CHAPTER 3: MAKING SENSE IN ARGUMENTATION
Chapter 3 introduces some of the critical approaches people use to understand argumentative situations.
This is difficult material to teach, because it asks students to think critically about assumptions they have
taken for granted all their lives. The material in this chapter will be easier to teach if you have encouraged
students to discuss their world views when studying the previous chapter. It is essential that, by this point
in the class, students have had ample opportunity to experience lively and nonthreatening discussions of
controversial issues. We have found that by engaging students in discussion of the personal and social
ways people (including themselves) appraise arguments, we can use Chapter 2 to prepare students for the
material in Chapter 3.
One strategy we have found especially useful when discussing postmodern and feminist approaches is
constantly circling the discussion back to how a postmodern or feminist perspective influences
argumentation itself. This helps remind the students that our focus is argumentation, rather than
postmodernism, feminism, or any of the controversial topics we discuss.
Our students enjoy playing with the ideas of postmodernism, especially if we introduce it through specific
(and somewhat outrageous) examples, such as those offered in the chapter. Students can identify with
these examples, and their specificity provides a relatively firm grounding for subsequent discussion of
postmodernism as an approach that actually expands the political (in the broad sense) possibilities for
argumentation beyond its traditional role as an instrument of persuasion.
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. Using ONLY formal logic, what can you conclude from the following statements?
Statement 1: “All Argumentation classes are full.”
Statement 2: “John found a class that wasn’t full.”
2. Which of the following accurately traces the formal logic of the text?
3. In light of Robertson’s claim that “an attack against one is an attack against all,” what is the LOGICAL
inference of the statement that, “the alliance’s 19 ambassadors decided to invoke Article 5 of the NATO
charter for the first time in the alliance’s history”?
4. Which of the following terms identifies a theory of culture and society that describes a cultural zeitgeist
of
crisis, desperation, anxiety, and lassitude?
5. According to a postmodern perspective, what is the primary function of master narratives?
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. Name 3 of the elements Ronald Pine listed as essential to scientific logic. Select 1 of these elements
and describe how it is articulated in a handout provided by the instructor (perhaps use a description of a
2. Working with a handout provided by your instructor, identify and describe the theme, structure,
peripeteia, narrative voice, and style. In what ways is the story more and less persuasive to you? How do
3. Identify the primary influences of gender on reception and presentation of arguments. Working with a
handout provided by your instructor, analyze a speech (or portion of a speech) and newspaper report of
4. Use the following excerpts from an editorial by Thomas L. Friedman, published on March 14, 2004, in
the New York Times to organize a brief analysis of how postmodernity influences contemporary politics.
Be sure to discuss both the dangers and opportunities associated with postmodernism.
Nandan Nilekani, C.E.O. of the Indian software giant Infosys, gave me a tour the other day of his
company’s wood-paneled global conference room in Bangalore. . . . “We can have our whole global
EXERCISES/PROJECTS
1. Ask each student to bring a visual representation dealing with a controversial issue such as gay/lesbian
marriage, globalization, or ethics in business. Objects could include personal photographs, drawings,
2. Select a clip from a television comedy shown in the 1950s, and show it to students. Ask students to
identify (1) arguments that make fun of gender stereotypes, and (2) arguments that strengthen gender
3. Show students a recent (one that appeared on your local television stations if possible) political
4. Have students watch a familiar public speech, preferably one delivered by a male(such as Martin
Luther King’s I Have a Dream). Ask them to write down instances where the speaker uses personal
testimony and other nontraditional forms of support for his argument. After the students have watched the
speech, engage them in a discussion of feminist views on the strengths and weaknesses of nontraditional
claims, evidence, and other support for arguments.