Herrick, Argumentation, 3 ed.: Preface

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instructional resources

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contents

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isbn:
9781891136177
304 pages paperback
IM:
9781891136191
2007

Argumentation
Understanding and Shaping Arguments

third edition

James A. Herrick
Hope College

Consulting editor:
Robert Iltis, Oregon State University

PREFACE

My principal goal in this new edition of Argumentation: Understanding and Shaping Arguments, as in previous editions, has been to provide an accessible, thorough, ethically grounded, and audience-centered guide to arguments as they occur in public and private settings. For my own courses, which I have taught for over twenty-five years, I wanted a textbook that would be informed by contemporary and classical theory, as well as a practical guide to understanding and evaluating the vast amount of persuasive writing and speaking we all encounter in our own lives. In conversations with many colleagues who also teach argumentation courses, I learned that they, too, wanted a textbook that would guide students in constructing arguments, while nurturing the values central to constructive democratic discourse.

I have tried to keep these concerns in mind in preparing this edition for the twenty-first century classroom. Drawing on my own teaching experiences with the book, comments from colleagues who have used earlier editions, and the actual contemporary practice of public discourse, I have attempted to maintain the essential nature of earlier editions and build on existing strengths, while also updating examples, expanding some explanations, and developing new sections as needed. I hope you will find the result to be an intellectually rigorous yet highly accessible aid to teaching an argumentation course, as well as courses such as critical thinking, advanced public speaking, or expository writing.

As in previous editions, I have sought always to keep the actual practice of everyday argumentation in view. The guidelines for making and evaluating arguments are descriptive, rather than rigid and prescriptive; they are presented conceptually, as issues that should be considered in terms of audience and context. I have been guided by the various ways in which we actually reason in public and private settings, rather than emphasizing the practice of formal debate. This approach acknowledges how we actually reason. It also encourages students to become "rational judges" of arguments rather than simply applying "rules."

As any classroom instructor knows, relevant and timely examples are crucial to successful teaching. In keeping with my focus on marketplace argument, I have made a diligent effort in this edition to provide examples that are contemporary, relevant to students' concerns, and derived from the actual practice of public discourse. Examples are drawn from business and professional contexts, sports, medicine, politics, current events, interpersonal relationships, and personal decision-making.

Finally, emphasizing the everyday practice of argumentation also means that the audience and ethics continue to play important roles in Argumentation: Understanding and Shaping Arguments. Everyday arguments always emerge in contexts that include audiences and advocates, both in possession of personal values and moral responsibilities. Thus, the book discusses advocacy ethics in some depth in an early chapter and maintains a focus on ethics throughout. Students are asked to consider the ethical obligations they incur any time they enter the public arena as advocates, including respect for both the audience and the settings in which arguments develop.

FEATURES OF THE BOOK

This new edition of Argumentation: Understanding and Shaping Arguments retains the central features that characterized earlier editions and that instructors have told me worked well in their classrooms. These include:

An emphasis on the importance of sound and open public discourse to rational decision-making in a healthy democracy.
A clear, accessible theory of audience-centered argument, rooted in classical and contemporary concepts, that is introduced early in the text and informs subsequent discussions.
An emphasis on preparing students to be skilled practitioners of written and spoken public discourse, as well as fully equipped critics of the arguments they encounter in their own lives.
An early chapter on ethical advocacy (Chapter 3), discussing various perspectives and providing a foundation for an focus on argument ethics throughout the book.
An emphasis on the qualities of reasonable arguments and reasonable people (introduced in Chapter 4).
Clear explanations, examples, and exercises that help students see how various types of arguments-from simple comparisons to complex formal syllogisms-develop and are evaluated in diverse public and private settings.

FEATURES OF THE NEW EDITION

This new edition adds several new features that are intended to enhance its content and clarity. These features arose from my own classroom experiences with the book and from suggestions from a number of colleagues. They include:

Expanded explanations in every chapter to guide student exploration of important concepts and skills.
Many new examples, drawn from a wide range of interests and endeavors important to students-politics, business, health, sports, the environment, education, interpersonal relationships, and international relations.
Expanded discussion of the Internet as a valuable source of information, evidence, and global perspectives on a wide range of issues; as well as detailed guidelines for using and evaluating Internet sources (Chapter 7).
Expanded treatment of audience adaptation, with guidelines for evaluating audience needs, expectations, and commitments.
Expanded discussion of the advocate's ethical responsibilities in public settings, introduced in Chapter 4, and consistent attention throughout to the importance of the audience's moral commitments in the argumentation process.
New chapter divisions with shorter chapters, allowing greater adaptability to various course structures and greater flexibility in assignments.

PEDAGOGICAL FEATURES

Several pedagogical features are designed to engage student interest, enhance understanding, and emphasize salient points.

Key terms at the beginning of each chapter, with an extensive glossary of terms that enhance students' ability to make, understand, and respond to arguments.
Extensive exercises at the end of each chapter, to encourage students to explore concepts and applications in a variety of contexts. The exercises have been expanded and updated in this new edition.
Epigrams to engage student interest at the beginning of each chapter.
Figures and pull quotes to highlight salient points and add visual interest.
Photos introducing each major section, to add visual interest and underscore the range of real-life contexts in which argument occurs.
An instructor's manual with additional exercises and other teaching resources, available to adopters.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

The new edition of Argumentation: Understanding and Shaping Arguments maintains substantially the same content and order of topics that characterized the previous edition. In response to suggestions from people who have used earlier editions, however, the chapters in this edition are shorter and more sharply focused to make the book more flexible for classroom purposes. This third edition consists of twenty chapters, organized in seven parts that reflect the central concerns of the book.

Part I, "Goals, Skills, and Functions of Argumentation," consists of three chapters that introduce the basic vocabulary and theory of argument, as well as several analytic tools that help students grasp how particular arguments have been crafted.

Chapter 1, "An Introduction to Argumentation," explores the roles of values and agreements in argumentation, as well as ways in which argumentation assists deliberation and decision-making in a democratic society.

Chapter 2, "The Elements of Arguments," sets out a foundational theory of argument and shows how interpretations of evidence vary according to the values that people bring to the argumentative situation. Chapter 3, "Tools for Analyzing Arguments," presents students with a highly practical set of analytic tools for grasping the structure and content of any argument.

Part II, "The Conditions of Constructive Argumentation," includes two chapters that examine the qualities of arguments and the characteristics of advocates that benefit argumentation.

Chapter 4, "Ethical Advocacy," introduces the ethical obligations of public advocates, with a focus on the advocate's personal qualities and moral commitments. The ethical framework developed in this chapter provides a backdrop for subsequent discussions of public advocacy in the text.

Chapter 5, "Reasonable Arguments, Reasonable People," sets out a three-part approach to argument analysis, which involves considering an argument's evidence, structure, and use of language. This chapter also examines characteristics of reasonable people, such as a willingness to present one's reasons to others.

Part III, "Support: The Content of Arguments," addresses crucial issues of evidence in detail, including those that arise with the vast amount of research that is now done online.

Chapter 6, "Evaluating Evidence," provides guidelines for assessing the quality of evidence.

Chapter 7, "Locating and Evaluating Sources of Evidence," explores methods of evaluating sources of evidence, from books and magazines to interviews and the Internet. (The discussion of locating, using, and evaluating Internet sources has been expanded and updated in this new edition.)

Chapter 8, "Using Statistics as Evidence," describes the issues and mechanics of generalizing from a sample. It also discusses how statistical evidence may be used well-or employed carelessly to mislead an audience.

Chapter 9, "Using Testimony as Evidence," sets out basic types and tests of testimony, to assist students in evaluating and employing testimonial evidence.

Part IV, "Validity: The Structure of Arguments," considers important issues of argument structure in a variety of kinds of arguments.

Chapter 10, "Validity in Conditional and Enumeration Arguments," examines the structure of arguments that develop around necessary and sufficient conditions, as well as arguments that follow an enumeration or partition pattern.

Chapter 11, "Validity in Categorical Arguments," examines the structure of arguments that manage categories or definitions.

Part V, "Linguistic Consistency: Language in Argument," is made up of two chapters that explore issues ranging from definition and ambiguity to common problems such as redundancy and mixed metaphor.

Chapter 12, "Definition in Argument," takes up the fascinating role played by different types of definition in argumentative settings. Sources of definitions as well as their various uses are considered.

Chapter 13, "Ambiguity, Equivocation, and Other Language Considerations," helps students avoid common mistakes that cloud the clarity of their thinking, writing, and speaking.

Part VI, "Types and Tests of Arguments," covers major types of arguments encountered in public and private settings, and presents methods for evaluating these arguments in detail.

Chapter 14, "Analogies and Examples," examines reasoning from one or a limited set of cases, as well as reasoning by comparison of cases.

Chapter 15, "Reasoning about Causes," presents an accessible guide to the difficult issue of proving cause, whether of individual occurrences or classes of events.

Chapter 16, "Moral and Practical Arguments," covers four arguments that are often found in advertising and political discourse, and that engage our moral commitments or pragmatic concerns.

Chapter 17, "Essential Nature Arguments," addresses a set of arguments often overlooked in texts of this type-arguments built around claims about the essence and interpretation of institutions, individuals, and documents.

Chapter 18, "Fallacies and Appeals," is devoted to erroneous reasoning. This chapter also includes a careful discussion of the difficult issue of appeals to the emotions and to authority.

Part VII, "Developing and Adapting Your Case," provides the student with guidelines for developing a case and presenting it to an audience.

Chapter 19, "Policy Case Construction," discusses the elements of an effective case in support of a proposal and covers the basic vocabulary of policy debate.

Chapter 20, "Adapting Arguments to an Audience," provides students with a highly practical guide to audience adaptation. Questions about demographic concerns are highlighted. The audience's moral commitments and their relationships to both the topic and the advocate are also addressed.

The glossary at the end of the book lists terms and definitions that have been highlighted throughout the book.

I hope these new chapter divisions will provide greater focus on major concepts and make it easier to adapt the book to your own course and teaching needs.

In this new edition of Argumentation: Understanding and Shaping Arguments, my principal goal remains to offer a comprehensive approach to creating and evaluating arguments that is both substantive and highly practical, and that helps students become better, more self-assured producers and consumers of public and private discourse. Like many people who teach argumentation today, I hope that helping a new generation of students to understand and practice argumentation will enhance the crucial reasoning processes that keep democracy vibrant, lead to better reasoning in our public interactions, and help us all arrive at mutually beneficial decisions with less discord and division. I offer this new edition of Argumentation in the belief that we all stand to gain when the citizens of our democracy are well equipped to read, think, write, listen, and speak with skill and confidence. Toward this goal, I hope that the changes characterizing the third edition of Argumentation: Understanding and Shaping Arguments will render the text appealing and relevant to both instructors and students.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many individuals have had a hand in forming this new edition of Argumentation: Understanding and Shaping Arguments. As the present book would not have been possible without their assistance, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge their help and to thank them.

Teaching at least one section of argumentation every semester provides me with continuous opportunity to test material and solicit the reactions of students to the text. I would like to thank the many students in my Analytic Skills course here at Hope College whose suggestions and comments have improved both topic presentation and the quality of exercises in each chapter.

A number of colleagues at colleges and universities across the country have also provided helpful feedback that contributed in important ways to enhancing every aspect of the third edition of Argumentation. My thanks to the adopters who responded to a survey concerning their experiences with earlier editions of the text. These include Beth Brunk-Chavez, University of Texas at El Paso; Martha S. Cheng, Rollins College; Larry Eby, Goldey-Beacom College; Robert Greenstreet, East Central University; Erica Hollander, Metropolitan State College of Denver; Margaret M. Michels, Pennsylvania State University; David Moss, Crafton Hills and Mt. San Jacinto Colleges; and David Zarefsky, Northwestern University.

I am also deeply indebted to the reviewers whose insightful comments on early drafts of the manuscript strengthened and clarified the treatment of topics throughout the book. In this regard, special thanks are due to Diane M. Blair, California State University, Fresno; Beth L. Brunk-Chavez, University of Texas at El Paso; George N. Dionisopoulos, San Diego State University; James M. Farrell, University of New Hampshire; Robert Greenstreet, East Central University; Karen King Lee, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Thomas M. Lessl, University of Georgia; Beth Innocenti Manolescu, University of Kansas; Margaret M. Michels, Pennsylvania State University; Frank O'Mara, State University of New York, College at Oneonta; Dennis L. Wignall, Dixie State College; and David Zarefsky, Northwestern University.

Several other individuals have provided crucial support, assistance, and advice in the development of this third edition. I would like to thank consulting editor Robert Iltis of Oregon State University for supplying a number of the examples and other important content elements for the present edition, as well as for his encouragement regarding the text's unique value as a teaching tool. Thanks also to Hope College Communication Departmental office manager Linda Koetje for her careful attention to various aspects of manuscript preparation and correspondence with the publisher. I also want to thank Kathleen Domenig of Strata Publishing for the extraordinary care and high level of professionalism she brought to every detail of production, and for a number of important recommendations regarding the text's structure, tone, and appearance. Finally, my deepest gratitude to my wife and daughters who, with typical good nature and patience, allowed me the time to complete what must have seemed at times an all-consuming task.