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• Classic-Fiction

We might paraphrase the claim as “The rules for paying income tax give rich people monetary advantages” or “The rules for paying income tax help the rich get richer.”

Now let’s look at the implicit ideas that the claim assumes to be true. Because this sentence has been offered out of context, let’s supply a range of possibilities:

Tax laws don’t treat people equally.

Tax laws may have unintended consequences.

If we assume the speaker is worried about tax laws possibly benefitting the wealthy, then a few more assumptions can be inferred:

Tax laws shouldn’t benefit anybody.

Tax laws shouldn’t benefit those who are already advantaged.

This process of definition will help you see the key concepts upon which the claim depends. Regardless of the position you might adopt—attacking tax laws, defending them, showing how they actually benefit everyone, or whatever—you would risk arguing blindly if you failed to question what the purpose of tax law is in the first place. How does the writer intend “benefit”? Does he or she mean that tax laws benefit only the wealthy and presumably harm those who are not wealthy? Note by the way that the assumptions we might infer would differ depending on context. If this statement appeared at a rally for the Tea Party, it would suggest one set of underlying assumptions; if it appeared at the Democratic National Convention, it would suggest another set.

The wording of this claim seems to conceal an egalitarian premise: the assumption that tax laws should not benefit anyone, or, at least, that they should benefit everyone equally. But what is the purpose of tax laws? Should they redress economic inequities? Should they spur the economy by rewarding those who generate capital? Our point here is that you would need to move your thesis back to this point and test the validity of the assumptions upon which it rests.

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Try This 4.2: Uncover Assumptions in Reviews

Say you read a review that praises a television show or film for being realistic but faults it for setting a bad example for the kids who watch it. What assumptions might we infer from such a review? Here is an example of one underlying assumption: Good and bad examples are clear and easily recognizable by everyone. List at least three more.

Then locate a review of any other cultural product—a film, a show, a CD, a book, a concert, and so forth. Isolate key claims and uncover assumptions, that is, reason back to premises.

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Uncovering Assumptions: An Economist Speaks

In the following Voice from Across the Curriculum, economics professor James Marshall foregrounds the importance of uncovering assumptions in designing and answering research questions.

Voices From Across the Curriculum

What’s beneath the question? On some occasions, students find that they have confronted an issue that cannot be resolved by the deductive method. This can be exciting for them. Will cutting marginal tax rates cause people to work more? The answer is yes or no, depending on the premises underlying the workleisure preferences incorporated into your model.

—James Marshall, Professor of Economics

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Try This 4.3: Uncovering Assumptions: Fieldwork

You can practice uncovering assumptions with all kinds of material— newspaper editorials, statements you see on billboards, ideas you are studying in your courses, jokes, and so forth. Try a little fieldwork: spend a week jotting down in your notebook interesting statements you overhear. Choose the best of these from the standpoint of the implied (but unstated) premises upon which each statement seems to rest. Then make a list of the uncovered assumptions.

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3. REFORMULATING BINARIES

HOW TO REFORMULATE BINARIES

Step 1: Locate a range of opposing categories.

Step 2: Define and analyze the key terms.

Step 3: Question the accuracy of the binary and rephrase the terms. Step 4: Substitute “to what extent?” for “either/or.”

Binaries are an essential component of thinking and writing analytically. They have already figured significantly