Image of the Roman god Janus from Wikimedia Commons
The month of January was named in honor of the Roman god Janus, the god who looked both ways. While Janus may have been a careful pedestrian, it’s unlikely that he gained his tag line – the god who looked both ways – because of the caution he exercised in crossing the street. Rather, “the god who looked both ways” acknowledges Janus’ propensity for looking both forward and backwards: to the future as well as the past.
Janus is clearly an appropriate namesake for a month that transitions our western human cultures into a new year, bidding us to learn from the past and joyfully move into the future. But what does this have to do with writing?
Quite a lot, actually, if you frame it the right way.
And that’s precisely what this week’s writing tip is about: framing. Not framing, as in “framing a house,” although that meaning of the word could be appropriate, as Janus is often depicted above a doorframe – a transitional space of passage from old to new and back again. Nor is it framing, as in “framing someone for a crime.” This type of framing is inappropriate under any circumstances and should never be done, unless you’re writing a mystery novel!
I’m talking about framing, as in “presenting evidence throughout a piece of writing in a manner that supports, clarifies, or otherwise works with the argument you want to make.” Remember that an argument, to a writer, isn’t about angry people shouting at each other; it’s about making a statement, asserting a claim, or proposing a new idea and helping your reader see why that statement, claim, or idea is worthy of consideration. Framing helps a writer convince the audience that his or her ideas are worthy of consideration. Framing accomplishes this task by demonstrating how the author’s own ideas build upon, challenge, are supported by, or are consistent with the ideas of other authors who have published on the topic. In other words, framing puts the current author’s ideas into a tidy “frame” with other authors’ ideas, so that the relationships between each author’s ideas can be seen, digested, and pondered by the reader.
During a discussion on the concept of framing in one of my writing classes, a student – let’s call him J – raised his hand tentatively in a room full of tangible silence. He was a shy, soft-spoken student who preferred writing to speaking. It always surprised me when he volunteered a question or comment in class. It surprised me even more that he was the one student bold enough to venture a question or comment in a room full of seemingly shocked people. Encouragingly, I asked him if he had a question. He lowered his hand, nodded, and said “Do you mean that we can use framing to just make stuff up?”
All of his classmates nodded enthusiastically, murmuring in a mixture of English and the three non-English languages represented in the classroom. The murmuring suggested that everyone in class had been thinking exactly what J had been thinking: the concept of framing is a license to make stuff up, twist the truth, or – at the very least – conceal evidence that is inconvenient to your own argument.
I could see why they would think this. I was also quite glad that they had raised this point, as it provided an excellent opportunity for us to talk about the following: (1) academic dishonesty, (2) the problems of intentionally misrepresenting someone else’s ideas, and (3) the importance of ensuring that your reader understands where the cited author’s ideas end and your interpretation of those ideas begins.
I offered my students the following example as part of our discussion.
Linguist Stephen Krashen’s work on language acquisition is famous for, among many other ideas, the concept of i+1. This concept describes a way for language teachers to use the target language (the language that students are learning) in the classroom. In this formula, the letter “i” stands for input: the language input that students receive by listening to the teacher speak and interacting with the learning materials that the teacher chooses. Meanwhile, “+ 1” refers to the ideal level of complexity or difficulty of the language input to which students are exposed. The formula is a convenient way of saying that language teachers should try to present students with language that is just a little bit – but not too much – more complex than the language that they already know.
For example, on the first day of my German classes, I like to introduce students to the language right away, by showing them how to introduce themselves in German. Within fifteen minutes, everyone in class has started to figure out a lot of things about the German language: what the personal pronouns for “I,” “you,” “he,” “she,” and “they” sound like; how regular verbs work; and how the cultural conventions of greetings work among speakers of German. Unless students already knew some German before taking my class, they generally can’t explain what they learned from all of the language input I offered them on the first day of class. Nevertheless, they’ve begun to develop a foundation on which to build lots of information about the German language. In other words, they’ve developed a little bit of “i” on which I can build a little bit of “+1.” So the next day, I start class with the same input (“i”) that I used on the first day, introducing myself again and helping students introduce themselves to each other and to me. And then I add the “+1”: I introduce the question “How’s it going?” and model various appropriate answers. And so we work together to build their knowledge of the language slowly but surely with a new “+1” every day.
Krashen’s concept of “i+1” crops up frequently in scholarly research on language acquisition and language teaching as well as informal conversations among teachers. But it doesn’t always crop up for the same reason. This is how we see the concept of framing in action. I’ve interacted with authors or teachers who interpret the concept of “i+1” to support the argument that students should work with authentic reading materials: texts written for native or proficient readers of the target language. But I’ve also interacted with authors or teachers who interpret the concept of “i+1” to support the argument that students should work with modified texts: texts that have been simplified in some way, or texts that contain translations or notes to help foreign readers make sense of the content without necessarily making sense of the language.
Proponents of the authentic text argument rarely see eye to eye with proponents of the modified text argument and vice versa. Yet they find a common source of support for their respective arguments in Stephen Krashen’s concept of “i+1.” Neither party misrepresents Krashen’s concept. Rather, each party interprets the pedgagogical benefits of i+1 in a way that is most consistent with his or her own arguments, while acknowledging that other interpretations are possible.
And this is what framing is all about. It’s about presenting evidence that supports your argument and explaining why you think the evidence supports your argument. If readers disagree with your framing, that’s OK: your framing has opened a door to conversation with the reader.
In all of this rambling, have you managed to figure out what any of this has to do with the Roman god Janus, the god who looked both directions? Perhaps (almost certainly) you have your own interpretation of the relationship between Janus and the concept of framing. I’ll leave you with my own interpretation:
Janus looks to both past and future, just as a good writer must look to both past and future. In looking to the past, a writer finds the ideas that inspire, support, or challenge his or her own ideas. In looking to the future, a writer suggests conclusions that can be drawn from or conversations that can flourish about his or her own ideas. In framing, a writer combines past and present, demonstrating how his or her ideas fit into and move the conversation eterally through the universe of ideas. Janus would no doubt approve.
Tune in next week for more on framing and the art of analysis.
Happy Writing, and Happy New Year!
Dr. Lori
Engaging Texts: Has Your Text Been Engaged? 