Invention: Read Prewriting Strategies, and then read Mary’s Freewrite. Then read the rest of this section In free writing (or any invention technique at this point) the idea is to get ideas on paper.
I’m working on a research paper. The topic is Organic Strawberry. It needs Aristotle’s argument.
Invention: Read Prewriting Strategies, and then read Mary’s Freewrite. Then read the rest of this section In free writing (or any invention technique at this point) the idea is to get ideas on paper. Keep in mind that AT THIS POINT IN THE PROCESS many of those ideas should be about the history and consequences of your issue. So when you are writing what you know, what you think you know, what you’ve heard, etc, those ideas will serve as guidance to discovery. Don’t suppress other ideas that surface; they are useful. Just be sure you also free write about the history and consequences. Invention does not require any research.
For example, if you look again at Mary’s Freewrite, you will see in sentence 1 she says “Teenage crime seems to be on the rise.” That’s a valuable idea for Mary because as you can see she offers no specifics to develop that idea. Fine. It’s a freewrite. All she wants to do is get words on paper. BUT that idea will be very valuable for her exposition because the idea serves as guidance as to an idea that Mary must discover what’s reasonable to believe about her declaration. Now she must find out if teen crime is in fact on the rise by comparing the amount of teen crime now to the amount of teen crime at some previous point (or points if she wants to show a trend) in time.
Mary makes many declarations like this that will guide her discovery as to the history and consequences of teen crime (Keep in mind that Mary still needs to come to a more specific meaning of teen crime, but it’s fine for her at this point in her process. For example, she says teen girls are more involved than in the past, she says teens are killing each other, and she says after school programs have been eliminated (NOTICE THESE ARE PAST OR PRESENT TENSE VERBS-THAT’S GOOD). The point is that she has clear direction as to what she must discover in the next phase of the process, discovery.
The Exposition: The exposition is the beginning of an argument. All effective arguments begin with an exposition. You can think of it as a mini report. Its function is to use concrete and specific language to establish the significance of the issue and to bring readers to an understanding of the issue today. Significance is established by presenting the history and consequences of the issue. We will rely upon speakers (sources) to provide words and ideas about that history and about those consequences. Take a look at the Examples of Draft Expositions to see how they differ in their effectiveness.
Some Rules about the Language Used in Expositions:
Use action verbs. The language in an exposition should be neutral language. It should not show a bias regardless of your position. “The unfair policing bill was passed in 1992” is an example of biased language because it makes a judgement about the policing bill. So are “A militarized police force is a danger to us all” and “The Justice Department is corrupt.” Notice both of these claims use “to be” verbs. The “to be” verbs are “be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being.” When we use “to be” verbs as sentence verbs, we create non neutral language. We can use them as auxiliary verbs for action verbs as in “The Congress is voting” or “The bill was judged unconstitutional.” (Now if your goal is to persuade, you might use biased language to create a particular ethos or pathos, but remember; our goal is to discover what, if anything is reasonable to believe about a significant issue expressed in a claim.)
The tense of verbs used in an exposition should be present or past tense since we are writing about history and current understanding. Future tense can be used if we are citing a source that is relevant to the issue, but even that is rare.
The exposition should contain no modals. Modals are parts of verbs that indicate the moods of verbs. The modals are “should, could, would, might, may, must, shall, will, can, has to, ought to, needs to.” It’s possible that a modal might be used by a source, but try to avoid doing so.
Use concrete and specific language. For example, don’t tell us that “household incomes have gone down over the last twenty years,” show us that “the median family income for a family of four in 1999 was $32,000, and that family’s median income today is $27,000.”
Make sure the end of the exposition brings us to an understanding of what’s going on with the issue today. The Central Relationship
Aristotle is interested in meaning, and he believes that meaning is found within relationships. An argument is made of many relationships. The most fundamental relationship in an Aristotelian argument is the Central Relationship. Some rhetoricians call it the enthymeme. Some call it a truncated syllogism. Regardless of what we call it, it is the fundamental building block of an Aristotelian argument. It is the structure that functions to determine what belongs in an argument and what does not. It is the claim and the reason for that claim that is validated by everything else in the argument.
The central relationship is comprised of three parts. Two of those parts are visible; the third is invisible but can be derived if the visible parts are structured appropriately. The two visible parts are 1) the thesis, and 2) the because clause (aka the central reason). Because we are writing arguments and not reports or some other genre of writing, our thesis will be a policy claim. Our because clause will be the reason we believe that policy claim, that thesis, to be reasonable.
Explain What You Knew: Discuss what you already knew about your topic. In other words, offer readers some context. You may even want to incorporate some of the material from your Personal Inquiry Essay or write new narrative material to engage and inform your readers.
Tell What You Wanted to Learn and Why: Let readers know what you wanted to find out about your topic and Find sources.
https://classes.lanecc.edu/enrol/index.php?id=1161…
ARISTOTELIAN ARGUMENT
Aristotelian argument is also called classical argument and is based on the ideas of Aristotle who is considered to be the father of rhetoric. Aristotle’s ideas still serve as the bases for conventions in several western disciplines like philosophy, law, civics, speech and communication among others.
Instead of looking at success in an argument as our effectiveness at persuasion which is how many rhetoricians evaluate our competence to argue, we will have as a goal a different purpose for argument.
For us, instead of being based upon our ability to persuade folks to adopt our position on an issue, success will be based upon our ability to discover what , if anything, is reasonable to believe about a significant issue expressed in a claim. So our goal will be to discover what’s reasonable, and we will leave it for reasonable folks to believe what they will. An argument for us therefore, is an attempt to discover what, if anything, is reasonable to believe about a significant issue expressed in a claim.
An Aristotelian argument, for our purposes, has four main parts, the exposition, the central relationship, the counter argument, the body.
The Exposition: The exposition is the beginning of an argument. All effective arguments begin with an exposition. You can think of it as a mini report. It’s function is to use concrete and specific language to establish the significance of the issue and to bring readers to an understanding of the issue today. Significance is established by presenting the history and consequences of the issue. We will rely upon speakers (sources) to provide words and ideas about that history and about those consequences. Take a look at the Examples of Expositions to see how they differ in their effectiveness.
Some Rules about the Language Used in Expositions:
Use action verbs. The language in an exposition should be neutral language. It should not show a bias regardless of your position. “The unfair policing bill was passed in 1992” is an example of biased language because it makes a judgement about the policing bill. So are “A militarized police force is a danger to us all” and “The Justice Department is corrupt.” Notice both of these claims use “to be” verbs. The “to be” verbs are “be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being.” When we use “to be” verbs as sentence verbs, we create non neutral language. We can use them as auxiliary verbs for action verbs as in “The Congress is voting” or “The bill was judged unconstitutional.” (Now if your goal is to persuade, you might use biased language to create a particular ethos or pathos, but remember; our goal is to discover what, if anything is reasonable to believe about a significant issue expressed in a claim.)
The tense of verbs used in an exposition should be present or past tense since we are writing about history and current understanding. Future tense can be used if we are citing a source that is relevant to the issue, but even that is rare.
The exposition should contain no modals. Modals are parts of verbs that indicate the moods of verbs. The modals are “should, could, would, might, may, must, shall, will, can, has to, ought to, needs to.” It’s possible that a modal might be used by a source, but try to avoid doing so.
Use concrete and specific language. For example, don’t tell us that “household incomes have gone down over the last twenty years,” show us that “the median family income for a family of four in 1999 was $32,000, and that family’s median income today is $27,000.”
Make sure the end of the exposition brings us to an understanding of what’s going on with the issue today.
The Central Relationship
Aristotle is interested in meaning, and he believes that meaning is found within relationships. An argument is made of many relationships. The most fundamental relationship in an Aristotelian argument is the Central Relationship. Some rhetoricians call it the enthymeme. Some call it a truncated syllogism. Regardless of what we call it, it is the fundamental building block of an Aristotelian argument. It is the structure that functions to determine what belongs in an argument and what does not. It is the claim and the reason for that claim that is validated by everything else in the argument.
The central relationship is comprised of three parts. Two of those parts are visible; the third is invisible but can be derived if the visible parts are structured appropriately. The two visible parts are 1) the thesis, and 2) the because clause (aka the central reason). Because we are writing arguments and not reports or some other genre of writing, our thesis will be a policy claim. Our because clause will be the reason we believe that policy claim, that thesis, to be reasonable.
A policy claim has a specific structure and function. It’s function is to seek change. It’s structure is a subject agent + a modal + an action verb. One example of a policy claim would be the following:
The governor of Texas should impose a stay at home order for Texans.
In the above example, “governor” is the subject agent. It is the entity that has the authority to make the change that the claim seeks.
“Should” is the modal, and “impose” is the action verb.
So now we have a policy claim, the 1st visible part of a central relationship.
Now we need the second visible part, the because clause. So we must answer the question, “why should the governor impose a stay at home order for Texans?” The answer,
“because the governor wants to limit the spread of the virus.” Notice the structure of the because clause. It has the same subject agent as the thesis, the “governor.” It has a different action verb, “wants.” A modal is not required in the because clause, but a modal is required in the policy claim which is the thesis.
Now the question surfaces “where do the terms of the central relationship come from?” They come from the terms of the exposition, from what was discovered about the significance of the issue. In this example, the exposition would have included the history of the virus in Texas and the consequences of the virus in Texas and the role of the governor in the issue. And the exposition would have ended with some statement about what the state of the issue today is. “Today covid cases are rising, and Texas has just had it’s largest daily increase to date with hospitals near capacity.”
So when we put the two visible parts together, we have the following relationship:
“The governor of Texas should impose a stay at home order for Texans because the governor wants to limit the spread of the virus.”
Now that we have the visible parts of the central relationship, we can derive the third part, the invisible part. That invisible part is called the assumption.
The assumption is derived by using the indefinite pronoun “anyone” or “anything” as the subject of the assumption followed by the relative pronouns “who” or “that” and then adding the verb part of the because clause and then the verb part of the thesis. So in this example it looks like this:
“Anyone who wants to limit the spread of the virus should impose a stay at home order for Texans.”
And now the terms of the argument are set, and the parameters of the argument are defined. We now know what belongs in the argument and what does not. In this argument, the writer must show it to be reasonable that anyone who wants to limit the spread of the virus should impose a stay at home order for Texans and the writer must also show that the governor wants to limit the spread of the virus. These then are the parameters of the argument. Both must be developed. Both are not necessarily developed to the same degree, however.
Sometimes the assumption must be more developed than the because clause, and sometimes the because clause must be more developed than the assumption, and sometimes development of both is roughly equal. Notice that the thesis is never developed. In an Aristotelian Argument, if the assumption is developed as reasonable to believe and the because clause is reasonable to believe, then the thesis must be reasonable to believe and never needs to be developed.
So this argument could include all the discovery that shows how a stay at home order is effective at limiting the virus (the assumption). It could use other states as examples, it could use the testimony of health experts, it could include hospital records, infection rates and any other evidence that shows the effectiveness of what stay at home orders accomplish. The argument will also show that the governor has the authority to issue the order and that he wants to limit the spread of the virus. It may partially be shown in the history of the exposition based upon what he has done in the past, or it may be shown legislatively based upon the Texas state constitution, or it may take elements of both and other things like his authority to allocate funds or move patients. It seems that this argument, however, will spend more time and development on the assumption than on the because clause. But both must be developed.
Usually, once a writer has formulated the central relationship, some revision of the exposition takes place so the exposition includes the necessary development of the terms of the argument. For example, the role and behavior of the governor historically in the covid issue, the consequences of covid to his state, and how the issue evolved in Texas.
It is the development of these two parameters that occurs in the rest of the paper, and all the relationships in the paper are tied to one another through their relationship to the central relationship.
The most common errors new arguers make with the CR are 1) not following the required structure of the CR, 2) changing, adding, or subtracting terms (words) when they derive the assumption, 3) picking a false agent (for example “Parents should make their kids….” If parents thought it reasonable to make their kids…., they would have already done so, so they are a false agent) 4) trying to name some generic entity like “the government” as an agent. A discovery should already show who historically has had authority in regards to an issue. Besides, “the government” could mean many things. By saying “the government should….” does one mean the federal mint, the post office?
A writer rarely devises an appropriate CR on the first try. It’s like an evolution of related ideas. Central relationships can change as extended discovery takes place and new relationships are understood, but once a writer has a workable CR, she has a map as to how the rest of the argument might unfold. Take a look at Examples of a Central Relationship to see how a CR might evolve first from the term in an exposition and then through its own process. Try to keep CRs as simple and clear as possible. They are easier to manipulate and change that way.
The Counter Argument
At some point in your discovery, you are likely to come across a voice that disagrees with your argument or some aspect of your argument. If opposition to your argument or some aspect of your argument exists in the public domain and you do not address it, readers will be skeptical of your knowledge or sincerity. They are unlikely to see you as more informed than they are, and your credibility will suffer. Aristotle calls this your ethos. On the other hand, you do not want to contrive opposition just so you can beat it down in the presence of your readers. Such contrived opposition usually starts with phrases like “some may think….” or “opponents often say….” If real opposition exists, you must respond to it. Sometimes you might have to concede that the opposition is reasonable. In that case you might show how even so, your course of action (the change you seek and the way to get there) is still the preferred outcome.
The Body (Development of the parameters of the argument). Extended discoveries and extended relationship building both build on the work that you did for the exposition, but now you are dealing with the parameters of the argument and not just the significance of the issue. As before, some early discovery might be used better later in the paper, and some later discovery might be used better earlier in the paper. A rough draft should be at least as long as the final paper will be, but longer allows for keeping the most effective writing and eliminating the least effective writing. If you need more words, look for generalizations within the paper, and see if you have provided examples. Doing so results in internal expansion of the paper. Remember, generalizations begin with plural nouns or indefinite pronouns.
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