How to Write Arguments

Perhaps it was the tease of spring weather followed by winter’s return, but this week seemed very long. Maybe it was because one of my favorite co-workers left to join another publishing house. Or it could have been the March blues, in any case, I am very glad Friday is finally here! Since Friday is “anything goes day” on this blog I thought I would post an excerpt from How To Write by Alastair Fowler. The book contains 25 short chapters that demystify the writing process. Below is the chapter on arguments. Why this chapter? Because bloggers are feisty folks and could use some help shaping their arguments. Enjoy.

It is easy to begin simply by asserting what you want to argue. But what then? Many continue with bald assertion after bald assertion; which is unlikely to convince people, unless they agree with you already.

The first thing to do in support of your assertion is to restate it in different words. Refreshing its verbal expression gives readers a chance to take up your meaning more exactly, from words that follow a different route or that may be more familiar to them. And you yourself will discover by restating whether the initial assertion can in fact be said in any other way. If it can’t, it may be a house of cards, a merely verbal construct without substance. Through reformulating the assertion, in fact, you will get a better grip on its core idea. If then you become less certain, it may be time to try out the idea in conversation. Political leaders are said to try out whole speeches in private conversation like a man trying on ties in his bedroom.

After restating the assertion you may still want to argue for its truth or value. By ‘argue’ I don’t mean construct syllogisms, although it does no harm to think out the logic of what you are saying—‘We are all going to die; he is one of us; so he is not going to live for ever.’ No, persuasion is usually what to aim for, rather than logical demonstration. You can persuade in many different ways, for example by strong instances: appealing to common experience or the historical record. Or by quoting the authority of respected authors. (These have to be chosen with care, with an eye to your probable readers: no point in quoting sages to children, or Che Guevara to High Tories.) You can sometimes argue by confuting an opposite viewpoint; it may have weaknesses obvious from your own. Again, you can sometimes clarify words generally confused in discussing the issue in dispute. Finally, you may want to qualify your first assertion in the light of all that has been considered; indeed that will be fully expected of you in the recapitulation or summing up.

Another way to persuade is by developing your assertion more fully. Suppose you wish to make the point that good writing is more efficient than bad. First you state it: ‘Good style is more efficient than bad.’ Next you rephrase, replacing every substantial word in the first statement. This requires some expansion, since ‘efficient’ has several meanings: ‘When you write something well, it is not only clearer and more pleasurable to read, but also more economical of effort.’ Restating has clarified the ideas of efficiency and good style. And you could go on to unpack the initial assertion further, explaining that clear writing gives pleasure partly through rapid access of information. Or you might persuade by example, referring perhaps to the research project directed by E. D. Hirsch, which established beyond reasonable doubt that good style eases uptake of meaning. Again, you might look into possible objections to the assertion. Some object on principle to clear writing, since they believe (like the British poststructuralist Catherine Belsey) that ‘suave, lucid style conceals ruptures and avoids the very words ideologically at issue’. Anticipating this objection you might write ‘Elegance need not be evasive.’ Or, more combatively, you could argue that some who dislike clear writing prefer difficult jargon because it obfuscates ideas that couldn’t bear much examination. Alternatively, if you wanted a more moderate statement, you could say, ‘So long as the rhetoric is honest, its elegance can only assist communication.’

Arguments and counter-arguments can often be combined, as in Macaulay’s wordy attempt to rebut defense of Charles I on the ground that ‘he had so many private
virtues’:

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hardhearted of prelates; and the defense is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o’clock in the morning! It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation. (Macaulay, ‘Milton’)

Here the repeated sentence structures, together with the vivid examples, are intended to overwhelm readers, despite the weakness of the argument. Logic is often less successful than indirect persuasion.

Macaulay’s violent rhetoric of conviction is not of course the only way to persuade. For example, you may well prefer to maintain a more detached position not committing yourself outright. If so, you might keep in mind gentler formulas, suitable for polite disagreement:

Virtues, however, do not go quite to the mark . . .
There is some plausibility in this view; but . . .
It does not seem far-fetched to think that . . .
To put it a little differently . . .

You may sometimes need to offer a phrase tentatively, advancing and half withdrawing it again:

In a way
As it were
As might be said
So to say
As one might say
As if one were to say
If I might put it like that
If it is not nonsense to put it so extremely
But that may be to go too far.

Such qualifying phrases can help to suggest a neutral stance, implying perhaps how diplomatic you are. To some, however, such phrases will seem weak, craven, or disingenuous.

At all events, it would be a mistake to express strong feelings without considering how readers are likely to receive them. If you say ‘Robinson is a total bastard who should be hung, drawn, and quartered,’ people may even feel ‘I can’t help thinking this Jones (or whatever your name is) may be a little bit biased.’

A chief point in argument is to assert only as much as can be substantiated. Better to understate, usually, than to exaggerate. Why say ‘Everyone supported the Government,’ when the evidence of a single dissentient voice will be enough to prove you wrong? It is surely better to put, instead, ‘Many supported the Government.’ Such considerations will decide how much you should commit yourself to claiming. But when you engage yourself in support of a strong position, try to give of your best by consistently amplifying the viewpoint: make sure all the modifiers and qualifiers tend the same way, and attend to any unsupported assertions.

You will not convince readers if you use language that obviously depends on dogmas of an ideological system. Whether the system is Christian, atheist, or agnostic (or Marxist, Buddhist, nihilist, or deconstructionist) makes no difference to this. Jargon or formulaic language will suggest you are not troubling to rethink the matter; which your readers may take as a sort of insult.

Thinking afresh (or seeming to) is a strong point of the writings of Richard Rorty, the American philosopher. If you wish to persuade, it is worth studying Rorty’s oblique method, as he considers the case for dualism, for example, in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. The question is whether ‘sensation’ and ‘brain process’ are just two ways of talking about the same thing.

The question now arises: Two ways of talking about what? Something mental or something physical? But here, I think, we have to resist our natural metaphysical urge, and not reply ‘A third thing, of which both mentality and physicality are aspects’. Why not (one might ask)?

Why not propose this third thing? Here Rorty, seeming to share his reader’s temptation to an easy metaphysical solution (‘we have to resist our natural urge’), in effect rules out what would be a difficult objection for him to refute. He does this by suggesting that to make the objection would be to succumb to what is no more than a ‘natural metaphysical urge’. Now Rorty anticipates a further objection, by pretending to propose a strategy against himself:

It would be better at this point to abandon argument and fall back on sarcasm, asking rhetorical questions like ‘What is this mental–physical contrast anyway? Whoever said that anything one mentioned had to fall into one or other of two (or half-a-dozen) ontological realms?’

This would actually be a fair point, but Rorty calls it ‘disingenuous’, since it is ‘obvious’ that ‘ “the physical” has somehow triumphed’. Left at that, one might resist his assumption that the physical is all there is. But Rorty goes on to face the difficulty more directly:

But what did it [the physical] triumph over? The mental? What was that? The practice of making incorrigible reports about certain of one’s states? That seems too small a thing to count as an intellectual revolution. Perhaps, then, it triumphed over the sentimental intellectual’s conviction that there was a private inner realm into which publicity, ‘scientific method’ and society could not penetrate. But this is not right either.

Apparently taking the reader into collaboration Rorty deflects an awkward point by pretending to hold it, then withdrawing from it as untenable, while making this defeat less unpalatable by minimizing the victory of materialism (‘too small a thing’).

This subtle, oblique form of persuasion should not be imitated without caution; it easily descends into slippery and unsound rhetoric. But there are tactics to be learned from Rorty. While you should not sail under false colors, you needn’t, either, wave your flag in the reader’s face.