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Chapter Resources CHAPTER RESOURCES Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 1 1-2 Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Chapter 1 ANATOMY OF AN ARGUMENT Goals This chapter provides students with an overview of several concepts key to writing arguments and key to this text as a whole. The overview includes a definition of a formal argument and a short description of the three models of argument that will be discussed in greater depth in later chapters. The overview includes writing concepts that apply to writing well in general: • the rhetorical rhombus, which shows students how argument fits into the act of communicating through writing • prewriting methods that writers use to get started • techniques for capturing the reader’s attention in the opening paragraph and techniques for firmly concluding a paper • revising strategies, including reading with a critical eye, using peer-critique workshops, and revising for different purposes Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 3 In general, writers may find the notion of the rhetorical rhombus quite useful since its four corners—purpose, audience, writer, and subject—interconnect at different stages of the writing process and form a way of remembering the elements implicit in any communicative event. 1-4 Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 1—Anatomy of an Argument 5 Teaching Suggestions Instructors may find it useful to have students read this chapter for the second day of class in order to see the broad strokes of the material they will be studying for the term. Instructors may wish to discuss in class some of the exercises, such as the one designed to help students understand the distinction between formal argument and disagreements one may have informally in conversations and those exercises demonstrating the way that published writers use some of the introductory techniques in their work. Instructors may also find it useful to devote some of class discussion to explaining the rhetorical rhombus and the WTHC criterion. Many former students have said that applying these guidelines enabled them to better approach writing assignments for all their classes, regardless of discipline. Consider an paper for a philosophy class. Its purpose may be to explain the logic of a particular philosopher’s viewpoint and apply it to a present-day social issue. Notice that if a student chose to consider a particular thinker’s stance, say Machiavelli’s, he or she would not be arguing that the philosophical stance is or is not morally right; rather, the student would be demonstrating how that view could be applied to address a contemporary social issue. The student’s audience would not only be the instructor but would also include the projected, imagined audience of those who wish to deal with the social issue. As the writer, the student has adopted the persona of someone who shares the Machiavellian philosophy. Perhaps the student has narrowed the paper’s subject to a social issue of importance to him or her because he or she believes that the philosopher whose ideas are being applied has an approach that would benefit society today. On the other hand, the student may believe that approach is being used to the detriment of society today and wish to show that to be the case in its baldest form. The “who-the-heck cares” criterion (WTHC), another concept students have found useful, helps hone the idea of audience further—better, actually—for if we really think about it, other than our family and friends, who the heck really cares about our opinions or the ideas that we are writing about? And since we could probably talk to our friends and family fairly easily, why should we bother to write down our ideas? When we really think about our audience in this way, we construct a real audience for ourselves and have a clearer sense of our purpose as well. Who would truly care, and why should they care if they don’t at the outset of the argument? How can we make them care? Some people also refer to the WTHC criterion as significance or point. Attending to the WTHC criterion helps keep writers from reiterating needlessly and assists them in knowing what material to organize, how and what to keep, and what to toss when they go over their drafts. Example: Writer Meaghan knows a good deal about snowboarding, and her first few drafts illustrate her expertise. In them she includes details about the joy of waking up early when she knows she’ll be driving to the slopes, the way that she prepared her board the night before, the different ways she could have prepared her board if she had been planning to snowboard in another Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 6 Chapter Resources location or if the snow pack had been different, the exhilaration she felt during her first run, the attempts all the snowboarders on a particular run were making to do the best trick, and the spirituality of snowboarding. However, she isn’t sure what she needs to embellish or how she should conclude. Meaghan has not written an argument; she’s written a few drafts that help her recall why she enjoys the sport. To construct an argument, Meaghan needs to consider her audience: who-the- heck would care about her experiences snowboarding—and why? If Meaghan is hoping to recruit more members for the ski club so that the costs of going to the slopes will be lower, she will need to convince readers that they would voluntarily want to wake up at 4:30 A.M. on Saturday morning. The details about the preparation of her board will be less important to that audience than those that convey the exhilaration or the spirituality of snowboarding. Meaghan may also need to describe the success that even beginners could enjoy on their first trip to the slopes. She might want to conclude her piece by exhorting her audience to join the ski club to experience the sport first. Who-the-heck else might care about Meaghan’s experiences snowboarding— and why? Perhaps some fellow members of the ski club have been careless with the equipment provided by the club, and perhaps they’ve also been content with going to the same spots, places where they don’t try anything new. If Meaghan’s audience is comprised of experienced snowboarders who are intermediates, she could instead argue about the importance of maintaining the equipment and the need for intermediates that attempt tricks that could develop their abilities further. In her conclusion, Meaghan might need to show intermediates the value of following her suggestions—the increased safety and enjoyment of the snowboarders and the increased life of the boards. In this example of a topic with which students may be fairly familiar illustrates how they might use the rhetorical rhombus and the WTHC criterion to communicate effectively. Use of these concepts can assist writers in moving from writer-based to reader-based prose. Further, it can help some writers see how to overcome their difficulty concluding their arguments. Suggested Answers to the Exercises Exercise 1.1 1. Partial definitions from The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition: Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 1—Anatomy of an Argument 7 • argue v. tr. 1. To put forth reasons for or against; debate. 2. To attempt to prove by reasoning; maintain or contend. 3. To give evidence of; indicate. 4. To persuade or influence (another) by presenting reasons. • argument n. 1.a. A discussion in which disagreement is expressed; a debate. b. A quarrel; a dispute. 2.a. A course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating truth or falsehood. • debate v. –intr. 1. To consider something; deliberate. 2. To engage in argument by discussing opposing points. 3. To engage in a formal discussion or argument. n. 1. A discussion involving opposing points; an argument. 2. Deliberation; consideration. 3. A formal contest of argumentation in which two opposing teams defend and attack a given proposition. • dispute v. –tr. 1. To argue about; debate. 2. To question the truth or validity of; doubt. 3. To strive to win (a prize for example); contest for. 4. To strive against; resist. –intr. 1. To engage in discussion or argument; debate. 2. To quarrel angrily. n. 1. A verbal controversy; a debate. 2. An angry altercation; a quarrel. • quarrel1 n. 1. An angry dispute; an altercation. 2. A cause of a dispute or an argument. intr. v. 1. To engage in a quarrel; dispute angrily. 2. To disagree; differ. 3. To find fault; complain. Using definitions such as these, you can guide students in seeing how definitions provide evidence for their felt sense—for example, that an element of emotion is implied in quarrel but not in debate or argue. Students should also recognize that implicit in the words argue and argument is the notion of providing reasons to the audience. 2. a. Yes. Data are available on correlations between smoking and lung cancer. b. No. The statement is either true or not true, so it cannot be developed into a formal argument. c. Yes. Conceivably studies have been done on children studying a foreign language as well as their own. Such studies could be used to test this claim. d. Yes. Conceivably studies that have tested the correlation between amount of subjects’ video-game playing and their level of abstract reasoning skills exist and can be used to support this assertion. 3. Students must provide this information on their own. 4. a. To support this claim, a person would need to use statistics. First, however, a person would have to define adults and safer.
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