Word Works
Learning through writing
at Boise State University
Number 78 February 1996
Published by the BSU Writing Center

Making your case

In any academic or workplace situation, people need to construct arguments or make their case for something. In college classes, argument is often an essential part of short, informal in-class writings as well as formal essay exams ("Argue for or against the proposition that. . . ."). It figures prominently in prospectuses and term papers. All of us use argument when proposing an idea or in trying to persuade other people to do something. Argument is everywhere.

For all its commonness, however, those of us who teach and tutor writers are aware that skill at arguing doesn't always come naturally. Writers need to acquire some basic principles in order to make their arguments effective and persuasive.

Claim + reasons

The first principle is that an argument consists of a claim plus supporting reasons. Many writers think in terms of evidence: facts, statistics, pronouncements from authorities, etc., rather than reasons. Evidence can be used to support reasons, but in itself it rarely constitutes sufficient reason or a persuasive argument. The ancient rhetoricians, going back to Aristotle and even to the early Sophists, were wisely suspicious of evidence, because they believed it could easily be faked. These days we're aware how easy it is to lie with statistics (one of our own pet forms of evidence), to misquote authorities or take their words out of context, and so forth. So the main support has to be reasons.

Let's say Professor Oliver Twist of Gruel U. wants to persuade colleagues in his department that contract grading, a system in which students contract to do a certain amount of work for a certain grade (provided that the work is of satisfactory quality), is a good way to evaluate student work. He first has to figure out what his exact claim should be. It can't be merely that "contract grading is a good system," because that's too vague to persuade anybody. So he tries:

Claim: Contract grading is a fair, effective way to assign grades in a course.

Next Oliver has to figure out what his reasons are. And he has to separate good reasons from reasons that are not good. "I want Fagin to get off my back about this" may be one of his real reasons, but it's not a good reason, because it makes no appeal to the common good of colleagues or students. After some thought he comes up with a starter list of reasons.

Reason 1: Contract grading gives students a greater sense of control over what they learn and what grades they get.

Reason 2: Contract grading saves instructors' time; they can use more writing in their classes, or use it in larger classes, because they need less time to process it.

Reason 3: Contract grading is fairer than conventional grading because professors don't have to make so many judgment calls on borderline cases.

Developing the reasons

Now each reason needs to be developed in a persuasive way. For this we turn to the work of Stephen Toulmin, whose method of analyzing the structure of argument has greatly helped teachers and students of argumentative writing. Here we will use an adaptation of Toulmin's schema by John Ramage and John Bean, whose slightly altered version is a bit clearer and easier to use than Toulmin's original.

First, the writer needs to find the grounds for each reason. Grounds can consist of any type of evidence, such as personal experience and observation, testimony, statistics, etc. It can also consist of further reasons. Oliver sketches out the grounds he might use for the first reason.

Reason 1: Contract grading gives students a greater sense of control over what they learn and what grades they get.

Grounds: I have personally observed that students seem to have a greater sense of mastery. I could cite the example of Kathy, who started the semester feeling extremely unqualified for the class and ended deciding to switch her major to this department. I could cite the student evaluations, in which 80% stated they preferred the contract grading over conventional grading. I could cite that study in The College Teacher about the effect of contract grading on students' retention of course material.

Next, Oliver must examine the unstated assumptions, or warrants, underlying Reason 1. Is there anything he's taking for granted that his audience might not accept as true? He writes it down:

Warrant: It is a good thing for students to have a greater sense of control over their learning.

"That looks OK," he says to himself. "I don't think anyone would disagree with that." Therefore he probably won't have to worry about defending that warrant, or even bother mentioning it. But he thinks of another one that might cause trouble:

Warrant: It is a good thing for students to have a greater sense of control over their grades.

Oliver thinks of Nancy, an influential member of the department, who told him the other day that she thought it was the faculty's job to assess students' performance, and students should in no way be led to believe that they have any say in the evaluation of their work. Therefore, Oliver will need to either drop this part of his argument or address this warrant by providing backing.

Backing: Some students perform better when relieved of their anxiety about grades.

Backing: Students benefit from having a part in evaluating their own work; they will learn to be more self-evaluative and thus learn how to improve on their own.

The first piece of backing, Oliver believes, is true as long as he qualifies it with "some." But it still sounds rather weak and he probably shouldn't use it. The second looks stronger. But Nancy could reply that contract grading would do little more to promote self-evaluation than traditional grading, because it would meet considerable student resistance, and she could be right. Oliver decides he'll come back to work on this later, and moves on.

Dealing with possible objections

Claim-reason-grounds-warrant-backing is the main structure of an argument using Toulmin's scheme (see the box on the back page). But Oliver also has to consider what rebuttals his audience might come up with for each reason, and how he needs to accommodate his argument to the rebuttals. He searches for possible objections that Fagin, Nancy, and other colleagues might think of, and works out the conditions for rebuttal. Conditions for rebuttal usually begin with except or unless.

Reason 1: Contract grading gives students a greater sense of control over what they learn and what grades they get. Conditions for rebuttal: Except for students with low motivation or low self-esteem; they might go for a "C" and not try to do any better. The grade becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To accommodate his case to this potential rebuttal, Oliver might amend his claim with a qualifier by writing:

Qualifier: "gives most students. . . ." or "can give students. . . ."

Toulmin's scheme can be used not only in the confirmation part of the argument, where the writer makes his or her own case, but also in the refutation, where the writer deals with arguments on the other side. For instance, Oliver might anticipate that some of his colleagues will object: "The whole idea of contract grading is fallacious, because the teacher-student relationship is not a contractual one."

He might compose a counterclaim: "Contract grading is a real contract, because it is like a business contract in important ways." and then he might enumerate what he sees as the similarities. Or he might concede: "Contract grading is not a contract in the business sense, but that is not a good reason for shooting it down. The term contract is the conventional one for such a grading system, and we shouldn't let terminology stand in our way of a valuable alternative to traditional grading."

Oliver has a start toward making his case. Reason 1 needs work. And he needs to run his other reasons, and other opposition reasons, through the same process. It's as important to be inventive in thinking up the opposition reasons as one's own confirmation reasons.

The whole process might sound tedious, spelled out this way, but actually once Oliver gets used to using the Toulmin scheme it goes pretty fast. And he ends up making a stronger case because he has developed his argument systematically. His argument still might not persuade the people he wants to persuade, but it has a much better chance at success. (In a recent BSU English class on writing arguments, the more successful students tended to be the ones who got in the habit of running all their good reasons through the Toulmin scheme.)

Some connections

This discussion of argument is closely related to a couple of other topics recently covered in Word Works. One is development, as described in the issues on the Evidence Loop (numbers 54 and 47) and TRIAC (number 75). A quick comparison of the Toulmin scheme with both the Evidence Loop and TRIAC models will reveal that the three systems have a lot in common. All three describe how successive statements in a paragraph relate to one another by stating the claim and reason, refining the reason, illustrating it, and analyzing how the illustration relates to the reason. The three strategies can be used together in any combination.

The other topic is audience, discussed in Word Works numbers 76 and 77. What we have described here, the structure of argument, is the logos of persuasion, the reasons and their support. But the most impressive argument in the world, logos-wise, will not persuade if the writer hasn't also paid attention to ethos and pathos -- the reader-writer relationship. The relationship tells the writer what tone of voice to use and what kind of reader to "construct" in the text.

It also tells the writer quite a bit about the logos: which reasons and grounds the audience is most likely to give their assent to. Oliver will need to discard any reasons that might sound self- serving. He does his best to create the ethos of a reasonable colleague who has the best interests of the students at heart first, without neglecting the well-being of the faculty. He tries to create a "reader in the text" who has their interests at heart and is willing to listen to reason.

Summary of a sample argument worked out on the Toulmin scheme
  • Claim: Contract grading is a fair, effective way to assign grades in a course.

  • Reason: Contract grading gives students a greater sense of control over what they learn and what grades they get.

  • Grounds: I have personally observed that students seem to have a greater sense of mastery. I could cite the example of Kathy, who started the semester feeling extremely unqualified for the class and ended deciding to switch her major to this department. I could cite the student evaluations, in which 80% stated they preferred the contract grading over conventional grading. I could cite that study in College Teaching about the effect of contract grading on students' retention of course material.

  • Warrant: It is a good thing for students to have a greater sense of control over their grades.

  • Backing: Students benefit from having a part in evaluating their own work; they will learn to be more self- evaluative.

  • Conditions for rebuttal: Except for students with low motivation or low self-esteem; they might go for a "C" and not try to do any better. The grade becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  • Qualifier: Amend claim to "gives most students. . . ." or "can give students. . . ."

    • RL