LMA/Sem II

ARGUMENTATION

 The purpose of writing an argument is to convince someone of a particular point of view. Usually
an argument consists of an opinion arrived at through some process and it is supported by a set of
facts.

 It is not unknown, however, for people to reach different opinions about the same set of facts.
Consequently, defense of a particular point of view is likely to be the result of an individual’s
opinion as well as a presentation of the facts. The following should illustrate how one could form
an incorrect hypothesis based on a set of facts. (See example: “The Astounding awakening of Mr.
B”)

 Since arguments are part fact and part opinion, support becomes extremely important. Support
should come from facts that you can verify as well as from people who are recognised to be
authorities in the field. The following argument illustrates how both support and expert opinion
make this example believable. (See second example )

 One of the most important requirements for writing a good argument is clear reasoning: it is
especially important in an argument that the writer not be criticised for faulty thinking. Fallacies in
reasoning will weaken the credibility of any argument.

PITFALLS TO AVOID:

1. Oversimplification: ignoring essential details in order to make your argument work; reducing the
analysis to a level so simple that you distort the facts and the truth.

If all children were given good homes, there will never be any criminals.

2. Either-or argument: presuming that there are only two alternatives.

We must either build impregnable defenses or fight the…

3. Irrelevant evidence: using evidence that has no bearing on the topic; does not support because it
is not logically related.

My favorite movie star says the milk is bad for the body; therefore, I am going to stop drinking
milk.

Inadequate evidence is closely related to this; that is, making an assumption that a large
number of people do something on the basis of a small sample.

If you graduate with an entrepreneurial degree, you are sure to make lots of money. My father,
brother and sister all have entrepreneurial degrees, and they are all rich.

4. False cause: failing to analyze all the alternatives; can result in attributing a given situation to the
wrong cause.

Many people are not driving their cars as much as they used to because they are tired of rush-
hour traffic.

5. Attack the person: attacking the person and not the position of the person.

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 I disagree with Senator X’s proposal to dispose of wastes in our state. After all, a person who can’t
even clean up his own campaign committee has no business making decisions like this.

6. Generalization or overgeneralization: arguing that something is always or never this way:

All people who have two children are good parents.

7. Tautology: reasoning that is circular, that uses the same words to explain something that might
already be unclear.

All gorkies do is gorky.

8. False comparison: comparing things that are not alike in basic composition. Comparison
becomes unreasonable.

Comparing a wife or a husband to a used car – for trade-in purposes.

 To develop an argument you may have to: use examples, facts, statistics, details;
Put events in chronological order
Compare and contrast one position with another
Use definitions, cause-effect, and analogy

TASKS:
1. Correct this generalization: all businessmen are just money hungry; they don’t care whom they
hurt as long as they make money.
2. Correct this oversimplification: If we stopped all interaction with foreign countries, America
would never have to fight another war.
3. Correct this tautology: Rip is a lucky person because he always wins.
4. Write a one-paragraph argument for or against a topic of your choice.

NARRATION

Narration as a mode of writing may overlap with the other modes of writing: expository, descriptive
and argumentative. Nevertheless, as a discursive technique, narratives have certain
specific features.

I. CONVERSATIONAL NARRATIVES OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Definition (cf. W.Labov, “The transformation of experience in narrative”, in Jaworski and
Coupland, The Discourse Reader, 1999, Routledge):
=one method of recapitulating past experience by matching a verbal sequence of clauses
to the sequence of events which (it is inferred) actually occurred.

Overall structure:
1. The abstract: summarizes the central action and main point of the narrative. A story-teller
uses it at the outset to pre-empt the questions what is this about, why is the story told?
Eg.: ‘My brother put a knife in my head.
And I twisted his arm up behind him.
This was just a few days after my father died…’ (Source, Labov, 1999)
2. Orientation: sets the scene; the who, when, where, and the initial situation of activity of the
story. Syntactic properties of the orientation: many past progressive clauses (sketching the
kind of thing that was going on before the first event of the narrative occurred.
- it is theoretically possible for the orientation clauses to be placed at the beginning of the narrative,
but in practice, we find much of this material placed at strategic points

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3. Complicating action: is the central part of the story proper, answering the question ‘what
happened then’?
4. Evaluation: addresses the question so what? A directionless sequence of clauses is not a
narrative. Narrative has a point, and it is narrators’ prime intention to justify the value of the
story they are telling, to demonstrate why these events are reportable.
5. The resolution: what finally happened to conclude the sequence of events.
6. The coda: ‘and that was that’. It wraps up the action, and returns the conversation from the
time of the narration to the present.

TASK: Identify the overall structure of the following narration of past experience: (source: Labov)

a. When I was in fourth grade –

No, it was in third grade –
b. This boy he stole my glove.
c. He took my glove
d. and said that his father found it downtown on the ground
e. I told him it was impossible for him to find downtown ‘cause
all those people were walking by
and just the father was the only one
that found it?
f. So he got mad at me
g. Then I fought him.
h. I knocked him all out in the street…..
i. So he say he give.
j. and I kept on hitting him.
k. Then he started crying
l. and ran home to his father.
m. And his father told him
n. that he ain’t find no glove.

II. NEWS STORIES AS NARRATIVES (see Bell,A, in Jaworski and Coupland, The Discourse
Reader)
1. Abstract: in news the ‘lead’ (or first paragraph) has the same function as the abstract in personal
narratives. For major news stories, the lead paragraph is often set off from the remainder of the
story in larger type of across several columns of the body copy.
The headline is an abstract of the abstract (abstracting the lead paragraphs).

2. Orientation: it is obligatory in news stories. It usually concentrates at the beginning of a story, but
may be expanded further down.

3. Evaluation: its function is identical to that in personal narratives. The lead paragraph is usually a
nucleus of evaluation, because the function of the lead is not only to summarize the main action,
but also to focus the story in a particular direction.

4. (Complicating) action: in personal narratives a defining characteristic is the temporal sequence of

its sentences. New stories, by contrast, are seldom told in chronological order. Moreover, the result
is placed before the action which caused it. Because in news writing it is not the action or the
process which takes priority but the outcome.

5. Resolution: news stories often do not present clear-cut results. When they do, the result will be in
the lead rather than at the end of the story. News stories are not rounded off.

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6. Coda: usually there is no coda. The reason – in news writing the floor is not open. (Exception:
broadcast news, where the end of the programme is explicitly signalled).

TASK: Analyse the following news story from the point of view of story structure and time structure:

STORY STRUCTURE TIME STRUCTURE

US troops
Ambushed
In Honduras

Tegucigalpa
UNITED STATES troops in Hon-
duras were put on high alert af-
ter at least six American sol-
diers were wounded, two ser-
iously, in a suspended leftist
guerrilla ambush yesterday,
United States officials said.
Six or seven soldiers were
wounded when at least three
men, believed to be leftist guer-
rillas, used high-powered wea-
pons in an ambush of bus carry-
ing 28 passengers 20 kilometres
north of the capital Tegucigalpa,
United States embassy spokes-
man Terry Kneebone said.
The bus was carrying the
soldiers from a pleasure trip at a
beach on the Atlantic Coast.
‘It was a surprise attack’,
Southern Command spokesman
Captain Art Haubold said in
Panama City.
‘The US forces did not return
fire. They kept going to get out
of the area as quickly as
possible’.
A Tegucigalpa radio station
said an unidentified caller said
the leftist group Morazanista
Patriotic Liberation Front
Claimed responsibility for the at-
Tack. – NZPA-Reuter.

(Source: The Dominion, Wellington, 2 April 1990

in A.Bell, 1999)