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IV

ARGUMENTATION

1. NATURE AND PURPOSE OF ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING

ARGUMENTATION may be defined, in general, as that kind of discourse wherein the aim is to influence belief or opinion. In argumentation the writer or speaker assumes that there is difference of opinion between himself and the person addressed with regard to the matter discussed, and his object is to remove the difference by bringing that person over to his way of thinking. Argumentation always presupposes that there are two sides to the question. Where no difference of opinion exists, there is no ground for argument.

It is this presupposition that there may be difference of opinion on the subject discussed that distinguishes, in the main, argumentation from exposition. In exposition, the presumption is that the reader is at one with the writer in desiring simply a clear understanding of the subject. When he understands fully and clearly what the writer is trying to make him understand, all has been done that needs to be done. Whether he believes it to be true or false is immaterial; it is sufficient if he simply understands it. In argumentation, however, it is different. Here it is the

reader's beliefs or opinions with regard to a subject, not his understanding of it merely, that the writer is concerned with chiefly. Explanation may, of course, play an important part in an argumentative discourse; but it is always a part subservient to the main purpose of the discourse, which is the influencing of the belief or opinions of the reader.

It is not always easy, to be sure, to distinguish between what is meant as explanation simply and what is intended to influence belief. The line between exposition and argumentation, as has been said, is not, and can not be, very sharply drawn. Many books and articles which are obviously expository in their main intention have yet an underlying argumentative purpose. The main purpose of Darwin's Origin of Species, for example, may be regarded as expository, but note the argumentative tone of the following passage:

The complex and little known laws governing the production of varieties are the same, as far as we can judge, with the laws which have governed the production of distinct species. In both cases physical conditions seem to have produced some direct and definite effect, but how much we cannot say. Thus, when varieties enter any new station, they occasionally assume some of the characters proper to the species of that station. With both varieties and species, use and disuse seem to have produced a considerable effect; for it is impossible to resist this conclusion when we look, for instance, at the logger-headed duck, which has wings incapable of flight, in nearly the same condition as in the domestic duck; or when we look at the burrowing tucutucu, which is occasionally blind, and then at certain moles,

which are habitually blind and have their eyes covered with skin; or when we look at the blind animals inhabiting the dark caves of America and Europe. With varieties and species, correlated variation seems to have played an important part, so that when one part has been modified other parts have been necessarily modified. With both varieties and species, reversion to long-lost characters occasionally occur. How inexplicable on the theory of creation is the occasional appearance of stripes on the shoulders and legs of the several species of the horse-genus and of their hybrids. How simply is this fact explained if we believe that these species are all descended from a striped progenitor, in the same manner as the several domestic breeds of the pigeons are descended from the blue and barred rock pigeon!

The purpose of the writer here is manifestly not merely to explain his theory, but to show how much more satisfactory it is as an explanation of the facts in the case than the commonly accepted theory of special creation. He not only wishes his reader to understand it, but to accept it as true.

2. CONVICTION AND PERSUASION

One of the first things the student should note with regard to argumentation is that it has two phases,one which concerns the reason or understanding mainly; and the other, the will. When the effort to win assent takes the form of an appeal to the understanding, it is called reasoning, or conviction if the appeal has been successful; when, however, it consists mainly of an appeal to the will-which is usually reached through the passions or feelings-it is com

monly called persuasion. There is a difference between being convinced and being persuaded. Conviction is content with simple intellectual assent; persuasion, on the contrary, seeks, wherever possible, to transform belief into action. A man convinced against his will is, according to the adage, of the same opinion still. To induce him to act in conformity with his opinion is the task of persuasion.

At bottom, as has been intimated already, argumentation is a matter for the understanding rather than the feelings. But the feelings play a very important part in it for all that. Man is not wholly a creature of reason, though in his arguing he sometimes makes the mistake of supposing that he is. Temperament, training, inherited tendencies, special interest, and so on, all go to give the mind a bent; and this bent is sometimes so decided that it is difficult for one to see things quite as others see them. Still, it is at the same time true that, though we may be much less under the sway of pure reason than we sometimes suppose, we always expect to have our understanding convinced before we change our opinions. Our reason must be satisfied before we yield assent. It is only where our interests or feelings are unconcerned, however, that we are likely to be induced to yield that assent by the methods used in pure reasoning. Hence it is in the field of pure science only, where personal interests, passions, or prejudices have no place, that we may expect to find pure reasoning. The demonstration of a proposition in geometry is an example of reasoning pure and simple without any admixture of persuasion. All that is required of us here is in

tellectual assent, and that we must yield if the reasoning is sound and we are in the possession of our senses. Argumentation of this kind, however, is seldom or never to be met with outside the realms of pure science. Whenever we deal with questions which bear upon the interests or activities of life, we put more or less of feeling into our discourse. There is, virtually, no such thing as pure reasoning in literature; persuasion enters, to some degree at least, into practically all argumentative discourses of the ordinary kind, the kind, that is, with which we are here concerned. On the other hand, pure persuasion is as rare as pure reasoning. Persuasion must have a substratum of reasoning before it can be widely effective. We may move for the moment by an appeal to the passions or prejudices of our hearers or readers, but the effect will not be very lasting if there is no solid logical basis to our argument.

Practically, then, all argumentative discourses which deal with questions of personal, political, or social interest are a mixture of reasoning and persuasion. They accomplish their end partly by conviction and partly by persuasion, aiming always at a happy combination of the two methods. The two methods, indeed, are each, as Professor Baker puts it," the complement of the other, and ideal argumentation would combine perfection of reasoning, complete convincingness, with perfection of persuasive power-excitement of just the right emotions to just the right extent to obtain the ends desired by the speaker or writer." 1

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