Author: James E. Scheuermann

You may have learned the SQ3R method in junior high or high school.  “SQ3R” stands for survey, question, read, recite, review.  In most versions of this method, it encourages students to understand a chapter of a textbook by (1) surveying the principal headings and subheadings, maps, charts, and figures of the chapter, and reading the introduction and conclusion of the chapter, (2) asking questions about those headings, subheadings, and so on, (3) reading the chapter, (4) reviewing it, and (5) reciting what you have learned. 

You may be asking yourself how my discussion of outlining, summarizing, and determining the point of an argumentative text in Chapter 6 of Reading Argumentative Texts differs from the SQ3R method. 

The principal difference is that SQ3R is a method for understanding a chapter of a textbook.  Textbooks typically are expository works – that is, they present or expose a subject matter to you and do not take sides on disputed questions, if there are any such questions (you would not expect to find disputed questions in an elementary algebra textbook, for example).  My focus in Reading, as you will recall, is on analyzing arguments and texts that make arguments, not expository works.  And my focus is not limited to any particular type of book. We examine arguments wherever they may be found (in a history book, a speech, a scholarly essay, an article on the editorial pages of a newspaper, and so on). 

Textbooks often do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, work that you have to do for yourself in analyzing and understanding an argumentative work.  The headings and subheadings of a textbook are often the outline of the chapter or something very close to it.  Textbooks have questions at the end of the chapters, which force you to focus on particular passages or charts in a chapter in order to understand the chapter; you will not find that in argumentative texts.  We need not belabor the differences. 

Apart from these few differences and some others you can discern, both the point of the SQ3R method and Chapter 6 of Reading is to give you tools to better understand what you are reading.  If you have not yet learned the SQ3R method, I encourage you to jump online and read a few of the articles and discussions of it.  You may find a few pointers that you will want to use alongside the tools discussed in Chapter 6 to make understanding of what you read easier or more efficient.  Doing the sort of broad surveying of a textbook chapter, which is the first step in the SQ3R method, may help considerably in your outlining of a longer argumentative work, for example.  In any event, it could not hurt. 

If comparing the SQ3R method to the strategies and tools offered in Reading helps you to understand more of what you read, then by all means make those comparisons.  If modifying the SQ3R method to make it more easily applicable to argumentative texts helps you to better understand those texts, it’s all upside and no downside.  That’s a real bargain in the game of life. 

It is easy to overlook the importance of an introduction to an argumentative text.  This is especially true if you are pressed for time or are not rigorous in your reading habits.  But if your goal in reading an argumentative text is to understand its meaning, as it should be, then you will be more likely to reach that goal by paying close attention to the introduction.  Introductions are important in reading, as they are in interpersonal interactions.

In Chapter 5 of Reading I discussed six types of introductions to argumentative texts.  I discussed one other type in the Workbook.  In this post I will draw a connection between the so-called “five-paragraph essay,” which many of you learned in an English composition course (if you haven’t yet learned this writing tool, this is a great opportunity to learn it quickly and easily), and my prior discussions of introductions.

Most English writing courses in high school or college teach how to write the five-paragraph essay.  In the introduction, paragraph one, the author states what she intends to do in the essay and how she intends to do it.  Paragraphs two, three, and four do what the author has said she would do.  And paragraph five says, in effect, “I told you I was going to do X; I did X in the prior three paragraphs; and now you know about (or should believe) X.”  If you are struggling with writing a short essay, this is a tried-and-true method for writing a clear and clean one.  It is formulaic and lacks some of the more artistic bells and whistles, but it gets the job done.  Most importantly, it imposes a structure and discipline on your writing that will help clarify and refine your thoughts.

Here’s an example of a five-paragraph essay.

       In this essay, I am going to prove to you that if the major industrialized countries of the world undertook actions A, B, and C, we would reduce global emissions of CO₂ by at least 50 percent.  In the next paragraph, I present the evidence that doing A will reduce global emissions of CO₂ by 20 percent.  In the paragraph following that, I will show that doing B will reduce global emissions of CO₂ by 20 percent.  And in the fourth paragraph, I show that doing C will reduce global emissions of CO₂ by at least 10 percent, and maybe more.  [Paragraph 1]

       Scientific studies have shown that doing A will reduce global emissions of CO₂ by 20 percent.  [This is followed by a discussion of the studies.]  [Paragraph 2]

       Other scientific studies have shown that doing B will reduce global emissions of CO₂ by 20 percent.  [This is followed by a discussion of the studies.]  [Paragraph 3]

       Finally, some scientific studies have shown that doing C will reduce global emissions of CO₂ by at least 10 percent and maybe more.  [This is followed by a discussion of the studies.]  [Paragraph 4]

       I have demonstrated that the major industrialized countries can reduce global emissions by at least 50 per cent.  As established in the studies discussed above, each of the three actions is technically feasible.  The question which none of these studies discuss, because it is not a scientific or technical question, is whether these industrialized nations have or will have the political will to take these actions.  If so, we can expect some of the effects of global climate change will be lessened or delayed.  If not, we can expect the consequences of global climate change to worsen in the short and long term.  [Paragraph 5]

What is the relationship of the five-paragraph essay to our discussion of introductions in Reading and in the Workbook?  The introduction to the five-paragraph essay is a simplified form of the Road Map introduction, and such an essay can be an argumentative text in which one the author a Road Map.  If you understand what a Road Map introduction looks like, you likely will be a better writer, since you will have a tool you need to construct a five-paragraph essay, or a much longer one.  If you understand how to write a five-paragraph essay, you likely will have an easier time understanding argumentative texts that employ the Road Map introduction.  This illustrates that being a better writer and being a better reader are just two sides of the same coin.   

In Chapter 4 of Reading Argumentative Texts, I argued that two common views of arguments were incorrect and/or misleading.  One of these views, which I referred to as Myth #1, holds that the “conclusion of an argument must be a statement of subjective opinion.”  I will not use this post to continue to beat the drum of why this position is flat-out wrong. 

There is a related view of arguments, a close cousin of Myth #1, that I will analyze here.  It asserts that “statements of fact” are “not arguable.”  The authors of this position apparently believe that this is true because “[m]ost facts can be verified by doing research.”  Let’s call this Myth #1A.  It is also without merit.

There are two principal problems with this view.  First, it misconstrues the function of an argument.  It treats the function of an argument solely as the grasping of a conclusion.  The conclusion of an argument answers the “what?” question, as in “what is the case” or “what is true about the world?”  But an argument answers not only that question but also the “why” question, that is, it tells you why something is the case; it provides the reasons why some statement is true.  Without knowing those reasons, you know relatively little.  If you do not understand why some particular statement is true, if you do not know the reasons why it is true, you are not able to connect that statement with other things that you know to be true.  All of your knowledge is disjointed, unrelated fragments.  And that is not a particularly useful way of navigating through the world, if such navigation is possible at all. 

Curiously, the same authors who propound Myth #1A effectively acknowledge that a principal function of arguments is to answer the “why” question.  They concede that arguments “expand our knowledge with the depth of their analysis” and “lead us through a complex set of claims by providing networks of logical relationships and appropriate evidence.”

The second problem with Myth #1A is the idea that verifying facts through research is an adequate substitute for understanding the reasons supporting a supposed fact.  Let’s take a simple example to illustrate the point.  Suppose you are considering buying a dog, but don’t want one that will bite your friends, neighbors, and kids.  So, you get online and research the tendencies of various breeds to engage in unprovoked attacks on strangers.  One site states that “Rottweilers are inherently vicious and routinely attack strangers” and another site says that “Rottweilers are not inherently vicious and do not routinely attack strangers unless trained to do so.”  You won’t know which statement is true if you do not know the reasons supporting these two statements. 

Even if you do a lot more research, unless you gather enough facts to construct an inductive argument about the tendencies of Rottweilers, you won’t know which statement is more likely to be true or false.  Suppose you dig a little deeper and find that the first statement was supported only by this premise:  I was attacked by a Rottweiler in City Park, when I was walking though minding my own business.  (That’s a weak inductive argument.)  And you also learn that the second statement was supported by twenty scientific studies of many breeds of dogs and each study showed that Rottweilers are no more likely to attack strangers than other breeds.  (That’s a much stronger inductive argument.)  Now you know that the second statement is more likely true than the first and the reasons why it is more likely true.  If you are really interested in digging into the truth of this matter, you could even dig into each of these studies to learn how they were conducted, whether they utilized adequate control groups, what the margin of error is for their conclusions, and so on.  Soon you will become an expert not only on Rottweiler tendencies but maybe also on canine behavior more generally.    

We live in a time in which the “spin doctors” on cable television and social media sites are legion.  And a time when there is a plethora of false and incorrect information waiting to be found. The idea that you can just verify facts through research may be a remnant of a bygone, more innocent era. 

Moreover, it is worth pausing and asking, what is a “fact”?  “The cat is on the mat” may state a simple fact.  But much of what we argue about in our society is more complex facts (or matrices of facts), often mixed in with professional judgments and norms, and no quick internet or library research is going to verify those.  Consider this statement:  climate change caused by human activity is happening now.  That may look like a purely factual statement, but it is not entirely one or, if it is, it is a multi-faceted factual statement.  For starters, before you can begin to understand whether it is true or false, you need a precise definition of “climate change” and a method for measuring change cause by human activity, and both of those may involve some amount of scientific judgment and the application of agree-upon norms.  Again:  easy access to guns leads to more violent deaths in the U.S. than we would have if we had stricter gun laws.  This states a fact only if there is prior agreement on what “easy access” and “stricter” mean in this context.  (Strictly speaking, it states a counterfactual, but we need not go into that here.) 

In sum, you can argue facts.  Aristotle knew that more than 2300 years ago when he proved, through an argument, that “Socrates is mortal.”

If you are new to learning about arguments, one of the initial challenges you may be facing is how to tell if a text asserts an argument.  Often this is a simple task, but just as often it is not.  Even people who have lots of experience asserting and analyzing arguments can struggle with this issue when presented with some particular text.  You will recall that we addressed this issue in the last section of Chapter 4 of Reading Argumentative Texts, where we distinguished nonfiction argumentative texts from four other kinds of nonfiction writing that generally do not assert arguments.  This post is intended to provide you further guidance to meet this common obstacle to understanding.

An example will illustrate the challenge and suggest some tools to meet it.

One of the most noteworthy texts of the civil rights movement in American in the last half of the 20th century is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  (You can find this essay on numerous websites.  Here’s one: Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.].pdf (google.com).)  Dr. King wrote this essay in April 1963, while in the Birmingham, Alabama City Jail for his participation in nonviolent, civil rights protests.  It is a response to a public statement signed by eight white clergymen who, in effect, asked Dr. King, “why are you, a clergyman from Atlanta, Georgia, coming to Birmingham, Alabama, to demonstrate in our streets and why are you doing it now?”  One question they raised specifically was why Dr. King and his fellow protesters didn’t give the new city of Birmingham administration time to address their grievances. 

Dr. King responded, “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’  It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity.  This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’”  He continues with the following paragraph (which I have edited):

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. . . . [W]hen you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky. . .; when you take a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “ni**er,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” – then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. . . . . I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”

Is Dr. King making an argument in this paragraph?  If you cannot answer that question easily, not to worry.  A second (or third) reading will help you, but even then you may be uncertain. That’s when you reach for one of your analytic reading tools. 

Let’s start with what may be an easier question:  is this paragraph rhetorical in any respect?  There is little doubt that it is.  Recall that in Chapter 4 we discussed that Aristotle used “rhetoric” to refer to the use of words to persuade the reader or listener to act in some fashion, to believe something, or to feel something.  In his view, speakers or writers persuade either through (1) appeals to reasons and logical arguments, (2) appeals to emotions, feelings, or shared values, or (3) appeals to the credibility or reputation of the writer or speaker.  So, using Aristotle’s framework, what kind or kinds of appeal(s) is Dr. King employing in this passage?

Clearly he is appealing to the emotions of and, he presumes, to the values he shares with, the eight white clergymen and the wider audience he addresses.  He does this through a series of vivid images – “vicious lynch mobs,” “hate filled policemen,” “airtight cage of poverty,” “tears welling up” in the eyes of his six year old daughter who is barred from Funtown; sleeping at night in automobiles; “nagging signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’”; and so on.  This rhetorical appeal to emotions and values is effective in part because of the particularity of the examples Dr. King marshals.  Imagine telling your innocent six-year-old daughter or sister that she can’t go to the local amusement park because she’s Black (or Hispanic, or Asian, etc.), and watching her begin to cry.  It is also effective because of the multiplicity and variety of these examples.  They paint a powerful portrait of how racism and discrimination infect every aspect of the lives of Black people. 

Is Dr. King also appealing to the rational and logical powers of his readers?  If so, that would suggest that he is making an argument of some sort.  As I read this paragraph, Dr. King is making an inductive-theoretical argument, along these lines: 

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights.
Over that time, we have experienced:

• vicious mobs lynching our mothers and fathers at will and drowning our sisters and brothers at whim;
• hate-filled policemen cursing, kicking and even killing our black brothers and sisters;
• the vast majority of our twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society;
• our tongues twisted and our speech stammering as we seek to explain to our six-year-old daughters why they can’t go to the public amusement park . . . and tears welling up in their eyes when they are told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and seeing ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in their little mental skies;
• taking a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of our automobiles because no motel will accept us;
• humiliation day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”;
• being called “ni**er,” “boy” (however old you are), and “John”;
• our wives and mothers never being given the respected title “Mrs.”;
• being harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that we are Negroes, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next;
• being plagued with inner fears and outer resentments;
• forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness.”

Therefore, for all of these reasons, our impatience is legitimate and unavoidable and we cannot wait any longer.

The argument is inductive because its conclusion does not necessarily follow from its premises.  It is theoretical because it does not ask any person or entity to do something, but rather makes a case for the truth of a statement about some state of affairs, its conclusion.

In sum, this paragraph is both rhetorical and asserts an argument.  As we saw in Chapter 4, the five forms of nonfiction texts are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  A text can have characteristics of more than one of these forms. 

You can perform this sort of analysis with other parts of Dr. King’s essay and any other text when you are uncertain whether it asserts an argument.  Try it.    

In Chapter 4 of Reading Argumentative Texts we did a deeper dive into the nature and types of arguments and we examined the differences between argumentative and nonargumentative nonfiction texts.  We covered a lot of ground in Chapter 4 and my commentary on Chapter 4 could be correspondingly broad and deep.  Yet that may be boring.  Whatever your chosen theology, if you are a serious reader or writer, you know that a cardinal sin is writing a boring text.  So, rather than being exhaustive in my commentary, I will be selective.   

Let’s start with enthymemes (enthymatic arguments).  I do this not because this is the most important topic in Chapter 4, but because it allows us to discuss a few not-boring jokes. 

This joke has made its way across social media:

• I picked up a hitchhiker. Seemed like a nice guy. After a few miles, he asked if I wasn’t afraid that he might be a serial killer. I told him that the odds of two serial killers being in the same car were extremely unlikely.

That’s not a great joke, but it’s a good one, and instructive to boot. 

What do you have to understand to get the joke?  What is implied by the actual sentences in the joke but because it is not stated, the joke is funny?  The joke requires you to supply the missing premise that the driver/speaker is a serial killer.  And once you have done that, you know why it makes sense for him to say that the odds of both of them being serial killers is low, and why we can imply from that (why he asks you to infer from that) that he is not afraid.

We know from Chapter 4 of Reading that an argument with an implied premise which is necessary to draw the conclusion the text is proposing is an enthymatic argument.  What would this joke look like if we restated it as an enthymatic argument?

I picked up a hitchhiker when I was driving (alone).
He seemed like a nice guy (not a threat).
After a few miles, he asked if I wasn’t afraid that he might be a serial killer.
I am a serial killer.  [Implied premise]
I told him that the odds of two serial killers being in the same car were extremely unlikely. Therefore, I told him that I am not afraid that you (the hitchhiker) are a serial killer. [Implied conclusion]

This example illustrates that many jokes are really enthymatic arguments.  That is not the only lesson to be drawn from this example, however.

You will recall that at several places in Reading (see especially Chapters 1 and 6) I said that the structure of a text is one source of its meaning.  This joke is a good example of that.  When we alter the structure of the joke and present it as a complete argument, with the missing premise supplied, it loses its humorous meaning; it isn’t funny anymore.  But in its original form, when we treat the joke as an enthymeme and figure out the missing premise, we find it to be humorous.  That reinforces a central premise of Reading, namely, that the meaning of an argumentative text is to be found not only in the words of the argument, but also in other features of the text, including its structure.  (Jokes that derive their humor from their structure (and not all of them do, see Reading Chapter 7) are broadly similar to certain types of good poems.  A good poem often takes its meaning not just from the words in the poem but also by the way they are arranged and by what is not said but only implied or suggested.)

It would take a psychologist to explain why we laugh at this joke or any joke, to explain the psychology of humor.  I’m not that person.  Our example does show, however, that the joke creates humor in large part through its structure as an enthymeme.  When the listener figures out the missing premise, he is likely to think the whole joke is clever and typically will be amused by that.  In addition, he may take some modest joy in the fact that the joke-teller thinks enough of his (the listener’s) intellect that the teller has chosen to communicate that to the listener in this fashion. 

Enthymatic jokes, in other words, are intended to create shared meaning between the teller and listener, and they generally do it by asking and requiring that the listener engage in the intellectual exercise of figuring out what meaning the joke-teller is trying to share with him. Through the medium of the joke, the joke-teller may be trying to communicate and share values, group membership, a perspective on the world, or information in a novel fashion.  That shared meaning generally tends to bring people closer together intellectually or emotionally (there are exceptions to this, as when the listener gets the meaning, but rejects its appropriateness (as in racist jokes)).  It tends to create a community or strengthens the bonds of an existing community.  It makes our lives richer and deeper, even if ever so slightly.

Let’s look at another enthymatic joke:

• Did you hear about the billionaire astronaut who held a news conference and announced that he was going to fly a spaceship to the sun?  When a reporter asked him how he was going to avoid dying from the sun’s heat, he replied, “I’m not worried, I’ll be going at night.”

This is a pretty weak joke, more in the nature of a “Dad joke.”  Nonetheless, it does illustrate how jokes can be enthymatic arguments and why even a 7th grader would be inclined to groan at this joke. 

For the billionaire to arrive at his conclusion that he will be safe if he lands at night, he must reason according to this enthymeme, or one close to it:

I will fly a spaceship to the sun.
The earth goes through cycles of daytime and nighttime. [Implied premise]
So, the sun must go through cycles of daytime and nighttime. [Implied conclusion]
On earth, the temperatures are generally hotter during the daytime and cool off at nighttime. [Implied premise]
So, the sun must have hotter temperatures during its daytime and must cool off during its nighttime. [Implied conclusion]
So, I’ll fly to the sun during its nighttime and be safe.

To refer back to other points made in Chapter 4, in addition to this argument being an enthymeme, it is also a form of inductive argument by analogy (two analogies, in fact), and it is a weak inductive argument, since there are many dissimilarities between the sun and earth that serve to falsify the premises and the (internal and final) conclusions of the argument. 

Why is this joke not a very good one?  Why is it relatively unfunny?  Consider this possible explanation.  Whatever humorous meaning is communicated by the enthymatic structure of the joke is undermined by the clear falsity of the premises in the arguments by analogy that purport to support the final conclusion.  When two sources of meaning in an argumentative text conflict with each other, as here (structure and content), we experience an intellectual incongruity.  We want to laugh and at the same time we want to groan because the premises are clearly factually off base. 

Many jokes about lawyers and other professionals also are enthymatic arguments.  Because I spent a few decades practicing law, I had no shortage of friends and relatives who thought I just had to hear the latest lawyer joke.  Here is one of the “better” ones:

• A priest, a minister, and a lawyer were trapped on an island surrounded by sharks many miles from the mainland.  They waited for days to be rescued, but no one came for them.  Finally, in desperation, they agreed that one of them had to try to swim to the mainland to get help.  No one volunteered for the task because they feared they would be eaten by the sharks.  So they decided to draw lots to decide who would make the swim.  The lawyer lost the draw, said his goodbyes to the priest and minister, jumped into the water and began to swim.  Surprisingly, when he got near the sharks, they formed two parallel lines and allowed him to swim through this lane unmolested.  The priest shouted with joy, “It’s a miracle.  Thank God.”  The minister replied, “No, father, just professional courtesy.” 

This enthymatic joke incorporates the stereotypes that lawyers are aggressive predators, just like sharks, and that even within this profession of aggressive predators there exists professional courtesy.  You can reformulate this joke as an argument with implied premises that express these stereotypes.

You will get this joke only if you believe or at least are familiar with these stereotypes and so can supply the missing premises.  That belief or familiarity provides social context for the rest of the joke.  If you aren’t at least familiar with these stereotypes, you won’t understand why this joke is humorous.  In other words, this joke is an example of context imparting meaning to a text, which is the subject of Chapter 8 of Reading. 

Finally, did you get the (very light) joke in the title of this post?  Did you interpret this title as enthymatic?  When someone comes up with a really bad idea or offers a bad argument in support of an idea, we often hear the expression, “that argument is a joke.”  The comment typically is intended to be critical and disparaging.  The title of this post is intended to play off of that phrase by turning it around and prompting you to pause and wonder what this post may be about, where is it going.  Did Scheuermann make a mistake?  Are there really some jokes that are arguments?  You likely will be taking that pause and get the joke (such as it is) only if you first have heard the phrase “that argument is a joke.”  This is another example of how context imparts meaning.  More on that topic when we get to the post on Chapter 8.

© James E. Scheuermann 2022, all content on this blog

I recently picked up a college textbook on critical reading and writing which views “argumentative rhetoric” as an essential tool for “self-defense . . . against manipulation by politicians, the media, teachers, and assorted propagandists.” The book advances the proposition that learning the tools of “argumentative rhetoric” will enable you “to fight back against those trying to take verbal and intellectual advantage of us. . . ”

In my experience – both as one who has read a fair number of college rhetoric and writing textbooks and as one who follows current political discourse in this country – this statement reflects a widespread opinion of the purpose of analyzing a text for its meaning, of reading critically (where “critically” does not mean to be able to criticize, but rather to be able to analyze sharply and thoroughly). I have no general criticism of this view. To the contrary, I think that this approach is useful and appropriate in many circumstances. There is no shortage of wrongheaded (and potentially harmful) arguments about how we should live together as a community that need to be defeated in a democratic society. The tools you will find (or have found) in Reading Argumentative Texts will enable you to engage in this sort of intellectual combat if that’s your purpose.

But before you go down that path, or fall into the mistaken belief that the only purpose of “critical reading” is to wage intellectual battle, consider where this view can lead. The British essayist and novelist George Orwell, while serving in India during World War II, wrote this about British propaganda:

“We are all drowning in filth. When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has an axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgment have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone’s thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a “case” with deliberate suppression of his opponent’s point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends.”

Quoted in Christopher Hitchens, And Yet. . . , p. 317 (New York: Simon & Schuster 2015) (this quote apparently is taken from Orwell’s diaries, though Hitchens does not make the source clear).

The view that we should learn the tools of analyzing texts to use them as swords in our intellectual battles doesn’t necessarily lead to a stinking pile of intellectual “filth,” such as Orwell describes. But it may and sometimes does. Certain cable “news” outlets prove that.

So, I ask you to consider another purpose of learning to analyze a text for its meaning, of learning to read critically. For many years before his retirement, Leon Kass, a medical doctor and ethicist, taught undergraduate humanities courses at the University of Chicago. He was widely regarded as an excellent teacher. In a recent interview he was asked, “what is the value of . . . close reading?” Part of his answer is especially salient:

“If you want to learn from the text, and not only learn about it, you can’t read just for argument or ammunition. You have to learn what it says and what it means, and why the author might have put things this way rather than some other way. It’s also to learn, by going slowly, how a book wants to be read, . . .
To read a great text, one wants to live with it, and have it dwell with you. You do this in the belief that it might just teach you something you really want to know but might not otherwise learn. To do that, you have to slow down, ponder the words. It’s only in this way that a book will really open up to you, as opposed to fitting into your preconceived notions of what the world is like.”

“A Questioning Mind,” University of Chicago Magazine, Summer 2021, pp. 32-33.

Notice the different postures that you, the reader, take with respect to a text when you are reading to engage in intellectual combat, on the one hand, and when you are reading to learn, on the other hand. In the former activity, you and the text (or the author of the text) are adversaries, and the goal is to defeat the meaning (the ideas, emotions, or way of looking at the world) that the text is trying to communicate. In the latter activity, when you are reading to learn, the text (and its author) is a teacher and you, the reader, are in the role of a student. You are engaged in a cooperative activity in which ideas, emotions, a way of looking at the world and everything in it – in short, meaning – is communicated to you, is shared with you. (The greater the text, the more it has to teach you.)

I am not arguing that one of these postures is “right” and the other “wrong.” Only a fool would attempt that. I am saying that if you have never taken the latter posture, the posture of being an engaged student who is analyzing a text to learn from it, there is a world of possibilities open for you to explore.

Reading to learn is a close cousin of reading for understanding. Reading to learn – it need not be a novel or rare activity, and we all benefit when it is not.

The great 19th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill attributed his success as “an original and independent thinker” to his intellectual tenaciousness:  “that of never accepting half-solutions of difficulties as complete; never abandoning a puzzle, but again and again returning to it until it was cleared up; never allowing obscure corners of a subject to remain unexplored because they did not appear important; never thinking that I perfectly understood any part of a subject until I understood the whole.”  (The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, p. 100 (NY: Signet Classics 1964))

You will recall that in chapter 2 of Reading I stated that pinning down an author’s meaning is a matter of always asking the next question of the text.  Why does the author say that?  What does she mean by that?  Does she have any evidence for saying X?  And so on.  (Reading, pp. 16, 21.)  I characterized that activity as being persistent or intellectually aggressive.     

Mill’s point and mine are essentially the same, although he expressed it far more eloquently than I did.  When you are embarked on an intellectual activity, don’t give up too soon; keep pressing for greater understanding as far as you can.  Keep on keeping on, to use the words of an old R&B song.

What do you do when you have run out of questions to ask of a text but are still not sure you understand it completely? Go to the sources of meaning we discussed in Reading and ask yourself if they suggest further questions to ask. In other words, you can use the sources of meaning as analytic tools, or at least as jumping off points for analysis, for further dialogue with the text. For example, the structure of a text is a source of meaning because it relates the argumentative parts of the text to each other, on the one hand, and the argumentative parts of the text to the nonargumentative parts, on the other hand, and all of the parts to the whole. Examine and question those relations.

The need for intellectual persistence is entirely general and not limited to any one type of intellectual activity.  It applies, however, with particular force to reading complex argumentative texts.  At times, you may find the analysis of one of these texts difficult. But never forget: You can do it.  You can do it.

As I stated in my last post, the next series of posts will elaborate on the approach and tools presented in each of the chapters of Reading. Accordingly, this post provides some perspective on Chapter 1 and, because of the introductory nature of and method employed in Chapter 1, on the entire approach of the book.

There are many ways to analyze an argumentative text.  It would be foolish for anyone to claim that one of these methods is the “right” one and that all of the others are more or less incorrect.  Each method is more or less easy to use, reveals more or less of the meaning of a text, and, perhaps, uncovers different kinds of meaning in a text. 

The method that Reading advocates¸ which I believe is the most efficient and productive method, is one in which you are continuously asking questions directly of the text to extract its meaning.  These questions include, for example: 

• Does the author really say X (where X may be any statement, e.g., that the Civil War was fought to end slavery, or that human activity is driving species to extinction at an unprecedented rate)?
• If so, where?
• If he doesn’t expressly say X, is X implied by what the author does write?
• If X is not expressly stated in the text and not implied by anything in the text, did the author mean to communicate X?
• What does the author mean by Y (where Y may be any statement, e.g., that liberty and equality are incompatible, or that paying a person to make an organ donation is immoral)?
• Is my interpretation of Y consistent with other statements the author expressly makes?
• And so on.

Those sorts of questions allow you to understand the meaning the author is attempting to convey – what the author’s argument is and is not, whether that argument is valid or invalid, how the statements in the argument relate to the nonargumentative statements in the text, and so on. 

When you are engaged with an argumentative text in this direct fashion, it is helpful to have tools to guide and assist your efforts. Having the right tools for the job will make your reading more efficient, productive, and enjoyable.  So, what are those “right tools for the job”?    

Some college rhetoric, reading, and writing textbooks ask you to pigeon-hole a part of a sentence, a complete sentence, or a text as a whole into a theoretical model more or less directly related the actual words and meaning of the text.  Consider, for example, the following:

• Some writing textbooks and online sources on writing college papers make Stephen Toulmin’s theory of argumentation a centerpiece of their pedagogy. Following Toulmin, they instruct you to write and analyze texts by asking whether sentences or parts of sentences in the text fall into one of these six categories:  claim, grounds (or evidence), warrant, backing, qualifier (or modality), and rebuttal. 
• One textbook employs a theory of signs and instructs readers to analyze texts in terms of a sign, signals, and signification, where only the sign is “overt” (metaphorically, the part of the iceberg that is above the surface of the water) and signals and signification are “covert” (metaphorically, the part of the iceberg that is below the surface of the water) causes or reasons for the sign. 
• Finally, rhetorical analyses traditionally have begun by asking whether the text is deliberative (political) and focused on future action, or forensic (judicial) and focused on past actions and events, or epideictic (ceremonial) and focused on praising or blaming in the present.  And such analyses also traditionally have focused on three means of persuasion, namely, appeals to the character of the speaker (ethos), to the emotions of the audience (pathos), or to evidence and reasoning (logos).

I need not belabor the point with additional examples.

Each of these theory-ladened methods can be useful in analyzing texts and determining what an author means.  When any one of them is productive for your understanding a text, or a particular type of text, then by all means employ it. 

Bear in mind, however, that for every goal you have, for every task you set out to accomplish, some tools are better suited than others.  You can’t win a football game with a baseball and you can’t cook a delicious dinner with motor oil.  The analytic tools I present in Reading are designed to guide your direct engagement with argumentative texts by focusing on the principal sources of meaning of such texts with no unnecessary theoretical distractions or obstacles between you and the text. 

If you have read, or are reading, Reading, you may be asking yourself, “well, the book spends a fair amount of time on arguments – what an argument is; the relation of premises and conclusion; the four principal types of arguments; enthymemes; fallacies; and so on – and isn’t all of that just a theoretical sideshow that the reader has to slog through to get to the meaning of a text?”  In brief, “isn’t Reading just as “theory-ladened” as any other rhetoric, writing, or critical reading textbook?” 

The discussion of arguments in Reading is intended to provide you with the appropriate conceptual tools you need to successfully understand the meaning of an argumentative text.  You can think of these tools as constituting a “theory” – a coherent conceptual framework.  Or you can simply view them as a bundle of tools that will help you overcome some of the traditional challenges to understanding the meaning of texts.  In either case, these tools are relatively simple to use and understand and don’t come with unnecessary and distracting theoretical baggage.  They are time-honored, going back to at least Aristotle’s works from 2300 years ago.  And they are essential – you may miss much of the meaning an author is trying to communicate without them. 

Suppose you want to plant a large tree.  You need to dig a hole.  What are the most suitable tools for the job?  You probably can dig a big enough hole with your hands, but it will take you weeks, be very frustrating, and will be some of the hardest work you’ve ever done, if you finish the job at all.  You can bring in a bulldozer, front-loader, and lots of heavy equipment, but unless your tree is massive, that’s overkill.  Having a shovel, pick, and other hand tools fit to the task will allow you to get the job done efficiently and with satisfaction, without broken fingernails and cuts on your hands and without torn up grass and rental fees from the heavy equipment.    

The analytic tools in Reading are like that shovel, pick, and the rest of the hand tools you need to dig the hole and plant the tree.  Without them, your reading of texts may be shallow, unenlightening, and more work than fun. With them, you can dig into an argumentative text in a productive fashion so you can understand more of what the author is trying to communicate.  They assist and guide your intellect in directly engaging with the words and meaning of a text without the overkill of unnecessary theory. They lead to improved understanding, which is good in itself and good because it is empowering.  

Since the publication of my book, I have been asked by several students and teachers, “what’s in it?” “what parts of it would be helpful to my students in my critical reading (or rhetoric) class?” and the like. To answer these and similar questions, I am posting an annotated Table of Contents for the book.  In subsequent posts, I will discuss each of these chapters and sections in more detail.

Annotated Table of Contents

Preface

This book is an introduction to the tools that allow you to better analyze and understand the meaning of nonfiction texts that assert arguments.  These texts include newspaper editorials, speeches, sermons, and scholarly essays and books. 

This book will benefit anyone, of any age, who wants to better understand the meanings of nonfiction argumentative texts.  Its principal audience is students in late high school or early college writing, rhetoric, critical thinking, and critical reading courses. 

Chapter 1.  Introduction

A. Arguments and the Writings that Make Them

The discussion begins with a simple example — an eight-sentence smart-phone text.  We analyze its argumentative and non-argumentative elements.  We next analyze part of an essay on the decimation of bird populations.  The discussion of these examples introduces the concepts of practical arguments and theoretical arguments, and the difference between them.

In addition, these examples teach that the meaning of an argumentative text is to be found in not only in the statements that constitute the argument, but also in those statements in the text that are not part of the argument, and in the relations between the argumentative and non-argumentative parts.

B. Purpose and Method:  Where Are We Going and How Are We Going to Get There?

This is a general overview of the purpose of the book:  to provide practical and flexible tools to better analyze and understand the meaning of argumentative texts.  These tools include tips, concepts, and strategies by which to analyze a text.  These tools are practical and flexible, in contrast to a rules-based approach or a loose “any-reading-that feels-right” approach. 

The tools do not rely on or employ technical terms from theories of psychology, communication, or any other academic discipline.  The approach throughout is to engage the reader directly with the text, and not to interpose any academic theory (or theories) between the reader and the text. 

C. Meaning

The principal sources of meaning of an argumentative text that we will examine in this book are:  (a) the structure of the text, (b) key sentences, phrases, and words, (c) context, and (d) the logical connections between terms.  Other sources of meaning (e.g., the use of nondeclarative sentence forms such as imperatives) are also discussed to illuminate how they impart meaning to a text.

D. Hold On to This Thought

It is noteworthy that two very different Americans, from different racial, religious, and cultural backgrounds – Ralph Waldo Emerson and Malcolm X – have expressed very similar views of the benefits of reading.  If two people from such different backgrounds find reading of great value, that’s worth thinking about.

Chapter 2.  Reading Is Not a Spectator Sport

A. Watching the Game vs. Playing the Game

Reading is an activity, not a spectator sport.  Think of it as a dialogue between the reader and the author.

B. Reading As a Dialogue

The book employs a hypothetical dialogue on the death penalty to illustrate how reading an argumentative text to understand its meaning is similar to engaging in a dialogue with a friend, where the interlocutor’s questions cause the friend’s position to change or become more refined.  Reading for understanding is a matter of always asking the next question to refine one’s own understanding of the meaning of the text so as to pin down the author’s meaning as far as the text will permit. 

Chapter 3.  Why Are You Reading?

Every activity has a purpose.  We discuss three principal purposes of reading.  This book is about the first of these.

A. Reading to Understand

Understanding an argument means knowing the answers to two questions:  (1) what does the author know (what is his conclusion/thesis) and (2) how does he know it (what are his premises)?  Answering those questions typically involves analyzing the entire text and interpreting its parts.  Understanding the meaning of an argumentative text requires, in addition, knowing the meaning the author intends to communicate through those parts of the text that are not part of the argument and how those parts relate to the argument.

Because reading is an art, within a zone of reasonableness, there is no one, authoritative reading of a text, only better or worse readings.  I discuss ways a reading can be outside of the zone of reasonableness.

Use initial critical reactions to a text as a way of gaining greater understanding of the author’s meaning (“do not dictate to your author; try to become him”).  Understanding a text before reaching any final critical judgment of it is essential. 

B. Reading to Obtain Information

Reading to obtain factual information is distinguished from reading for understanding

C. Reading to Become Wise

Being wise, however that may be characterized, is the task of a lifetime.  Knowing how to analyze argumentative texts is different from reading to become wise, but it is one way to begin down that path. 

Chapter 4.   Arguments:  A Closer Look

This chapter takes a closer look at what arguments are and are not.

A. Two Myths About Arguments

Two myths are debunked in order to better clarify what can count as an argument. 

Myth 1: the conclusion of an argument must be a subjective opinion.

Myth 2: the conclusion of an argument must be a statement that can be proven true or false.

B. Deductive and Inductive Arguments

The distinction between deductive and inductive arguments is discussed through a series of examples. 

Four broad argument types are identified:  deductive-theoretical, deductive-practical; inductive-theoretical, inductive-practical.

C. Arguments:  Valid and Invalid, Strong and Weak

1. Deductive Arguments:  Valid or Invalid

This is a discussion of how deductive arguments are valid or invalid, illustrated through many examples.

2. Inductive Arguments:  Strong or Weak

This is a discussion of how inductive arguments are strong or weak, illustrated through many examples.

D. Enthymatic Arguments:  Meaning What He Did Not Write

“Enthymeme” is defined.  Sometimes we can understand what an author wrote only by assuming premises in her argument that she did not actually write.

E. Argumentative Texts and Other Nonfiction Texts

Argumentative texts are distinguished from four other types of nonfiction texts through examples.  Each of these four types are discussed through examples.

1. Expository Writing
2. Descriptive Writing
3. Explanatory Writing
4. Rhetorical Writing

Chapter 5.   Every Person Has a Skeleton, Every Argument Has a Structure

Every argumentative text has a beginning (an introduction), a middle, and an end.  This chapter discusses six types of introductions.  Many examples from the mass media and scholarly works are used to illustrate the points made in this chapter.

A. Introductions – They Come in Various Shapes and Forms

1. Here’s the Destination and the Road Map to Get There
2. The Subject Variation on the Road Map
3. Asking a Question (Stating a Problem)
4. The Anecdotal Introduction
5. Let’s Get Right to the Point
6. Just the Facts, Ma’am, Just the Facts

Chapter 6.  What Does the Skeleton Look Like?  Outlines and Summaries

The structure of a text is one source of its meaning.  Outlines are an important aid to understanding the meaning of an argumentative text because they reveal structure.  Specifically, outlines reveal the relationship of the principal premises to each other, the relation of those premises to supporting evidence, the relation of the parts of the text that constitute the argument and those that are not part of the argument, and the reasons why those non-argumentative parts may be included within the text. 

A. Outlines

This section undertakes detailed analyses of two complete argumentative texts written for mass audiences.  The discussions of these texts include:  (a) stating the thesis, (b) an outline of the text, and (c) restatements of the argument of the text, which are not the same as the outline. 

1. An Opinion Piece on Studying Latin

This is an essay from the PBS NewsHour encouraging listeners (readers) to study Latin.

2. An Opinion Piece on Voting Rights

This is an essay from Newsweek online favoring lowering the voting age to 16 years old.

B. Summaries:  The Big Picture in a Nutshell

This is a discussion of what should be included in a good summary and the point of doing a summary.

C. What’s the Point?

Further remarks on why two outlines or two summaries may differ from each other, and why that is not a problem but an opportunity.  Use those differences as a starting point for further inquiry into the meaning of an argumentative text.

Chapter 7.  Ambiguity and Nonliteral Uses of Language

Outlines and summaries are analyses of the meaning of a text from 20,000 feet.  With this chapter we turn to the analysis of particular words, phrases, and sentences to extract the meaning of a text. 

A. Two Kinds of Ambiguity

Semantic ambiguity (arising from the meanings of a word or phrase) is distinguished from syntactic ambiguity (arising from sentence structure).

  B. Three Nonliteral (i.e., non-factual) Uses of Language.  

1. Normative Statements: Values Are Not Facts

The distinction between factual and normative statements is discussed through the examination of passages of a book addressing the justness of punishment and a brief argumentative essay on surrogacy.   

2. Irony:  Saying What You Do Not Mean

Irony is common and yet sometimes not well understood or not readily recognized by readers.  Many examples illustrate irony.

3. Rhetoric

The book approaches rhetoric as the use of words to persuade the reader (or listener) to act or to have a certain belief, not through logical arguments (or not principally through these), but through appeals to emotions, feelings, or shared values (pathos), or to the character or reputation of the writer (or speaker) (ethos). 

Chapter 8.  Context Imparts Meaning

Context is an important source of the meaning of an argumentative text.  This chapter discusses how five types of context do this.  

A. Intellectual Context

Most argumentative texts are responses to arguments made by other authors on a question or subject matter.  They are part of an ongoing, multi-person dialogue, which is the intellectual context of the text you are reading.

B. Social, Political, and Cultural Context

Social, political, and cultural contexts tend to be more diffuse and more amorphous than intellectual context.  The author may be:  (a) addressing a perceived social, political, or cultural issue without expressly addressing the arguments of any other author or school of thought or (b) echoing his readers’ understanding of their social, political, or cultural environment to give deeper meaning to his arguments.

C. Physical Environment as Context

An author’s beliefs about the physical environment (e.g., the environment of generals on a battlefield) may be a source of meaning for a text.

Chapter 9.  The ABC’s of Logic

This chapter presents a minimal introduction to common fallacies and necessary and sufficient conditions.  The chapter is intended to give students some more formal tools for analyzing arguments and to point them to further tools available from other sources. 

A. Informal Logic:  Common Fallacies

Five common fallacies are discussed and illustrated through examples:  (a) equivocation, (b) begging the question, (c) non sequitur, (d) ad hominem attacks, and (e) ignorance.

B. Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

Many errors and/or ambiguity in argumentation are the result of the failure to understand these concepts.  They are discussed and illustrated through many examples.

Chapter 10.  Conclusion        

            Here I offer a few concluding remarks on what this book has covered and some thoughts for further reflection.