NOTES ON ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS
The
following notes have been borrowed from my close friend, Dr. John Wegner. Although
slightly altered, they provide both a solid description of the features of the
academic argument and help in improving your own argumentative essays. I offer this information because I believe
that the argumentative essay represents the
crucial genre of writing you will do in college. It is logic and persuasion distilled. Thank you, Dr. John.
…there
comes a time when you just gotta dance.
But
nobody said you can’t pick good music.
---Doctor
Johnny Fever
The purpose of these notes is to give you some sense of the nature of the argumentative essay. You will notice that despite the negative connotations argument has accrued over the years, it is actually productive. Be aware, too, that argument and persuasion are (for me, at least) synonymous. All rhetoric is persuasive. It seems to me that any time you talk or write you are trying to conform people to your view (in fact, there’s a well-known book in which Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz argue that “everything’s an argument”). When you argue, you merely have to defend your position effectively based on the evidence you have gathered. To break the essay down to its bare bones: I want you to assert, offer proof, and defend.
DEFINING
AN ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY
An argumentative essay states and defends a thesis sentence. A thesis is a claim that can be defended and must be defended if it is to be accepted. The thesis should be a substantiated observation that can teach others something about a subject. The thesis is crucial. It should be one sentence, and it should be debatable.
Examples:
1. The Odyssey is about Odysseus’ journey home.
Evaluation: Not a good thesis. It does not need defended; any one reading the story will notice, so this is not teaching, nor is it debatable.
2. Lysistrata shows that women in the ancient world were always treated equally by men.
Evaluation: Not a good thesis. Although this is a debatable response, it cannot be supported by the text (or history). Beware of unqualified statements (e.g., "always," everything, "a is b").
3. The Odyssey is a story about Telemachus’ coming of age and Odysseus’ acceptance of his son as an equal.
Evaluation: May be a good thesis. There are other ways to read the story and the claim requires analysis and explanation of the work. One might learn something from this claim-- if, that is, the author defends the validity of his or her reading.
Don't despair if you think of more 1's and 2's than 3's-- that is okay for starters. You can begin simple and safe, but challenge yourself to get more complex. What does Odysseus’ journey signify or symbolize? Why is that important?
As you brainstorm for ideas, pose questions to yourself. Decide on a topic, The Odyssey, then start asking questions. Use the journalistic questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. As your idea develops, check it against the text.
Remember: great essays often don’t start with great ideas but often do result from the smart handling of simple ones.
Good writing demands careful reading and re-reading. To read the work once is to sample it, not to understand it--it’s a first meeting rather than a meaningful conversation.
As you read and re-read, I recommend that you keep a notebook handy. Make notes about what you find interesting, comments about what the author seems to be saying or doing, comparisons between this work and others by the same author (or another author). These notes may later provide ideas for a thesis.
For example, notes on Machiavelli might develop like this: “Men are evil” (a category 1, right?); “It is better to be feared than loved” (a clarification of narrative facts); “Mach’s advice is old.” “We don’t need leaders wearing guns.” “Is leadership the end all be all? Does Mach ask too big a price?” “What about order?” Does our desire for ultimate freedom keep us from electing rulers who are effective?” “Armed leaders are not virtuous.” And so on.
PREWRITING
Prewriting is relatively undisciplined activity, but it is important. The idea is to begin to collect ideas and get some words on paper--maybe to sketch out tentative responses or to elaborate on some of your responses.
Staying with the Machiavelli example, now you begin to acknowledge the issues and problems you are seeing with Mach. Don’t worry about spelling, syntax, or anything that will keep you from writing. You might even set a timer for 10 minutes during which you write without stopping. If you can’t think of anything to write, write, “I can’t think of anything to write”; at this point boredom might force productive thoughts on you.
Another technique (brainstorming) is just jotting down phrases and ideas, perhaps drawing arrows among them to suggest connections you would like to explore and perhaps cross-referencing them to page or line numbers from the text. With both techniques, you will find your notes quite useful.
DRAFTING, OUTLINING, DRAFTING AGAIN
Prewriting and early drafting are “thesis-seeking” activities: you are writing to discover what you want to say. One way to move from a free write (or brainstorm) to a draft is to identify a part of your free write that seems interesting to you. Jot down this idea at that top of a page and write out a few more thoughts on the matter. At this point you may find an interesting idea starting to take shape.
Many promising (but only promising) essays stop at this point, but more careful writers will take this idea and use it as a working thesis--a tentative claim that needs to be tested against the text and then modified, perhaps toned down or complicated. You are probably within two or three drafts of your final version.
An outline might help at this point because it’s a way to test the working thesis. You will fine tune the thesis; the firmer the thesis gets, the more useful it is in helping you determine what stays in and what gets cut from the essay.
As you work on drafting and redrafting, remember that argument begins with an assertion followed by the defense of that assertion. In contrast, a narrative (a story) often moves from a position of uncertainty (something has happened, but we might not know who did it) to one of certainty (we learn the details and retroactively make sense of the previous data). Rhetoric or argumentative writing does not work this way. The rhetorician tells the reader precisely what he or she is going to argue, then goes ahead and does it. Telling a story and arguing a claim are different activities. As you draft, make sure you are structuring the essay rhetorically.
FINAL EDITING
Now get tough on yourself. Check your work carefully against the grading criteria. Is your thesis stated clearly and does everything in the essay clearly relate to the thesis? Make sure your own voice is the strongest one in the paper. Resist the temptation to make a claim then to replicate a string of quotations that relate to it. (If I want to hear Machiavelli first and foremost, I will go to Mach. What I want are your observations about Mach, all tied clearly to your thesis.)
Make sure that you are using clear topic sentences for your paragraphs, and that every sentence in a paragraph clearly supports its topic sentence. Also be sure that the sentences progress in a logical manner; each sentence should lead to the next.
Before the last draft, read your essay out loud to help you catch awkward or garbled sentences. Sometimes you words don’t say what you think they are saying. Read your essay backwards too. You can often catch spelling and spacing errors that your computer might miss. Finally, have a friend or colleague who will be a ruthless critic read your essay and tell you if it makes sense. And if it does not, where doesn’t it and why?
FORMAL DETAILS
In short papers, you do not have space for endnotes or footnotes. Document quotations parenthetically using page references. Use MLA format for your works cited page.
Avoid long quotations-- they noticeably detract from your voice in a short paper. Here are some examples of correctly used quotations:
1.
2. Sartre believes "omens in the world" gain only the meaning the observer gives them (354).
The quotation should also fit the sentence structure in which it appears. Quotations are no excuse for subject/verb agreement errors, illogical tense shifts, etc.
Put quotation marks around the titles of essays, short poems, and short stories, and underline the titles of longer poems, plays, and novels.
GRADING
When grading your papers, I will look for intelligent and imaginative arguments. See my own Grading Criteria. In general, I look at:
Thesis: Does your paper give a clear sense of why you are
writing? Does it make a claim on your reader’s attention? Does it answer the question “so what”?
Focus and Organization: Does you paper focus clearly on your thesis, excluding what is irrelevant? Do the different parts of your paper clearly relate to each other? Does the paper make organizational sense?
Fullness: Do you develop your arguments sufficiently enough that they can be followed? Do you stay with your subject long enough that you convince your reader that you know what you are talking about?
Specifics: Do you make your argument in terms that are as specific as possible? Do you give specific grounds for your claim? Do these grounds make sense?
Mechanics and Style: How well have you edited? Are there spelling errors? Awkward sentences? Punctuation problems? Is documentation handled correctly? Does it interfere with the flow of your paper? Does your style fit your purpose? Is the voice clear? Is your diction appropriate? Are your sentences varied? Is your paper readable?
These notes cannot describe every element of your essay, but they may help. Remember, there is no room for fluff or nonsense, nor for an overly broad thesis. With careful writing and editing, you can defend a precise thesis with focus and fullness and with strong specific support. It just takes time.