Inventing Arguments

Chapters 1-2 Information

College Comp II

Argument

• An argument is the act of asserting, supporting, and defending a claim.

• A claim is the statement the author makes that he/she is trying to convince the reader is true.

• Argument is found everywhere around us from commercials to text and media.

Argument Cont.

• Argument does not always involve beating an opponent, but it deals with making others see the wisdom of a position or perspective.

• Each academic area has its own arguments on the fields of study within the dicipline.

Argument Cont.

• Many often say that everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion; however, this ignores how people actually work together to build, transform, and trading opinions.

• Opinions are only just that

if not accurately supported.

Rhetoric

• Rhetoric is a process of recognizing and using the most effective strategies for influencing thought.

• Every time someone offers information, describes something a particular way, or arranges information in a particular way so that someone else will accept a claim, he or she is making rhetorical decisions.

Five Categories of Rhetoric

• Invention: the discovery and development of ideas

• Arrangement: the organization of ideas in a coherent and engaging fashion

• Style or voice: the personal or individualized use of language conventions, with attention to appropriateness, situation, and audience

Five Categories of Rhetoric Cont.

• Memory: the recollection of prepared points

• Delivery: the presentation of ideas

Rhetorical Situation

• The rhetorical situation refers to an opportunity to address a particular audience about a disputed or disputable issue.

• Is an opportunity to gather and use the available means of persuasion

• Involves exigence—an occasion when something happens or does not happens that results in some uncertainty.

Rhetorical Situation

• Includes:– Exigence– Arguer (Speaker/writer)– Audience– Method of communication– Rules of communication– Text message

• None are independent from each other

The Academic Essay and Rhetoric

• The student is usually the speaker/writer.

• The audience is normally the student’s peers and instructor.

• The rules are defined by the syllabus and the assignment, which is the exigence or opportunity to address the audience and make an assertion

Academic Essay Cont.

• A savvy writer will include social, cultural, and historical situations to his/her advantage.

• They will try to make a conncetion by sharing the audience’s values, assumptions, emotions, and beliefs as well as cultural, past and present political trends, discoveries, local events, and widely used literature.

Academic Essay Cont.

• In academic writing, the writer brings forward unfamiliar topics while introducing them in new and revelatory situations.

• They do not reinforce what the audience already thinks, but bring in new claims, assumptions, hopes, and even fears.

Structure of Argument: Claims

• The claim is the main argumentative position (or thesis) being put forward.

• Support give substance and legitimacy to a claim and allows or convinces the audience to accept the claim. – Facts– Statistics– Scenarios– Appeals to logic, emotion, character, value, & need

Argument Structure: Claims Cont.

• Basic format for an argument is a claim with support information.

• More complex form is to give a main claim and then give the subclaims or supporting claims with support information for those subclaims/supporting claims.

Types of Claims

• Claims of fact: argue that a condition exists, has existed, or will exist. (Facts must be proven to be truth.)

• Claims of value: argue that something possesses or reflects a particular quality whether it be good/bad, unreasonable, practical, unfair, fair, etc.

Types of Claims Cont.

• Claims of policy: argue that some action should be taken or some change made. This requires some change in behavior, policy, approach, or even attitude.

Characteristics of Claims

• Focused claims: guide the reader’s and writer’s attention to a specific issue, even to a particular aspect of a specific issue. This means a focused thesis to gain depth.

• Arguable claims: make assertions that could be challenged on various grounds that invite or directly address opposition.

Characteristics of Claims Cont.

• Revelatory: writing attempts to do more than argue for the opinions, but it reveals an unfamiliar topic or reveal a new layer of a familiar topic. The object is to change the reader’s thinking.

• A good thesis statement is a declarative sentence with three subtopics/claims, and it comes as the last sentence in the introduction of the essay.

Arguable Claim Issues

• A thesis statement is not a question.

• It does not state an obvious fact.

• It invites several positions or multiple perspectives on the same topic.

Argument Structure: Support

• Called grounds or proof, support comes in many forms:– Evidence: authorities, testimony, facts,

statistics– Examples: allusions, anecdotes, illustrations,

scenarios– Appeals: to logic, emotion, character, value,

need

Evidence

• Evidence support already exists.– Authorities: are experts who offer specialized

knowledge—give credibility to a writer’s claim• Support own claim• Support opposing claims• Help explain a topic• Help to give some history or context to argument

Evidence Cont.

– Testimony: eyewitness or firsthand account

– Facts: agreed-upon bits of knowledge that do not require further support in an argument

– Statistics: figures drawn from surveys, experimentation, and data analysis

Examples

• Examples are specific occurrences of a phenomenon.

– Allusions: references to some public knowledge from history, current events, popular culture, religion, or literature. Used for formal essays, informal articles, and literary works.

Examples Cont.

– Anecdote: short accounts of a particular event or incident and often presented as brief stories that support the arguer’s claim.

– Illustrations: graphic descriptions or representations of an idea by carefully describing the details to create an image in the reader’s mind.

Examples Cont.

– Scenarios: fictional or hypothetical examples and can support just about any argumentative claim

Appeals

• Sometimes called reasoning, appeals are major forms of support that help the arguer create a connection between the audience and the topic. – Advertisements are probably the most

abundant examples of appeals used.

Appeals Cont.

• Appeals to Character: draw attention to the arguer’s personal nature, integrity, experience, wisdom, or personality. Fend off doubts about arguer’s credibility and make the audience comfortable so as to accept the arguer’s claim.

Appeals Cont.

• Appeals to logic: usually done with statistics and facts. Line of reasoning or logic appeals to engaging the audiences intellect and reasoning.

– Inference: process of deriving a logical conclusion based on premises known to be true; logical step from one idea to another

Appeals Cont.

• Line of reasoning: refers to a series of logical steps that lead arguer and audience to a main claim. – Type of Reasoning:

• Deductive logic: builds a conclusion from accepted premises or general principles

• Inductive logic: builds a conclusion from particular observations or examples

• Analogical logic: borrows the logic from one situation and applies it to another.

Appeals: Reasoning Cont.

• Deductive reasoning allows the arguer to conclude only what the premises allow; even if it is false, the logic may be valid. – Found behind legal or ethical decisions– Syllogisms: are lines of deductive reasoning

that require three steps—premise 1 + premise 2= Conclusion

• Require support and sometime significantly more reasoning, examples, or evidence to be accepted as truth.

Appeals: Reasoning Cont.

• Enthymemes: are not certain in all situations but emerge in particular situations; contain a number of steps or premises—more than three; contain a missing or unstated premise—those that are obvious are often not state.

– Do not require a lot of support, if any, to be taken as truth

Appeals Cont.

• Appeals to Emotion: bring about some type of emotional reaction from the reader.– Can be used dishonestly and should be used

sparingly.

• Appeals to Need: make a connection between the subject and a basic human need such as food, shelter, belonging, intimacy, self-realization, etc. – Reach inside an audience to people’s essential

requirements of living

Appeals Cont.

• Appeals of Value: connection between the topic and general value of fairness, equality, honor, kindness, selflessness, duty, responsibility, economics, pragmatics, etc. – Values may compete with one another, so

good arguers know how to bring a particular value to the forefront and make it seem the most important or pressing one.

Appeals: Reasoning Cont.

• Inductive reasoning: builds from a specific point or premises and leads to a general claim or conclusion. – Deductive vs. induction: go together constantly

in everyday life and often operate in the same argument.

– Deductive arguments reinforce some standing assumptions people have while inductive arguments create particular benefits or liabilities in people’s minds.

Appeals: Reasoning Cont.

• Analogical reasoning: depends on comparisons or analogies. – Arguer moves from one particular to another

particular through the use of comparisons, metaphors, allegories, parables, and examples.

Other Elements of Argument

• Counterargument: refute claims or positions opposed to those that the writer or speaker is trying to prove. It is often called refuting the opposition. – Good arguers carefully examine others’

positions and try to imagine contrary points to help draw a clear distinction between the two camps of thought.

Other Elements of Argument Cont.

• Concession: involves acknowledgement or granting value to an opposition claim and usually done through qualifiers. – Concede the good points that an opposition

may make and qualifying others makes for a strong argument. (The ideas the arguer agrees with the opposition on.)

Other Elements of Argument Cont.

• Qualifiers: they acknowledge the limits of an arguer’s claims. By qualifying one’s claims, the arguer acknowledges there are limitations.– Words such as perhaps, seems, maybe,

some, several, many, could, and might.

Logical Fallacies

• Ad hominem: attack the person instead of the idea the person puts forth—often seen in politics and everyday life.

• Straw person: misrepresenting a position and then proving it wrong.

• Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: faulty cause-effect that one thing happened before another when they are not really related

Logical Fallacies Cont.

• Either/or: claims only two opinions exist when there are more.

• Hasty generalizations: draw conclusions based on too little evidence.

• Non sequitur: skips or confuses logical steps—does not follow logic.

• Slippery slope: claims that a certain way of thinking or acting will necessarily lead to more of the same

Logical Fallacies Cont.

• Begging the question: no support is provided, but only the restating of the claim.

• Red herring: deliberate attempts to change the subject.

• Bandwagon: everyone else is doing it, you should, too because it is commonplace that makes it okay.

Logical Fallacies Cont.

• Association: claims that two people or things share a quality just because they are somehow associated, connected, or related.

Toulminian Logic

• Six Components:– Claim: conclusions or assertion– Support: appeals, evidence, and examples– Warranting Assumption: statement to connect

claim and support in logical way– Backing: evidence that supports warrant– Modal Qualifiers: words or phrases that limit

scope– Rebuttal: refutes an opposing claim or charge