Page 128 - Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

RESEARCH, REASONING, AND ANALYSIS 11 5

context in which it was produced. In other words, information from indirect
sources is only as good as our understanding of that source itself. For example, as a
result of changes over the past two decades, an academic commentary such as the
one by James on advertising in the 1970s may not be precisely relevant to con-
temporary concerns. There is no general rule to apply to such analysis of sources,
except that we must always think about the context (who obtained the information;
when, where, and how the information was arrived at) as well as the text (what the
information is).
For example, imagine you are watching a television program on advertising.
The host makes some comments on nationalistic commercials, saying that they
always produce an emotional reaction and that is why they are effective. Is this
source useful for an academic investigation? If you answered no, then you would,
in some circumstances, be correct. But the important question to ask is 'Why?'. Let
us contrast this hypothetical television program with a more usual source: academic
writing. The trustworthiness of academic writing is based on the idea that the
person doing the writing is an expert in that area, through their close study of the
topic, their skills as a researcher, their careful, long-term analysis, and their involve-
ment in a system in which articles and books are published only after the scrutiny
of other qualified academics to determine if they are 'right' or not. In other words,
the claims are trustworthy because an institutionalised method makes them trust-
worthy. It is a social convention that academic work is regarded as being more
'sound' (if often more remote) than 'popular' work; it is also a worthwhile social
convention because there are good reasons to accept this distinction in soundness.
The usefulness of the television program depends, however, on what exactly we
are trying to find. It might be quite relevant to argue that the popular perception of
nationalist advertising is very important in the effectiveness of such commercials.
So, even if we distrust many of the claims that are advanced in the popular media
and trust those from more scholarly work instead, we can still use as evidence the
fact that people do actually make and listen to the first sort of claim. In other
words, while we may not trust the television program as an indirect commentary
on advertising, we could certainly use it as a direct source of popular views on
advertising.
Do you see the difference? Sometimes we will want to make claims in our
reasoning that convey information in the claims themselves. And sometimes we
will want to make claims about the fact that a certain type of claim, or group of
claims, has been made by others. Developing the latter type of writing is essential
in good critical work and, thus, requires you to develop skills in knowing about
sources of knowledge.

Exercise 8.3

Write a short analysis of the different direct and indirect sources that you use
most frequently in your current reasoning. What questions do you need to ask
about them? What rules and assumptions, stemming from the discipline or