Chapter 17 - Strategies for Argumentation and Persuasion Summary

Chapter 17 - Strategies for Argumentation and Persuasion Summary

In this chapter you learn about strategies of argument and persuasion. In a persuasive argument you are trying to get a person (your reader or listener) to think or feel a certain way or to act on something. In order to build a persuasive argument, there are some necessary steps to take. First you must prepare your argument. You need to know who your audience is and know your goal. You also need to gather evidence and ideas that support your argument and develop reasoning. You must make and qualify your claim by drawing conclusions based on the evidence that you gathered. You need to add qualifiers into your argument. Some examples listed in the chapter are words like, typically, sometimes, almost and often. You should try to avoid making all or nothing claims or extreme claims. So, stay clear of words like, all, best, never or worst. And avoid obvious or unsupported claims as well. Next you want to support your claim. To support your claim you will need evidence. A few examples of evidence that you can use would be observations, statistics, analogies, and predictions. Make sure all of your evidence is accurate, complete, relevant, current, authoritative and appealing. While showing the evidence you gathered, use patterns of inductive or deductive logic. I also learned that you need to identify fallacies. There are several different types of fallacies that can be within an argument. Some of these types of fallacies are trying to distort the issue, sabotage the argument, draw faulty conclusions, misuse evidence, or misuse language. Also, when building a persuasive argument, you want to make sure to engage the opposing side. You do so by acknowledging the opposition and develop rebuttals to it as well. In this chapter I learned there are three types of claims you can make in an argument. These types of claims are claims of truth, claims of value, and claims of policy. Claims of truth state whether something is or is not the case. Claims of value show whether something does or does not have worth. And claims of policy show what ought to be or ought not to be. I also learned that in an argument you need to be able to distinguish a claim from fact and/ or opinion. A claim is a conclusion in which was drawn from logical thought and reliable evidence. A fact is a statement that can be checked for accuracy and an opinion is a personal attitude toward something. I think for myself, the rule in building a persuasive argument that stuck out for me was to have a rebuttal for the opposing side. I believe that really can make your argument whole or complete.