What Are the Arguments

What this handout is about

This handout will ascertain what an argument is and explain why you need one in near of your bookish essays.

Arguments are everywhere

Yous may exist surprised to hear that the word "argument" does not have to exist written anywhere in your assignment for it to be an important role of your chore. In fact, making an argument—expressing a indicate of view on a subject and supporting it with evidence—is often the aim of bookish writing. Your instructors may assume that you know this and thus may not explain the importance of arguments in grade.

About material y'all learn in college is or has been debated past someone, somewhere, at some fourth dimension. Even when the textile you read or hear is presented as a simple fact, it may really exist one person's interpretation of a gear up of data. Instructors may telephone call on y'all to examine that interpretation and defend it, abnegate information technology, or offering some new view of your ain. In writing assignments, you will well-nigh always need to do more merely summarize information that you accept gathered or regurgitate facts that have been discussed in course. You will need to develop a signal of view on or estimation of that textile and provide evidence for your position.

Consider an example. For nearly 2000 years, educated people in many Western cultures believed that bloodletting—deliberately causing a ill person to lose blood—was the most effective treatment for a multifariousness of illnesses. The claim that bloodletting is beneficial to human health was not widely questioned until the 1800s, and some physicians continued to recommend bloodletting as late as the 1920s. Medical practices have now inverse because some people began to doubt the effectiveness of bloodletting; these people argued confronting it and provided convincing bear witness. Man noesis grows out of such differences of opinion, and scholars like your instructors spend their lives engaged in debate over what claims may exist counted equally accurate in their fields. In their courses, they desire y'all to engage in like kinds of critical thinking and debate.

Argumentation is not just what your instructors do. Nosotros all use argumentation on a daily footing, and you probably already have some skill at crafting an argument. The more you meliorate your skills in this area, the ameliorate you will be at thinking critically, reasoning, making choices, and weighing testify.

Making a claim

What is an argument? In bookish writing, an argument is usually a principal idea, often called a "claim" or "thesis statement," backed upwardly with prove that supports the idea. In the majority of college papers, you will need to make some sort of claim and use testify to support information technology, and your ability to practise this well will split your papers from those of students who run across assignments every bit mere accumulations of fact and detail. In other words, gone are the happy days of being given a "topic" about which you lot can write annihilation. It is fourth dimension to stake out a position and prove why it is a good position for a thinking person to hold. See our handout on thesis statements.

Claims tin be as uncomplicated every bit "Protons are positively charged and electrons are negatively charged," with show such as, "In this experiment, protons and electrons acted in such and such a style." Claims can too exist as complex every bit "Genre is the virtually important chemical element to the contract of expectations between filmmaker and audience," using reasoning and evidence such as, "defying genre expectations can create a consummate apocalypse of story grade and content, leaving the states stranded in a sort of genre-less abyss." In either instance, the rest of your paper will detail the reasoning and evidence that take led you to believe that your position is best.

When beginning to write a paper, ask yourself, "What is my betoken?" For example, the point of this handout is to help you go a better writer, and we are arguing that an important step in the process of writing effective arguments is agreement the concept of argumentation. If your papers practice not have a main point, they cannot exist arguing for annihilation. Asking yourself what your point is tin assist you avert a mere "information dump." Consider this: your instructors probably know a lot more than you do almost your subject matter. Why, then, would you want to provide them with material they already know? Instructors are normally looking for two things:

1. Proof that you sympathise the material
2. A sit-in of your ability to utilize or apply the material in ways that go beyond what you have read or heard.

This 2d part can be done in many ways: you tin can critique the material, apply it to something else, or fifty-fifty just explain information technology in a dissimilar manner. In gild to succeed at this 2d pace, though, you must have a particular signal to contend.

Arguments in academic writing are usually circuitous and have time to develop. Your argument will need to be more than a simple or obvious statement such as "Frank Lloyd Wright was a peachy architect." Such a statement might capture your initial impressions of Wright equally you have studied him in form; nevertheless, you need to look deeper and express specifically what caused that "greatness." Your teacher will probably expect something more complicated, such as "Frank Lloyd Wright'due south architecture combines elements of European modernism, Asian aesthetic class, and locally found materials to create a unique new manner," or "At that place are many strong similarities between Wright'southward building designs and those of his mother, which suggests that he may take borrowed some of her ideas." To develop your argument, you would so ascertain your terms and prove your claim with testify from Wright's drawings and buildings and those of the other architects you mentioned.

Evidence

Exercise non stop with having a indicate. You accept to back up your signal with bear witness. The strength of your evidence, and your use of information technology, can make or interruption your statement. See our handout on testify. Yous already have the natural inclination for this type of thinking, if not in an academic setting. Think about how you talked your parents into letting you borrow the family car. Did you present them with lots of instances of your past trustworthiness? Did you make them experience guilty because your friends' parents all let them drive? Did you whine until they just wanted y'all to shut upwards? Did y'all look upwards statistics on teen driving and utilize them to evidence how you didn't fit the dangerous-driver contour? These are all types of argumentation, and they exist in academia in similar forms.

Every field has slightly different requirements for acceptable evidence, so familiarize yourself with some arguments from within that field instead of merely applying whatever evidence you like all-time. Pay attention to your textbooks and your teacher's lectures. What types of statement and testify are they using? The type of bear witness that sways an English teacher may not work to convince a sociology instructor. Find out what counts as proof that something is truthful in that field. Is it statistics, a logical development of points, something from the object being discussed (art work, text, civilisation, or atom), the way something works, or some combination of more than ane of these things?

Be consequent with your evidence. Unlike negotiating for the apply of your parents' machine, a college paper is non the identify for an all-out blitz of every type of argument. You can oftentimes apply more than one type of evidence within a paper, merely make sure that within each section you are providing the reader with evidence appropriate to each claim. And then, if you lot start a paragraph or department with a statement like "Putting the educatee seating expanse closer to the basketball courtroom will raise thespian performance," do not follow with your testify on how much more money the university could heighten by letting more students go to games for free. Data about how fan support raises role player morale, which then results in better play, would be a better follow-upwardly. Your next department could offer clear reasons why undergraduates have as much or more correct to nourish an undergraduate event every bit wealthy alumni—but this information would not go in the same section as the fan support stuff. Yous cannot convince a confused person, then go on things tidy and ordered.

Counterargument

I manner to strengthen your statement and evidence that you have a deep understanding of the effect y'all are discussing is to anticipate and accost counterarguments or objections. By because what someone who disagrees with your position might take to say almost your argument, you show that you accept thought things through, and you dispose of some of the reasons your audience might have for not accepting your argument. Recall our give-and-take of educatee seating in the Dean Dome. To make the most effective argument possible, you lot should consider not only what students would say about seating simply also what alumni who have paid a lot to get good seats might say.

You can generate counterarguments by asking yourself how someone who disagrees with you might respond to each of the points you've fabricated or your position as a whole. If you can't immediately imagine another position, here are some strategies to try:

• Do some research. It may seem to yous that no one could possibly disagree with the position you lot are arguing, only someone probably has. For example, some people debate that a hotdog is a sandwich. If you are making an argument concerning, for example, the characteristics of an exceptional sandwich, yous might want to meet what some of these people accept to say.
• Talk with a friend or with your instructor. Another person may be able to imagine counterarguments that haven't occurred to you.
• Consider your conclusion or claim and the bounds of your argument and imagine someone who denies each of them. For example, if you argued, "Cats make the best pets. This is because they are clean and independent," yous might imagine someone saying, "Cats do not make the all-time pets. They are dirty and needy."

Once you accept thought upward some counterarguments, consider how y'all will answer to them—will you lot concede that your opponent has a betoken but explain why your audition should yet accept your argument? Will you reject the counterargument and explain why information technology is mistaken? Either fashion, y'all will want to leave your reader with a sense that your argument is stronger than opposing arguments.

When you lot are summarizing opposing arguments, exist charitable. Present each statement fairly and objectively, rather than trying to go far look foolish. You desire to show that you have considered the many sides of the issue. If y'all simply set on or caricature your opponent (also referred to as presenting a "harbinger man"), you suggest that your argument is only capable of defeating an extremely weak antagonist, which may undermine your argument rather than enhance it.

It is usually amend to consider one or two serious counterarguments in some depth, rather than to requite a long merely superficial list of many different counterarguments and replies.

Be certain that your reply is consistent with your original statement. If considering a counterargument changes your position, y'all will need to go back and revise your original argument accordingly.

Audience

Audience is a very of import consideration in argument. Have a await at our handout on audience. A lifetime of dealing with your family members has helped yous effigy out which arguments work all-time to persuade each of them. Perhaps whining works with one parent, but the other will only take common cold, difficult statistics. Your kid brother may listen only to the audio of coin in his palm. It's usually wise to think of your audience in an academic setting every bit someone who is perfectly smart merely who doesn't necessarily concord with you. You are not just expressing your opinion in an statement ("It's true because I said so"), and in almost cases your audience will know something about the discipline at hand—so you volition demand sturdy proof. At the aforementioned fourth dimension, practise non think of your audience as capable of reading your heed. You take to come out and country both your claim and your evidence clearly. Do not presume that because the instructor knows the cloth, he or she understands what role of information technology yous are using, what you remember about it, and why you take taken the position you've called.

Critical reading

Disquisitional reading is a large part of agreement argument. Although some of the cloth y'all read will exist very persuasive, practise not fall under the spell of the printed give-and-take as say-so. Very few of your instructors think of the texts they assign as the terminal give-and-take on the discipline. Remember that the author of every text has an calendar, something that he or she wants you to believe. This is OK—everything is written from someone's perspective—merely it's a proficient matter to exist enlightened of. For more data on objectivity and bias and on reading sources advisedly, read our handouts on evaluating print sources and reading to write.

Take notes either in the margins of your source (if you are using a photocopy or your ain volume) or on a carve up canvas as you read. Put away that highlighter! Simply highlighting a text is good for memorizing the chief ideas in that text—it does not encourage disquisitional reading. Role of your goal as a reader should be to put the author'south ideas in your own words. Then you can end thinking of these ideas as facts and get-go thinking of them as arguments.

When y'all read, enquire yourself questions like "What is the author trying to show?" and "What is the writer assuming I will agree with?" Do yous agree with the writer? Does the writer adequately defend her statement? What kind of proof does she use? Is in that location something she leaves out that you would put in? Does putting it in hurt her argument? As yous go used to reading critically, you will starting time to see the sometimes hidden agendas of other writers, and yous can utilize this skill to improve your own power to arts and crafts constructive arguments.

Works consulted

Nosotros consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout's topic, and we encourage you to practice your own research to find additional publications. Please practise not use this list as a model for the format of your ain reference list, as information technology may not lucifer the commendation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries commendation tutorial. We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris Thousand., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers, 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Berth, Wayne C., Gregory Thousand. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Bizup, and William T. FitzGerald. 2016. The Craft of Research, 4th ed. Chicago: Academy of Chicago Press.

Ede, Lisa. 2004. Work in Progress: A Guide to Academic Writing and Revising, 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin's.

Gage, John T. 2005. The Shape of Reason: Belligerent Writing in College, 4th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A., and John J. Ruszkiewicz. 2016. Everything's an Argument, 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin'south.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook, 5th ed. New York: Longman.

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