Move #1: Illustrating

Illustrating is when you use scenes, incidents, stories, or images from another text to illustrate a point you want to make. For instance, Scholes illustrates his point about ideological narratives by re-presenting a Budweiser commercial, an ideal example that helps him make his case. In English 101, we will often talk about the “10 on 1” principle: in college writing, it’s usually better to make 10 points about 1 idea than to make merely 1 point and bore readers with 10 different examples. Scholes only uses a single Budweiser commercial to illustrate his argument, but he makes several interesting points about the importance of performing ideological criticism on popular culture texts through this one example. Beware falling into the “1 on 10” trap in your writing. Don’t illustrate the same point over and over: “And another example is. . .” It’s also problematic if you simply prove the author’s same point in your own paper. For instance, when you are forwarding, don’t just think of another commercial to make the same points Scholes made about the Budweiser commercial. It’s a useful exercise to practice doing close reading of a visual text, but you aren’t adding anything new to the conversation, just another example.