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THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF ARGUMENTATIVE / PERSUASIVE WRITINGPersuasive writing is writing that sets out to influence or change an audience's thoughts or actions.You are subjected to persuasion everyday from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed. Understanding persuasive strategies can help you in two very important ways:Knowing the strategies helps you analyze the strategies other people are using to persuade you. This way you can protect yourself when, for example, unethical marketers are trying to take advantage of you.Knowing the strategies helps you to choose which is the most effective way to persuade an audience.How do we get others to accept our point of view?by appealing to their reasonby appealing to their emotionsby the appeal of our good characterAPPEALING TO REASON:Remember that an argument is an appeal to a person's sense of reason; it is not a violent fight, dispute, or disagreement. It is a measured, logical way of trying to persuade others to agree with you. You must remember that there are at least two sides to every issue. If you take the attitude that there is only one side—your side-- you will quite likely alienate your reader.You need, then, to choose one side of an issue clearly in an effort to persuade others. If you're unsure of your own stance, how can you expect other people to assess, understand, and be convinced by your position?There are two basic types of reasoning processes: Deduction and InductionDEDUCTION: begins with a general principle or premise and draws a specific conclusion from it.Example:All people who smoke endanger their health. (major premise)My father smokes. (minor premise)Therefore, my father is endangering his health. (conclusion)Is this a strong argument? You need to offer evidence in support of your claims. It may be impossible to prove a cause-effect link between my father's smoking and his declining health.INDUCTION: supports a general conclusion by examining specific facts or cases.Example: If I was to argue that my father was endangering his health, I might cite specific symptoms: His teeth are yellowish and he's lost a considerable amount of weight.He's no longer able to cycle his 25km every morning.Whenever he exerts himself physically, he ends up coughing extremely hard.Other Logical Appeals? You could cite smoking/cancer statistics, authority in the form of the Surgeon General, financial costs etc.APPEALING TO EMOTION: The logical appeal is certainly an extremely persuasive tool. However, our human nature also lets us be influenced by our emotions. One way of evoking emotion in your reader is to use vivid images.You could also offer vivid examples in support of your argument. Use language and/or images that are emotionally charged. Be careful, however, that when you use emotional appeal, you use it "legitimately." You should not use it as a substitute for logical and/or ethical appeals. Don't use emotional appeals to draw on stereotypes or manipulate our emotional fears. Don't use emotionalappeal to get an automatic, knee-jerk reaction from someone. If you use emotionally charged language or examples simply to upset or anger an audience, you are using emotion illegitimately. Your use of emotional appeal shouldn't oversimplify a complicated issue.APPEALING TO OUR GOOD CHARACTER: The appeal of your ethics can occur on one or more of the following levels in any given argument:Are you a reasonable person? (That is, are you willing to listen, compromise, concede points?)Are you authoritative? (Are you experienced and/or knowledgeable in the field you are arguing in?)Are you an ethical/moral person (Is what you're arguing for ethically sound/morally right)Are you concerned for the well-being of your audience? (To what extent will you benefit as a result of arguing from your particular position?)The ethical appeal is based on the audience's perception of the speaker. Therefore, the audience must trust the speaker in order to accept the arguments. Don't overlook ethical appeal, as it can be the most effective of the three.Elements of a Good Argument:Remember to identify any unfamiliar or uniquely used terms in your argument.If you forget to define your terms (or choose not to define them) you run the risk of alienating your audience, confusing them, or causing them to come to inappropriate conclusions.You Must Ensure that Your Evidence is ConvincingConvincing evidence will satisfy the following questions:Is the evidence sufficient in volume? That is, is there enough evidence to present a strong, indisputable case?Is the evidence trustworthy? Does it come from reliable, informed sources?Is the evidence verifiable? That is, can you corroborate it through other sources. Is the evidence factual, or does it rest solely on opinion?APPEAL TO AUTHORITY:If you are drawing on an authoritative, expert figure to back up what you say, is the authority actually reliable? When trying to determine whether someone is an authority, consider the following elements:Is your expert a current authority on the specific subject in question?Is your expert up-to-date on the most current procedures, statistics, testing programs etc.Is your expert viewed favorably by his/her peers? Is he/she respected in the field?Is your expert associated with reputable organizations?Is your expert as free of bias as possible?Remember that when quoting a source you must be careful that you don't accidentally (or intentionally) take the quote out of context, changing the original meaning.Keep in mind, as well, that your authority should be knowledgeable about the subject; he/she should not simply be someone famous. A celebrity endorsement is not quite the same as expert opinion (unless the celebrity is endorsing a product that she/he uses). In addition, you want to ensure that the authority you are using is still current in the field.Remember that the most successful arguments often combine the three appeals. With that in mind, be very careful about relying solely on logic in an argument. Use a combination of appeals to allow for a more balanced argument. An audience may readily become resistant to your argument if you rest solely on a particular line of reasoning that they fundamentally disagree with.Other Important Terms for Argument:Concession: When you concede a point in an argument, you are saying that you actually agree with your opponent on a particular issue. Remember that this is not a sign of weakness. In fact, you are strengthening your ethical appeal because you are coming across as a reasonable person who is willing to see more than one side of the argument.Refutation: When you deliberately, directly attack an opponent's argument, point by point, you are said to be "refuting" the argument.Anticipating and Addressing Counter-Arguments: When you are making your argument, you must remain aware of what points your opponents will likely take exception to. If you can anticipate what the likely objections will be, and then address them in your argument, you'll likely strengthen your position.Toulmin's Argument ModelStephen Toulmin, an English philosopher and logician, identified elements of a persuasiveargument. These give useful categories by which an argument may be analyzed.ClaimA claim is a statement that you are asking the other person to accept. This includes information you are asking them to accept as true or actions you want them to accept and enact. For example: You should use a hearing aid.Many people start with a claim, but then find that it is challenged. If you just ask me to do something, I will not simply agree with what you want. I will ask why I should agree with you. I will ask you to prove your claim. This is where grounds become important.GroundsThe grounds (or data) is the basis of real persuasion and is made up of data and hard facts, plus the reasoning behind the claim. It is the 'truth' on which the claim is based. Grounds may also include proof of expertise and the basic premises on which the rest of the argument is built.The actual truth of the data may be less that 100%, as all data is based on perception and hence has some element of assumption about it.It is critical to the argument that the grounds are not challenged, because if they are, they may become a claim, which you will need to prove with even deeper information and further argument. For example: Over 70% of all people over 65 years have a hearing difficulty.Data is usually a very powerful element of persuasion, although it does affect people differently. Those who are dogmatic, logical or rational will more likely to be persuaded by data. Those who argue emotionally and who are highly invested in their own position will challenge it or otherwise try to ignore it. It is often a useful test to give something factual to the other person that disproves their argument, and watch how they handle it. Some will accept it without question. Some will dismiss it out of hand. Others will dig deeper, requiring more explanation. This is where the warrant comes into its own.WarrantA warrant links data and other grounds to a claim, legitimizing the claim by showing the grounds to be relevant. The warrant may be explicit or unspoken and implicit. It answers the question 'Why does that data mean your claim is true?' For example: A hearing aid helps most people to hear better.The warrant may be simple and it may also be a longer argument with additional sub-elements, including those described below.Warrants may be based on logos, ethos or pathos, or values that are assumed to be shared with the listener.In many arguments, warrants are often implicit and hence unstated. This gives space for the other person to question and expose the warrant, perhaps to show it is weak or unfounded.BackingThe backing (or support) to an argument gives additional support to the warrant by answering different questions.For example: Hearing aids are available locally.QualifierThe qualifier (or modal qualifier) indicates the strength of the leap from the data to the warrant and may limit how universally the claim applies. They include words such as 'most', 'usually', 'always', 'sometimes'. Arguments may thus range from strong assertions to generally quite floppy or largely and often rather uncertain kinds of statement.For example: Hearing aids help most people.Another variant is the reservation, which may give the possibility of the claim being incorrect. Unless there is evidence to the contrary, hearing aids do no harm to ears.Qualifiers and reservations are much used by advertisers who are constrained not to lie. Thus they slip 'usually','virtually', 'unless' and so on into their claims.RebuttalDespite the careful construction of the argument, there may still be counter-arguments that can be used. These may be rebutted either through a continued dialogue, or by pre-empting the counter-argument by giving the rebuttal during the initial presentation of the argument. For example: There is a support desk that deals with technical problems.Any rebuttal is an argument in itself, and thus may include a claim, warrant, backing and so on. It also, of course can have a rebuttal. Thus if you are presenting an argument, you can seek both possible rebuttals and also rebuttals to the rebuttals. STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO WRITING AN ARGUMENT ESSAYThe Introduction – Grab and Keep the Reader While the writer might not ever be able to completely sway her reader, she needs to at least get the reader's attention right from the start. With an argumentative essay, one of the best ways to do that is to introduce a surprising statistic or summarize an interesting story dealing with the topic at hand. For example, if a student is writing about why people should not shop at Walmart, she might begin her paper with this sentence: Did you know that Walmart is the world's largest company (Dube, Lester, and Eidlin)? Would it surprise you to know that the company is also one of the biggest employers in the world? How does that knowledge impact consumers? How would you feel if I told you that you should stop shopping at Walmart? Not only does this introduction get the reader's attention, it also leads into the writer's claim. Find Reasons to Support the Claim Once the writer has laid out his claim for the reader, he needs to support his claim. Through his planning and research, he has likely found several reasons to support his ideas. For a strong argumentative essay, he will want to give at least three. Using the example topic above, three such reasons might be these: Walmart stores drive out locally owned businesses, thus disrupting local economies. Walmart stores put Americans out of jobs, because the company buys many of its products from overseas. Walmart pays its workers low wages. Now that the writer has chosen three reasons to support his claim, he will need to back his claim; in other words, he needs add in the data.. Each one of these reasons can be one or more paragraphs long. Address the Opposition When you think about your topic deeply, you are likely to find plenty of arguments contrary to your own. Spend some time examining these ideas and choose one to refute within your paper. If you do not, you are not writing an argumentative paper; furthermore, many readers will dismiss your ideas. So, again looking at the above topic, one argument against the writer's position that readers should not shop at Walmart is that Walmart typically offers lower prices than its competitors. Because Walmart offers lower prices, many consumers feel that they should shop there. So how can the writer refute this point of view? Not only should she argue against this idea, but she should try to find a way to turn it around. If she can do that, she is presenting a strong argument. She might choose to do it this way: Many people refuse to shop elsewhere because Walmart offers lower prices than many of its competitors. Shoppers say they can't afford to shop elsewhere. But what if I told you that Walmart's products are of inferior quality? Of course, she again needs to present evidence from sources to back up what she's said, but by arguing against the opposition - and actually turning the argument around – she has strengthened her argument. The Conclusion Offers the Writer a Chance to Reaffirm His Claim The conclusion is the point where the writer must pull all of his ideas back together and reaffirm his position. Like his introduction, the writer might choose to ask provoking questions or cite one last statistic. Whatever the case, he needs to end on a strong note. He might end it this way: When our forefathers founded this great country, they envisioned a land of freedom and prosperity, where a man could pursue whatever he wanted and find a way to survive. I, for one, don't think the idea of a huge chain like Walmart fits into the vision of our forefathers. Walmart has driven out all the "mom and pop" stores around it and has decimated the American way of life. How many Walmart products have you purchased in the last five years that were actually made in America? How do you think that affects our great nation? He reminds his readers of his claim as well as some of his reasons as he closes his paper. Writing an Argumentative Essay Step by Step In a nutshell, here are the basic components to an argumentative essay: Introduction that establishes the writer's claim. At least three paragraphs citing three reasons to back the writer's claim. Each paragraph should include an in-depth explanation as well as "proof" or evidence of what the writer says. At least one paragraph anywhere in the essay where the writer introduces an idea from the opposition and finds a way to "disprove" it. A conclusion that reaffirms the writer's claim and reasons for it. ................
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