1. Developing Arguments for the Persuasive Speech
Chapter Twenty-Five
Developing Arguments for the Persuasive Speech

2. Chapter Twenty Five Table of Contents What is an Argument?
Variations in Argument: Types of Claims, Evidence, and Warrants
Fallacies in Reasoning

3. What is an Argument?
Argument: a stated position with support for or against an idea or issue.

4. What is an Argument? Stating a Claim Providing Evidence
Giving Warrants

5. What is an Argument? Stating a Claim
Claim: declares a state of affairs, often stated as a thesis statement.
Answers the question, “What are you trying to prove?”

6. What is an Argument? Providing Evidence
Evidence: material that provides grounds for belief in a claim.
For example, statistics, testimony, facts, examples, and narratives.

7. What is an Argument? Providing Evidence
The goal of evidence is to make a claim more acceptable or believable to the audience.

8. What is an Argument? Giving Warrants
Warrant: a statement that provides the logical connection between evidence and a claim.

9. What is an Argument? Giving Warrants
Write down the claim.
List each possible piece of evidence you have in support of the claim.
Write down the corresponding warrants that link the evidence to the claim.

10. Variations in Argument: Types of Claims, Evidence, and Warrants
Types of Evidence
Types of Warrants
Addressing the Other Side

11. Variations in Argument: Types of Claims
Claims of fact: focus on whether something is or is not true, or will or will not happen
Claims of value: address issues of judgment
Claims of policy: recommend a specific course of action to be approved of or taken

12. Variations in Argument: Types of Evidence
Audience Knowledge and Opinions
Speaker Knowledge and Opinions
External Evidence

13. Variations in Argument: Types of Warrants
Motivational warrants: focus on the needs, desires, emotions, and values of audience.
Authoritative warrants: rely on the audience’s beliefs about the credibility or acceptability of a source of evidence.

14. Variations in Argument: Types of Warrants
Substantive warrants operate on the basis of an audience’s beliefs about the reliability of factual evidence.

15. Variations in Argument: Types of Warrants
Warrants by cause: offer a cause-and-effect relationship as proof for a claim
Warrants by analogy: compare two similar cases and infer that what is true in one is true in the other

16. Variations in Argument: Types of Warrants
Warrants by sign: infer that such a close relationship exists between two variables that the presence or action of one may be taken as the presence or action of the other.

17. Variations in Argument: Addressing the Other Side
All attempts at persuasion are subject to counter persuasion.
Inoculation effect: by anticipating counterarguments and addressing or rebutting them, you can “inoculate” your listeners against the “virus” of these other viewpoints.

18. Fallacies in Reasoning: The Pitfalls of Arguing
Logical fallacy: a false or erroneous statement, or an invalid or deceptive line of reasoning.
Be aware of fallacies!

19. Fallacies in Reasoning: The Pitfalls of Arguing
Begging the Question
Bandwagoning
Either-Or Fallacy
Ad Hominem Argument
Red Herring

20. Fallacies in Reasoning: Begging the Question
Stating an argument in such a way that it cannot help but be true even though no evidence has been presented.

21. Fallacies in Reasoning: Bandwagoning
Phrasing arguments as if they were true because “general opinion” supports them.

22. Fallacies in Reasoning: Either-Or Fallacy
Poses an argument in terms of two alternatives only, even though there may be multiple ways of viewing the issue.

23. Fallacies in Reasoning: Ad Hominem Argument
Attacking an opponent instead of the opponent’s argument.

24. Fallacies in Reasoning: Red Herring
Arguments that rely on irrelevant information.