
m sure that at this point in your academic career, you will have written
dozens of reports. Even as early as Grade 3, children are asked to write
some report or other, whether it is an account of a personal experience,
such as in a theme essay on What I did During My Summer Vacation,
or a list of facts gathered from various sources about a historical figure.
So why study the report at this point, you ask. The answer lies in the fact
that in the university, the report is so common as to be practically a
language or way of communicating. It is not an occasional activity, but a
way of life. You are asked to report in practically all courseshistory,
biology, anthropology, literature, art studies, architecture. And you report
practically every day, whether you are aware of it or not. What do I mean?
Well, is it not that even during class discussions, you are asked what soand-so said in her article, or to explain author Xs classification of leaders,
or to summarize in your own words for the rest of the class the definition
of sustainable development given by authors M and N? And then during
exams, you are asked to synthesize the philosophies of Hobbes, Locke and
Rosseau, or to trace the evolution of the democratic form of government,
or to explain how the postmodern novel differs from the classic realist
text.
The report is something youre expected to produce with some degree of
flair, with sophistication even. The written reports especially are supposed
to contain information from not just one or two sources but from at least
five sources. These are reports that are not just a patchwork of material
quoted from here and there but entirely new works that are creative, wellsynthesized, and just as good (if not better) accounts as your original
sources. For the report at the university level is a means not only of
reproducing knowledge but also of producing it.
Tall order, huh? But dont be intimidated. Well take this business of report
writing one step at a time, beginning with locating and evaluating sources
of information; taking down notes from your sources, including
summarizing and paraphrasing and quoting; writing the report; and finally
documenting your sources.
Well take for granted for the moment that the subject matter or topic of
the report is one that is assigned by the teacher or professor. It is not
something you choose yourself from out of the blue, or if you do choose it,
your choice is one of several topics in the course outline drawn up by your
professor. In any case, let us assume that you have a given topic.
Let us also assume that your report is expected to be an account of what
written sources have to say about the subject matter. You are not being
asked to give an account of something you experienced, as in an experiment
or a participant observation project. Neither are you being asked to
interview people about what they have experienced or what they know
about the subject matter. These two types of report you will certainly be
required to write sometime in your college career, but usually later, after
you have gone through special courses on qualitative and quantitative
methods of research. You will find that in the university, asking people
what they think of something is not just a matter of standing in a street
corner and accosting every passersby with your question. Neither is it as
simple as interviewing the people you know and then recording their
answers. There is a science to interviewing and to conducting surveys
that you have to learn, and you will do so in a course or two devoted only
to this.
On the other hand, the report that requires you to read various written
sources of information is fairly universal in college, and you are required
this type of report even as early as your freshman year. So this will be our
focus of study in this course.
Module 1
Objectives
After studying this module,
you should be able to:
1. Find bibliographic
What is one obvious source of information
sources of information
for this report? The newspapers, you say?
for a report; and
Thats right. You will certainly find news
2.
Evaluate whether a
stories on all three topics. But thats just one
bibliographic source is
source. And it is a limited source in the
reliable.
sense that newspaper articles are
themselves reports, or accounts of
information taken from other sources. So
even as you note information taken from newspaper accounts, also take
note of the sources of information used so that you can look these up
yourself, if necessary. Since it is a requirement of journalistic reportage to
always state their sources, you should find this type of information clearly
stated.
The newspaper reports on poverty incidence will probably cite as one
source statistics from the National Economic Development Authority
(NEDA). This is a matter of public record and it should be readily available
to you, either at the NEDA office itself or at its website. NEDA statistics
4 Communication II
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Unit I Module 1
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ACCURACY
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OBJECTIVITY
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CURRENCY
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COVERAGE
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10 Communication II
No, I did not have to read the book to be able to annotate it in this way. I
simply looked at the table of contents and the blurb at the back of the
book. The latter should be taken with a grain of salt as they are usually
intended to help sell the book. But if the blurb is a quote from the book
itself, then maybe we can suspend disbelief. An even better alternative is
to scan the books introduction. How did I know the articles in the book
were written by Japanese scholars? Well, the names told me, plus I scanned
the notes about the authors section. Altogether I spent about 5 minutes
evaluating the book and another 2 minutes to write down this annotation.
Are the index cards absolutely mandatory? Well, they do make for easier
handling. You can shuffle them and put them in your pocket. Theyre
neater and not so easy to lose, unlike slips of scratch paper or pages in a
notebook containing 10,000 other notes.
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Unit I Module 1
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Activity 1-1
Below is a list of topics. Choose one topic and then come up with a
working bibliography of eight sources of information on the topic.
In choosing what sources to include in your working bibliography,
apply the principles of evaluating sources discussed in this module.
And then annotate each of the sources you have chosen.
Your tutor may require you to submit your working bibliography
in 3 x 5 index cardsone bibliographic entry per cardduring
the First Study Session.
The topics to choose from are:
1. political awareness and involvement of the Filipino middle
classes
2. Japanese anim in Philippine popular culture
3. literacy and texting in the Philippines
4. mental health through the ages: changing perspectives
5. the politics of environmentalism
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Module 2
Recording information
Objectives
After studying this module,
you should be able to:
1. Summarize information
from a source effectively
and efficiently;
2. Use your own words
when summarizing and
paraphrasing;
3. Determine when to make
a direct quote, a
paraphrase, or a
summary.
First of all, you wont be allowed by your teacher to just submit a patchwork
of quoted material. You are expected to come up with a coherent report
that includes information from various sources. If you simply string quotes
along, the report will not be coherent at all. Janet Giltrow, in her book
Academic Writing (1999), uses the following figure to illustrate why
stringing along quoted material wont work:
14 Communication II
Original source
^^^^^^^^^^********^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^*******
**********^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^*********
******
Summarizing
What is a summary? Well, as Im sure you know, its a record of the
important or major ideas in a source. That is, it does not include the
supporting details for those ideas that were in the source. A summary is
also a restatement of those important ideas in your own words.
Lets take this one at a time. First, finding the main ideas. How do you
know which ones those are?
If you said paragraphs usually have topic sentences, youre quite right.
The topic sentence is the sentence that contains the key idea of the text. It
is also the most general of all the sentences, since the others are there in
support of the topic sentence.
But. Yes, but. To limit yourself to the topic sentence is to risk writing a
summary thats too general, or vague. Consider this passage and the
summary that comes after it.
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Is this all the original passage is saying? Wasnt the original passage more
specific than this? In fact, some of the supporting sentences in a text flesh
out what a broad topic sentence says and thus contain key ideas too. So
you must take them into account when writing your summary.
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16 Communication II
In this passage, there are many levels of generalityfrom the most general
such as stigmatizing effects of AIDS, to the most specific such as losing
custody of ones children if found to have AIDS. The question now is
choosing which ones to include in the summary. To choose only the most
general is to risk being vague.
Summary # 1 states the key idea of the passage but it does not communicate
the serious impact of non-disclosure of HIV status due to fear of the stigma
attached to having AIDS that is apparent from the specific cases cited in
the original passage. There is a need to include some of the details, but not
too much of these. To include too many specific details is to risk being
trivial. For example:
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Summary # 2:
Fearing rejection, discrimination, hostility, mistreatment, and even physical
violence, and desiring to avoid pity from others and feeling concern about
causing loved ones emotional pain, HIV positive persons often keep their
health status a secret even from their family and friends. Their fears are not
unfounded as many who are discovered to have AIDS end up losing their family
and friends, their employment and housing, and access to school and health
care. Rather than tell others, HIV-positive individuals end up isolating
themselves and thus becoming depressed and more anxious than ever before.
They buy their own medicines instead of having their insurance policy pay for
fear of the insurance company telling their employers, and they limit their
treatment options. The women dont negotiate for safer sexual practices with
partners because they are afraid that they will be found out to be prostitutes or
drug addicts, and their children will be taken away from them. (155 words)
This second summary makes it sound like the examples of what HIVpositive people do to avoid disclosure are general or true of all. In fact,
these are just examples that the writer of the original passage writes. Also,
it takes too many of the original passages words and phraseology. Consider
this third alternative summary:
Summary # 3:
Afraid of being shunned, ridiculed, maltreated, or pitied, many HIV-positive
individuals do not tell even people close to them about their health condition.
But not telling anyone makes them feel more isolated and helpless, which can
get in the way of care and treatment. For example, some choose to make do
with treatment that they can afford to pay for themselves, without assistance
from others. Many put up with unsafe sexual practices for fear of revealing their
health status to their partner. (82 words)
Observe the use of synonyms for the words and phrases in the original
passage. Also, the summary is only about a fourth of the original in length,
even as it includes all of the key points in the original passage.
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18 Communication II
Passage B: From Notes On My Life by Gregoria de Jesus as translated by Encarnacion
Alzona
Original text
When I was about eighteen years old, young
men began to call at our house, and among
them was Andres Bonifacio, who came in
company with Ladislao Diwa and my cousin
Teodoro Plata, then clerk of court, but none of
them talked to me of love, since parents in those
days were extremely careful and girls did not
want people to know that they already had
admirers. The truth, however, was that Andres
Bonifacio had already informed my parents of
his intentions and for nearly a year had been
trying to win their approval, although I knew
nothing about it. Three months more elapsed
before I learned that my father was against
Bonifacios suit because he was a freemason,
and the freemasons then were considered
bad men by our elders because of the
teachings of the friars; and at that time
precisely I was beginning to like him a little.
Six months later I had earnestly fallen in love
with him, and my father, though opposed at
first, in the end gave his consent because of
his love for me and because I told him frankly
of our love for each other.
In deference to my parents, we were married
in the Catholic church of Binondo, in March
1893, with Restituto Javier and his wife
Benita de Javier as sponsors; but the week
following, we were married again in the
house of our sponsors on what was then
called Oroquieta Street before all the
Katipuneros at their request, since they did
not recognize as valid our marriage in the
Catholic church. I remember that there was
even a little dinner attended by, among others,
Pio Valenzuela, Santiago Turiano, Ramon Basa,
Marina Dizon, Josefa and Trining Rizal, and
nearly all the dignitaries of the Katipunan. On
the evening of the same day, I was admitted
into the Katipunan and assumed the symbolic
name of Lakambini, swearing to obey its rules
and fulfill its sacred purposes. (324 words)
High-level names
Courtship
Long courtship
Working for parental approval
Paternal opposition
Katipunan wedding
Summary:
After a year-long courtship when she was only 18, during which he tried and eventually
succeeded in winning her parents approval, Andres Bonifacio and Gregoria de Jesus
got married. They had two weddings: one at a Catholic church, to please her parents,
and the other, held on the same day, a civil ceremony witnessed by Katipunan
members. She was then sworn in as a member of the organization. (68 words)
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Unit I Module 2
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Notes
Photographs as
bearers of truth
Photograph as
faithful
representation of
real object
Main topic
1st main
support
use of
photographs as
evidence
2 nd main
support
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20 Communication II
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light illuminating
the object
photographed
proof that the
photographed
was really there
3rd main
support
photograph as
certificate of
presence
photo attests to
the photographed
objects being
really present
to see is to
believe
camera
considered more
objective than any
other recording
technologies
it is the camera,
not the camera
man, who records
4th main
support
Unit I Module 2
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Giltrow calls the strategy for summarizing that we used above the notetaking strategy. We take note of the gist of each paragraph of the source
text. This allows us to:
1. check that we really understood the connections between each part of
the source text
2. check that we have really accounted for all parts of the source text
3. express the main points of the source text in our words, and therefore
avoid copying
4. manipulate and arrange the main ideas in a way that enables us to
express them briefly and coherently in a new text (that is, the summary)
The note-taking strategy is very useful for coming up with summaries of
long texts. Of course, it is not always necessary to do paragraph-byparagraph note-taking. When summarizing a really long article or chapter,
you can simply note down the gist of each page or section of the text. The
sections are usually labeled. But if you feel youre losing track of the
discussion, says Giltrow, you can always shift down to paragraph level,
registering each step of the discussion.
Activity 2-1
Now do some summarizing of your own. Take a long-ish section
(at least three pages) from among the sources you annotated in
Activity 1-1 and write a one-paragraph summary of it.
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22 Communication II
Paraphrasing
We have in fact been talking about paraphrasing in the section on
summarizing. For to paraphrase means to say something in your own
words. But in this section, I want to call attention to the fact that sometimes
we dont keep only to the main points of a source. We want to highlight
something said by a source, such as an explanation, without necessarily
collapsing it into only its key ideas. But at the same time, we do not want
to simply quote the original passage for it is too dense, or it is written in a
style that makes it difficult to understand. Indeed, even if we choose to
quote it, we are required to then interpret it, or clarify what it means. This
is when knowing how to paraphrase comes in handy.
According to Concepcion Dadufalza (1992), A paraphrase is essentially
a retatement that renders more transparent the full meaning of a piece of
discourse. , it is a kind of translation from one register of language to
another, such as from scientific discourse to ordinary lay mans terms;
from literary or poetic style to common discourse; from archaic writing to
present usage; or from slang to standard English. For a college student,
a paraphrase is an indication that he comprehends the meaning of his
references and is able to incorporate in his writing those views, ideas, or
just plain information which he has gathered from various sources in
language that is his own.
A paraphrase is a full rewrite of the original (Dadufalza). It could be
longer or shorter than the original, depending on your word choice and
choice of sentence patterns. But it does not include information that is not
in the original.
Consider the example below.
Passage D: From Canon Law on Marriage: Introductory Notes and Comments by
Alfredo Dacanay, SJ
The exercise of discretion of judgement is intelligence brought to bear on a
particular choice to be made, and that this basis of nullity has to do with the
harmonious integration of the intellect and will from which proceeds a conscious
and free determination directed towards a certain object. Marital consent then
derives from a combined action of cognitive, deliberative/critical, and volitional
faculties. One must know what is at stake; one must be capable of considering
and evaluating the elements, properties, rights, and obligations of marriage as
well as ones own capacity to fulfill those obligations; and one must be free to
want and choose this way of life with or that particular person.
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Unit I Module 2
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For a valid act of consent, one must therefore have a rudimentary knowledge of
marriage and must freely accept its responsibilities, and, in addition he/she must
have the judgemental capacity to evaluate what is being consented to, to elicit the
act of consent and to fulfill what is involved or demanded by marriage. One must
be able, in a sense, to look to the futureto see and assess the danger signals
which are obvious to family and friends and which are being commented on by
them.
Such a critical faculty is generally of later development in people and is not usually
attributed to persons until their late teens of early twenties at the earliest. There
are many in whom it is of much later development, and some, indeed in whom it
never develops at all. It is a special kind of faculty proportionate to the special type
of heterosexual relationship that marriage is. One might conceivably be a good
judge in business or be a highly competent researcher, and still be grossly lacking
in the required kind of judgement for choosing a partner and entering the married
state with that partner. In other words, competence in ones profession is not a
necessary index of maturity in this area.
Paraphrase:
Consent in marriage is measured by a persons ability to understand what
marriage means and requires of him/her, his/her ability to freely agree to entering
this state of life, and his/her ability to fulfill marital obligations. A person is not born
with this ability to assess or evaluate his/her fitness for marriage. It is an ability
that is usually developed in young adulthood. Some people develop it later in life,
and others not at all. It is an ability moreover that is not guaranteed by signs of
good judgement in other areas of ones life, such as in ones career or profession.
An individual with a good business sense is not necessarily able to evaluate his/
her fitness for marriage and therefore give valid consent to being married.
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24 Communication II
Paraphrase:
It is widely accepted that the difference between men and women is fundamentally
a matter of biological make-up. But there is new evidence to suggest that women
are not necessarily the same physiologically the world over and neither are men.
The physiological differences between groups of women and between groups of
men can be greater or more significant than those between men and women of
the same racial stock. Also, what used to be thought of as biological, and therefore
universal, categories, such as sexual behavior and childbearing, appear to be
culturally and socially determined. Is this also the case with hormones and the
way the mind works?
Activity 2-2
Now try and paraphrase this:
Passage D: From Issues Confronting Mass Vaccination: The Experience
with Hepatitis B Immunization by Ernesto O. Domingo
Hepatitis B (HB) is caused by a virus that attaches the liver primarily. Though
rarely fatal, the infection can persist in a chronic form. Chronic hepatitis B
(CHB) can lead to cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer, which are fatal and for
which there is no satisfactory treatment. The chronicity of HB infection is
determined by a number of factors but age of acquisition is the most important.
When acquired during the perinatal period, infection leads to chronicity in
more than 90 percent of cases; infection that occurs beyond the age of 16
years has only 2-10 percent incidence in the chronic form.
HB infection is a major global health problem. The WHO estimates that more
than half of the worlds population has been infected by this virus. Fifty million
new infections occur every year, resulting in 350 million cases of CHB. Seventyfive percent (262.5 million) of CHB victims reside in the Asia-Pacific region.
One to one and a half million CHB victims die from cirrhosis and liver cancer
every year. They are the source of new infections. In the Philippines, the rural
poor acquire the infection very early, that is before the age of 5 years. On the
average, the prevalence of past infection in the population is about 58 percent.
Ten percent of all Filipinos have CHB. No wonder primary liver cancer (PLC)
ranks second and seventh of all total cancers in males and females,
respectively. Twenty-five out of 100,000 adult females develop and die of PLC
every year.
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Unit I Module 2
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Quoting
At the risk of being accused of being too elementary, let me ask the question:
What is a quote?
A quote is a word-for-word copy of a text, of course.
When does one quote?
In general, a quote is best for:
l
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Short passages
When the quoted material is the most succinct formulation of the topic
and to paraphrase it would be to risk mangling the meaning or blunting
the point
To prove a point; to enlist expert scholarly support
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26 Communication II
In the paragraph from Quimpo, the quote proves the claim made in the
topic sentence much more effectively than any explanation by the author.
The quote gets it straight from the horses mouth, so to speak. (Of course,
Murad is introduced earlier in the article from which this passage is taken
as a ranking leader of the MILF, so we can take it thats hes the horse
from whom we should take it.)
The quote used in the paragraph from de Dios illustrates what we mean
by some statements being worthy of being quoted because they are succinct
formulations of the idea you want to convey.
Some quoted passages are not shortin fact, they can be a paragraph or
even two paragraphs long. But you feel that the passage youre quoting
bolsters a point you are making and it is best for your reader to see this for
themselves. In that case, go ahead. But do try not to quote several pages
of a source. Try to quote only a paragraph at most, and if longer than this,
abridge the quoted material with the use of ellipsis. An example is my
quote of Dadufalza earlier in this module where I omit certain words
from the original, since I feel they are not necessary, and use ellipsis ()
to mark the omission. But be sure that youre not altering the meaning of
the original in the omission!
Also, do not just plop a quote down on a page. When you quote, you
must explain or at least make obvious to the reader why you are doing so.
A quote without an explanation is called a dropped quote.
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Unit I Module 2
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(The passage is indented or set off from the stem sentence and the
rest of the text, and is not enclosed in quotation marks. It is sometimes recorded using a smaller font size.)
4. Partial quotation:
Manuel L. Quezon III in his essay, Palawan Burning compares the
sound of a burning forest to that of an exceedingly hungry man
munching crackers.
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Unit I Module 2
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30 Communication II
But why notecards, you ask. Cant you use a plain old notebook, or scratch
paper? Well, yes you can. But notecards are easier to arrange and rearrange for when youre about to write your article or report. With
notecards, you wont have to flip through the pages of your notebook to
look for a piece of information you recall noting down but now cant
seem to find.
Recap
In this module, we discussed various ways of noting or recording
information from sources. These are summarizing, paraphrasing, and
making a direct quote.
You summarize when you want to include only the main points of the
source text. In summarizing, as in paraphrasing, you use your own words.
You note down information in the form of a paraphrase if the detail it
contains is important and you wish to clarify what the source passage
means.
You make a direct quote when the quoted material is the most succinct
formulation of the topic or idea, and when the quoted material proves a
point youre making. But a quote should be accompanied by an
explanation. And it is best to keep direct quotes to a minimum.
The type of note-taking you will be making the most use of is summarizing.
As for notecards, well though it may seem fussy to some and so lacking in
spontaneity (!), in the end they do make for an orderly way of keeping
notes.
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Module 3
Reported Speech:
A Basic Feature
of Academic Writing
Objectives
After studying this module,
you should be able to:
1. Organize information in
a report;
2. Avoid the pitfalls of
incoherence; and
3. Document your report.
The point of all that is not so you can now claim the information you got
from your sources as your own. I have to stress this point because many
people have the mistaken notion that it is only direct quotes whose sources
should be explicitly identified. They think that having paraphrased
somebodys ideas, they can now forget about telling the reader where
they got their ideas from.
This is called plagiarism, folks. And contrary to another mistaken notion
that you can get away with it (or that the reader will not be the wiser to it)
because after all you have phrased it in your own words, the dishonesty is
so easy to spot. How? Well, it is so obvious that the information could not
32 Communication II
be something you thought of yourself! Can you really claim that the
information that Gregoria de Jesus was married at 18 came off the top of
your head? Or that the idea that the tendency toward depression is often
genetic is something you thought of yourself? Or that you just know,
instinctively, that liver cancer is the second most fatal cancer among men?
So now you know how to spot a false claim of being in the know, as
evidenced by unacknowledged sources. You just ask the writer: How do
you know? Is it plausible for the writer to have come upon this bit of
information all by him/herself?
The fact is that there is no need to pretend that you know more than you
do. There is no need to hide the fact that your report is 90 percent facts
and opinions taken from other texts and authors. In academe, it is all
righteven preferredthat one have many intellectual debts. According
to Giltrow, A main characteristic of the genres of professional scholarship
is the way one piece of writing openly, explicitly demonstrates its
dependence on other pieces of writing. In fact, unless scholars enjoy
international renownunless their names are virtually household words
in academic circlesthey can scarcely publish a sentence without locating
that sentence amongst what other people have written on the topic. The
scholars position is defined in relation to other scholars, rather than a
position of standalone wisdom.
Your scholarly dependence on other scholars is shown in two ways. One
of these is the use of footnotes, in-text citations of the source, and reference
lists at the end of your article or report. We will discuss the conventions of
this way of acknowledging sources towards the end of this module.
Another way of showing your dependence on other scholars is the use of
words and phrases in the body of your article or report that show that
what you are writing about belongs not to you but to someone else. The
term for such words and phrases, says Ventura (1999), is
acknowledgement phrase.
The acknowledgement phrase, which marks what Giltrow (1999) calls
reported speech, contains the name of the author and/or the title of
source and a reporting verb, or a verb that tells what the source is doing.
Some of these verbs are:
implies
says
states
notes
suggests
points out
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argues
claims
posits
postulates
hypothesizes
affirms
demonstrates
shows
illustrates
indicates
identifies
reports
Unit I Module 3
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Can you add some more to this list? Note that some of these are neutral or
value-free, while others are evaluativethat is, the verb suggests an
attitude to the source, an interpretation of what the source is doing vis-vis an idea.
The use of these marks or signals of reported speech do mean a great deal,
as the following examples will show:
1.
2.
Reidenberg claims that life in cyberspace, like other forms of life, is regulated.
Life in cyberspace, like other forms of life, is regulated.
1.
Vergara argues that contrary to the idea that photographs are truthful records
of reality, photographers and photography can and do distort reality.
Contrary to the idea that photographs are truthful records of reality,
photographers and photography can and do distort reality.
2.
The first sentence in each pair contains signals that call attention to its
being reported speech, or speech belonging to someone other than the
person who wrote the sentence. The second sentence in each pair implies
that the sentence is the writers own, which of course is a misrepresentation.
According to Giltrow, the signals of reported speech serve as a frame
for material you summarized from your source. She cites the following
functions of the frame:
1. It introduces your sources openly and directly.
2. It establishes the boundary between different sources of information,
showing that you are moving from one source to another.
3. It establishes the boundary between material you have collected from
other sources and your own commentary on or evaluation of this
material.
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34 Communication II
In 1943 Dr. Leo Kanner published a now classic paper entitled Autistic
Disturbances of Affective Contact where he described a paradoxical and
bewildering behavioral disturbance of childhood. Based on his clinical
observation of a unique group of young patients who displayed an extreme
detachment from all human relationships, he recognized this autism (literally
self-ism), or total self-centeredness, as the fundamental pathogenic disorder
in their illness.
UP Open University
Unit I Module 3
35
Well, perhaps you would prefer a less blunt opening. Say the report is
about the incidence of poverty (remember this from Module 1?). You could
start by saying,
Who among us isnt familiar with the face of poverty? Everywhere we look in
this city we come face-to-face with signs of poverty. So when asked the
question about the extent of poverty in the Philippines today, one could very
easily say, Oh, poverty in the Philippines is widespread. How widespread
exactly, is the subject of my report. More precisely, my report will provide
statistics on the incidence of poverty across three administrationsthat of Cory
Aquino, Fidel Ramos, and Joseph Estrada.
But if you think that since youve introduced your sources at the beginning
of your report, you can forget about mentioning them henceforth, think
again. According to Giltrow, The further your readers get from that
introducing statement, the less certain they will be about the source of
information. Consider this re-writing of the passage from Sobritchea:
Pertierras article on Visayan witchcraft (1983) provides an interesting analysis
of how femaleness is constituted in the asuang (witch). He asserts that
although asuang are always women, their most virulent representation is that
of a beautiful woman. The female asuang has the power to lure unsuspecting
men to their deaths, cause miscarriages by sucking out foetal fluids or inflicting
pain on humans with or without provocation.
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36 Communication II
Asuang are unselective of their victims; they are perceived to be malicious,
vindictive, whimsical and anti-social. These traits are often associated with
women because of their being house-bound and oriented to the domestic
sphere. The feminization of the asuang-complex is a common response to
fundamental threats to the conceptual and moral orders in many Philippine
communities. By intensifying public fear of the feminine asuang, society
reaffirms the values necessary to reproduce the public (masculine) domain
the values of reciprocity and exchange.
The lack of references to Pertierra in the second paragraph makes the reader
unsure about who the source of the observations is. Is it Sobritchea saying
these, or is it still Pertierra? Or is it another source, one not yet named?
UP Open University
Unit I Module 3
37
Ok, what am I driving at now? Whats the point of the dialogue between
Anna and Rafael? Well, I simply want to call attention to the fact that a
report should be more than a list or a narration of facts, or bits of
information. There ought to be some way of organizing the information
you have gathered into a whole that makes sense, that has a meaning.
Moreover, that meaning should be an interesting one, a powerful one,
one that will grip the imagination of your readers so that they dont end
up simply forgetting what you wrote, or thinking that your report was
just a record of trivia.
Giltrow says you need to have a strong topic. No, this is not topic in the
usual sense, as in the general subject matter that youre reporting about.
Its more like the answer to the question What is this all about? or,
better, What is the point of all this? In a sense, what were referring to
here is what other writing scholars call a thesis. The term refers to the key
idea of an essay or article. And yes, even reportsthat is, those reports
that are more than just a simple answer to a question posed by your
professor in, say, an exam or class discussionmust have a thesis. To put
that last sentence more clearly, a well-written report or documented essay
must have a thesis; it must make a meaningful point out of the mass of
information it presents.
A thesis for Rafael report could be revealed by certain combinations of the
bits of information he gathered. The data might reveal something about
the circumstances under which a literate tradition thrives and doesnt
thrive. Or a thesis statement may be made out of certain similarities as
well as significant differences in the uses of literacy in the communities
and/or traditions included in Rafael report.
The foregoing suggests that you first formulate your thesis from a serious
reflection on the information you have gathered for your report, and then
you organize the information you have gathered in a way that will support
your thesis and make it clear to your readers. Consider this boxed example
of a report (actually only a small section with a 400 page book):
The Rise of Literacy
The art of writing was introduced into the archipelago, from South India by way of
Sumatra, circa 1000-1200 A.D., contemporaneously with other aspects of Indian
culture. The system of writing was syllabic rather than alphabetic, and the direction
of writing was from bottom to top, left to right.42 For implements, the ancient
Filipinos used crude materials: an iron stylus or knife, bamboo, palm leaves, tree
bark, and similar materials. While various Philippine scripts have been discovered,
their close affinities speak of a significant unity in this culture area.43 As to the
diffusion of these scripts in the archipelago, Robert Fox says:
Syllabic writing (a key to cultural growth) was confined to some seventeen
Filipino groups, all being coastal or near-coastal peoples. Writing,
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38 Communication II
UP Open University
Unit I Module 3
39
Pre-Spanish writing must have been restricted due to a number of factors: the
system was stil on its way towards greater sophistication and flexibility, finer
materials for writing were still to be found or produced; and, more important, this
particular culture tool still had to gain prominence in a tradition largely oral.52
These factors had the following results: relatively short texts (messages, lists,
brief incantatory phrases, etc.) were inscribed; certain kinds of texts by virtue of
their strongly traditional and religious nature may not have lent themselves
easily to an alien form of transmission; and that this tool was available not only to
just a few groups in the islands but to a community of sharers definitely more
constricted than that which sustained oral art.53
Such is the sway of tradition that even after the spread of literacy the oral spell
remained. In avery real way after the medium is one with the message. Gaspar
de San Agustin, in 1720, says:...what has been preached to them and printed in
books avails but little, for the word of any old man regarded as a sage has more
weight with them than the word of the whole world.54
It must be remembered that a literary culture based on writing presupposes not
just the mere existence of writing but an established tradition of education based
upon letters. On this basis one can conclude that a true culture of literacy was not
present in the archipelago before the coming of the Spaniards.
Such a culture was to slowly evolve. Even while the art of writing came to be more
widely practised, it is possible that much of literature remained in a pseudo-oral
tradition, i.e., that written texts came to be the cribs or basis for memorization and
oral recitation.55 Such a pseudo-oral existence has important repercussions
both for oral and written literature in points of theme, structure, and style. During
the Spanish period, and even beyond, much literature existed in this border area
where values from both realms were combined.56
Chirino may have overgeneralized when he said in 1600: Now they write not only
their own letters, but ours as well, with a very well cut pen and on paper like
ourselves. They have learned our language and pronunciation and write it as well
as we do, and even better, because they are so clever that they learn anything very
quickly.57
The more marked change from native to Roman script must have taken place at
the close of the 17th century. In the 18th century, the old syllabary fell into such
disuse that Fr. Sebastian Totanes wrote: it is now rare to find a native who knows
how to read his own letters and rarer still one who knows how to write them.58
Earlier, in 1663, Colin said that owing to the difficulties of the native script those
who know our characters are studying how to wrie their own language in these. All
of them have now adopted our way of writing.59 But one presumes that the process
of replacement was not in any way simple or swift In. the 17th century, and beyond,
in the less acculturated areas, native and Spanish systems of writing co-existed.
Colin himself remarked:
They all cling fondly to their own method of writing and reading. There is
scarcely a man, and still less a woman, who does not know and practice
that method, even those who are already Christians in matters of devotion.
For from the sermons which they hear, and the histories and lives of the
saints, and the prayers and poems on divine matters, composed by
themselves (they have also some perfect poets in their own manner,
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40 Communication II
who translate elegantly into their own language any Spanish comedy),
they use small books and prayer books in their language, and
manuscripts which are in great number...60
In the transition from the native syllabary to the new system there may have been
the phenomenon Bienvenido Lumbera calls the loss of literacy. Speaking of the
Tagalogs, Lumbera says: What seemed to have happened was that literature
Tagalogs became fewer between the coming ofthe Spaniards in 1570 and the
middle of the eighteenth century.61 Lumbera sees in this break ther eason for the
loss of precontact literature, for the older members of the community had records
the young could no longer read as the latter were already learning a new alphabet.
This theory though is open to question: there is the paucity of precontact literature
to begin with; furthermore, th coexistence of the two systems over a period of
transition may be as real a fact as the sudden cooptation of one by the other.
There is nevertheless reason to believe that there was no orderly transfer or
substitution of skills owing to the stresses of conquest and the particularistic
character of native society. The first century of colonization must have been marked
by much disorientation in demographic, economic and cultural patterns. In such
a situation culture change manifested itself in many ways: the loss of skills and
values as they fell into disuse, their continued existence side by side with new
cultural forms, and, in many cases, their eventual substitution by these forms.62
What impresses is the fact that culture change is complex for it allows for the
simultaneous existence of elements from old and new traditions or the
combination and fusion of elements from these traditions. Replacement is
never total. This is true not just of the matter of literacy but of literature in general.
UP Open University
Unit I Module 3
41
This is a relatively short passage, but Ileto, the author, takes great pains to
remind us of his topic at strategic points. Can you highlight those
reminders of his topic?
If you highlighted One methodwhich has many variationsof
obtaining anting-anting and A different way of obtaining anting-anting
and The more common, and less risky, way of obtaining anting-anting,
youre perfectly correct. These reminders of the topic, or reinstatement
and reactivation of the topic as Giltrow calls them, serve to ensure
coherence in your text. They also ensure that your readers dont lose their
bearings, as can happen when you are being quite detailed.
More precisely, these restatements of topic, according to Giltrow:
1. construct a higher level of generality by giving a general and, in this
case, abstract name to the details of the passages;
2. establish the meaning of the objects and conditions referred to; and
3. guide the readers interpretation of the facts mentioned.
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42 Communication II
Activity 3-1
At this point, you should be ready to make your own report with
information from the sources listed in your annotated bibliography
(Activity 1-1). Specifically, write a 3-page report with a strong thesis
using information you gathered from at least three of the eight
sources in your annotated working bibliography. Summarize,
paraphrase, quote information as necessary and observe coherence
in your report.
In the example, we know from the in-text citation that the sentiment
expressed in the statement before the citation is not the writers own, but
one that the writer has paraphrased from Yaps 1991 study. The full details
of the source, including the title of Yaps article, Yaps first name, and the
publisher of the article, appear in the List of Works Cited (traditionally
called a bibliography) that appears at the end of the entire report.
Another style of making in-text citations is to note the authors surname
followed by the page number (instead of the year of publication) in the
source where the information cited can be found, also enclosed in
parentheses.
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Unit I Module 3
43
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44 Communication II
3. In the humanities style, the first letters of all the words in the title are
in caps (title case), while in the author-date style, only the first letter of
the entire title is in caps (sentence case). But journal titles are in title
case.
4. In the humanities style, the full title (including sub-titles) is included
while it may be included, shortened (only the title is included), or
omitted in the author-date style.
5. Quotation marks enclose the title in the humanities style. There are no
quotation marks in the author-date style.
6. The name of the publisher and the title of the journal may be abbreviated
in the author-date style.
The in-text citation (of source) formats also differ. In the humanities style,
the in-text citation includes authors surname and page number, or just
the page number if the authors name is already in the main text (or
paragraph). In the author-date style, the in-text citation includes the
authors surname and the year of publication, or just the year of publication
if the authors name is already in the main text (or paragraph). The page
number may be included if the text for which the source is being cited is a
direct quote.
SAQ 3-1
Find these out for yourself:
1. The author-date style is the preferred style in the social sciences
and the natural sciences. Why do you think is this so?
2. To which general style does the MLA (Modern Language
Association) Style belong? The APA (American Psychological
Association) Style? Whats the difference between the two?
Activity 3-2
Go over your draft report (from Activity 3-1) and document your
sources. Use the in-text citation format for source notes and be
sure to append a reference list. Choose one style for referencing
and be consistent.
UP Open University
Unit II
Module 4
Objectives
After working on this module,
you should be able to:
1. Evaluate the kinds of
evidence cited by sources,
including the sources use
of statements of fact,
opinion, convention and
preference;
2. Apply the principles of
logical argument in
analyzing your sources
claims;
3. Assess your sources
contribution to more
general issues; and
4. Articulate a critical
stance using one or a
combination of all of the
above skills.
48 Communication II
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Unit II Module 4
49
Looking at connections
Is your source making a logical or rational argument? Or are there gaps in
the reasoning? Are there weak connections in your sources exposition?
For a detailed discussion of weaknesses in argument that must be avoided,
read the excerpt from Guzman in Appendix 4-3 (pp. 23-31 of this module).
Again, following Giltrows advice, you simply have to point out these
weaknesses. In the case, of minor weaknesses, you can even take a
supportive stance and fill in the gap yourself, showing that you appreciate
your sources effort to put forward a credible claim. For example, you
could write, Although in this article Reyes does not unequivocally
establish the connection between violence against women and
pornography, many other studies (cf. Kintanar, 1987; Diaz, 1979; Rodolfo
and Suplido, 1984; Mendoza, 1992) have proven the connection.
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50 Communication II
Assessing generalizability
Consider the context of your sources argument. Consider the bigger
picture of which it is a part. Ask yourself, What important phenomenon
does the argument address? Why is this an important phenomenon? For
example, you could say that your source is making a contribution to the
literature on deviant behavior among Filipino adolescents, or that the text
you are summarizing is about the dynamics of marital failure. If you are
in a position to do so, you can go on to assess the value of your sources
contribution to this bigger picture, or relate it to other contributions.
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Unit II Module 4
51
Some examples
Below are examples of texts that take a critical stance. Read each one and
identify the strategy/ies used by each author in establishing his/her critical
stance.
Passage 1
(From Abrogated Lives of Working Women by Patricia B. Arinto, in Public
Policy Volume II No. 2 April-June 1998)
Camagays account of working women in 19th century Philippines also confirms
certain things we have known or suspected about the oppression and
exploitation of women, for example. She takes notes of complaints of abuses
committed against the criadas, the rivalry between the matronas titulares
(licensed midwives) and the traditional hilot and partera, the forcible prostitution
of young girls from the provinces, and the fact that maestras were paid wages
lower than the wages of the male teachers. It is important for these concrete
cases of exploitation be brought to the attention of feminist readers and
activists, that they may see how much better, or worse, off is the situation of
todays working women. More importantly, such accounts enable us to
appreciate Filipino working womens struggle for economic independence at
critical moments in our national history.
If there is a limitation to Camagays account, it is perhaps the sketchy socioeconomic context that she provides to her portraits of Filipino working women.
At one point she says: The documents reveal that a number of prostitutes
arrested did come from the provinces. Was this indicative of the hard times in
the countryside? From the population sample of 160 prostitutes, 105 came
from the provinces. The question is cogent and should not have been left
unanswered. Exactly what was the economic situation in 19th century
Philippines? Why were women working instead of staying at home? What
material conditions led to the participation of women in the labor force?
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52 Communication II
Passage 2
(From International and Intranational Comparisons of Philippine Poverty by
Solita collas-Monsod and Toby C. Monsod, in Causes of Poverty, edited by
Arsenio M. Balisacan and Shigeaki Fujisaki, University of the Philippines
Press, 1999)
The most glaring difference is that based on the official or national poverty
lines, the Philippines has the highest incidence of poverty among the countries.
Considering that real per capita incomes in the Philippines are not much
different from those in Indonesia and China, this is surprising, to say the
least. And it is even more surprising to show poverty incidence in Thailand
and Malaysia also to be higher than that if Indonesia and China, when their
real incomes per capita, however computed, are three to six times larger.
One may be led to the conclusion that poverty reduction is not a priority
objective in the Philippines.
But this would be an unfair conclusion. In the first place, national poverty
lines are not really comparable. They reflected differences in economic and
social development, and even differences in food and caloric standards. For
example, the Philippine good basket would have a higher proportion of noncereals than, say, the Indonesian food basketand non-cereals are far more
expensive than cereals. Also, the composition and weight of the other basic
needs may be greater. The effect of all these would be to raise the Philippines
poverty line relative to those of its neighbors.
In the second place, some countries (e.g., Indonesia, China) subsidize the
prices of a number of basic food and other items. This would have the effect
of lowering the poverty line in these countries relative to that of the Philippines.
Thus, other indicators are needed to be able to usefully compare poverty
situations.
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Unit II Module 4
53
Passage 3
(From Changing Contexts of Urban Poor Struggles by Anne Marie Karaos,
in Public Policy Volume II No. 4 October-December 1998)
Berner introduces the notion of locality as a conceptual tool to explain the
process of identity and group formation among the urban poor and their
transformation into political actors. The locality, he says, is a socially defined
spatial entity which provides the multiple relations and interdependencies
that can be the basis of group building and collective action. Localities provide
as well the social context where the collective learning of new political practices
can take place.
It is too early to say that these collective efforts that Berner describes would
amount to a significant change in political culture. Berner himself suggests
no such thing. I would content, however, that they constitute significantly
new political practices that add to the poors repertoire of political action. But
whether and how these new practices would solidify into a social movement
or into a transformation of political culture is a subject that must wait some
years for an answer.
While Berner dismisses as too restrictive class-based theories of urban social
movements which tend to give historical significance only to movements
oriented toward transforming capitalist urban structures, he nevertheless
echoes the pessimism of urban scholars about the urban poors ability to
develop into a movement or a self-conscious political class capable of
confronting the power structures of urban society and transforming the urban
way of life. An eminent scholar on this topic, Manual Castells, regards as
genuine urban social movements only those that are able to effect changes
in urban, political and cultural practices. He submits that a necessary condition
for genuine urban social movement to emerge is the forging of stable ties
between urban poor organizations engaged in the broader process of class
struggle (Castells, The City and the Grassroots, 1983).
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54 Communication II
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Unit II Module 4
55
Appendix 4-1
Statements of Fact vs.
Statements of Opinion
You probably were immediately able to say that the following sentences
were true or false:
1. There are two girls in the room.
2. Ana is taller than Toni.
3. Ana is in pants; Toni is wearing a skirt.
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56 Communication II
And you would be absolutely right! Why? Because it was possible for you
to verify your answers right away. [The word verify comes from the Latin
verus, which means true.]
You were able to tell whether each statement was true or false by comparing
what each of these statements was saying to the actual situation. You
were able to check each assertionby direct observation against reality
or experience.
In other words, the proof to support your claim that each statement is
either true or false was within reach.
You actually saw that indeed there were two of them, both girls; you
actually saw what they were wearing; and you were actually able to see
how tall each one of them was and compare their heights.
Now lets see which statements you said you would be able to say were
either true or false, but only after you got additional information. If you
pointed out the following, then again you would be absolutely right:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
For you could simply go to Toni or Ana, or both of them, and ask what
their names were and how old they were. You could also ask them if they
were students and what year they were in. You could even ask them
whether they loved the outdoors, or which of them loved the outdoors
more. And you could also ask how much Toni pays for a haircut and how
often she gets one, couldnt you?
But what if you were too shy to approach them, or they were too shy, or
were extremely wary of strangers? Or if they felt that your questions were
too personal? Well, you could still check the facts by either asking around
or going to the records.
It might take some doing, but the important thing to realize is that you
have a way of finding out, or of verifying the assertions. Take note,
therefore, that a statement of fact need not be true. Poland is in Asia is
still a statement of fact because it can be either true or false (in this case
false) and its truth or falsity can be readily verified.
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Unit II Module 4
57
But what about the following statements? How would you verify them?
How would you be sure they are true or false? What would your basis be
for declaring each of them true or false?
1.
2.
3.
4.
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58 Communication II
Unit II Module 4
59
But then again you would have to go back to the question of looks.
With the additional question of what we mean by good or better. In
short, when does something or someone look good or look better?
Add to this the original question of whether or not Tonis haircut at the
moment makes her look good or better. (By the way, if you - or
anyone else - say better, you will have to show that you knew how she
looked before.)
Now let us go back to the earlier statement, She spends P100 every other
week for a haircut, which we agreed was a statement of fact.
But supposing we stated it this way: She squanders P100 every other week
on a haircut? Would it still be a statement of fact? To be able to answer this
question correctly, you will have to look closely at the word squanders.
Recall your lessons on connotation in Comm. I. What does the word
squanders connote? What does it suggest? What meanings or images
does it call to mind?
A check with the dictionary will tell you that the word squanders
suggests wasteful and lavish spending. It would connote extravagance
and ostentation, and a degree of irresponsibility, wouldnt it?
While you will probably be able to get some agreement on the meaning of
the word squander, you may not be as lucky in getting people to agree
on how much you would have to pay for a haircut to be accused of
squandering your moneyin the same way that you realized it would
not be so easy to get a consensus on what was good or becoming.
Depending on each ones means, there would be those who would NOT
think twice about paying as much as P500. On the other hand, there are
those who would not part with even P50 for the same service.
Once more, you can see how difficultor almost impossibleit would be
to have everyone agree on one answer or one standard or measure.
By now, you must have seen that certain assertions are extremely
difficultor even impossibleto verify or ascertain beyond the slightest
doubt.
Remember: A statement that indicates that the writer (a) is not
sure that he or she can produce sufficient proof to support his or
her assertion, or (b) realizes that there most probably would be
disagreement, is a statement of opinion.
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60 Communication II
You can now see that the statement, She spends P100 every other week
for a haircut is a statement of fact; but the statement, She squanders
P100 every other week for a haircut is a statement of opinion because of
the connotations or the array of suggested meanings that squanders
brings with itand the disagreement that may result from its use.
This time lets look at the statement, Tonis mother says that she squanders
P150 every other week on her haircut.
Is it a statement of fact or a statement of opinion?
If you said it is statement of opinion, then that was a perfectly
understandable mistake, since you were most probably misled by the word
squanders and our discussion of its connotations.
If, on he other hand, you said it is statement of fact, you would be absolutely
right. What we are verifying here is not whether or not Toni does squander
her money, but whether or not her mother actually said what she is
supposed to have said.
Tonis mother can confirm or deny whether she actually, cant she? Of
course, she can.
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Unit II Module 4
61
Appendix 4-2
Statements of Convention vs.
Statements of Preference
Read the following sentences carefully and tell which of these are
statements of fact.
1.
2.
3.
4.
62 Communication II
they were given this name is, again, what we may call a linguistic
decision. (The word archipelago comes from the Greek archi [chief] +
pelagos [sea]. Another dictionary definition of the word calls it a sea
studded with many islands.)
Now, try taking Sentence Five on your own and putting it through a
similar analysis? Try comparing it to the following sentence: The trees are
relatively young and there is no underbrush. Is the latter a statement of fact
or is it more than that? How would you justify your answer?
How about Sentence 3? Do you agree that it is a statement of fact? How
would you explain your answer?
A statement of convention is a statement whose truth is established by
common consent as found in rules, regularities of usage, and linguistic
custom or definitions.
Lets move on to the next kind of assertionthe statement of preference.
Statements of preference are statements which refer, not only to data that we
perceive through our senses, but to our experience with these data and to
our judgment of these data. These are statements whose truth or falsity may
not be arrived at through means that are absolutely correct or error-free,
as there are no absolute or universally agreed-upon standards of good or
bad, right or wrong, etc. These may be subcategorized into statements of taste,
statements of obligation, and ethical statements
Consider the sentence: I like Philippine mangoes.
This is an example of a statement of taste, the first subcategory of statements
of preference.
Now consider this sentence: Philippine mangoes are of higher quality than
mangoes grown in other parts of the region.
Higher quality is a debatable or arguable description. After all, what is
quality? Would it be easy to find a consensus on what this means,
particularly with respect to mangoes?
And how does one measure quality? When is it high and when is it
low? Didnt you learn earlier that this probability of disagreement is
what makes a statement a statement of opinion?
As stated, however, this sentence is expressing the staters judgment or taste (i.e.,
preference) rather than describing the object (mangoes). And we are reminded
that there is no arguing about tasteto each his own; to each her own.
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Unit II Module 4
65
Then why not a sentence of fact? Because you may not easily find an
exact measure of sweetness, something that is universally acceptable. What
may be sweet to one may not be sweet to another.
What about the sentence: It is a fact that mango soap and other mango
facial preparations are taking the beauty world by storm?
Do not be misled by the use of fact in the sentence. Some people
consciously or unconsciouslyresort to this to sound more convincing;
consciously, especially when they are not so sure of themselves. Perhaps
to rattle the opposition?
The phrase taking [the beauty world] by storm is itself a clich and an
exaggerationa hyperboleused for effect. What exactly do we mean
by it? Offhand, it means that a large number of people have turned or are
turning to these preparations in a relatively short span of time. But then,
how large is large? To the manufacturers? To the competition? To
converts? To skeptics?
Then why not call it a statement of preference? Because there is nothing
in the statement that suggests that the stater is happy about the situation
or likes what is happeningif it is indeed happening. He or she may be
dismayed by it, a feeling which is also an expression of preference. On the
other hand, he or she may simply not care one way or the other. And
there may be reason for those who are more objective, more circumspect
the Food and Drug Administration, perhaps to make such a statement
in the context of verifying such a claim.
Finally, we come around to examples of sentences about mangoes that
are statements of fact.
Sentence 1: Ripe mangoes are juicier than green ones.
The word juicier may have thrown you off in one of two directions. First,
its naming a quality may have led you to classify it as an opinion. However,
juiciness, being a physical attribute, is not as difficult to measure as some
other quality, such as charm or intelligence. In this particular case, holding
up a ripe and a green mango side by side may end any debate on the
matter.
The other direction in which you may have strayed is that of preference.
Again, the word juicier, by making a comparison, may have suggested
that juiciness is a desirable quality of mangoes, or any other fruit, for that
matter (to the stater, at least). But to arrive at such a conclusion may be a
case of second-guessing, because the stater may actually prefer crisp to
juicy.
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Sentence 2: The word mango comes from the Tamil word mankay.
A check with a Tamil dictionary or with the work of scholars in the
language can determine the truth or falsity of this statement. You may
have mistaken this to be a statement of convention. But ask yourself, was
the etymology (the origin of the word) arbitrarily decided upon by an expert
or a group of experts, or were their conclusions based on scientific data?
If the latter, which most likely it is, then this is a statement of fact.
Sentence 3: Mangoes are indigenous to Eastern Asia.
Like Sentence 6, this statement can be verified by botanists, cultural
historians, or archeologists, or by all three working together, or by anyone
who has access to and can interpret the results of scientific/scholarly work
on the subject.
Statement 4: The legend of the mango is a love story.
This time, we turn to our folklore, to our storybooks, to find out if this
claim is true or false. One question that may be raised, though, is, What is
a love story? Is there anyone above 10 who cannot tell one from one that
is not? (We can expect questions, however, from those steeped in the latest
literary theories which challenge established concepts and offer alternative
meanings and readings. . . . But that, as they say, is another story or,
more accurately another course altogether!)
Statement 5: China is one of the largest importers of Philippine mangoes.
Records at the Department of Trade and Industries of the Philippines and
or its counterpart in China can easily confirm or reject this claim. What
other government agency or agencies can provide you with pertinent data?
Statement 6: I know someone who refuses to eat or even taste mangoes,
ripe or green.
How do you find out if Im telling the truth or just telling a tall story?
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Appendix 4-3
Fallacies
How often have you heard or used the term fallacy? What do you
understand by the term? Most likely, the word has some very negative
connotations for you. You most probably used them when engaged in a
discussion or debate, whether spoken or written. You have most probably
used this in protest against your adversarys arguments. Can you name a
few terms you have used in its place?
Fallacy comes from fallere, Latin for deceive. In general terms, a fallacy is
an error in reasoning, as well as those mistaken beliefs that result from
this faulty reasoning.
Take note, however, that a fallacy is an error in reasoning and should not
be confused with an error of fact.
To be more specific, a fallacy is an argument in which the premises
given do not provide the conclusion the needed degree of support.
Fallacies have also been called pitfalls to be avoided when constructing
an argument. Pitfalls because, while they may appear valid and
convincing, they turn out to be technically incorrect upon closer scrutiny.
There are those who deliberately commit fallacies to win an argument
And there are fallacies that sound valid and convincing. Remember,
however, that this lesson is meant to help you (a) identify fallacies in
competing or rival arguments and (b) defend your position without falling
intoor resorting toany of these pitfalls.
Just as there is deductive argument and inductive argument, there is
deductive fallacy and inductive fallacy.
A deductive fallacy is a deductive argument that is invalid. Its premises
may be false; on the other hand, its premises may all be true, yet it may
still have a false conclusion. For instance:
Premise 1: If the waling-waling is the national flower of the Philippines,
then it is grown in the Philippines.
Premise 2: The waling-waling is grown in the Philippines.
Conclusion: The waling-waling is the national flower of the Philippines.
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For example:
Those who are asking for a continuation of the peace talks are just a
bunch of misguided rabble-rousers and publicity-seeking members of
the clergy.
3. Argumentum ad ignorantiam/Argument from Ignorance
The arguer claims that something must be true simply because it has
not been proven false. Conversely, something must be false because it
has not been proven true.
For example:
How dare you call us thieves? Has anybody been able to prove that
our wealth is ill-gotten?
Of course there are UFOs! Show me that they do not exist.
4. Argumentum ad misericordiam/Appeal to Pity
Also known as special pleading, here the arguer appeals to pity to
push for the acceptance of a conclusion.
For example:
I wish they would drop the charges against my husband. I have spent
countless sleepless nights, my children no longer can face their
classmates, and we all have stopped reading the papers or watching
TV.
5. Argumentum ad populum/Appealing to the Gallery/Appealing to the
People
The arguer pushes for the acceptance of an argument by appealing
usually with emotive languageto a large number of people.
For example:
Think of the huge boost to the economy that would be brought about
by large number of jobs to be created with the approval of the Visiting
Forces Agreement.
6. Argumentum ad numerum
The arguer contends that the more people there are supporting a
proposition, the greater the likelihood that it is correct.
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For example:
There are thousands of people attending pro-Gordon rallies. Surely,
he should be reinstated.
7. Argumentum ad vericundiam/Appeal to Authority
The arguer exploits admiration for the famous to gain acceptance of a
proposition.
For example:
Kobe Bryant drinks Sprite. (What is the proposition being pushed?)
8. The Fallacy of Accident
The arguer goes from the general to the specific. The moralistic arguer
and legalistic arguer tries to decide every moral or legal question by a
mechanical application of the rules. The arguer applies a general rule
to particular case even if the accidental circumstance of the case
makes the rule inapplicable.
For example:
How could he have failed math? He is Chinese. (Implicitly: Chinese
are generally math wizards.)
9. The Fallacy of Converse Accident/Hasty Generalization
It is the reverse of the Fallacy of the Accident. The arguer arrives at
general rule after examining only a few specific cases.
For example:
I witnessed a live crucifixion in Pampanga during the Holy Week.
Boy! Filipinos are certainly a bunch of masochistic perverts!
10. Dicto simpliciter/Sweeping Generalization
It is the opposite of the Hasty Generalization. The arguer applies a
general rule to a particular situation; however, the specifics of the
situation may render the rule inapplicable.
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For example:
I wouldnt hurry to the board meeting if I were you. Remember, this
is the Philippines. Think Filipino Time.
11. Non Causa Pro Causa/Post hoc ergo propter hoc
These are also called Fallacies of False Causes.
In the Non Causa fallacy, the arguer identifies something as the cause
of an event when it has not been shown to be the cause.
For example:
I wear this red shirt every time I take an examination. This is my
lucky shirt.
In the Post Hoc Fallacy, the arguer assumes something to be the cause
of an event simply because it preceded the event
For example:
I broke my mirror last Monday while getting dressed, and, true enough,
I flunked the interview.
12. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc
The arguer claims that, when two events that occur together, one event
must have caused the other, without considering that other factors
may have caused it.
For example:
All my classmates with long hair get such high grades. I think Ill
start growing my hair.
13. Fallacy of the Skewed Sample
The arguer uses as evidence a statistical sample that is not representative
of the universe to which it belongs.
For example:
There is a groundswell for constitutional change. A survey of the
members of the House of Representatives shows that more than 80
percent are strongly in favor of the move.
14. Circulus in demonstrando
The arguer presents an argument that is entirely circular.
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For example:
Im positive this is correct because it says so in my book. And I know
the book is correct because I wrote it.
15. The Complex Question/The Loaded Question/Fallacy of
Interrogation/ Fallacy of Presupposition
This is the interrogative form of Begging the Question
The arguer asks a question that embeds another question that has not
yet been asked, and presupposed a definite answer to this question.
For example:
How many times have you tried shabu? (What is the embedded
question? The presupposed answer?)
16. Fallacy of Composition
The arguer maintains that a property shared by parts of something is
necessarily is a property or quality of the whole.
For example:
At least two members of your organization are college dropouts. What
right does it have take part in the review of our curricula?
17. The Fallacy of Division
The opposite of the Fallacy of Composition. The arguer assumes that a
property or quality of a group is necessarily a quality of each part or
member of that group.
For example:
She has a Forbes Park address. She must be a millionaire.
18. The Slippery Slope Argument
The arguer asserts that if one (harmful) event occurs, so will other
harmful events, even it cannot be shown that the harmful events were
caused by the first event.
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For example:
If parents allow their children to participate in adult conversation,
soon they will demand to take part in adult activities, and, before you
know it, children will be running their parents lives.
19. Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle
The arguer claims that some things are similar, but does not explain or
specify the similarity.
For example:
Aspirin and heroin are both drugs. If we can buy aspirin over the
counter, we should be able to buy heroin over the counter.
20. Argumentum ad antiquitatem/Fallacy of the Golden Past
The arguer believes that what is old is good or right. Thats the way
it has always been.
For example:
Why do we have to revise our by-laws? They have been in place for
more than fifty years now.
21. Argumentum ad novitatem
The arguer asserts the opposite of argumentum ad antiquitatem.
For example:
I doubt the effectiveness of this method. It is so traditional. I strongly
suggest that we replace it with latest in language-teaching techniques.
22. Argumentum ad crumenam
The arguer maintains that money is the measure of rightness or
correctness; that those with more money are more likely to be right.
For example:
Millionaires dont steal.
23. Argumentum ad lazarum
The opposite of argumentum ad crumenam. The arguer asserts that the
poor are better, more correct, more virtuous than the rich.
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For example:
Sidewalks rightfully belong to the poor venders and hawkers. After
all, the rich dont have any use for sidewalks. They run aroundand
run them downin their cars.
24. Argumentum ad nauseum
The arguer believes that the more an argument is repeated, the more
likely it is to be true.
For example:
Hes said it before, he is saying it again. The President has said it a
thousand timesin the papers, on radio, on television. No relative, no
friend, no crony, no gambling partner of his will receive any special
favors during his term of office!
25. The Fallacy of Bifurcation/False Dichotomy/Either-Or Thinking
Also sometimes called the black and white fallacy. The arguer
presents only two alternatives to a given situation, when there are
other possible alternatives.
For example:
Either we ratify the Visiting Forces Agreement or we open our shores
to foreign invasion.
26. The Fallacy of the Red Herring
The arguer introduces irrelevant material to the discussion to divert
attention away from the main discussion and towards a different
conclusion.
For example:
Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, at a public hearing, to a minister of the
United Churches of Christ of the Philippines: You say that the Visiting
Forces Agreement is a form of U.S. imperialism. But the UCCP is based
in the U.S., isnt it? Why did you not get baptized in the Philippine
Independent Church instead? I was baptized as an Aglipayan [a
member of the PIC] as achild!
27. The Fallacy of Tu Quoque/You Too
We who were involved in the execution of Leo Echegaray, in one
way or another have been called murderers. What would you call
many of those in now in death row?
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Module 5
In this module, we will talk briefly about expressing your critical stance in
the form of an essay. The general term for this type of essay is critical
essay. There are specific forms of the critical essay, such as the reaction
paper and the position paper.
Guzman discusses both types in Units II and III of the Communication
Skills II manual. Her discussion of the position paper is fairly thorough
and requires no elaboration, at least for the purposes of this course. As for
the reaction paper, I merely wish to emphasize the idea (stated in Module
D) that a reaction is not necessarily just a simple statement of like or dislike
for something, or of interest or indifference. At the university level, a
reaction consists of an analytical take on a subject matter.
In Unit II of Guzman, examples of the reaction paper are given. The
examples are reactions to political, social, and cultural events written by
columnists. A close reading of the examples will show that their writers
are basically reacting to or critiquing the events according to a set of criteria.
In some cases, the criteria are explicitly stated while in others they are
implied (and we simply have to piece them together). Now there is no one
set of criteria that applies to all types of phenomena. The selection of criteria
to use in judging or analyzing something depends on, first of all, the
phenomenon or object of analysis itself. Is that phenomenon a movie? A
novel? A political rally? A new law? Each of these must necessarily be
analyzed according to a different set of criteria. It wont do to analyze a
movie the way you would analyze a novel (although some forget this
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when the movie in question is based on a novel). These are two different
genres, each with their own set of narrative devices and conventions.
A professional reaction paper is one that applies a relevant set of criteria
for evaluating the object of the reaction. (On this basis, we can classify
reactions papers into book reviews, film reviews, letters to the editor,
political analyses, social commentaries, etc.) Comm. II is not the course
that teaches you such sets of criteria. Indeed, no one course can. In the
university, various courses train you in evaluating various genres and
types of phenomena. For example, in Humanities I, you will learn how to
analyze literary texts. In Humanities II, you will be taught how to do a
critical study of paintings and sculptures. Your social science courses should
teach you various sets of criteria for evaluating political and social events.
Pending your taking those courses, let us focus meanwhile on learning to
write critical summaries, or reaction papers that are an expression of a
critical stance vis--vis claims made by written sources. Aside from being
something you will be asked to do often in the course of your college
career, writing critical summaries trains you in paying attention to what
someone else is saying and how they are saying it. This in turn is the first
step to being able to make a valid comment or reaction to what that other
person is saying. Also, this is one way of learning or imbibing the modes
of thought and expression in academe.
In Module 5, you were taught four strategies or ways of making a critique:
l
l
l
Examining the validity of the evidence cited by your source for his/
her claim;
Looking at the coherence (or lack of it) of your sources argument;
Considering points of view or positions that are contrary to that of
your source; and
Assessing the generalizability of your sources claim.
You will apply these strategies in writing the critical essay required for
Assignment # 2. The first two strategies require you to simply pay close
attention to what your sources are saying and how they are saying it. The
last two strategies require you to go beyond your source and to find out
how your source relates to other texts or to the larger body of discourses
on his/her subject matter. This means you will need to do some research
and read up on related literature.
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That the assignment requires you to write one critical essay on at least
three sources implies that you must make your choice of sources to critique
on the basis of a main focus or angle. To put it another way, the sources
must be sufficiently related for you to be able to write about them in one
essay. Your essay must have a central idea or thesis (or a central claim, if
you will) that your critique of the three sources will help you establish.
Needless to say, a good reaction paper observes the principles of effective
writing: unity of thought, coherence, grammatical correctness, order, and
conciseness (did I miss a principle or two?).
Also, remember to document your sources both within the text and by
means of a list of works cited. The unit on the critical essay builds on the
module on the report. What you learned in both units you should apply
to the assignment for Unit II.
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The main reason for this omission in my view was the erroneous assumption
that history is good only for enhancing love of country or pride in ones
heritage. Which probably accounts for why in June, there was a brisk sale
of flags and the barong tagalog and saya, the visible trappings of identity,
but little analysis of where we stand in the world today. What was
sorely lacking was an orientation to the past as service to the future
and the present. The Centennial would have been far more significant
if it became the occasion for debating national purposes or for
highlighting the features that have characterized our peoples life in
the last hundred years and analyzing these in historical and critical
terms.
Again let me borrow from Nietzsche to illuminate what I am saying
History, he says, pertains to the living man in three respects: it pertains
to him (first) as a being who acts and strives, (second) as a being who
preserves and reveres, and (third) as a being who suffers and seeks
deliverance. This threefold relationship corresponds to three species of
historya monumental, an atiquarian, and a critical species of history.
A nations monumental history would tell us about its great heroes, the
great moments ad accomplishments in its past, and the virtues that these
heroes and accomplishments exemplified. Confronted by such a
monumental past, says Nietzsche, the man of the present learns from it
that the greatness that once existed was in any event once possible and
may thus be possible again; he goes his way with more cheerful step, for
the doubt which assailed him in weaker moments, whether he was not
perhaps desiring the impossible, has now been banished. On this score
at least, I believe that the Centennial has registered its most important
successes. By reminding us of our heroes and their deeds, and of the crucial
moments when they chose immortality over mere existence, the Centennial
showed us a legacy of greatness worthy of emulation. Such a history
always inspires, even if at times, to do so, it has had to mythify.
It is in the antiquarian and the critical mode of remembering that I feel the
Centennial proved to be most weak. History serves its antiquarian function
when it gives us a sense of our rootedness in a place, surrounded by the
ancestral goods in which our souls may find a home. For the man who
remembers, landscape becomes the resting place of memory. In Nietzsches
words: The history of his city becomes for him the history of himself; he
reads its walls, its towered gate, its rules and regulations, its holidays like
an illuminated diary of his youth and in all this he finds again himself, his
force, his industry, his joy, his judgment, his folly and vices. Here we
lived, he says to himself, for here we are living; and here we shall live, for
we are tough and not to be ruined overnight.
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We have not seen much of the antiquarian sense in the Centennial except
in the ironic attempt to construct replicas of historic buildings in the socalled centennial village in the reclaimed grounds of the former American
base in Clark. Meanwhile our old buildings everywhere have lain in ruin,
unable to project even a glimmer of their ancient glory. Our National
Museum is only now about to find a real home. Traces from our past are
rotting in dusty warehouses. Many historical documents remain bundled
in shoe boxes, awaiting the gentle caring hands of librarians and archivists
with a historical sense. Old photographs fade into dust in humid storerooms
even before they could be re-shot for the appreciation of future generations.
The finest antique collectionsartifacts of a peoples creativityare no
longer found in churches or cathedrals or public museums but in the private
homes of the wealthy, where they surrender their pious significations in
favor of their new decorative functions.
The treatment of historic buildings and monuments has been even more
miserable. There is no conscious policy to preserve or even just to re-insert
the old into the new, except when they are neededlike the Barasoain
churchto lend a touch of solemnity to an official function. We have
become a nation of philistine developers, a crazed people engaged in the
relentless erasure of landmarks from the past. Which is why, unlike in
Europe, geography in our country is seldom an incitement to remembering.
Outside of their relatives homes, balikbayans find really little to come home
to which would remind them of the contentment they had felt in the
homeland of their youth. All around them they find only the grim
reminders of the desolation and poverty from which they sought to escape.
But more than this, the Centennial has had no critical value. It has failed
to provide the occasion to criticize and condemn aspects of our past on
which some surviving institutions or practices worthy of being junked
might still be anchored. Critical history examines what we have become
in the hope of freeing ourselves from the chain of past errors. It is through
this that history performs an emancipatory or liberative function.
A good example is the place of our national minorities in the nations life.
Critical history would have told us how the aberrations and crimes of the
past produced the minoritization and inferiorization of Mindanao and
the Cordilleras. If done well, such an exorcism of an episode in our history
would have permitted us to condemn past deeds and free ourselves from
their living residues. It would have enabled us to take the first real step
towards correcting a historic injustice, and thus pave the way to forgiving
ourselves as a nation.
But the celebratory character of the Centennial overshadowed any concern
for rectifying collective errors and crimes whose effects continue to haunt
us to this day. For it was decided early on that the centennial should not
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reopen old wounds or resentments. It was partly for this reason that the
Centennial expressly avoided any discussion of the circumstances
surrounding the assassination of Andres Bonifacio and of Antonio Luna.
Some organizers suggested that this might embarrass some families or
even entire provinces, or pit one ethnic group against another.
In view of all of this, it is no longer surprising that the Centennial
celebrations came and went without creating lasting impressions on the
national consciousness. The past failed to teach us its lessons for the simple
reason that we forgot or refused to raise the right questions. Therefore, it
was natural that the centennial would leave no challenges. Its exploration
into our past had been cursory and had explicitly avoided controversy.
But I think it is never too late to interrogate the past, to root out past
crimes and errors in the hope of rectifying the living marks they have left
behind. It is true for individuals and institutions; it is true for nations. I
believe it is not too late to examine what we have become in the last one
hundred years in the light of the moral identity that our ancestors had
helped forge through decades of struggle. For this is what history is all
about. As Milan Kundera puts it: The struggle of people against power is
a struggle of memory against the vicissitudes of forgetting forms the core
of our moral identity.
Moral identity is an interesting concept for it signifies the principles that
animate a countrys progress into the future. it summarizes the hopes
that we associate with the social movements that have shaped our nations
destiny. It is my belief that Filipino moral identity as it has evolved up to
the recent past contains at least five elements:
1. First is the quest for national freedom, the belief that we Filipinos are a
nation equal to other human beings, capable of governing ourselves,
and entitled to live in freedom within the community of nations.
2. Second is the quest for democracy, the belief that we must establish a
republican democracy, a system in which every citizen has equal rights
as any other, where the state exists to serve and protect the interests
and welfare of its citizens both as individuals and as members of the
collectivity, and where the people are sovereign.
3. Third is the quest for economic self-reliance, the yearning to be a selfreliant nation, hoping to achieve enduring economic growth through
the development of its people and natural resources.
4. Fourth is the quest for social justice, the belief that the first task of
government is to ensure the provision of the basic needs of the people,
the elimination of poverty, and the equalization of opportunities for
advancement, even if this entails expropriation and redistribution of
property like agricultural land.
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5. And lastly, the quest for ecological balance, the belief that this piece of
earth on which our nation stands, our natural environment and all
that it has, is not something we inherited from our ancestors but is
rather something we borrowed from our children, that we are merely
the stewards of this place on the planet, not its owners. This means
acceptance of the principle that property rights are naturally limited
by our collective obligations to our children who will inherit the
environment.
We do not need history to inform us about our moral identity, for these
values are very much an integral part of our present consciousness. But
we need history to remind us of the conditions that have stood in the way
of the realization of these values through successive generations. We need
history to tell us about the origins of the institutions and laws that contradict
the basic values that to this day animate our social movements. We do not
need history to tell us about our supposed destiny as a people, for there is
no such thing apart from the destiny we create by our actions. We only
need history to remind us how we have come to live the way we do in
spite of what we believe in, hoping that such a realization may produce
the cheerfulness we need to goad us in the effort to achieve our country.
It is obvious that the national purposes I have laid out here as components
of our moral identity would acquire their particular meanings in relation
to the times we live in. The demands of national freedom, for instance,
would have to be re-contextualized in recognition of the realities of
globalization. The era of colonial conquest is long past. But there are new
modes of integrating national economies into the logic of larger markets
beyond the control of nation-states. And indeed advances in transportation
and communication have made the boundaries of nations porous and
almost meaningless. Our people have become phenomenally mobile. They
have recreated the Filipino family and culture against all odds on foreign
land. Filipino identity has acquired new meanings when recast as
oppositional identity in hostile social environments. One-tenth of the
Filipino nation now resides outside the Philippines, making us truly a
modern diasporic people. We cannot continue to treat Filipinos who have
adopted the citizenship of their host countries as lying outside the vision
of responsibility of our nation. For they remain very much a part of the
nation we have become. All these realities we must take into account as
we grapple with the demands of nationhood and sovereignty.
I am afraid the OCW phenomenon, which originated in the 70s in a
temporary program to alleviate domestic unemployment, has now become
a permanent feature of the national life. Yet the institutions we have
invented to address this phenomenon have remained ad hocprovisional,
and grossly inadequate to respond to the complex needs of an overseas
population. We have to abandon the fiction that the OCW is just a
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full pagesin a leading Asian economic magazine. After all, APEC is not
a direct producer or distributor of goods. The advertising is there because
APEC needs to be. The blurbs for APEC declare its potential for a new
global economic order, capitalism triumphant, linking the world together
and ushering in a new millennium of peace and prosperity. The advertising
supplement is in fact entitled Forum for the Future.
How does culture fit in? I will argue that APEC is a proclamation of
possibilities. The very vision of free trade remains challenged but here we
find an instance where the cultural sphere precedes the economic. The
images of APEC are starkly ideological, obstinately projecting a particular
worldview. The Far Eastern Economic Review supplement notes, almost in
passing, that there is a financial crisis in Southeast Asia, but goes on to
say that the Vancouver meetings are there to digest recent eye-catching
progress. The worldview is of global cooperation and inevitable progress.
This theme of progress permeates through all of APECs history.
But moving away from this theme of progress and evoking other images,
we think of the hastily constructed roads leading to the villas in Subic for
the Asia Pacifics leaders. We see a row of men, standing side by side like
fraternity brothers posing for a homecoming. Think of the preparations
for the Vancouver summit in 1997, somewhat muted as Asias tigers turn
into cubs. Think of the Newsweek cover declaring Vancouver as the new
capital of Asia. Think of media coverage, of President Clinton assuring
the world that alls well with the world by going off to play golf.
APECs representation of globalism is ideological in the way it obscures
many other images. Its press releases have a limited time frame, never
mentioning the many currents that have in fact linked peoples and
communities for many centuries. We are made to forget the migrations
more than 40,000 years agofrom northern Asia, across the Bering Straits,
into the Americas: the First Nations of Canada; the native American
Indians of the United States (US); the Mayans of Central America; the
Incas of South America and the may other groups, now called indigenous,
that first colonized the other side of the Pacific.
Ironically, it was another age of colonialismmuch more rapid, much
more violentthat restored the linkages around this Pacific rim. Spanish
colonialism and the Acapulco trade, for example, created channels for an
extensive exchange of ideas, material culture and even of genes across
three continents: Europe, Central America and Asia. (Three years ago at
a conference in Brazil, I met a Cuban physician who was excited about
meeting a Filipino. It turned out his grandmother had been a Filipina.)
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In the last decade of the 20th century, APEC almost seems inevitable, a
convergence of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) ad of
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a consolidation of
the New Economic Order. For all intents and purposes, the consolidation
is total and efficient. It assures you that the NcDonalds hamburger you
eat in Manila, with a little variation, will be served with the same standards
in Washington DC. It assures you that you are now truly a global citizen,
the Nike you wear is assembled from components and labor of at least 10
different countries around the Pacific and beyond.
The consolidation is presumed because it is often most visible in aspects of
culture such as cuisine, music, cinema, fashion and the use of English as
lingua franca. It is important that this image of globalization be propagated
for it becomes self-fulfilling, with APEC representing a world where borders
and barriers are torn down, a world united by cosmopolitan preferences.
It is the globalization, too, that is feared by many, sometimes even bringing
together opponents with diverse ideologies who see globalization as an
erosion of cherished values and traditions. Running through these fears,
too, is that of a dominant West destroying Asian values. The debates
then are no longer those of economic and political ideologies but of culture.
Yet, and this is an important point, political economy remains the arena
in which these debates take place.
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Yet it is doubtful that APEC will facilitate more of such labor movements.
Unlike the European Communitys provisions for free movement of labor,
protectionism is apt to be more for the norm in APEC when it comes to
the movement of people across borders. In fact, we already find efforts
from neighboring countries like Malaysia to curtail this movement of labor.
Yet we also find that, in spite of efforts to regulate them, these migratory
movements continue unabated, spurred by economic hardship as well as
political conflicts. With or without APEC we find hordes of the global
homeless living in inhospitable countries, returning home only for a brief
respite.
Amidst this deterritorialization we will find the creation of new boundaries,
of new localities. Look hard enough and you will find, eve within the
member nations of APEC, cultural loci in various stages of development,
carrying old and new forms of nationalism, whether among the
undocumented populations of Filipinos and Indonesians in Malaysia, or
the Burmese refugee populations in Thailand. The reluctant host countries
are aware of these new loci, and their inherent dangers: away from home,
nationhood becomes an even more powerful concept.
Add, too, the dimension of time as we examine nascent nationalisms.
What happens when the diasporas come to span several generations?
Already, we see Asian-Americans emerging as potent political forces. Closer
to home, we have seen how the Chinese migration at the turn of the
century from the southern Chinese provinces of Fuijan and Guandong to
several countries in Southeast Asia has become a vital factor in shaping
the regions political economy, as well as its culture.
It is also curious how the movements are not unidirectional. We find young
Filipino-Americansquite often born ad raised in the US and unable to
speak Filipinocoming back to look for their roots. Young VietnameseAmericans, too, have gone home to the cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh,
sometimes risking the wrath of their staunchly anticommunist parents
who had left Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s. And the there are the
businessmen of Chinese ethnicity who upon their return to China to invest,
are being hailed as patriotic overseas Hua. This massive inflow of capital
back into China, including large amounts from the renegade province of
Taiwan, would not have been possible without the current wave of
globalization.
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Neocolonialism transformed
Does all this mean then that we have indeed come into a postcolonial age
and that perhaps talk of neocolonialism has become archaic? No. In fact
it may be argued that neocolonialism may eve be on its second wind. The
imperial forays in the form of military invasions may have needed but
certainly there is reason to be concerned with the continuing skewed power
relationship.
Amidst the images of prosperity and Asian versions of Horatio Algertype success stories, the cold statistics still point to worsening economic
inequality within and among nations. The Economist (29 September 1997)
cites United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UNCTAD
figures showing that, in 1965, the average income per capita of the worlds
wealthiest 20 percent was 31 times that of the income of the poorest 20
percent. By 1990, the wealthiest quintiles income was 60 times that of the
poorest. These are cold statistics indeed. But they do not quite capture the
tensions that come with the inequality, and the continuing dynamics, of
resistance.
I do not agree with Samuel Huntingtons thesis (1996) of a clash of
civilizations mainly because he speaks of power blocs, playing on the old
divisions of East and West. I am more inclined to suggest that the clashes
will be less global than regional and national. The loci that I referred to
earlier rise out of domestic tensions. Global developments will undoubtedly
be significant but the crucial developments will be in the many loci of
resurgent nationalisms. For instance, the fears of global Islamic
fundamentalism are exaggerated but at the same time, it must be
recognized that the currents of this fundamentalism will find expression
in many local movements. Nationalism along lines of political, particularly
class, ideology will subside. This is not the say that political ideologies are
dead; they will, quite simply, assume new forms.
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Global babbling
As many social analysts have pointed out, one distinctive characteristic of
the current wave of globalism is that we see the transnational flow not
only of goods but also of information. This transnational flow of
information is a vital component of trade liberalization, with one of the
highlights of APECs Manila meeting being the lifting of tariffs on
information technologies.
No doubt, this explosion of information takes place in the context of skewed
power relations but it is useful to look at how, exactly, the information
flows mirror changing relations. Video Valium (aka CNN) batters us with
Ted Turners interpretations of the words, Princess Diana and of Mother
Teresa, interspersed with ads from the humanitarian agency CARE. A
voice drones about how the proportion of humanity living in absolute
poverty has declined through the years, followed by the deceptive Where
theres hope, theres CARE. The CARE ads capture many aspects of global
information flow: an optimistic, almost naive, and some would say
deceptive, view of global poverty, including their own role as humanitarian
aid agencies in reducing that poverty. But CNN and CARE are only part
of the picture.
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Nationalism as difference
But let us return to the APEC leaders standing in a row, with Clinton
towering over them and wearing that elegant barong made out of Philippine
fabrics and silk. Does that make him more Third World, more Filipino?
His wearing a batik shirt the previous year did not make him more Third
World, more Indonesian. These subtle nuances in the manipulation of
images call for closer attention, particularly in the way the images try to
blur the differences, projecting the image of global citizens.
Yet, again, it is not all domination and hegemony and manipulation. The
market has its own logic. So while the market tries to universalize taste,
the tearing down of borders actually creates new problems.
We have seen that APEC has had a turbulent history, with strong
opposition raised against globalization, most visibly from Malaysian Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad and more discreetly from ministers in
countries such as Indonesia. These expressions of nationalism take many
forms, spilling into other areas as in Mahathirs routinized tirades against
neocolonialism and the invocation of Asian values as a key to survival.
In so many ways APEC epitomizes globalization. But we should not forget
that while the image-makers have decentered the world, APEC still does
not include half of the world: Europe, Africa, many parts of Latin America,
and the former Soviet Union. In fact, APEC is neither Pacific (it excludes
many South Pacific nations) nor Asian in its exclusion of the entire
subcontinent of South Asia. APECs importance comes not just with what
it is attempting to become, but also in what it is not. The Pacific basin is
not, and will never be, the world.
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Note
This article is an expanded version of a paper originally delivered at a
symposium sponsored by the Philippine APEC Study Center (PASCN)
held in December 1997.
References
Aguirre-Beltran, G. 1979. Regions of Refuge. Society for Applied
Anthropology Monograph No. 12. Washington, DC: Society for
Applied Anthropology.
Appadurai, A. 1991. Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a
Transnational Anthropology. In R Fox (ed). Recapturing Anthropology:
Working in the Present. Sta Fe New Mexico: School of American
Research Press.
Bello, W & J Chavez-Malaluan, (eds). 1996. APEC: Four Adjectives in Search
of a Noun. Manila: Manila Peoples Forum on APEC.
Featherstone, M. 1995. Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and
Identity. London: Sage Publications.
Gosen, G. 1996. Maya Zapatistas Move into the Ancient Future. American
Anthropologist 98(3): 528-538.
Huntington, S. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations. New York: Simon ad
Schuster.
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Unit III
The Concept Paper
Thus far, we have discussed and tried our hand at writing reports and
reaction papers. These are the two most common types of academic
discourses. But they are not the only types. In this unit, we turn our
attention to a third type of academic discourse, the concept paper.
At the risk of preempting Module 6, let me state at the outset that a concept
paper is an essay that defines or clarifies a concept or idea. From this
definition, it is obvious why we are focusing on the concept paper in this
Unit: like the report and reaction paper, it is the kind of essay that university
students like yourselves write a lot of. That is, as students you are often
asked to define a term or to explain what it means.
Sometimes the definition required is no more than a paragraph or two in
length. But more often than not, you must come up with a whole essay to
explain the meaning of an idea. Concept papers can be quite complex, as
you will find from our discussion. I refer in particular to concept papers
that are articulations of a theoretical or conceptual framework. There is
also the special type of concept paper the usefulness of which extends
beyond the walls of academethe concept paper leading to a project
proposal.
The Unit consists of two modules:
Module 6 - An Introduction to the Concept Paper
Module 7 The Concept Paper II: Conceptual Frameworks
The modules build on the previous ones. You will find, if you havent
done so yet, that the academic papers we are discussing in this course are
interrelated and at some point, the lines between them become blurred.
Many a report becomes a critical summary, which is really a kind of
reaction paper, and many reaction papers, particularly those reacting to
concepts, do share some characteristics with the concept paper. For the
sake of analysis, we distinguish among these types of writing. But
remember that the skills you learned in the previous Units are skills you
will need for this Unit as well. At the same time, I hope you will learn new
ones.
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Module 6
An Introduction to
the Concept Paper
What is a Concept?
We begin with this question because the key word in concept paper is
really concept.
Briefly put, a concept is an idea. According to Websters Ninth New
Collegiate Dictionary, the word comes from the Latin conceptum, meaning
something conceived in the mind: thought, notion and an abstract or
generic idea generalized from particular instances.
Thus, concept papers are essays that clarify or explain an abstract idea or
thought. The idea could be a key term or word like city or patriarchy
or the middle classes. Or it could be a method or approach to something,
such as a post-structuralist approach to literary analysis or a semiotic
approach to art appreciation. The concept being explained or described
could also be a policy, such as deregulation, or a project, such as the
search for outstanding young scientists or declaring the UP Open
University as the national center of excellence in open and distance
learning.
These different types of concepts lead to different types of concept papers,
which we shall describe in the sections that follow.
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Activity 6-1
See if you can identify the parts of a formal definition in the sample
definitions given. The samples are reproduced below. Underline
once the definiens; underline twice the genus; and underline thrice
the differentiae.
1. Daycare is the institutional provision of care-taking services to
young children, these services including feeding, supervision,
shelter, and instruction. (qtd. in Giltrow, 1995, p. 189)
2. A computer virus is a computer program or section of
programming code which is designed to sabotage a computer
system by causing itself to be copied into other parts of the
system, often destroying data in the process. (The Oxford
Dictionary of New Words, 1991; qtd. in Guzman, 2000, p. 135)
3. Atmosphere is the mood pervading a literary work, setting up
in the reader expectations as to the course of events, whether
happy or (more commonly) disastrous. (A Glossary of Literary
Terms, qtd. in Dadufalza, 1996, p. 190)
Now, the foregoing are just one-sentence definitions. They do not a concept
paper make. Concept papers of the type we are considering in this section
are, according to Guzman, basically extended definition[s]. They provide
not only the classification and distinguishing characteristics of the term
being defined, but also its provenance or origin, its causes, its effects or
consequences, its mechanics, its uses, and the like.
For example, the extended definition of computer virus is as follows:
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The urban poor are, consequently, a fluid subject not only for
research bit for practical policies as well. Although poverty is
widespread and visible in Metro Manila, the poor hardly form a
definable segment or sector that can be used as a unit of analysis
or a target group for development measures. According to a PCUP
discussion paper (Nario 1990, 1), inconsistent definitions have
caused the fragmented formulation and implementation of plans
and programs addressed to their needs This situation has not in
any way yielded a long-term impact for the entire urban poor
sector, but had produced only stop-gap solutions.
A viable way out of these problems of conceptualization is the
common knowledge that the poor live in certain parts of the city
and are hardly ever found in others. Many of the definitions
discussed by Nario (1990) indicate that while urban poverty is not
restricted to the enclaves of slums and depressed areas it is heavily
concentrated in these places. In a recent area-based evaluation of
statistical data, Lamberte (1992) estimates the number of people
living in depressed barangays or high-risk urban communities
in 1990 at some 3.6 million or 47 percent of Metro Manilas
population. If we take into consideration the growth since then
and the systematic errors of census data mentioned above, we can
say that slum dwellers form a clear majority today.22
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Aside from the fact that a concept like urban poor is not as
straightforward as some might think, the above example shows that an
essay that defines such a concept does so using ways or techniques other
than the formal definition. Dadufalza enumerates these techniques as
follows:
by synonym
by origin or semantic history
by illustration
by function
by analysis
by likeness or similarity
by analogy or metaphor
by contrast
by negation
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In this example, biography and history, two separate concepts, are shown
to have a relationship. This relationship is the (third, more abstract) concept
that is being explained or clarified. Note that the relationship between the
two terms is not one of cause and effect or one of similarity or contrast.
The type of relationship between ideas that constitutes the types of concepts
referred to here is complex, even constructed. That is to say, it is not a
natural and/or obvious relationship. It is the writer who establishes
the relationship, who makes us see or acknowledge it in his/her concept
paper.
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The following topics are likely to be the subject of the kind of concept
paper discussed above:
1. The Politics of Truth (the title of a book by Michelle Barrett, 1991)
2. Conversion and the Ideology of Submission (in Vicente Rafaels
Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog
Society under Early Spanish Rule, 1988)
3. Colonizing the Cuisine: The Politics of Philippine Foodways (in
Doreen Fernandezs Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture, 1994)
4. gender and power
5. democracy and the Internet
Concept papers that explore relationships between concepts or that
construct new concepts out of other concepts are fairly common in
academic discourse. And these are the kinds of concept papers you must
become adept at writing.
Activity 6-2
A. Do one of the following:
1. Locate one of the three published works given as examples
of topics that posit a relationship (i.e., the works of Barrett,
Rafael, and Fernandez) and summarize what the writer
means by the topics.
2. Summarize a published work (may be an essay or article,
or a chapter, or part of a chapter) that is an example of a
concept paper or essay that explores or posits a relationship
between ideas.
B. Do one of the following:
1. Write a 3-5-page concept paper on one of topics 4 and 5
above (i.e., gender and power or democracy and the
Internet). Read up on your topic of choice, by all means,
and cite relevant sources to prove or clarify your points.
You may decide to narrow down the topic further. That is
part of what a concept paper does. Remember to document
your sources.
2. Write a 3-5-page concept paper on a topic of your own
choice, provided the topic is one that posits a relationship
between at least two ideas. Be guided by the example given
from McCoy (pp. 12-13). You may consult and cite relevant
sources. Remember to document your sources properly.
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Module 7
rom doing Activity 6-2, you must have observed that in order to establish a
relationship between two essentially separate
ideas, you need to consider these ideas from a
particular viewpoint. For the relationship
between them is not one that is inherent to
these ideas; rather, it is constructed, or
formulated, by the writer him/herself. It is a
relationship that is conceptualized by the
writer.
This brings us to an important type of concept
paper, the conceptual framework, in which a
writer articulates his/her understanding of
certain ideas and how they relate to each other
from a certain point of view. This is the type
of concept paper we will discuss in this module.
Objectives
After studying this module,
you should be able to:
1. Describe or characterize
a conceptual framework;
2. Identify examples of
conceptual frameworks;
and
3. Write a research
proposal, a specific type
of conceptual framework.
What is a Framework?
Having defined the word concept, from which the word conceptual is
derived, let us now define framework. The dictionary tells us that a
framework is a system, structure, or schema. Putting conceptual and
framework together, we have a scheme or structure for interpreting ideas
or concepts.
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purpose of essay: to
define a semiotic
approach to art
criticism
basic premise or
assumption of
authors approach
to art criticism
II
Let us begin with the basic premise that there are two interrelated
aspects in the study of art. The first is that art has its specificity,
that is, its particular language or vocabulary that has to do with
the media, techniques, and visual elements of art and that consti-
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tute it as a distinct area of human knowledge and signifying practice. This is not just what is commonly called the formal aspect of
art, but it is what constitutes art as a particular human activity
different from the others. The other aspect is that art, while it has
its specificity, is at the same time historically situated and shaped
by social, economic, and political forces. Both these aspects need
to be taken into account to be able to fully understand and
appreciate art. For a study of the formal elements alone will not
lead to a full understanding of the work, in the same way that the
exclusive study of the social determinants risks collapsing the artistic
into the sociological. A visual work as an iconic or pictorial sign
has a unique and highly nuanced meaning, and this uniqueness
and semantic richness arise from the original use of the elements
and resources of art. Needless to say, the meaning, signification,
or system of significations of a work is not statemental, nor is the
understanding of a work a reductive process that reduces meaning
to a summary, statement, or single insight or message. Meaning in
art is a complex of intellectual, emotional, and sensory significations,
which the work conveys and to which the viewer responds,
bringing in the breadth of his cultural background, artistic exposure
and training, and human experience in a dialogic relationship with
the artwork. One may speak of a works horizon of meaning
(Eagleton 1991), implying a range of possible significations that a
work may accommodate, at the same time that it suggests semantic
parameters.
definition of
meaning in art
components
of authors
semiotic
approach to
art criticism
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the first
component or
plane of
analysis:
basic semiotic
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two sources of
meaning of
physical
aspects of
artwork
example of
basic semiotic
analysis of
artwork in
which meaning
is derived from
psychophysical
experience
The elements of the visual arts derive their semantic, or meaningconveying potential, from two large sources, namely, (1) human
psychophysical experiences (psychological and physical/sensory),
which are commonly shared; and (2) the sociocultural convention
s of a particular society and period (Matejka and Titunik 1976). As
human beings, our sensory and physical experiences in general
are intimately fused with our psychological conditions and
processes. Among our basic psychophysical experiences involve
those of the changing light of day and night, of warmth and cold,
of weight or gravity, relative distance, pleasure and pain, with the
complex intellectual and emotional associations that go with these.
Because of these humanly shared experiences, it is often possible
to arrive at a general agreement of what these elements and their
usage convey in a work of art.
The semantic potential of line, for instance, does not merely lie in
its orientation as horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or curvilinear, but
also in its very quality, its thickness or thinness, density and
porosity, regularity or irregularity, its production by even or uneven
pressure on a surface, as well as qualities determined by the
instrument producing it. A line made by a technical pen signifies a
set of concepts and values different from that made by a stick of
charcoal. Likewise, the different orientations of line derive their
meaning from the positions of the body. Asleep or at rest, one is in
a horizontal position; in readiness, vertical; and in action, diagonal.
In dance, one creates curved lines in space with ones body and
limbs.
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more examples/
specific
applications of
basic semiotic
analysis
example of basic
semiotic analysis
in which meaning
is derived from the
sociocultural
context of artistic
elements
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difference
between
semiotic
analysis and
classical
approach to art
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the second
component or
plane of analysis
the iconic plane
one component
of iconic plane:
the choice of
subject
second
component of
iconic plane:
subject-viewer
relationship
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third
component of
iconic plane:
positioning of
figures
Does the painting show strong central focusing with the principal
figure occupying the center space, or is it decentered and the
painting asymmetrical in composition? How doe these
presentations contribute to different meanings? Does the subject
or subjects have a formal or a casual air? How does one describe
the central figures stance: poised, relaxed, indifferent, provocative,
or aloof? How much importance is given to psychological insight
into character by the artist? To costume and accessories? To the
settingnatural, social, or domestic? What is the relative scaling
of the figures from large to small? What bearing does this have on
the meaning of the work? Lunas Tampuhan (1895) brings to the
fore the artists sensitivity to body language. How do the postures
of the man and the woman convey their emotional attitudes?
....
fourth
component:
style of
figuration
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requirement of
contextual
analysis: broad
knowledge of
history and
economic,
political and
cultural
conditions
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fourth plane of
analysis:
evaluative
plane
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considers
standards
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the
relationship
between critic
and artist
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differences
in critical
interpretation
conclusion:
the dialogic
nature of
art
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A Second Example
Different disciplines look at the same phenomenon or object of study
differently. This is another reason why academics consider conceptual
frameworks important. It tells the reader where the writer is coming from,
or through what disciplinal lens he/she is looking at something.
In the sample conceptual framework we will consider in this section
Corruption: A Framework by Emmanuel de Dios (in Public Policy III: 4,
1998)we shall see how a fairly familiar concept, corruption, is viewed
from a particular disciplinal perspective, that of Economics. The experience
of reading this essay is one of defamiliarizationthat is, the concept seems
no longer familiar, as we see it from a different point of view. The
experience is also one that should make us appreciate the following:
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Corruption: A Framework
By Emmanuel S de Dios
Defining Corruption
There is no single definition of corruption. An earlier literature
(e.g., Cario 1986) presupposed legal norms and defined the matter
primarily in terms of behavior that deviated from such norms.
Posing the question this way, the main focus of attention becomes
one of asking why there was a deviation between value systems,
for example, between what people did and what the law required.
This had the disadvantage, however, of leaving unanswered
whether and to what extent the observance of either moral or legal
norms produced useful social outcomes.1 Much earlier, in The Wealth
of Nations (Book 5, Chapter 2, Article 4), Adam Smith raised
precisely this dilemma regarding the rationality of legal norms
themselves when he described the smuggler in sympathetic moral
terms as
the limitation of
the legal
definition of
corruption
introduction to
the economic
view of
corruption
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one aspect of
the economic
concept of
corruption: its
relation to
monopoly
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specific
allusion to
how
monopoly
leads to
corruption
definition of
corruption visa-vis
monopoly
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concretizing
the theoretical
discussions
of P-A:
government
as principal;
agent as
bureaucrats
and politicians
one reason
why agents of
government
are not
discouraged
from corrupt
practices: the
giving of fixed
wages or
salaries to
agents
regardless of
output
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need to be,5 leading to undue risks being borne by the agent. This
may reach absurd proportions, such as when the death penalty or
life imprisonment is imposed on even petty bureaucratic crimes,
leading to questions regarding the credibility of such threats. Finally,
the possibility must also be raised that even the fixed-fee implied
in this scheme is not at a level sufficient to fulfill the participation
constraint, a circumstance that highlights the low level of
compensation of bureaucrats.
The main message of the PA approach is to point to the possibility
and appropriateness of other mechanisms. For example, some
variety of linear-free schemes, similar to share tenancy, may both
distribute risk and maintain incentives for performance by basing
payment on observable indices of performance. A version of this
has actually been attempted in the fee-sharing arrangement
between the Metro Manila Development Authority and their agents
(traffic enforcers and traffic towing). Another broad possibility is
a fee-scheme where it is the agent that pays a fixed fee to the
principal. Under this arrangement, high powered incentives exist
for the agent to perform, since it is the residual claimant, although
the arrangement presumes a capacity for risk-bearing. Recent
examples of these include the privatization of the provision of
certain public services that generate revenue, such as resorting to
private concessionaires in the case of metropolitan water and
sewerage or, much earlier, the tax farms France under Colbert.
Where no revenues or appropriable rents are involved, sequential
contracting is a close alternative to direct provision by paid
employees, under which the principal (here, the government) pays
the contractor a fixed fee, with the difference that the tenure or
the stability of employment is not guaranteed. Here the incentive
problem is solved by more explicit competition in a pool of potential
agents. None of these alternatives is perfect: schemes with higherpowered performance incentives may cause agents to perform
overzealously with adverse consequences for the constituencies to
be served (e.g., bounty-hunting and false accusations). However,
it must be recognized that practice and experiment have lagged
far behind theory in this respect.
Corruption as tax or transfer
An early and somewhat surprising recognition of corruption in
the economics literature says that the corruption label by itself
i.e., without further qualificationsays nothing about efficiency.
In essence, corruption is a transfer, from the governmentor its
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one economic
view of
corruption: it
does not affect
economic
efficiency
corruption
works like a
tax
differences
between
corruption and
taxes:
difference # 1
difference # 2
132 Communication II
difference # 3
parametric vs.
variable
corruption: the
former is like
taxation
difference # 4
calling attention
to how
unconventional
the economic
view of
corruption is;
differences
between
conventional
view and
economic view
of corruption
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corruption as
part of a
complex of
problems
example of
how
corruption
reduces direct
benefits from
a project
relationship
between
regulation
and
corruption:
over
regulating
promotes
corruption
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example # 1
example # 2
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third economic
effect of
corruption
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Many years ago, Shleifer and Murphy tested the influences that
impinged on the growth of a cross-section of countries. Among
the variables they tested were the share of scientists and engineers
to total graduates, and the share of lawyers to total graduates.
They found that a higher share of scientists and engineers on
average influenced growth positively and significantly, while a
higher share of lawyers had a negative and significant effect on
growth. Obviously, the more extensive and lucrative corrupt deals
become in society, the more attractive entering that profession
becomes, and the more talent and effort are sucked away from the
productive process. This diversion of resources and talent from
productive to directly unproductive (dupe in Bhagwatis
terminology) activities is bound to be reflected ultimately in a lower
rate of economic growth.
It is in a similar way that one can view the most recent attempts to
change the Constitution, which have diverted and devoured huge
amounts of national energies. The attempts to change political and
economic provisions in the Constitution are part of a redistribution
game, intended to change the rules. Of course, it is contended, the
rules are wanting and cannot support future development. That is
at best debatable. The point is that any attempt to change rules
also uses up resources, which would otherwise have been spent
on production. Rather than spend time producing and crating,
people have been drawn into a controversy that eats up their
talents, resources and energies. This is true even if the proposals
were confined to economic provisions alone.
In this connection, one must mention that it is not only the talents
of the corrupt that are wasted; also wasted are the talents and
resources of those who would wish to prevent corruption. Part of
the costs of a corrupt and inefficient government consists of the
time of honest and morally outraged citizens provoked by its
venality and insensitivity. Demonstrations, rallies, strikes, citizen
watchdogs, volunteer groups, not to mention peoples revoltall
of these entail the use of resources that would otherwise have been
saved or used for directly productive purposes.
Investment Disincentives Due to Uncertainty
fourth
economic
cost of
production
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final
argument
against
corruption:
convergence
of the
economic
and moral
views of
corruption
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background of
the research:
how it came
about
the questions of
interest to the
researchers
What have been the gains to women as a result of the ICPD POA
and the BPFA? What gaps remain in our knowledge of women
and gender relations? How will the emerging forces of globalization
impact on women in particular, family, economy, and society in
general? What research and actions need to be taken due to ensure
that the next generation of women and men will enjoy a better
quality of life?
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focus and
intent of the
research
coverage of
review:
description
of sources
to be used
Women-Centered Perspectives and Research: The PostInternational Conference on Population and Development
(ICPD) Concerns
In the Programme of Action (POA) adopted at the ICPD in Cairo
in September 1994, governments affirmed womens rights to
reproductive health, defined as a state of compete physical and
social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,
in all matters relating to the reproductive system and all its functions
and processes.
A year after, in September 1995, at the UF Fourth World
Conference on Women, the Beijing Declaration and the Platform
for Action put forth the principles, strategies and specific actions
necessary to empower women and enable them to fully participate
on the basis of equality in all spheres of society to achieve the
goals of equality, development, and peace.
The UNDP Human Development Report of 1995 captured the
whole mission in the following statement: Human development,
if not engendered, is endangered.
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definition of
terms and
review of
related
literature
144 Communication II
relationship of
study to similar
studies; and
definitions of key
terms
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organization
of review
The marginal notes indicate the important parts of the research proposal.
Now read this second example:
Introduction
Young adults, defined in our research as those aged between 16
and 24, comprise about a fifth of our total population. With the
Philippines total population of almost 80 million, that percentage
translates into 16 million people. But the importance of this segment
of the population doesnt come just with the numbers. Young
people constitute a population that is full of potential. A countrys
future development depends on how these young adults are
supported as they go through the often difficult period of
adolescence, searching for their identity, and roles in society. Many
will still be studying, acquiring vital skills for their future careers,
but there are also many young Filipinos who will leave school during
this period, sometimes as early as in high school, to join the work
force. Many, too, would have become parents, starting new
families. The University of the Philippines Population Institute
(UPPI), in their 1994 Young Adult and Fertility Survey (YAFS),
found that by age 19, one out of every five Filipinas would have
married. By age 24, nearly 60 percent would have married.
Young adult experiences are crucial in forming much of what he
or she will carry through life: ones sense of self-worth, social
affiliations, responsibility, intimacy. Some of these values are
acquired through the family, religious institutions, and the mass
media, but often enough, too, they are acquired by young people
on their own, through trial and error. Sadly, young people
sometimes learn by default, i.e., they are given no choices, such as
when they are forced into an early pregnancy and marriage.
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background
and rationale
for focus of
study
146 Communication II
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definition of
terms
clarification
of method
to be used
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specific
coverage of
proposed
study
148 Communication II
the research
sites
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the research
team
research
period/duration
In each site, the research design considers sex, age, and socioeconomic status for selecting people for interviews and focus group
discussions. For the age variable, we have two intervals: those aged
16 to 19 and those 20 to 24, more or less corresponding to vital
transitions: the age of graduation from high school usually being
16 to 17 and marking either entry into the work force or into college.
For those who do enter college, 20 is usually the age of graduation.
research design
For socio-economic status, our division is quite basic: AB for highand middle-income groups, mainly students from the Manila and
Iloilo campuses of the University of the Philippines. The university,
although originally intended to cater to low-income Filipinos, has
become quite elitist because only upper-income students, who have
access to better primary and secondary private education, are able
to hurdle the entrance examinations. CDE or low-income
respondents were recruited from urban poor areas in Manila and
Iloilo. These include students as well as out-of-school youth.
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Adapted with modifications from Tan et al.s Love and Desire: Young
Filipinos and Sexual Risks (2001)
This second example is a research proposal for a field study involving the
collection of primary data from a sample. Like the first example, it contain
a background of the proposed study (or what led to it) a statement of the
studys focus to objectives, a definition of key terms, and a description of
the research method. The latter is much more detailed in this example
then in the first example. This is because the first is a review of existing
literature (also known as library research), a method that needs no
elaboration as the term is self-explanatory.
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Activity 7-1
Write a 3-5-page research proposal for a library research (meaning,
you will not conduct surveys or interview, but use published
material on the subject matter) on a topic of your own choice.
Your proposal should clearly articulate the research questions you
wish to answer and a review of related literature (including similar
studies and/or articles/books that tackle the same topic or related
topics). Be sure to document the literature you cite apropriately.
Conclude with a statement emphasizing the value of the research
you are proposing. Needless to say, your proposal should have a
good introduction.
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