Comments on: Why we should read it before we cite it — no, really!

By: Sara Jameson

Sara Jameson — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:05:23 +0000

I like how you poit out that what appears to be a conversation among scholars may not actually be one. On the other hand, for our students, as you say, any misreading is accidental. And they are freshmen, not supposed experts. But maybe you think that for some scholars the misrepresentation is due to sloppy or lazy work or to deliberate misrepresentation? All of which means maybe we need to add something to our ILP revision for next fall?
Also something about the Wikipedia page count research I just posted on?

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:36:29 +0000

Well I think I’d say of course this applies to books. I don’t think the authors are saying “this person only read the relevant chapter of this book and even though they read it really well, that’s bad.” They ‘re talking about situations where authors are saying, essentially, “this person is the authority on this topic so I’m going to cite them even though I haven’t read their article.” Pretty different I’d say. And the authors are also not, I think, talking about something that *could* be called misreading but is in fact an interpretation — they’re talking more about “this article says to do X and these authors did Q instead.”

Where the article doesn’t get there for me, actually, is in it’s very black-and-white view of writing and citing. It reduces the process to something more mechanical and more definable than I’m comfortable with. But where I think this research is really interesting and really important in the conversations you and I have had about FYC is in the concept of the conversation – there’s some pretty compelling evidence here that citations are very frequently not representing conversations and that’s an issue. Basically, these scholars aren’t engaging in dialogue with their sources any more than FYC students some of the time – and the FYC students have a much better excuse. I think realizing this is important – both for how we talk about the process to the students, and also in our expectations for what the student will be bringing to the process. If established scholars aren’t living up to that concept, we can’t expect students to get there if we don’t deliberately show them, and model for them, what that process looks like?

By: Sara Jameson

Sara Jameson — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:35:23 +0000

OK, but does this also apply to books? Weren’t we just saying that we can reassure students in WR 121 that they really do not have to read the entire book in order to use some background facts or to use some opinion. What do you think? And as for mis-reading, that’s part of the goal of WR 121 – reading comprehension – as when we give them Gould’s essay “women’s brains” and see if they can be sure what he says relative to what the others he quotes say. I would argue that making an interpretation might consist of mis-reading or not depending on how much evidence and how it is interpreted. but that’s more literary, perhaps.

By: Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:13:09 +0000

Shaun – yes. Some of the commenters and responders also made similar points about that. I think we’d all agree that one should read it well enough to get it right (or to have made a reasonable interpretation) but beyond that it becomes problematic.

One important distinction, I think, is between those things you cite to contextualize your study (i.e. the lit review) and those things you cite to provide evidence for important claims about the method or results of your study. Those would definitely be different kinds of reading. It is also this factor that you bring up that makes me think that Wright and Anderson have a very specific type of citation in mind that they think is necessary and they’re not really thinking of those types of citations where a critical strategic reading of the original source is enough.

I also wonder if there are disciplinary distinctions in play – that I think more things should be cited than they do because of the disciplines in which I was trained? In their response piece, for example, they recommend eliminating extraneous citations – anything that is not providing evidence or a direct quote. I kind of shuddered to think of the resulting prose if we directly quoted from everything we cited – maybe that’s a disciplinary distinction.

By: Shaun Huston

Shaun Huston — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:52:48 +0000

I also think that a question could be asked about what it means “to have read” a source before citing it. As we’ve discussed in a number of conversations, academic reading often involves closely reading select chapters of a book or even sections of an article. Of course, skimming introductory and concluding chapters/sections to ensure that the closely read pieces are properly contextualized is also part of such reading, but in no case are we talking about reading a source from beginning to end.