The Written Argument

I guess next week we are delving into the written argument. After reading the book and things online I had to write up what I felt the written argument was all about in a discussion board.

Here is what I wrote :

The purpose of a written argument is to clearly get your point across in a believable fashion. It is also to show the pros and cons of an item(s) and show the facts about the item(s) in question. You should also include the who , what, where, when and how of specifics to make readers understand your point of view and why you are going for one side or the other. Sometimes you may have both sides of an argument that you feel strongly about and just want to get feedback from other people as well.

An argument should accomplish the fact that this is your point of view and you are voicing your opinion. That this is how you feel -strongly about something and that you aren’t just saying something to get someone’s goat. You need to be subjective to the outside elements as well when you are writing an argument – giving your point of view, your goals or statitics that you have found but also being a little crass as well when writing it.

It should effect readers by getting them to think about a different side of things. They may have the con of everything and not seeing the pros of it. You may want to show them the pros of it. Such as stem cell research that has been argumented about since I can remember. Michael J. Fox went full throttle to try to get stem cell research pursued by the right people by arguing his side of views and what stem cell research really is and how he feels about it. It made people think about the other side along with giving them a little bit of background knowledge they may not have had to begin with. Things in this nature are quite “delicate” but if you feel strongly about something you need to present it to people in a manner that they can understand where you are coming from and why. What is the purpose of this argument and what you really want to accomplish.

The sort of strategies and factors effect the outcome of written arguments could be a good outcome people actually listen and see your point of view on things. They can also argue back with you giving you more ideas to your point of view. You need to focus on what you feel really passionate about to make a good argument. If you accomplish that people will often change their minds, be focused on another side instead of the side they are on. You might also have a bad side where they just say “forget you” basically and keep going on with their own strategies and guidelines of their own argument about how they feel about things. Sometimes you can change someone’s mind and sometimes you can’t. It is all in the delivery of it that makes a different.

Arguments do not have to be a winner or a loser. Sometimes you lose a great deal on your argument. If it is something you are truly passionate about then you can keep arguing , keep finding more facts , keep going at it . Sometimes you might win. Again , It all depends on the audience , the delivery , and how passionate you truly feel about the argument .

If I was going to teach someone how to argue I would probably start by finding out what they are truly passionate about, what they may want to change about a certain thing (i.e stem cell research). You need to find your passion , your voice to make an argument presentable . It is you who is doing the arguing so you need to make your voice heard and known.

Some of the principles I would have to teach them is even though you are on the pro or con side of the item you need to see the other side. You also need to look into the statitics and facts there are based on this item. You can’t go full throttle on anything without knowing the background of something. This sometimes will cause problems if you don’t know the other side of things . How are you going to present an argument that you don’t fully know about yourself?

The skills to be successful would be compassionate to the other point of view, subjective to the things surrounding the item in question, passionate about what they are arguing about, keeping focused on your pro or con and what you truly want to get out of this argument, you have to know people – your audience- etc in order to understand how others will feel about this.

The arguer has a huge responsibility not to be to uncompassionate to the other point of view because if they , again, as I stated don’t know the full true body of it all they will either make enemies or friends – succeed or fail. It is all up to that person to be as subjective as possible not trying to offend anyone but at the same time keeping your voice heard.