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Section
1
The passage used
as a source in this section occurs near the end of the article
"There's No Place Like Home: An Analysis of Homeless Testimonial
Narratives" by Niki L. Young. In this article, Young emphasizes
the importance of community and discusses how the homeless,
often excluded from community, seek to remain connected.
By analyzing the
testimony of sixteen homeless individuals at four congressional
hearings, Young shows how these individuals "confront exclusion
and reassert their humanity." She finds seven common strategies
in the language these homeless people use: exploring their uniqueness,
presenting the challenges they face, describing the difficulties
they encounter, explaining their loss of hope, claiming that
the system has failed, requesting help, and presenting themselves
as survivors. According to Young, these strategies allow individuals
"to confront and overcome social exclusion and to reclaim membership
in the community" (329).
The following passage,
which appears on page 338, examines the effect of such testimony
not only on those who give it, but on the community as a whole
when scholars study the testimony:
Stories bring
people together. Speaking before congressional committees
is a way of combating invisibility, a method of situating
oneself, a means of overcoming liminality. Testifying may
be a ritual process which offers the homeless the opportunity
to reassert their humanity and ultimately to reclaim their
lost sense of community.
The seven features
in these narratives illustrate how individuals can use language
to overcome situational constraints. The simplicity and
understatement associated with telling one's story are powerful
and sophisticated tools for confronting and overcoming the
dehumanizing side of rhetoric.
Taken together,
these narratives allow the scholar to construct a collective
argument that the individuals are unable to make. The study
of narrative, K. M. Langellier notes, has socio-political
and cultural implications: "The study of personal narratives
. . . invites researchers to listen on the margins of discourse
and give voice to muted groups in our society" (234). A
collective analysis of this testimony resituates individuals,
placing individuals at the center, removing them from the
margins. The experience of homelessness becomes the focus
of inquiry. Situating testimony in this way ultimately empowers
the homeless, for only they can articulate their own experience.
The only people who can fully communicate the meaning of
homelessness are the people who have experienced homelessness.
Publicly sharing individual experience is a means of developing
social understanding of that experience. In this postmodern
age, characterized by separation and alienation, elaborating
the role of communication in forming community may be more
vital than ever.
Now let's imagine
how a writer might use this passage in various ways.
PARAPHRASE
Suppose a writer
wishes to paraphrase Young’s main idea. Let's imagine that this
writer uses Young's view to exemplify how a scholar might examine
the concept of community:
Young makes
a powerful and provocative claim that simply talking about
homelessness in front of congressional committees can benefit
both the homeless themselves and others in society. Having
the homeless tell their stories to such committees can empower
the testifiers; in addition, scholarly study of such individual
testimony can help members of the larger society understand
homelessness more clearly. For Young, such narratives are
powerful because they affect those both who tell their stories
and those who hear them. (338).
Notes:
1. No quotation
marks are used because the words are entirely the writer's,
not Young's.
2. The writer
not only moves away from Young's language but also from the
way Young has organized and structured the ideas.
3. The parenthetical
citation (338) does not include Young's name; since the name
has already appeared in the text, the reader should understand
that this citation refers to Young's article.
4. A full citation
to Young's article will appear in the list of Works Cited, which
in MLA style is alphabetized by authors' last names.
SNIPPETS
In using Young’s
article as a source, a writer might instead quote snippets,
short phrases or words from the passage. In the following example,
a writer uses snippets from Young's passage to suggest the positive
tone of the article:
Young's focus
in this article is a hopeful one. She certainly believes
in communication, in its power to bring a community together.
For example, she speaks of the "social understanding" that
will come from the public testimony; she speaks of the "role
of communication in forming community." She quotes Langellier's
claim that studies of the testimony "give voice" to those
without it. Most optimistically, she sees this public sharing
of stories as a means of "empower[ing]" homeless individuals
(338).
Notes:
1. In a paragraph
which quotes many such snippets, and in which both the snippets
and the ideas in the paragraph are taken from one place, the
parenthetical citation comes at the end, not after each quoted
fragment.
2. Quotation
marks indicate words taken directly from Young.
3. Brackets ("empower[ing]")
indicate material such as letters, words, or punctuation added
to bring the quotation into grammatical agreement with the sentence
in which it is used. Ellipses (three spaced periods) would indicate
any material left out.
4. The text attributes
Langellier's words to Langellier; the wording of the sentence
clearly indicates that the phrase "gives voice" is Langellier's,
not Young's.
5. A full citation
will appear, properly alphabetized, in the list of Works Cited.
LONG
QUOTATION
Or, a writer may
wish to use a long quotation from this passage. The following
paragraph illustrates such use:
Young focuses
throughout the article on the connections between individuals
and the community. While her study examines the individual
testimonies of only sixteen homeless persons, she believes
this kind of public testimony has profound impact on the
community:
Publicly
sharing individual experience is a means of developing
social understanding of that experience. In this postmodern
age, characterized by separation and alienation, elaborating
the role of communication in forming community may be
more vital than ever. (338)
Notes:
1. This paragraph
begins with a paraphrase summarizing Young’s general point;
following that paraphrase, an indented quotation carries the
point further.
2. The indented
quotation is in Young's exact words.
3. There are
no quotation marks around the quotation because the indentation
itself indicates a direct quotation.
4. Young's name
does not occur in the parenthetic citation (338) because the
phrase "she believes" in the sentence leading to the quotation
gives the reader sufficient notice of the source.
5. The citation
is placed to the right of the final period because the quotation
is indented. The citation is understood to refer to the entire
paragraph because the paragraph begins with an attribution to
Young ("Young focuses . . .") and ends with her precise words
("may be more vital than ever").
6. A full citation
will appear in its proper place in the list of Works Cited.
USING
AN IDEA FROM A SOURCE
Finally, a writer
may sometimes take from a source a general idea that is not
common knowledge and develop another idea. In such a case, the
writer must cite the source if reading it led to an idea the
writer would otherwise probably not have had. Note in the following
paragraph how the author takes an idea from Young and pushes
it in another direction:
If communication
may make a social community more likely and more enduring
(Young), it follows that communication may also improve
communities such as families. However, Young's example,
in which homeless individuals testify before Congress, suggests
that only a certain type of communication will foster such
hoped-for changes. Her example further suggests that what
may improve understanding is not small talk or superficial
chat -- forms of interaction which are perhaps common in
families -- but formal and straightforward telling of stories,
with one party talking and the other offering a willing
ear.
Notes:
1. The parenthetical
citation gives no page number because the claim cited is a generalized
inference from the whole article.
2. Both the citation
(Young) and the wording of the second sentence ("Young's example
. . . suggests") indicate which ideas are Young's. Here the
writer, making an inference from Young's idea, applies that
author’s ideas about communication in society to another situation,
communication in families.
3. A full citation
to Young will appear in its proper place in the list of Works
Cited.
WORKS
CITED
As the notes indicate,
a paper containing one of these paragraphs would list Young's
essay in a separate "Works Cited" page at the end,
so the reader can find full information on the source. In the
following example, Young's essay appears in the MLA style.
Works
Cited
Young, Niki
L. "There's No Place Like Home: An Analysis of Homeless
Testimonial Narratives." Midwest Journal: A Journal of
Contemporary Thought 37 (1996): 32-340.
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