66 – Interpretation: reading and taking notes
bullet and to begin to see your reading and note-taking not so much
as a faithful record of what the author wrote (for which quoting is the
only solution) as your considered interpretation of what the author
meant. To paraphrase is to make concrete what you think the author
means.
If you lack confidence in your ability to interpret an author’s
meaning without greatly misrepresenting what he or she says, you
might need to work quite hard at what is to be said in the rest of
this chapter. But if you keep it in mind that your essay is to be
your ‘best’ answer to the essay question, you will see it follows that
your use of the sources must equally be your ‘best’ interpretation of
what they mean. You should try – so far as you can – to make your
notes preliminary sketches for some part of the finished essay, just as
an artist sometimes makes pencil or charcoal ‘studies’ of the subject
before composing it in paint.
The usual way of representing what the author means is, as
we have seen, to paraphrase his or her words in your own. What
paraphrasing does is to give your account of what the author is
saying. The focus is entirely on the content of the author’s ‘message’.
Though necessary, to concentrate exclusively on what the author is
saying – on the content – is to miss most of the really important clues
that enable you to establish your own ‘best’ interpretation.
Another way of approaching the question ‘What does the
author mean?’ is to ask what the author is doing with his or her
language. Academic writing (you will remember from chapter I) does
a great deal more than simply try to represent the truth about the
subject under scrutiny: a point of view has to be established, the
evidence must be assembled and turned into a coherent argument,
meanings must be clarified, the reader must be addressed, and the
writings of others taken into account. Academic authors will usually
be quite explicit about their major aims in the introductory chapter
of a book or in the opening paragraphs of a chapter; but not many
stop and tell you constantly what they are up to – partly because
they themselves are not fully conscious of what they are doing. Good
writers (and don’t forget that not all academics are good writers)
will often litter their text with clues and signposts, but the reader
bullet and to begin to see your reading and note-taking not so much
as a faithful record of what the author wrote (for which quoting is the
only solution) as your considered interpretation of what the author
meant. To paraphrase is to make concrete what you think the author
means.
If you lack confidence in your ability to interpret an author’s
meaning without greatly misrepresenting what he or she says, you
might need to work quite hard at what is to be said in the rest of
this chapter. But if you keep it in mind that your essay is to be
your ‘best’ answer to the essay question, you will see it follows that
your use of the sources must equally be your ‘best’ interpretation of
what they mean. You should try – so far as you can – to make your
notes preliminary sketches for some part of the finished essay, just as
an artist sometimes makes pencil or charcoal ‘studies’ of the subject
before composing it in paint.
The usual way of representing what the author means is, as
we have seen, to paraphrase his or her words in your own. What
paraphrasing does is to give your account of what the author is
saying. The focus is entirely on the content of the author’s ‘message’.
Though necessary, to concentrate exclusively on what the author is
saying – on the content – is to miss most of the really important clues
that enable you to establish your own ‘best’ interpretation.
Another way of approaching the question ‘What does the
author mean?’ is to ask what the author is doing with his or her
language. Academic writing (you will remember from chapter I) does
a great deal more than simply try to represent the truth about the
subject under scrutiny: a point of view has to be established, the
evidence must be assembled and turned into a coherent argument,
meanings must be clarified, the reader must be addressed, and the
writings of others taken into account. Academic authors will usually
be quite explicit about their major aims in the introductory chapter
of a book or in the opening paragraphs of a chapter; but not many
stop and tell you constantly what they are up to – partly because
they themselves are not fully conscious of what they are doing. Good
writers (and don’t forget that not all academics are good writers)
will often litter their text with clues and signposts, but the reader