Using Tagmemics As A Way Of Studying A Topic For Writing
Ever heard of tagmemics? It’s a system that allows you to look at a single object from three different perspectives. Because of that quality, it’s a very useful activity when you want to examine a topic from a variety of perspectives.
In tagmemics, you look at the topic in three ways:
- As a thing in itself. Look at the subject as a standalone item, looking at its properties, characteristics, classifications and other similar information that makes it identifiably unique.
- As a thing that changes over time. What happens to the subject over a period of time. Specifically, you want to look at the changes it takes over the period covered by the paper you’re doing.
- As part of a bigger context. Consider the subject in light of everything else going on around it. You can look for causality (why it’s the way it is) or comparisons with similar topics.
As you probably noticed, using tagmemics is a way to get you asking questions about the subject in question. More than just random questions, though, it leads you to pose very specific ones requiring focused replies — the kind of answers that can get you writing clear, thoughtful and interesting things about it.