The Making of Arguments

by J. H. Gardiner

Since the argument written out is the final test of the thinking, some care must be taken that students do not obscure by careless paragraphing and slovenly sentences such clearness of thought as they have attained in their brief. I have found it useful to prescribe marginal titles to the paragraphs: a student who has struggled to find a single phrase that will cover all of a sprawling paragraph will have learned some respect for firmness of paragraphing. In general, an instructor has a right to insist that his class shall apply in practice all that they have learned about the ordinary devices for getting clearness and emphasis.

In the third place, this practice in writing arguments ought to leave with students a more developed idea of how to make readers look favorably on a proposition which they are urging. I have insisted, at the risk of seeming repetitious, on the need of considering the audience whose minds are to be won over; for what persuasiveness can mean apart from specific persons to persuade I cannot conceive. Much of the perfunctory emptiness of the textbooks when they get to this part of the subject comes from neglecting this very practical and obvious side of making an argument. The difficulty it raises for arguments written in class work is just as obvious; more than most kinds of composition written for practice, arguments run the risk of having no touch with reality. Something may be done, however, if an instructor guides his class toward the kind of questions I have suggested above: an argument on the rules of football would be addressed to the Rules Committee, and most youths would know something of the prepossessions of so famous a man as Mr. Camp; an argument on a college question would be addressed to the faculty or the president, and it may be assumed that students have some idea of their general attitude on such matters. I have followed the practice in my own sections of freshmen of requiring them to put at the head of their brief and of their argument the audience which they had in mind. Then when one comes to criticism and conference one can by a little cross-examination bring home to them the very practical nature of this matter of persuasion.

One must be careful not to insist too strictly on the model and the scheme of work laid down here, and in practically the same form in other books. It is the best that has yet been devised, but any student who is set to making a brief of one of the examples of argument at the end of this book will see for himself that there is no one infallible way of making an argument. Each argument must adapt itself to its occasion and its audience; and an instructor will be wise to keep himself awake to this truth by noting divergencies from the model. The rules which are here set forth and the model which is built on them are serviceable just so long as they are serviceable, and no longer. Their chief service is done when they have set up in the minds of students a standard of effectiveness in singling out and emphasizing the critical issues of a question.

As to the exercises which should accompany the work in argument my experience with classes of five to six hundred freshmen leads me to think that their value to the student can hardly be overestimated. I will speak here of a few of them.

The exercises in the use of reference books is something that every student ought to be put through. I found it simple and not too extravagant of time to take my sections to the library in squads of ten or a dozen, and show them and let them handle the principal books on the list. Then on the spot I gave each of them a sheet of theme paper on which I had written some sort of fact drawn from one of these books, and told them to look up that fact and report on it. My object was to convince them that most ordinary facts can be looked up in less than five minutes. The material for this exercise I got by turning over the reference books and jotting down almost anything that caught my eye. One can in this way get a great variety of facts in a very short time. In some libraries it might be possible to get members of the library staff to share in this instruction; in all libraries one will find active cooperation.

For the preliminary work on the argument we found that it was often practicable and advisable to let the students pair off on the two sides of the question, and work together through all the preliminaries. Two men thus working together often discuss themselves into the liveliest kind of interest in their question; and almost always they come closer to the important issues involved by sharpening their wits against each other. Their arguments, too, are better, especially in the refutation, from their knowing just what points can be made on the other side.

It is excellent practice, not only for the brief and the argument, but also for all other college work, to set the students to making briefs of parts or wholes of the arguments printed here as examples, or of other arguments found outside. Not only lawyers, but other men of affairs, constantly have to digest and summarize papers; and skill in picking out essential facts and the thread of thought from a document is a highly valuable asset for practical life. The exercise is sometimes irksome to students, for it is hard work at first and calls for concentration of mind: but it can be sweetened and made livelier by the competition of classroom discussion.

All through the work on the argument students may well be set to watching the daily papers and the magazines for examples of arguments, and of good and bad reasoning. Very often an instructor can get, at the cost of a cent or two apiece, a set of arguments printed in a newspaper for his class to analyze. Senators and representatives in Congress are notably willing to send copies of speeches, and these sometimes furnish good examples of both sound and unsound reasoning.

If time serves, instructors will do well to give a grounding in logic. I have inserted a brief discussion of the subject with the hope that it will furnish a basis for a short study; it can be reenforced by a few weeks on such a manual as Jevons's "Primer of Logic," or Bode's "Outline of Logic" if there is time. Whatever be one's view of the positive value of deductive logic, there can be no doubt that every student should have some knowledge of the canons of inductive logic, and that a study of propositions and syllogisms is a mighty sharpener of the discrimination for the real meaning of words and sentences.

The short chapter on debating I have added for the use of classes where a moderate amount of training in this most useful of exercises is practicable. Debating may be looked at in two ways, either as training in alertness and effectiveness in discussion, or as a form of intercollegiate or interscholastic sport. On the latter aspect a recognized authority has said: "Formal debate is a kind of game. In the time limit, the order of speakers, the alternation of sides, the give and take of rebuttal, the fixed rules of conduct, the ethics of the contest, the qualifications for success, and the final awarding of victory, debate has much in common with tennis";[⁷⁹] [!--Note--] and he develops the likeness through a page of rather fine print. From this point of view debating has keenly interested a small body of students; in some colleges it has been recognized by hatbands or other emblems of distinction for the successful "teams"; and it has developed an elaborate apparatus of rules and of "coaches." With the game in this full bloom I have not space to deal in this small book; for such elaborate work of analysis and preparation one must go to special manuals which deal with it at length. I have confined myself to an application of the general principles of the subject to the spoken argument, and to a few suggestions for preparing for and carrying on the not very formal discussions which the average man gets into in the ordinary run of life.