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• Classic-Fiction

Here are some of the differences between argument as it is too often conducted in the media and argument of the type cultivated by college writing:

has more than two sides

moves from much more carefully defined and smaller (less global) claims

seeks out common ground between competing points of view rather than solely emphasizing difference

uses potentially contradictory evidence to test and qualify claims rather than ignoring such evidence or housing it solely as concessions (“okay, I’ll give you that point, but …”) and refutations (“here is why you are wrong!”)

adopts a civil and nonadversarial ethos (self-presentation) and rhetorical stance (relationship with the audience) (see Chapter 3)

avoids stating positions as though they were obviously and self-evidently true

avoids cheap tricks such as straw man—misrepresenting or trivializing another’s position so that it is easy to knock down and blow away—and name calling and other of the logical fallacies (see Chapter 9)

includes much more evidence and careful analysis of that evidence

Targeting the Opinionated and the Argumentative We can cap this brief discussion of modes of argument in college by targeting two words that are sometimes misunderstood—opinionated and argumentative. These are not neutral terms. Saying that someone is opinionated is not the same as saying that he or she has opinions, nor is an argumentative person simply one who offers arguments. The opinionated person has too many opinions—a firmly held view on virtually everything, and the argumentative person is one for whom argument is a form of interpersonal warfare and for whom relationships tend to be competitive and adversarial. Both terms are associated with being close-minded and uncivil.

Although members of the academic world frequently disagree with each other and call attention to those disagreements, they do not lead with conflict and criticism. For knowledge to grow in the academic world, people have to continue to talk with each other and hear what each other has to say. (See Naturalizing Our Assumptions and “I Didn’t Know You Wanted My Opinion” in Chapter 2.)

RHETORIC: WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED IT

Long before there were courses on writing, people studied a subject called rhetoric—as they still do. Rhetoric is a way of thinking about thinking. It offers ways of generating and evaluating arguments as well as ways of arranging them for maximum effect in particular situations. This book is a rhetoric in the sense that it offers methods for observing all manner of data and arriving at ideas. The division of rhetoric devoted to the generation of ideas is called “invention.” Writing Analytically is an inventionoriented rhetoric.

In ancient Greece, where rhetoric was first developed as a systematic body of knowledge, emphasis was on public speaking. When Aristotle trained his students in rhetoric, he was preparing them to make arguments in the agora, the central assembly place in Athens where social, political, and religious issues of the day were decided. A person well-trained in rhetoric was adept at finding available arguments on the spot. Rhetorical training provided its practitioners with particular habits of mind.

Today, training in rhetoric continues to be especially helpful for all people who wish to enter public discourse and contribute to civil debate on key issues. In one of the best current textbooks on classical rhetoric, Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students (Pearson/Longman 2004), authors Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee say about rhetoric that “its use allows people to make important choices without resorting to less palatable means of persuasion—coercion or violence” (2).

Unfortunately, the word “rhetoric” has suffered a serious decline in popular perception. To some people, rhetoric has come to mean something like empty, willfully deceitful, and sometimes just plain dishonest uses of language. People who think of rhetoric in this way will say things like “It was all just rhetoric,” that is, all talk and no substance.

In order to make use of all that