Everything's an Argument

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Argumentation Resource Page”

In this activity, students will demonstrate their understanding of key concepts from Everything’s an Argument by revising an existing university resource on argumentation to reflect information from this text.

Universities often publish resources on argumentation as helpful guides for their students to follow when responding to classroom assignments. Imagine that you are in the communications department of a university and have been asked to overhaul the existing resource page on argumentation, using concepts from Everything’s an Argument.

Organize Your Ideas

• Use the chapter summaries to make a list of key points from Everything’s an Argument.
• Consider how you might group and order these ideas to communicate effectively to a college-level audience.

Choose a Resource

Choose a university-sponsored resource page designed to assist students with argumentation. Here are some possibilities:

• This resource from California State University, Northridge
• This resource from the University of Minnesota, Crookston
• This resource from the University of Texas, El Paso

Write Your Revision

• Compare your ordered and grouped list of ideas to the university resource page you will be revising and consider what changes you might make to the page’s organization and content.
• Try to preserve the original source’s style, format, and voice as you revise for organization and content.
• Please highlight or use a different color font to show where you have made additions or changes.
• Because of the nature of this assignment, the ordinary rules regarding plagiarism do not apply:

○ You may preserve the original resource page’s language, structure, and so on where appropriate, without citing each instance of borrowed material.

○ It is understood that not all of the work you will turn in for this assignment will be your own original phrasing and ideas.

○ Note: All ideas from Everything’s an Argument should be paraphrased or summarized in your own words, and you should append a full citation of the original university resource page at the end of your revised version.

Share and Offer Feedback

• Share your work with a partner and offer feedback on the following points:

○ Does the revised resource adequately cover key ideas from Everything’s an Argument?

○ Is the revised resource organized effectively for its intended audience?

○ How well are the style, format, and voice preserved from the original?

Teaching Suggestion: Many of the resource pages that students choose will focus exclusively on formal written arguments. Before students begin their revisions, you may wish to discuss the many kinds of argumentation that are called for in different types of classes: visual, oral, and multimedia arguments, for instance, are all common assignment types in college, and their revised resource pages should reflect this. Feedback offered to peers in the final part of the assignment can be either oral or written, depending on which elements of the activity you would like to assess.

Differentiation Suggestion: This activity calls for the synthesis of two sources; students who struggle with abstract and higher-order thinking may be tempted to simply write an entirely new piece, ignoring the idea that this is intended to be a revision rather than an original piece of writing. These students, as well as those who struggle with written expression, may benefit from working with a partner or from a class-wide practice revising a sample paragraph from the University of Pittsburgh resource provided at the beginning of this unit.

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the bulleted outlines below. Cite details from the text over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. One of the claims that Everything’s an Argument makes is that advertisements can be “read” as arguments. Choose a print or video advertisement to use as the basis for your response.

• How does this advertisement illustrate the claims of Everything’s an Argument? (topic sentence)
• Explain three different aspects of the advertisement that illustrate claims made in the text.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, show how this supports the book’s overall claim that Arguments Are Everywhere.

2. Everything’s an Argument addresses the ways in which fallacies creep into public discourse. Choose a political advertisement or speech to use as the basis for your response.

• Which fallacies addressed in Everything’s an Argument are present in this political discourse? (topic sentence)
• Identify and explain at least three instances of fallacious reasoning in the advertisement or speech you have chosen.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, comment on how the fallacious reasoning you have identified relates to Everything’s an Argument’s larger concern with Argumentation and Society.

3. Everything’s an Argument heavily emphasizes that Presentation Persuades. Choose an editorial opinion piece—from a newspaper, online news site, or similar source—to use as the basis for your response.

• How successfully has the author of this piece used principles of effective presentation to persuade the intended audience? (topic sentence)
• Explain at least three specific examples of successful or unsuccessful adherence to the principles of effective presentation discussed in Everything’s an Argument.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, comment on the overall effectiveness of the piece and its relationship to presentation.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by textual details, and a conclusion.

1. Everything’s an Argument details the steps in writing a full rhetorical analysis of a text. Choose a multimedia text, like a short video or song, and write a full rhetorical analysis of it as an example of argumentation. Be sure to review Chapters 6 and 16 carefully, then apply the ideas in these chapters to your analysis. Comment on how this text is an example of Everything’s an Argument’s contention that Arguments Are Everywhere. Be sure to cite the source of the text you are analyzing.

2. In Chapters 8-12, Everything’s an Argument explains various types of arguments and how they can be constructed effectively. Read philosopher and educator bell hooks’s essay “Love as the Practice of Freedom” and consider the types of arguments and structuring principles discussed in Chapters 8-12. Write an essay analyzing the various types of arguments this essay contains and evaluating the effectiveness of the essay’s overall structure.

3. In Chapters 2-4, the authors explain the three types of appeals often found in argumentation. Read Henry David Thoreau’s famous argumentative essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” keeping in mind the three types of appeals discussed in Everything’s an Argument. Write an essay analyzing the types of appeals present in Thoreau’s essay and the overall effectiveness of his use of them. 

Multiple Choice and Long Answer Questions create ideal opportunities for whole-text review, exams, or summative assessments.

Multiple Choice

1. Which of the following statements might the authors be most likely to agree with?

A) Acts of communication are argumentative as their primary purpose, and the intention to entertain or inform is secondary to this.

B) Conscious intention is a key element of argumentation, and a creator cannot make an argument without it.

C) Although a creator may not consciously intend an act of communication as argument, it nonetheless contains elements of argument.

D) Creators must choose between the intentions to argue, inform, or entertain, because these purposes are mutually exclusive.

2. Which of the authors’ ideas is illustrated by the text’s use of chapter previews and summaries?

A) Effective arguments acknowledge counterarguments.

B) Presentation should be crafted for a specific audience.

C) Rogerian and invitational arguments have a high degree of ethos.

D) Arguments of fact are important in modern society.

3. What is the relationship between Aristotle’s classification of arguments and the modern understanding of the purposes and structures of different types of arguments?

A) We structure each of our modern argument types, regardless of purpose, according to the stages of stasis theory.

B) Stasis theory’s different required stages of argument mimic our modern understanding of the different structures and purposes of argument.

C) The different structures and purposes were created at different stages of Western history, and those Aristotle created are likely no longer relevant.

D) Different structures and purposes are relevant depending on whether an argument is about the past, present, or future.

4. Which of the following statements might the authors be most likely to agree with?

A) The introduction of fallacies into a logical argument should be avoided because they weaken both logos and ethos.

B) Offering counterarguments, qualifiers, and concessions makes an argument appear uncertain and damages its ethos.

C) Arguments that mix types—such as an argument of fact that contains an argument of definition—appear disorganized and illogical.

D) There is no place in an academic argument for personal evidence, because its use lessens credibility.

5. What is the relationship between pathos and fallacies like the bandwagon appeal and the slippery slope?

A) Fallacy is the larger category and pathos is one specific example.

B) These fallacies are examples of how pathos can be used to manipulate audiences.

C) This appeal is used to soften the impact of fallacies like the bandwagon appeal.

D) Using fallacies like these is one example of how a speaker can damage pathos.

6. What do arguments of definition and arguments of evaluation have in common?

A) The most effective structure for both is the Toulmin argument structure, with claims, warrants, and evidence.

B) Because of their most common uses, both types of argument are highly susceptible to authorial bias.

C) They both establish a standard and then analyze whether a specific example meets this standard.

D) Both require complex chains of reasoning that lead the reader through the stages of cause and effect.

7. Which is a strategy the authors recommend for building ethos?

A) Acknowledging the opposition’s arguments

B) Adding elements of humor into an argument

C) Using personal anecdotes to create audience empathy

D) Focusing on artistic, rather than inartistic, proofs

8. Which of the following statements might the authors be most likely to agree with?

A) Assessing the rhetorical situation is the first step in both analyzing and creating arguments.

B) When writing a college-level essay, a student should first establish a clear claim and then gather only evidence that supports this claim.

C) Of the various forms that argument takes, credible and reliable sources are most important to academic argumentation.

D) Rhetorical analysis should rely more heavily on deductive reasoning than on inductive reasoning.

9. Which fallacy can be refuted using the principles of sufficient and necessary causes?

A) Equivocations

B) Straw man

C) Slippery slope

D) Begging the question

10. Which is a strategy the authors recommend for enhancing style?

A) Selecting content according to context

B) Choosing the medium of the argument carefully

C) Corroborating evidence with at least three sources

D) Thoughtful use of punctuation

11. Which form of argumentation do the authors believe is particularly important in a partisan society?

A) Argument of degree

B) Invitational argument

C) Deductive reasoning

D) Argument of evaluation

12. Which belief do the authors hold about the most persuasive forms of argumentation?

A) They contain logos, ethos, and pathos.

B) They contain logos and ethos, but avoid pathos.

C) They are based on degree, analogies, and precedent.

D) They are based on degree and analogies, but avoid precedent.

13. Which argument structure do the authors use the Declaration of Independence to illustrate?

A) Argument of precedent

B) Inductive reasoning

C) Proposal

D) Classical oration

14. Which of the following could be considered unethical when deliberately used in public discourse?

A) Arguments of precedent

B) Pathos

C) Fallacies

D) Inartistic arguments

15. Which is a strategy the authors recommend for effective spoken arguments?

A) Keeping the audience engaged with complex and artistic language

B) Using visuals that can be easily seen and quickly processed

C) Conveying authority through concrete and objective language

D) Using visuals that convey ideas through contrast, proximity, and repetition

Long Answer

Compose a response of 2-3 sentences, incorporating textual details to support your response.

1. How might the ideas in Everything’s an Argument be helpful in everyday encounters with other people and mass media?

2. Early in the text, the authors distinguish between “convincing” and “persuading.” How does this difference relate to their later emphasis on the style of a presentation?