Friday, February 20 2009

Today’s Agenda

For today you had to read Chapter 6, identify which kind of argument you find to be most interesting, and explain how you will attempt to transform your writing into that kind of argument in a 1.5 page blog post.

Now, the first part of this should have been fairly easy, as only one kind of argument was discussed in this chapter – the Toulmin argument.

We begin my making claims:

However, in the instance of our papers, are claims are going to be specific to Hertsgaard’s argument.  Our THESIS will be our MAJOR OR MOST IMPORTANT CLAIM. We will also have numerous “lesser” claims we make along the way.

CLAIMS need to be backed up with evidence and support. For our purposes, the evidence and support we use will come from the articles we have read: The Oblivious Empire, America the Beautiful, and the third article of your own choosing.

Example: Because the American Government has carried out mass murder before, it is guilty of terrorism.

You will notice that that there is a problem here, which is that it may not be obvious to the reader how the EVIDENCE is connected to the CLAIM.

What we have with such a statement is essentially an enthymeme: a statement that has some presumptions wrapped up in it. These presumptions may make sense to you, but they may not make sense to the reader, so we have to be careful to unpack them for the reader. We do this with what is called a WARRANT.

The American Government has carried out mass murder before. For example, when the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, tens of thousands of people died. The deaths of many innocent Japanese citizens terrified the people of Japan, and forced the nation to change its political and military goals. The point of terrorism is to achieve exactly this effect through exactly these means. Subsequently, Hertsgarrd is correct when he claims that the United States has committed acts of terrorism in the past.

So – notice that we begin with a claim, and then connect it to some evidence. THEN we explain the specific logical relationship between the claim and the evidence.

Let’s look at the arguments we have be working on.

1)      Identify your major and minor claims. If this information is missing, you need to provide it.

2)      Identify the evidence you have been working on. If this information is missing, you need to provide it.

3)      Identify the WARRENTS in your writing. If this information is missing, you need to provide it.

Okay, now let’s look at the article by Alan Dershowitz on page 166: Testing Speech Codes. We will re-read it, and then test it against the basic topics we have covered today.

For MONDAY: You are to complete the first draft of your argument, and you will meet with me to go over it.  We will not have class, but we will meet to discuss your work.

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