What is the most important component of a successful argument in your field?
Carol Tateishi (California Bay Area Writing Project)
In the field of education, a new genre of writing that is gaining a foothold in the world of educational research is that of writing by teacher researchers. I refer here to the systematic and intentional research conducted by classroom teachers on questions of significance to their own practice. Writing by teacher researchers tends to break from traditional presentations of research and builds an argument through a variety of means. No single component of an argument leads to success, but the most compelling and successful arguments in this genre have one quality in common—authenticity of voice. The credible voice of the teacher is paramount if an argument is to succeed with an audience of teachers. Teachers know that classrooms are complicated places and that teaching is highly complex and context-specific. They bring this critical lens to their reading of research.
In a piece of writing by a teacher researcher, the force of an authentic voice is evidenced in a number of ways: writers engage readers in significant and complex questions about teaching and learning; they use rich data and analyses that often interrupt conventional assumptions; and they show how knowledge gained from the research is about particulars. Authenticity of voice can be made stronger when the teacher researcher is part of a collaborative discourse community and draws on the views and research of others. Just as teaching isn’t a tidy affair, successful arguments in teacher research don’t attempt to tie up all the loose ends, but, instead, open the door to new questions.
Richard A. Muller (Physics Department)
This may sound odd, but the most important component for a successful argument in physics is self-skepticism.
New, original, creative ideas are far more common in physics than most people think. But it is exceedingly difficult to find a new idea that is compatible with the vast collection of data that has accumulated over the years, and which can be found in the literature. In my paper I must demonstrate that I am familiar with that material, and that any new idea I am presenting is compatible with everything that is known. The reader must feel that there is no need to try to refute my argument by re-examining the literature, since I have already tried to do so and have failed.
But finally, to convince the skeptical readers (and every academic audience is skeptical), the key element is to disarm their disbelief by convincing them that I am even more skeptical than they are. My paper must illustrate why I have been compelled to reach the conclusion, despite all of the initially plausible arguments against it. The reader must not be able to think of any reasonable criticism that I did not directly address myself, explicitly, in the paper. It is not adequate to show my conclusion is novel. I have been forced to the conclusion, not because I like it, but because it is the only one that is both logically self-consistent and compatible with what was previously known.
Jean Schultz (French Department and Berkeley Language Center)
In French an essential ingredient to a good argument is the existence of a problematic issue that gives impetus and form to the ensuing intellectual discussion. There has to be something beyond the self-evident to discuss; there needs to be some issue to resolve. It is common in French to talk about the “problématique” as a key component to effective argumentation. The “problématique,” as the term suggests, implies that there is something controversial about the topic, something troubling, something contradictory, something perplexing. For the paper to be effective, the reader needs to be put in the position of resolving, along with the author of the paper, the central issue. The reader needs to feel he or she is discovering something new and seeing the issue in a new light. One of the author’s objectives is thus to engage the reader’s interest in the intellectual struggle.
The French dialectical essay, with its thesis, antithesis, and synthesis format, embodies this drive to come to grips intellectually with a problematic issue. Not only does it help students focus on the salient points of their argument, particularly the conflictual elements that naturally inform argumentation, but it also helps them to structure their argument, beginning with the thesis, then making the transition to the antithesis, and then reconciling the extremes in the synthesis, which forms the conclusion. The dialectical argumentation format provides students a focussed exercise in organization and argumentation at the same time that it develops their critical thinking skills.
Originally published: Volume 3 – Number 1 (Spring 2002)