Claims, argument & support Booth and other sources 1

Beyond the question You should be close to a workable Yes/No debatable non- trivial research question: Does television violence harm children? Your claim (chapter 8) will answer that question, but often with qualifiers: Television violence can harm some children psychologically, although the effects are not long-lasting and can be avoided by parental intervention. It generally does not make children behave violently. You then frame your argument (in the academic sense): Argument = claim because of reason based on evidence, acknowledging and responding to counterarguments (p. 113) A warrant connects your reason to your claim: Exposure to violent TV images must be harmful (p. 116) 2

Evidence and support Some refer to evidence as one specific kind of support for your argument. You can support your claim with Data, facts, logical structure (logos) Ethical structure of your argument and use/presentation of your evidence (no deception, plagiarism) and credibility of your sources of evidence (ethos) Engaging the emotions of your audience (pathos) Good argument strategy is to use all three Save something for the conclusion (perhaps an emotional appeal); we remember in this order: end-start-middle Avoid fallacies (see Keith & Lundberg, chapter 4) 3

Common fallacies Too much pathos, emotionally loaded language Attack the person and say their ideas must be weak (ad hominen attack) Everyone’s doing, thinking it so it must be true (ad populum) Fallacious appeal to authority (misuse of ethos—Jones has a Ph.D. but in an unrelated area) Appeal to ignorance—there’s no evidence against it so it must be true Faulty cause-and-effect reasoning: maybe cause & effect can be reversed, maybe both are caused by a third factor; correlation is not causation Red herring, non sequitur—your conclusion doesn’t follow from your reason (no warrant) Slippery slope—A leads to B leads to C leads to D: are all links there? Begging the question—”It goes without saying.” Already assuming what you are trying to prove False analogy—is repairing a car just like cooking? 4