From UVA Writing Center

The Elements of Argument

See Problem Statements and The Five Parts of Argument for detailed information on the different elements that go into constructing an argument. When constructing an overall argument, think of your body paragraphs as little arguments, each being a local claim that comes with its own requisite reasons, evidence, necessary warrants, and responses. This will help keep you from constructing thin arguments, or arguments that don't seem well supported or presented.

Dialogic vs. Combative Arguments

When we hear the word argument, we often think of two people hollering at each other, or someone with a desk and airtime yelling at a "guest" on the program. This is what's known as a combative argument, and they tend not to get too far. A combative argument tells the audience how they should think and/or act, rather than inviting the audience to arrive at their own conclusions.

Academic arguments are dialogic arguments. That is, they are in dialog with the audience. This means that the argument presents a claim and support for the claim, and invites the audience to grapple with what you've presented, and even pose countering positions. A dialogic argument allows the audience to come to their own conclusions about the position you've presented.

Arguing Meaning

One way we argue is when we believe there is a discrepancy in how something is defined and we try to re-define it. When arguing a meaning, you should know the problem that your definition will solve ahead of time. Arguments about meanings can hit a wall when they become surrogate arguments hiding a different issue. You and your audience may have different understandings of a term; you may be believe that werewolves are natural, whereas your audience may believe they are supernatural. In such a case, the issue is less about werewolves than it is about unexplained phenomena. Arguments can also hit a wall when the definition is actually a surrogate for values. This is sort of like the Beavis & Butthead problem, where everything either sucks or rocks. Your definition of something that rocks may be how someone else defines sucks. In that case, you're actually debating how you value something, and not how something is defined.

An Example of Arguing Meaning

By 2004, the U.S. was faced with a few arguments about definitions after the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. People who were caught fighting the coalition military but were not part of any organized and recognized military themselves (like a militia) were deemed to be enemy combatants by the administration, and thus not subject to the same Geneva Convention rights as a prisoner of war. This argument bled (!) over into the argument about a definition of torture; in an August 1, 2002 memo written by then -counsel to the president Alberto Gonzales, the definition of pain that constitutes torture was redefined to being "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure." (see page 46). Later, the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation was altered to move away from the Geneva Convention definition of prisoners of war, and re-defined the status of enemy combatants to permit torture. (This section of the field manual was leaked to the press, but is classified - the only section that is classified - and therefore not linkable. The rest of the U.S. Army Field Manuals are available here.)

A more general argument of definition has emerged around the classification of terrorist, generally around the aphorism "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." In Iraq, the classifications get murky when trying to distinguish Islamist terrorists from nationalist insurgents, two groups who have very different ends.

Elements of Meaning

Some elements that may help develop an argument about meaning are:

• Referent: The actual thing referred to when a certain term is used. When you talk about a werewolf, you're not describing a short, squat thing with feathers that hangs out on a pond.
• Category: A category is a set of things that are alike. Werewolves are in the category of lycanthropes, not to be confused with misanthropes.
• Terms: Words or phrases that describe elements in a category. Lycanthropes are shapeshifters that become supernatural animals, and are nocturnal.
• Features: Features are the similarities or distinctions between referents in a category. Werewolves have big teeth, are furry, have claws, and look like big dogs. Werecats are a lot like werewolves, but look like big cats; they're still lycanthropes, just not dog-like.
• Meaning: Meaning is assigned to a category based on its features. When meaning is assigned to the category lycanthropes, that meaning is derive from the collection of features that collect lycanthropes into a category.
• Criteria: Criteria are the elements that make up meaning. Criteria are to meaning as features are to categories.
• Definitions: A definition emerges when the criteria of a meaning is presented, and that meaning is attached to a category.

Arguing Causes

Another way we argue is by discussing how one thing causes or will cause another. By understanding how something can cause something else, you can argue for some sort of pragmatic response. Once you start looking into causes, you find that every cause is the result of a prior cause, and have to discern what is relevant to your argument and what isn't. By learning the causes of an event or potential event, you can then argue for pragmatic action to either maintain those conditions or alter them.

An Example of Arguing Causes

After 9/11, just about everyone around the world wondered what were the causes for the attack. These causes are still being debated today. Some causes presented to the public were:

• Al Qaeda hates the U.S. for its freedoms
• Al Qaeda wanted the U.S. military out of the Arab peninsula
• Middle Eastern regional political conflict between Islamist and sectarian groups drove Osama bin Laden to plan the attacks in order to drive Islamist sentiment in the Middle East and re-establish the caliphate, or Islamic-based government led by a political successor to the prophet Muhammad.
• U.S. support of Israel and its occupation of Palestine.
• In 2007, conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza argued in his book How the Left Led Us Into 9/11 (and in this L.A. Times article) that Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. because cultural liberalism as found in the United States offends fundamentalist Muslims.
• Conspiracy theorists argue that 9/11 was caused by the CIA training the Mujahideen in the 1980's, which then morphed and factioned off into separate Islamist and nationalist causes after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. After that, when the U.S. needed a reason to continue its military and economic expansion around the globe, the CIA simply mobilized those they trained to start a new world war, and with administration help facilitated 9/11.

Each of these arguments try to posit the conditions that gave rise to the 9/11 attacks, and the arguments either for or against any of these causes are still being debated daily in the press around the globe.

Thinking About Causes

When considering causes of an event, a few things can help keep things straight:

• We tend to focus on causes that immediately precede the event: Undergrads, school administration and townspeople will tend to focus on the most recent werewolf attacks in Charlottesville and where the undergrads were when and what they were doing when attacked. Other prior causes, like the influx of malevolent leprechauns who brought on the wave of lycanthropy, are prior causes that won't necessarily get immediate attention, but could be important.
• We tend to look only at causes to events that occur, and not at causes to events that do not occur: The evening news will only focus on the intoxicated undergrads who were snacked on by werewolves, not the intoxicated undergrads who made it home whole.
• Causality usually gets associated with surprising events, not common events: How intoxication can make undergrads vulnerable is not much of an issue until said undergrads begin getting gobbled up because of that vulnerability.
• We usually look to causes that confirm our prior assumptions: A scientist may look for a pack of rabid dogs in Charlottesville, while Rev. Pat Robertson may argue that god sent the werewolves because of Charlottesville's hedonistic ways.
• We usually look for causes that are proportional to the event: When investigating the werewolf carnage, the presumed cause would be the victim suffered some kind of terrible animal attack, not the victim suffered a really hard sneeze.

Qualifications

You don't want to overstate a claim or leave your terms unclear. Qualification is necessary language that limits and defines your argument to keep it without reasonable bounds to be accepted by the majority of your audience on its face. For instance, it's not always true that intoxicated undergrads will be eaten by werewolves when outside, but is likely. The war on drugs ad campaign in the U.S. suffered from overstating its claims in ads like This Is Your Brain On Drugs. The ad showed a man holding an egg, saying "This is your brain." Then he cracked the egg into a hot pan and the egg fries; "This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?" The claim of the ad suggested that any drug use will turn your brain into breakfast. This ad has been roundly parodied since it's inception. After the 9/11 attacks, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign released ads ("Nick and Norm") claiming that buying marijuana supports terrorism. Those ads also stretched audience credulity, and are now no longer on the website. However, the Office of National Drug Control Policy seemed to get that people weren't believing that smoking a joint would melt one's brain like napalm, nor that skunkweed grown in someone's closet or a dimebag from Jamaica were supporting Al Qaeda, and changed their approach. They released a series of ads like Pete's Couch, which showed people smoking marijuana and just sitting in their basements and not getting up and doing anything. In other words, the terms were qualified and limited, and the ad proved to be more effective.

Three Things Qualifications Do

1. Limit the range of a claim
2. Set a limit for the quality of evidence being used
3. State the necessary conditions for a claim to be the case

Conclusions

The final part of an argument is the conclusion. Often conclusions echo introductions, but in reverse. But - conclusions should not simply restate your claim; rather, think of a conclusion as an opportunity to justify your argument. A sample structure of a conclusion might look like:

• Language reiterating the main claim of the argument
• An explanation of the claim's significance (an answer to the question so what?)
• Other questions that still need to be addressed (an answer to the question now what?)
• A final coda, or fact/anecdote that brings the reader back to the beginning of your problem statement.

Remember, the conclusion should not contradict your main claim. If you're still drafting, you may find that the conclusion you write actually clarifies your claim for you. If that's the case, you may want to go back to your introduction and see if your claim needs tweaking to line up with your support (reasons and evidence) and conclusion.