Anker Susan. Real Essays with Readings with 2009 MLA Update
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READINGS
Chapter 46 • Process Analysis 777
to prison on burglary charges, using the time to further his education
and to study the teachings of the Nation of Islam, the Black Muslim
movement in America. He also changed his surname from Little to X,
suggesting that he could never know his true name — the African
name of his ancestors who were made slaves. Malcolm X became an
important leader of the Nation of Islam soon after his release from
prison, but he later left the group to form his own, less radical religious
and civil rights group. In 1964, Malcolm X was assassinated while giving
a speech.
“My First Conk” is an excerpt from The Autobiography of Mal-
colm X, which Malcolm cowrote with his friend Alex Haley. Using vivid
details to bring the painful process to life, Malcolm takes readers step
by step through his fi rst “conk” — a process that straightens curly hair.
GUIDING QUESTION
What main point does Malcolm X make about the process he
analyzes?
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This selection has been omitted intentionally from your
eBook due to electronic permissions issues. Regrettably,
we cannot make this piece available to you in a digital
format. You may be able to find a copy at your local or
school library; the author and title are included in your
eBook’s table of contents.
READINGS
778 Part Eight • Readings for Writers
PAUSE: What is
the main point of
paragraphs 8–15?
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This selection has been omitted intentionally from your
eBook due to electronic permissions issues. Regrettably,
we cannot make this piece available to you in a digital
format. You may be able to find a copy at your local or
school library; the author and title are included in your
eBook’s table of contents.
READINGS
Chapter 46 • Process Analysis 779
SUMMARIZE AND RESPOND
In your reading journal or elsewhere, summarize the main point of “My First
Conk.” Then go back and check off support for this main idea. Next, write
a brief summary (three to fi ve sentences) of the essay. Finally, jot down your
initial response to the essay. Did it surprise you that a well-known black activ-
ist leader once wanted to look more like a white man? What is something you
have done to conform to a particular group?
CHECK YOUR COMPREHENSION
1. Which of the following would be the best alternative title for this essay?
a. “The Pain of Conformity”
b. “Why I Hated My First Conk”
c. “Hairstyles of the Past”
d. “Does Anyone Remember Congolene?”
2. The main idea of this essay is that
a. most people regret something they have done to change their appear-
ance.
b. making a homemade conking solution is a dangerous process.
c. when Malcolm X was younger, he wanted to straighten his hair.
d. conking is a painful and degrading process that Malcolm X later
regretted having gone through.
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This selection has been omitted intentionally from your
eBook due to electronic permissions issues. Regrettably,
we cannot make this piece available to you in a digital
format. You may be able to find a copy at your local or
school library; the author and title are included in your
eBook’s table of contents.
READINGS
780 Part Eight • Readings for Writers
3. According to the author,
a. he was very pleased when he fi rst saw his straightened hair.
b. Shorty helped him conk his hair the fi rst time because he didn’t have
his family’s approval.
c. conking was such a painful experience that he never did it again.
d. the conk didn’t change the way he saw himself.
4. If you are unfamiliar with the following words, use a dictionary to check
their meanings: shabby (para. 4); bolted (10); blotted, staggering (20);
sheen (21); endured, brainwashed, inferior, mutilate (23).
READ CRITICALLY
1. What do you think is Malcolm X’s purpose in analyzing the process of
conking?
2. Reread paragraphs 6 through 11, underlining the details that Malcolm X
uses to appeal to readers’ senses. How do these details support his main
point?
3. Without going into too much detail, list the major steps in the conking
process.
4. Describe the author’s attitude toward conking when he was a teenager.
How and why do you think this attitude changed as he grew older?
5. Are the essay’s fi nal two paragraphs a good example of an effective con-
clusion? Why or why not?
WRITE AN ESSAY
Write an essay about a process you have gone through to change your appear-
ance (dieting, tattooing, body piercing, or bodybuilding, for example). In your
essay, explain why you made the decision to change your appearance, and
then explain the process. In your conclusion, examine how your perception
of the experience has changed over time.
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Chapter 46 • Process Analysis 781
Daniel Goleman
For Man and Beast, Language
of Love Shares Many Traits
Born in 1946 in Stockton, California, Daniel Goleman received his B.A.
degree from Amherst College and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology and
human behavior from Harvard University. As a long-time science reporter
for the New York Times, Goleman wrote often about the brain and stud-
ies in the behavioral sciences. In 1995, he published the best-selling and
highly infl uential Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than
IQ, in which he argues that people who have empathy and the ability to
love are most likely to be successful in life. His later books include Work-
ing with Emotional Intelligence (1998) and Social Intelligence: The New
Science of Human Relationships (2006). Goleman lectures frequently to
professional and business groups and on college campuses.
In the following essay, published on February 14, 1995, in the New
York Times, Goleman explores mating rituals among humans and other
animals.
GUIDING QUESTION
According to the essay, why do women and men who are interested in
one another behave as they do?
1 With the same ethological
1
methods they have long used in studies of
animals, scientists are turning their attention to the nuances of human
courtship rituals — otherwise known as fl irting.
2 By turning the ethologists’ lens on human courtship, scientists are
fi nding striking similarities with other species, suggesting that the non-
verbal template
2
used by Homo sapiens
3
for attracting and approaching
a prospective mate is to some extent part of a larger, shared animal
heritage.
3 A woman parades past a crowded bar to the women’s room, hips
swaying, eyes resting momentarily on a likely man and then coyly look-
ing away just as she notices his look. This scenario exemplifi es a standard
opening move in courtship, getting attention, said Dr. David Givens, an
PAUSE: Based on
these two opening
paragraphs, what
process do you
predict the essay
will describe?
1
ethological: relating to the study of animals
2
template: a pattern
3
Homo sapiens: the species of human beings
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782 Part Eight • Readings for Writers
anthropologist in Washington who is writing a book about evolution
and behavior. “In the fi rst phase of courting, humans broadcast widely
a nonverbal message that amounts to ‘notice me,’” said Dr. Givens.
“They do it through movement, through their dress, through gesture.”
4 From hundreds of hours of observations in bars and at parties, Dr.
Givens discovered that women, more than men, tend to promenade,
making numerous trips to the women’s room, for instance, both to
scout and to be seen.
5 A second nonverbal message in this earliest stage is, “I am harmless,”
Dr. Givens has found. The gestures and postures humans use to send
this message are shared with other mammals, particularly primates.
4
Charles Darwin, who noted the same gestures in his 1859 book, The
Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals, called them “submissive
displays.”
6 Perhaps the fi rst serious study of fl irting was done in the 1960s by
Dr. Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, an eminent ethologist at the Max Planck
Institute in Germany. Dr. Eibl-Eibesfeldt traveled to cultures around
the world with a camera that took pictures from the side so he could
stand near couples and take their pictures without their realizing they
were being observed. In research in Samoa, Brazil, Paris, Sydney, and
New York, Dr. Eibl-Eibesfeldt discovered an apparently universal non-
verbal human vocabulary for fl irting and courtship.
7 In humans, one such gesture is a palm-up placement of the hand,
whether on a table or a knee, a reassuring sign of harmlessness. Another
submissive display is the shoulder shrug, which, ethologists suggest,
derives from an ancient vertebrate
5
refl ex, a posture signifying helpless-
ness. A posture combining the partly shrugged shoulder and a tilted
head — which displays the vulnerability of the neck — is commonly seen
when two people who are sexually drawn to each other are having their
fi rst conversation, Dr. Givens said.
8 Being playful and childish is another way potential lovers often
communicate harmlessness. “You see the same thing in the gray wolf,”
said Dr. Givens.
9 When wolves encounter each other, they usually give a show of
dominance, keeping their distance. But in a sexual encounter, they be-
come playful and frisky, “like puppies,” said Dr. Givens, “so they can
accept closeness.” The next step is a mutual show of submission, all of
which paves the way for physical intimacy.
10 “We still go through the ritual of courtship much like our mam-
malian ancestors,” said Dr. Givens. “These gestures are subcortical,
PAUSE: Do you
think this is true?
Why or why not?
PAUSE: What
signals do potential
partners give each
other early on, and
why do they do so?
4
primates: mammals that include humans, apes, and monkeys
5
vertebrate: an animal with a backbone or spinal column
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Chapter 46 • Process Analysis 783
regulated by the more primitive part of our brain. They have nothing to
do with the intellect, with our great neocortex.”
6
11 The nonverbal repertoire for fl irting is “part of a natural sequence
for courtship worldwide,” said Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., and author of The Anatomy
of Love (Fawcett, 1993). “Mothers don’t teach this to their daughters.”
12 “In evolutionary terms, the payoff for each sex in parental invest-
ment differs: To produce a child, a woman has an obligatory nine-month
commitment, while for a man it’s just one act of copulation,” said Dr.
David Buss, a psychologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
and author of The Evolution of Desire (Basic Books, 1994). “For men
in evolutionary terms, what pays is sexual access to a wide variety of
women, while for women, it’s having a man who will commit time and
resources for helping raise children.”
13 From this view, the coyness of courtship is a way to “test a pro-
spective partner for commitment,” said Dr. Jane Lancaster, an anthro-
pologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. “Women, in
particular, need to be sure they’re not going to be deserted.”
14 Coyness is not seen in species where the female does not need the sus-
tained help or resources of a male to raise her young, said Dr. Lancaster.
In species where a single act of sex is the only contact a female requires
with the father of her young, “there’s a direct assertion of sexual interest
by the female,” said Dr. Lancaster.
15 But in species where two parents appreciably enhance the survival
of offspring, “females don’t want to mate with a male who will aban-
don them,” said Dr. Lancaster. In such species, “the courtship dances
are coy, a test to see if the male is willing to persist and pursue or
simply wants a momentary dalliance,” he said. “Instead of the female
simply getting in a posture for mating, she repeats a promise-withdraw
sequence, getting in the mating posture and then moving away.”
16 In humans, fl irtatious looks imitate this sequence. The coy look a
woman gives a man is the beginning of a continuing series of approach-
withdraw strategies that will unfold over the course of their courtship.
These feminine stratagems signal the man, “I’m so hard to win that if
you do win me, you won’t have to worry about me getting pregnant by
another male,” said Dr. Lancaster.
17 A taxonomy
7
of 52 “nonverbal solicitation behaviors” observed in
fl irting women has been created by Dr. Monica Moore, a psychologist
at Webster University in St. Louis. In her research, conducted in singles
bars, shopping malls, and other places young people go to meet those
PAUSE: How do
you respond to the
point made in this
paragraph?
PAUSE: What
comparison is
being made in this
and the previous
paragraph?
6
neocortex: the part of the brain that serves as the center of higher human functions
7
taxonomy: a classifi cation system
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784 Part Eight • Readings for Writers
of the opposite sex, Dr. Moore has found that the women who send
fl irtatious signals most frequently are most likely to be approached by
men — even more so than are women who are rated more attractive.
18 “It’s not who’s most physically appealing,” said Dr. Moore, “but
the woman who’s signaling availability that men approach.”
19 Flirting is the opening gambit in a continuing series of negotiations
at every step of the way in courtship. Indeed, the fi rst major negotiation
point is signaled by the fl irtatious look itself.
20 “When a man is looking at a woman and she senses it, her fi rst deci-
sion is, ‘Do I have further interest in him?’” said Dr. Beverly Palmer, a
psychologist at California State University in Dominguez Hills who has
studied fl irting. “If so, by fl irting she sends the next signal: ‘I’m inter-
ested in you, and yes, you can approach me.’”
21 Once the fi rst conversation begins, there is “a major escalation
point,” she said. “A large number of prospective pickups end here.”
22 Though men may say they are well aware of the tentativeness of
fl irting, Dr. Buss’s fi ndings suggest a male tendency — at least among
college-age men — toward wishful thinking in interpreting fl irtatious
looks. In settings where men and women go to meet someone of the op-
posite sex, Dr. Buss said, “we fi nd that when you ask men what it means
for a woman to smile at them, they interpret it as a sexual invitation.”
23 “But when you ask women what it means,” he continued, “they’ll
say it just indicates she wants to get to know him better.”
24 In interviews with 208 college-age men and women published in
the Journal of Sex Research, Dr. Buss and colleagues found that when it
comes to seduction, “the sexual signals that work for a woman backfi re
for men.”
25 “There’s a huge sex difference in how effective different tactics are,”
he added.
26 Perhaps not surprisingly, the research showed that for women,
direct sexual approaches — dressing seductively, dancing close, staring
into a man’s eyes — worked well in leading to sexual contact. But for
men, similar direct strategies were failures.
27 Instead, for men, the less overtly seductive romantic stratagems
fared best. “For men, the most effective approaches are displays of love
and commitment,” said Dr. Buss. “Telling her he really loves her, that
he cares, and is committed.”
SUMMARIZE AND RESPOND
In your reading journal or elsewhere, summarize the main point of “For
Man and Beast, Language of Love Shares Many Traits.” Then, go back and
check off support for this main idea. Next, write a brief summary (three to
PAUSE: How well
do the fl irtatious
behaviors and
responses described
correspond to your
own experience?
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Chapter 46 • Process Analysis 785
fi ve sentences) of the reading. Finally, jot down your initial response to the
selection. What information presented by Goleman did you fi nd most thought
provoking? Has your own behavior ever matched the kinds of behaviors he
describes here?
CHECK YOUR COMPREHENSION
1. Which of the following would be the best alternative title for this essay?
a. “The Biological Basis of Human Courtship Rituals”
b. “Flirting: A Guide to Better Understanding the Signals”
c. “Using Science to Help Find a Mate”
d. “Flirting: Good Strategy or Bad?”
2. The main idea of this essay is that
a. women have different ways of indicating interest in a potential part-
ner than men do.
b. one can become more successful at fl irting by understanding the
unconscious signals that are involved in courtship.
c. many of the behaviors associated with fl irting by humans have paral-
lels in other species.
d. men are likely to misread a woman’s smile as an indication of her
sexual availability.
3. One central point Goleman makes is that women
a. learn fl irting from their mothers.
b. play the game of courtship as a way of making sure that a man is will-
ing to commit to helping raise children.
c. should realize that men sometimes use direct sexual approaches
because they think that they work.
d. who are more attractive are less likely to be approached by a man than
those who are fl irtatious.
4. If you are unfamiliar with the following words, use a dictionary to check
their meanings: nuances (para. 1); heritage (2); coyly, scenario, exem-
plifi es (3); promenade (4); submissive (5); eminent (6); derives, vulner-
ability (7); subcortical (10); repertoire (11); obligatory, copulation (12);
appreciably, dalliance (15); stratagems (16); gambit (19); escalation (21);
tentativeness (22); tactics (25); overtly (27).
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786 Part Eight • Readings for Writers
READ CRITICALLY
1. How does Goleman give readers a broad perspective on the stages of
human courtship? What techniques does he use to shift from describing
the process to commenting on it?
2. What specifi c evidence is offered in the essay to suggest that human court-
ship rituals are the product of evolution? How convincing do you fi nd this
evidence?
3. How extensively does Goleman rely on the testimony of experts in this
essay? How does he present the work of these experts? Does this strategy
seem appropriate to you? Why or why not?
4. Why do you think that anthropologists and psychologists might be inter-
ested in studying human courtship rituals? What larger lessons might they
hope to learn? Can you see any practical applications of such research?
5. To what extent does this essay support stereotypes regarding male and
female behavior? What is your response to this aspect of the reading?
WRITE AN ESSAY
Write an essay about a process involving human interaction. You might use
Goleman’s essay as a starting point and write in more detail about the stages
that two people go through over the course of meeting, getting to know one
another, and becoming partners. Or you could focus on the stages involved in
the evolution of a friendship, the relationship between a parent and child, or
another close relationship. You can base your essay on your own experience,
but in presenting the process, explain it in terms of how it applies to people
generally.
Process Analysis: Linked Readings
THE PRESSURE TO CONFORM
Each of the following readings focuses on various aspects of the pressures
people feel to conform:
Malcolm X, “My First Conk” (this chapter, p. 776)
Langston Hughes, “Salvation” (Chapter 43, p. 745)
Kathleen Vail, “Words That Wound” (Chapter 44, p. 759)
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