A prolific painter of portraits before and after the French Revolution ...

ch07.qxd 12/2/04 11:57 AM Page 309
techniques for explaining
309
personality. Real bots talk, make jokes, have feelings—even if those feelings
are nothing more than cleverly conceived algorithms.
EXPLAINING HOW
Explaining how something should be done or how something happens is usually
called process analysis. One kind of process analysis is the “how-to” explanation: how
to cook a turkey, how to tune an engine, how to get a job. Such recipes or directions
are prescriptive: You typically explain how something should be done. In a second
kind of process analysis, you explain how something happens or is typically done—
without being directive or prescriptive. In a descriptive process analysis, you explain
how some natural or social process typically happens: how cells split during mitosis,
how hailstones form in a cloud, how students react to the pressure of examinations,
or how political candidates create their public images. In both prescriptive and
descriptive explanations, however, you are analyzing a process—dividing the sequence
into its parts or steps—and then showing how the parts contribute to the whole
process.
Cookbooks, automobile-repair manuals, instructions for assembling toys or appliances,
and self-improvement books are all examples of prescriptive process analysis.
Writers of recipes, for example, begin with analyses of the ingredients and the
steps in preparing the food. Then they carefully explain how the steps are related, how
to avoid problems, and how to serve mouth-watering concoctions. Farley Mowat, naturalist
and author of Never Cry Wolf, gives his readers the following detailed—and
humorous—recipe for creamed mouse. Mowat became interested in this recipe when
he decided to test the nutritional content of the wolf ’s diet. “In the event that any
of my readers may be interested in personally exploiting this hitherto overlooked
source of excellent animal protein,” Mowat writes, “I give the recipe in full”:
TEACHING TIP
Explain that process analysis
often contains two kinds
of analyses: analysis of the
ingredients, parts, or items
used in the process and
analysis of the chronology.
In a recipe, for example, the
analysis of parts occurs in
the list of ingredients; the
chronology is the instructions.
Ask students to read
the Mowat and Thomas
excerpts for both kinds of
analyses. Then ask them to
apply both kinds of analyses,
if appropriate, to their
own topics or drafts.
INGREDIENTS:
Souris à la Crème
One dozen fat mice Salt and pepper One cup white flour
Cloves One piece sowbelly Ethyl alcohol
Skin and gut the mice, but do not remove the heads; wash, then place in a
pot with enough alcohol to cover the carcasses. Allow to marinate for about
two hours. Cut sowbelly into small cubes and fry slowly until most of the
fat has been rendered. Now remove the carcasses from the alcohol and roll
PROFESSIONAL COPY—NOT FOR RESALE