Evaluation Arguments

What is an evaluation argument? It's an argument that talks about superlatives: this is the best of something, and here's why; this was the worst of something, and here's why. This kind of argument sets forth a system of ranking something, and usually does so in the service of affirming that a particular item of note falls at an extreme end in the ranking system. Here are some examples of evaluative claims:

"Citizen Kane" is the best movie of all time.

Hurricane Katrina was the most destructive Atlantic hurricane to hit the United States.

The new Bugatti is the most luxurious sedan ever built.

James Buchanan was the worst president the United States ever had.


Evaluative arguments usually have fairly simple central claims. What makes evaluative arguments interesting is often not the claims so much as the support that comes with them. In evaluative arguments, the supporting information behind the claims--the grounds and warrants--are called criteria. It's the criteria used in setting up an evaluative argument that give the argument its substance.

claim: Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane" is the greatest movie of all time.

grounds: When movie critics, directors, actors, and film scholars are asked to rank the best films of all time, no movie appears at the top of the list as often as the film that launched Orson Welles's career, and that also almost destroyed him. Released in 1941 when Welles was only twenty-three years old, it has influenced virtually every filmmaker who has made a movie since. No major director since Welles, in fact, has failed to pay tribute to the many features of Welles's masterpiece that have affected them or challenged them.

warrant: Welles's invention of the jump cut, his extraordinary use of tracking shots, and the myriad innovations of his narrative technique were unprecedented when he used them in his first film. The jump cut allowed Welles to begin a scene at one point in time and then, by combining a visual cut with an overlay of sound that bridged the cut, indicate in a uniquely cinematic way that time had passed in the story. The tracking shot, which existed before "Kane," was used by Welles in a way that only the imagination of a genius could devise. Earlier directors had used simple tracking shots to follow briefly the simple movement of a character through space. Welles's tracking shots did something totally new, something totally movielike: they conveyed the movement from one character's perspective to that of another. Said another way, his tracking shots both figured and animated psychological space in a way that no one anywhere had ever witnessed before. Though many great films had been made before "Kane," it was not until Welles presented his story of a great man who becomes a monster that people were able to see that movies can tell stories in ways that no other medium can even approximate. "Citizen Kane" announced to the world that the movies are, at their best, a true art, and it did so in ways that have yet to be surpassed, even nearly seventy years after it was first shown.

Arguments of evaluation are usually epideictic (concerning the present) but can also be forensic (concerning the past). Evaluation arguments fall into two basic groups: qualitative and quantitative. The sample discussion above is an example of a qualitative evaluation. Qualitative evaluations give a ranking in terms of criteria that relate to values expressed in non-numerical terms. These values express distinctiveness in terms of ideas like best, most influential, worst, most important, least important, and so forth.

Supplemental to Discussion on Facts and Reason

Go here for a tool that allows you to calculate the proper sample size for a population, allowing for various error margins.

One thing to consider about arguments that present numbers--polls, statistics and the like--is that the numbers don't really tell you much if you don't have a clear idea how they were obtained. If you see the results of a poll but don't know how the poll sample size was decided and what the poll's margin of error is, you're not getting crucial information that can help you understand what the numbers really mean. A sample size that is too small produces poll results that are likely to be skewed--that is, they don't reflect the real population the poll presumed to question. A high margin of error (above 2%) can make poll results questionable. If a poll shows that 48% of people respond a certain way to a question, for example, but the margin or error is around 5%, then what appears to be a minority opinion may actually be one held by a majority.

Another thing to consider about arguments based on numbers is how they can be built to sound authoritative while distracting you from the real issue at hand. For example, the argument Lunsford quotes by Dick Armey about traffic light cameras certainly cites a series of pretty specific, authoritative-sounding numbers--how much money is earned by the cameras, how many people were cited for tickets before and after a crucial change was made to the way the cameras were set up, and so forth. Note, however, in all his authoritative number-citing, Armey left out one pretty important set of numbers: how many accidents were there at the problem intersections before the cameras were installed, and how many were there once the cameras got set up and running? Did you notice that Armey left out that set of numbers? I would think most of us would tend to allow Armey to frame his discussion as he did, simply because he sounded fairly straightforward in his choice of evidence. If we take a more critical look, though, and ask what numbers are missing from his argument, I think we might at least ask whether his numbers paint a fair picture of the problem he's presenting.

In my view, good arguments are first about working to get at the truth as fairly as you can. In a world that is utterly awash in numbers, I think we have to ask of the arguments that use numbers just how fairly are the numbers being presented. Good, solid data are indispensible parts of a responsibly drawn argument. Numbers that distract, distort or misrepresent do nothing but kill a speaker's credibility. Look thoughtfully at the numbers you are shown, but remember to question them, as well.

An Argument of Values

Go here to find a copy of an argument I put together illustrating a technique for arguing about values. Look inside folder named "English 1101" for a Word document entitled "Reflections on America.doc." You can download the document using the link I've set up.

Definition Paper

A few people have asked me to tell them again what I want you to do in your definition paper. The definition paper is described in your syllabus, and I have talked about the definition paper in class several times. Here, again, is what I am asking you to do:

Using at least three readings from your text that deal with an issue of definition, tell me how they define the issue they choose and then respond to the definitions you find using what we have talked about in class. Write at least two double-spaced typed pages on what you find.

The paper is due to be turned in on September 27 by the end of class. You will have class time to work on it both Wednesday, September 20 and Wednesday, September 27. You must turn the paper in at the end of class on September 27 to get full credit for doing it.

The chapters in your book that have the most definition-based articles are 28 (almost all readings in the chapter), 27 and 26.

If you WANT to look outside your text to find ANOTHER article (in addition to the three you choose from your book), you are welcome to do so. If you choose an article from an outside source, you will need to document that article--that is, you will need to give a bibliographic reference telling me how to find it.

I hope this expanded description helps you.

Cohesion Example

The means by which Asian companies have sought to compete with American products in market segments in the Western Pacific region will constitute the objective of the first phase of our study. The labor costs of our Asian competitors and their ability to introduce new products quickly are the main issues to be examined in detail. A plan that will demonstrate how American industry can restructure its operations so that it can better exploit unexpected market opportunities, pariticularly in the Pacific Rim, will be developed from this study.

In the first phase or our study, we will examine market segments in the Western Pacific Region to determine how Asian companies have competed with American products. The study will examine in detail labor costs and the ability of Asian competitors to introduce new products quickly. We will develop from this study a plan that will demonstrate how American industry can restructure its operations so that it can better exploit unexpected market opportunities, particularly in the Pacific Rim.

What's the difference between these two examples? One big difference is that most readers find the first example harder to understand than the second. The reason this is so is that the sentences in the first selection don't connect to each other as well as the sentences in the second version. The sentences in the first version seem to hang there with no really apparent connection holding them together. The second version, by contrast, is structured so that it's easy to see how one sentence connects to the sentence that follows. This easy connection between sentences is what constitutes cohesion.

To make sentences cohesive, start a passage with a sentence that has a clear, readily understood subject, and put the new, complex, harder-to-understand information towards the end of the sentence. In the second sentence, choose a subject that recalls something you said in the previous sentence, so that your sentences appear to link to each other like links in a chain. Repeat this pattern throughout a passage, varying it a bit where you need to make a transition of some kind. By creating this kind of link between sentences, you create a rhythm that will make your readers see your writing as clear.

Williams says that what we see at the beginning of a sentence is the sentence's topic, and what we see at the end of the sentence is emphasis. Effective sentences, then, tend to be structured like this:

Topic+ verb+ emphasis.
Simple -- complex.
Old -- new.
Easy -- difficult.

We see writing as clear when, as we read through a passage, we see closely related topics appear in a series of sentences. If the topics in a passage don't relate closely to each other, we see the passage as incoherent.

from Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 4th ed., Lesson 6, Cohesion.

Using Emotions Well in Arguments

Aristotle wrote the first book on Rhetoric. As in so many things, he did so well with the subject that his Rhetoric has remained a standard work on the subject for about 2,500 years. People disagree with Aristotle, perhaps, but they never stray far from the basic ideas he sets forth in his work on the subject. What remains of Aristotle's work is, in fact, a series of lecture notes, not the entire original "textbook" he wrote, but even his notes are so detailed, so clearly articulated, that they offer us a good deal of useful information.

In Book Two of the Rhetoric Aristotle talks at great length about how emotions enter into the art of persuasive speech. In his discussion, Aristotle focuses on how anger is used to make an argument effective. Aristotle has no problem thinking that we argue sometimes in response to some wrong that has been done to us, and he gives a great many examples of the conditions that give rise to our anger as well as how we use persuasive speech to arouse others to anger in service to a good cause. Aristotle is, after all, always clear about one thing: that persuasive speech is only to be used to produce good, never to produce evil. To Aristotle, rhetoric is a moral art, not merely a political one.

For all kinds of reasons, the subject of emotions and their role in public (sometimes even in private) debates can make us uneasy. On the one hand, many if not most of us are easily moved to feel something if we are invited by a speaker to engage our emotions. Sometimes a speaker or a writer asks us merely to feel something; at other times, we are asked, if not urged, to feel something so completely that the feeling involved moves us not simply to sense, but to act. If we are moved to act for the greater good, then the use of emotions by our imagined speaker will have been done in an ethical way--that is, to produce a good end. If, on the other hand, we are being manipulated by such emotions, we call the speaker who has aroused us a demagogue. A demagogue is someone who stirs people up into an angry mob. Unfortunately, it would seem that public life has grown full of such people. Perhaps this is one reason why we often grwo uneasy when emotions enter into a public discussion.

One writer I know of who responds well to emotions in rhetoric is Jay Bookman. Writing for the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Bookman has offered a piece that deals with emotions in an interesting way. To read Bookman's piece, go here. Note how Bookman uses the idea of fear in his piece while inviting his audience not to be afraid.

Understanding Toulmin's Argument Model

In Everything's an Argument Andrea Lunsford mentions the Toulmin argument model, but she doesn't explain it very well. I found a resource on the web that gives a much clearer definition of Toulmin's argument model. To read that definition of the Toulmin model, follow the "Toulmin's Argument Model" on the right side of the blog's main page.