respond+to+your+required+readings

=**Reading in the Social Scientific Disciplines** =

//Kenneth Gergen's "The Dissolution of Self"//

 * 1) Gergen's thesis is located in paragraph two (2). Focusing only on what he has written in paragraph two, what do you think Gergen wants to demonstrate to his readers in the body of his persuasive article.
 * 2) Now look back over the body of Gergen's essay. If the body of the essay does not carry out the thesis, is the problem more with the thesis paragraph (because it does not reflect a new and better direction in the body) or with the body (because it wanders)? If you identify places in the essay where Gergen's article fails to support his thesis, what would you do to improve the overall unity of Gergen's article. If the body does support the thesis, what does Gergen do to assure that the body of his essay supports the position he forwarded in the thesis.
 * 3) Introductions are supposed to warm reader's up to a given topic and, more importantly, to find points where the writer's position is related to the reader's experience, interests, or knowledge. What does Gergen do in the introduction to warm his academic readers up to his topic.
 * 4) In the body of a persuasive essay, writers are supposed to provide readers with reasoned assertions in support of the thesis and then support those thesis-related assertions with appropriate evidence. What thesis-related assertions does Gergen advance in the body of his essay? What kinds of appropriate evidence does he present in support of his thesis-related assertions? And, finally, which of Gergen's evidence-supported, thesis-related assertions seems most credible to you? Why?
 * 5) In most excellent argument-persuasion papers, writers make considerable efforts to demonstrate that they have a genuine understanding of different points of view, and when appropriate, they go to the trouble of presenting arguments against their own position. Does Gergen take opposing views/counter-arguments into serious consideration? If so, how does the extra step of considering the opposing view strengthen Gergen's position. If not, does the absence of opposing views/counter-arguments weaken Gergen's argument?
 * 6) Though persuasion papers rarely advance unequivocal arguments, a good argument-persuasion paper can make readers accept that things very likely happen in the manner presented in the paper. Bearing this in mind, did Gergen's theoretical argument succeed in making you believe that the problem of the individual self had substantively changed since the time of Cooley (1909) and Goffman (1959)? Why? Why not?
 * 7) Does Gergen use language that is appropriate for his academic audience? Identify instances where he is particularly successful in writing for his academic audience. What might you do in your forthcoming essay to achieve a similar degree of success?
 * 8) Knowing that you have to write an persuasive essay on the problem of the individual self, identify keywords in both Gergen's, Cooley's, Goffman's articles that you think you might use in a search of scholarly social science journals on the issue of the individual self.