18 Basic Content and Structure of Argument

The Elements of Argument: A Brief Review

As you’ve learned in the “How and Why to Analyze Arguments” chapter, all arguments include several key features: a rhetorical situation, a main claim, sub-claims, support for those sub-claims (logical, emotional, and ethical appeals), warrants or assumptions, and counterarguments. Take a moment to review these features and think about how you will present them in your argument.

The Rhetorical Situation

Yes, you are writing whatever paper your professors has assigned because you have to pass the professor’s class to move on with your education. You would like nothing more than to be given a sure-fire method of earning an A on this paper. Alas, writing an academic essay is not a matter of following a rigid formula. Instead, you have to determine not only what you’re going to say–your thesis or main claim–but also the rhetorical situation for your paper. To determine the rhetorical situation, you need to determine what problem or issue you’re responding to (the exigence), who will benefit from reading your argument (the audience), and what you can reasonably argue given the length of the assignment and the amount of time you have to research and write about the topic (the constraints).

The rhetorical situation should inform every step of the research and writing process, from narrowing your topic idea to editing your work so that readers engage with your ideas. You will need to ask questions about the rhetorical situation before you begin planning your essay:

1. Have you narrowed your focus sufficiently so that you can provide an in-depth discussion of your topic, given the limitations of the assignment? Whatever the rhetorical situation, your professor wants to see you can offer more than just a superficial analysis of the topic. To ensure your argument succeeds, you need to choose a good topic. Don’t pick something you think is “easy to write about.” A good argument should not be easy to write.
2. Who is the intended audience for this argument? All of the papers you write in an academic setting should be aimed at educated readers, but you need to determine which educated readers would be interested in your topic. Are you writing to people who already know a lot about your topic, or is your argument going to educate them about something they don’t understand? Are your readers predisposed to accept some of your assumptions, or will they have a very different way of looking at the topic? How closely aligned our your values and your readers’ values?
3. What is your purpose for writing to this particular audience? Are you hoping your readers will do something after reading your argument, or do you simply want them to have a more complex understanding of the topic?

The Main Claim: What Do You Want the Reader to Believe?

In an argument paper, the thesis is often called the main claim, and it typically appears in the first paragraph of the essay, at the end of the introduction. The thesis or main claim clearly and specifically states the perspective or way of thinking you want your readers to adopt or at the very least, to appreciate. Begin with a tentative thesis or a provisional claim–one that is going to change as you write. The tentative thesis will almost never be the thesis you present in your final version of the essay because writing a defense of the thesis will most likely result in changing the thesis. As you review your research notes, you will likely discover that you have more information than you can use in the paper. That’s a good thing! Look over the notes and determine how to narrow your thesis so that you’re not promising to prove more than is possible given the length of your essay. Maybe one of your sub-claims would work better as the thesis. Or maybe your concluding paragraph presents a better thesis. Revise the thesis; then, revise the content to match the thesis.

Sub-Claims: What Do You Need to Defend?

In addition to the main claim, you will present sub-claims throughout the essay. The sub-claims are the reasons you’re offering in support of your main claim, and they, in turn, need to be supported. A sub-claim is anything the reader will not readily accept.  Even when you are quite sure that a statement in your essay is true and valid, you need to consider that statement from a reader’s perspective: will the reader accept the claim, or should you help them see why the claim is valid?

All of the claims in an essay should grow out of the evidence you’ve studied and/or generated: evidence from secondary sources, evidence you’ve gathered through primary or field research, evidence you’ve observed, evidence from your own experiences.

Support: What Makes Your Claims Valid?

To validate the thinking that you put forward in your claim and sub-claims, you need to present logical appeals or evidence: research studies or scholarship, expert opinions, examples, observations made by yourself or others, or specific instances that make your reasoning seem sound and believable. Don’t begin writing an argument and hoping you can think up some evidence as you draft. Instead, list your reasons or sub-claims and evidence for each of those sub-claims. Even if you don’t like to write formal outlines, starting with a general idea of how you will support your main claim or thesis will make it more likely that you have a strong argument.

In addition to evidence, support includes ethical and emotional appeals. Ethical appeals are your attempts to show readers that you’re reasonable and fair and that you’ve researched your topic thoroughly, so it’s important that you actually research your topic thoroughly (you can’t show what you don’t have!). You create ethical appeals by avoiding fallacies, adopting a reasonable tone, and citing your sources so that readers know you have done good research.

Emotional appeals are the reasons your audience will find your evidence compelling. Readers are rarely moved by facts alone; if the facts don’t relate to the readers’ values, if they don’t reflect the readers’ beliefs and concerns, the audience is likely to be unconvinced. You may reference data from the Center for Disease Control, which states that 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S in 2021, but those numbers may not touch upon a readers’ values as much as a specific example of a school shooting where several students and teachers died. Readers need to share the values or beliefs that would make them find the statistics troubling, and sometimes you will need to help them see how the statistics relate to their values and beliefs.

In addition, evidence works only if it directly supports your reasoning — and sometimes you must explain how the evidence supports your reasoning. You can’t always assume that a reader can see the connection between evidence and reason that you see or that the reader will understand what’s at stake when you present evidence. When that happens, you have a problem with a warrant.

Warrants: Why Should Readers Accept Your Support?

A warrant is an assumption that connects the claim or sub-claim and support; it makes the readers see why the support is meaningful. Think of warrants as the glue that holds an argument together and ensures that all pieces work together coherently and logically. Sometimes warrants are stated directly; often, they are implied.

An important way to ensure you are properly supplying warrants within your argument is to use topic sentences for each paragraph and to question the specific support for each topic sentence. What do readers need to believe or think if they are likely to accept your support? Why would they care about the evidence you’re providing? Or play devil’s advocate: Why might some readers think this support is invalid or problematic? What can you do to help those readers accept the support? In questioning your own support, you may find it necessary to address counterarguments.

Counterarguments: What About Other Perspectives?

A good argument includes perspectives that either challenge or completely oppose sub-claims the author makes throughout the argument. When you respectfully and thoroughly discuss perspectives or research that counters your support or that calls your own argument into question, you are showing yourself to be an ethical arguer.

It goes without saying that skeptical readers will question your main claim, but to develop a strong argument, you should think about which sub-claims they will question and why. In other words, you need to play devil’s advocate to your own argument. Consider the following questions:

• Could someone disagree with one of your sub-claims? If so, why? Explain this opposing perspective in your own argument, and then respond to it.
• Could someone draw a different conclusion from any of the facts or examples you present? If so, what is that different conclusion? Explain this different conclusion and then respond to it.
• Could a reader question any of your warrants? If so, which ones would they question? Explain and then respond.
• Could a reader offer a different explanation of an issue? If so, what might their explanation be? Describe this different explanation, and then respond to it.
• Is there any evidence out there that could weaken your position? If so, what is it? Cite and discuss this evidence and then respond to it.

Once you identify the counterarguments, you must respond to them so that a reader clearly sees that you are not abandoning or somehow undermining your own claim. Here are some ways to respond:

• Accommodate: concede to a specific point or idea from the counterargument by explaining why that point or idea has validity. However, you must then be sure to return to your own claim, and explain why even that concession does not lead you to completely accept or support the counterargument;
• Refute: reject the counterargument if you find it to be incorrect, fallacious, or otherwise invalid. Always explain why the counterargument perspective does not invalidate your own claim.
• Dismiss: correct a misconception about your argument, something the reader might think you mean when, in fact, you mean something else entirely. For example, you may have a different definition of a word than the one your reader assumes, or you may be offering a viewpoint that’s similar to but significantly different from another viewpoint.

You may have learned that you need to include a “counterargument” paragraph, a single paragraph that addresses and refutes the counterarguments readers might have. While this can be a good strategy, the best place to address a counterargument depends on when the counterargument might emerge in the minds of the readers as they are reading your work. If you offer evidence that a reader might question, for example, you can address that question right away; you don’t need to wait until the counterargument paragraph to present the readers’ legitimate concern. In fact, doing so would probably be confusing.Sometimes, presenting the most significant counterargument or arguments first makes sense, especially if you’re trying to show that a point on which there is a lot agreement is worth questioning. It might also work to present counterarguments at the end of the essay, after you’ve presented your best evidence but know that readers will still have questions.

Putting It All Together

Although all arguments should include these elements–claims, background, support, warrants, and counterarguments–you have to determine for yourself how best to present each of these elements. Doing so requires that you think about your audience. You need to present all the elements of the argument in a way that makes your reasoning easy to follow and convincing. Think about the convincing arguments you’ve read or heard. Did they all follow the exact same format? Probably not. Most likely, the authors presented their arguments in a way that they hoped the audience would find compelling.

That said, you should keep a few points in mind:

• you need a strong opening paragraph–something with a hook and several sentences that transition from the hook to the thesis
• before you begin presenting the support for your main claim, you need background information. Your audience is relying on you for vital information such as definitions, historical placement, and controversial positions. Consider what readers need to appreciate your argument and weave that information into your essay.
• your support should build up somehow, perhaps by starting with the least convincing reasons for accepting your claim and moving to the most convincing reasons.
• you should include emotional appeals in the argument by telling stories, using imagery, employing figurative language, and highlighting shared values
• you should cite all information from sources so that readers know where you found your evidence
• you should present counterarguments fairly and address them in a way that strengthens your argument
• you should conclude gracefully, in a way that leaves a lasting impression upon your readers

Once you have a rough outline of your argument, you need to draft and revise. Again, you need to make good choices about the content and organization of your essay. You should also expect to revise the essay several times before you submit your final draft for grading. As you draft, keep the following in mind:

• Most of the body paragraphs in your essay should assert a sub-claim (topic sentence) and evidence synthesized from different sources. You’ll also want to help your readers understand the issue by providing some context/background information, and you need to address counterarguments.
• Remember to qualify your conclusions when necessary. Qualifiers turn absolute statements into more reasonable statements. They include words like “typically,” “usually,” “most,” “in general.” You don’t want to sound wishy-washy, but you also don’t want to appear arrogant or unreasonable.
• If you’re using primary research/sources, provide information about how you conducted your research. You don’t need to cite primary research, but you should make it clear how you gathered your evidence.
• When using evidence from assigned sources, don’t assume your readers know anything about the sources you’re referencing. Imagine a general audience of educated readers, and introduce your sources appropriately.
• Help your readers see connections among different sources and connections with your own experience and/or field research. Body paragraphs, therefore, should synthesize evidence. Don’t simply summarize one source in a body paragraph.
• It’s especially important that you cite sources correctly. Failure to credit sources within the essay and/or on the Works Cited page constitutes plagiarism, which will have negative consequences.
• For all of the evidence you include—whether from sources, field research, or personal experience—provide commentary and analysis. Don’t expect your readers to understand how a quote, paraphrase, or summary of a source supports your point. You must explain your reasoning to the audience.

What About Using Personal Experiences?

If you’re including personal experiences in your essay along with your research, you should read this excellent article, “Weaving Personal Experience into Academic Writing,” by Marjorie Stewart:

https://writingspaces.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/stewart-weaving-personal-experience-into-academic-writing-1.pdf