• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Finally, we are advising that traditional forms and formats are only a part of what you need to learn in order to grow as a writer and thinker. The first unit of this book, for example, although its assignments can lead to traditional essays, focuses primarily on ways of using writing in order to improve your ability to observe. This kind of writing—exploratory writing, writing to help you discover ideas—can fuel various formats, including multi-modal ones.

WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT WRITING ARGUMENTS IN COLLEGE?

Insofar as you will be asked to write arguments in college, they will differ in significant ways from what you hear on crossfire-style talk shows and “news” programs. In made-for-TV arguments, people set out to defeat other people’s positions and thus “win.” Arguments in college are more exploratory—aimed at locating new ways of understanding something or at finding a tentative solution to a problem. Such arguments lead with analysis rather than position-taking. The claims you arrive at in an analysis are, in fact, arguments—analytical arguments.

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