1. Types of Claims: Establishing Purpose and Organization
Claims of Fact
Claims of Definition
Claims of Cause
Claims of Value
Claims of Policy

2. Claims of Fact
Claims of Definition
Claims of Cause
Claims of Value
Claims of Policy
Five Types of Claims
Virtually all arguments can be categorized according to one of five types of claims.
Claims can be identified by discovering the question the argument answers.
As we browse the types, notice how the questions all invite different purposes and different points of view.
They all lead to argument.

3. Claims of Fact: Did it happen? Does it exist? Is it true?
Is it a fact?

4. Fact Claim
When you insist a paper was turned in on time even if the professor cannot find it, or that you were not exceeding the speed limit when a police officer claims that you were, you are making claims of fact.

5. Fact Claims
These are central to court room debate since lawyers argue about what happened in order to prove innocence or guilt.
Historians also argue about what happened as they sort through historical evidence to try to establish historical fact.

6. Fact Claims: Women are as effective as men in combat.
The ozone layer is becoming depleted.
Increasing population threatens the environment.
Bigfoot exists in remote areas.
Men need women to civilize them.

7. Fact Claims
Note that all these claims are statements of fact, but not everyone would agree with them.
They are all controversial.
The facts in these claims need to be proved as either absolutely or probably true in order to be acceptable to an audience.

8. Claims of Definition: What is it? How should we define it?
What is it like?
How should it be classified?
How should we interpret it?
How does its usual meaning change in a particular context?

9. Definition Claims:
The entire argument can center around the definition of a term.
When you argue that an athlete who receives compensation for playing a sport is “professional,” and thereby looses “amateur” status, you are making a claim of definition.

10. Definition Claims:
We are considering definition claims that dominate the argument as a whole.
Definition is also used as a type of support, often at the beginning, to establish the meaning of one or more key words.

11. Definition Claims: Examples
Marriage as an institution needs to be redefined to include modern variations on the traditional family.
Some so-called art exhibits could more accurately be described as pornography exhibits.
The fetus is a human being, not just a group of cells.

12. Definition Claims: Examples
Wars in this century can all be defined as “just” rather than “unjust” wars.
Sexual harassment is defined in terms of behavior and not sexual desire.
Note that arguments introduced by these claims will focus on the definitions of family, art, fetus, just war, and sexual harassment.

13. Claims of Cause: What caused it? Where did it come from?
Why did it happen?
What are the effects?
What will probably be the results over the short and the long term?

14. Cause Claims:
When you claim that staying up late at a party caused you to fail your exam the next day or that your paper is late because the library closed too early, you are making claims of cause.
People often disagree about what causes something to happen, and they also disagree about the effects.

15. Clause Claims: Examples The cause-effect relationship is at issue in these statements
Overeating causes disease and early death
A healthy economy causes people to have faith in their political leaders
Sending infants to day care results in psychological problems later in life
Inadequate funding for AIDS research will result in a disastrous worldwide epidemic
Crime is caused by lack of family values

16. Cause Claims
An organizational strategy commonly used for cause papers is to describe causes and then effects.
Clear-cutting would be described as a cause that would lead to the ultimate destruction of the forests, which would be the effect.

17. Cause Claims: Effects may be described and then the cause or causes.
The effects of censorship may be described before the public efforts that resulted in that censorship.
You may also encounter refutation of other actual or possible causes or effects.

18. Cause Claims
The type of support for establishing a cause-and-effect relationship is factual data, including examples and statistics that are used to prove a cause or an effect.
Various types of comparison, including parallel cases in past history to show that the cause of one event could also be the cause of another similar even.

19. Cause Claims
Signs of certain causes and effects can also be used as well as hypothetical examples that project possible results.

20. Claims of Value: Is it good or bad? How bad? How good?
Of what worth is it?
Is it moral or immoral?
Who thinks so?
What do those people value?
What values or criteria should I use to determine its goodness or badness?

21. Value Claims
When you claim that sororities and fraternities are the best extracurricular organizations for college students to join, you are making a claim of value.
Claims of value, as their name implies, aim at establishing whether the item being discussed is either good or bad, valuable or not valuable, desirable or not desirable.

22. Value Claims
It is often necessary to establish criteria for goodness or badness in these arguments and then to apply them to the subject to show why something should be regarded as either good or bad.

23. Value Claims: Examples
Public school are better than private schools
Science Fiction novels are more interesting to read than romance novels
Dogs make the best pets
Mercy Killing is immoral
Computers are a valuable addition to modern society
Viewing television is a wasteful activity

24. Value Claims: Examples
Contributions of homemakers are as valuable as those of professional women
Animal rights are as important as human rights

25. Claims of Policy: What should we do about it? How should we act?
What should our future policy be?
How can we solve this problem?
What concrete course of action should we pursue to solve the problem?

26. Policy Claims
When you claim that all new students should attend orientation or that all students who graduate should participate in graduation ceremonies, you are making claims of policy.
A claim of policy often describes a problem and then suggests ways to solve it.

27. Policy Claims: Examples
We should stop spending so much on prisons and start spending more on education
Children in low-income families should receive medical insurance from the government
Social security should be distributed on the basis of need rather than as an entitlement

28. Policy Claims: Examples
Every person in the United States should have access to health care
Film-makers and recording groups should make objectionable language and subject matter known to prospective sonsumers

29. Mixed Claims
In argument one type of claim may predominate, but other types may also be present as supporting arguments or sub claims.
It is not always easy to establish the predominant claim in an argument, but close reading will usually reveal a predominant type, with one or more other the other types serving as subclaims.

30. Mixed Claims
For example, a value claim that the media does harm by prying into the private lives of public figures may establish the fact that this is a pervasive practice, may define what should be public and what should be private information, may examine the causes or more likely the effects of this type of reporting, and may suggest future policy for dealing with this problem.

31. Mixed Claim All may occur in the same article.
Still, the dominant claim is one of value, that this practice of news writers is bad.
By identifying the dominant claim, you also identify the main purpose of the argument.

32. Mixed Claim
When planning and writing argument, you will more easily focus on the main purpose for your argument when you have established the predominant claim and have identified its type.
You can use other types of claims as subclaims if you need to.

33. Mixed Claim
When you know your purpose, you can then plan appropriate organization and support for your paper, depending on the type of claim that dominates your paper.

34. What type of claim do you see?
On Women's Right to Vote by Susan B. Anthony ( ) Friends and fellow citizens, I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.

35. What type of claim do you see?
…During the twentieth century, we witnessed the atrocities of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Rwanda and other genocides, and even though the twenty-first century is only seven years old, we have already witnessed an ongoing genocide in Darfur and the daily horrors of Iraq. This has led to a common understanding of our situation, namely that modernity has brought us terrible violence, and perhaps that native peoples lived in a state of harmony that we have departed from, to our peril. Here is an example from an op-ed on Thanksgiving, in the Boston Globe a couple of years ago, where the writer wrote, "The Indian life was a difficult one, but there were no employment problems, community harmony was strong, substance abuse unknown, crime nearly non-existent, what warfare there was between tribes was largely ritualistic and seldom resulted in indiscriminate or wholesale slaughter." Now, you're all familiar with this treacle. We teach it to our children. We hear it on television and in storybooks. Now, the original title of this session was, "Everything You Know Is Wrong," and I'm going to present evidence that this particular part of our common understanding is wrong, that, in fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are, that violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, and that today we are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence… Steven Pinker: Ted Talks

36. What type of claim do you see?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: My fellow Americans, tonight I want to talk to you about Syria -- why it matters, and where we go from here. Over the past two years, what began as a series of peaceful protests against the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad has turned into a brutal civil war. Over 100,000 people have been killed. Millions have fled the country. In that time, America has worked with allies to provide humanitarian support, to help the moderate opposition, and to shape a political settlement. But I have resisted calls for military action, because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force, particularly after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The situation profoundly changed, though, on August 21st, when Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening: Men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas. Others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath. A father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk. On that terrible night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons, and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared them off-limits -- a crime against humanity, and a violation of the laws of war.