To find out more about how argument is seen in different subjects we asked some postgraduate students to write brief answers to the question, ‘What does
“argument” mean in your subject?’ We asked these students because they are quite experienced writers in their subject, they have recently been undergraduates themselves, and are now thinking hard about what it means to become an authority in their subject. As you will see, their ideas and ways of writing about argument demonstrate how different subjects present the world and make knowledge differently. At the same time, there were common themes in what they said:
• argument as a piece of writing that is ‘coherent’ with its parts clearly con- nected to each other, what many call a ‘logical flow’;
• argument as the presentation of a case, or as examining ‘both sides’ of a case;
• argument as logically connected writing;
• argument as a ‘thesis’ with supporting evidence and reasons.
These general points are a useful basis for you to think about argument in your own writing.
It is interesting to compare the tutor comments in Chapter 3 with what the students thought: the tutors talked about ‘what I look for in a student’s essay’
while the students are trying to work out for themselves what they need to do and how their subject works.
Below are some examples of what the students wrote. Please note that these are just examples of what individual students who were thinking about their own work had to say. They are interesting and useful for you to think about and to compare with each other but are not to be taken as standardized directions for how to write.
Psychology: two students
I mostly think of argument when I write essays with the word ‘discuss’ in it. Then we are expected to take one side of the argument and provide relevant evidence and then take the other side of the argument. We are discouraged from writing about arguments in lab reports because it becomes too opinionated and it is merely meant to be a report and study of a specific experiment.
This student points out that ‘argument’ is only relevant in some situations. In others, it is a question of just reporting or sometimes ‘explaining’ rather than
‘making a case’.
From my experience of reading psychological journals, much time is spent on replicating past studies and a means for validating or refuting past conclusions. These experimenters then use ‘hard’ evidence to strongly defend their personal perspectives and fight off arguments presented by other researchers within the similar field.
Here, argument is seen as a kind of contest between two opposing sides who have to be ’fought off’, which is more like the everyday sense of the term.
History
The idea of argument or thesis is quite central to my subject’s rationale for its own evidence; interpretation and engagement with the work of others is widely viewed as the heart of the distinction between ‘history’
and ‘antiquarianism’. Most historians would say that a work’s argument MAKING AN ARGUMENT AND PERSUADING YOUR READER 93
should be explicit and should have a central thread upon which the rest of the content should hang, although how often they follow this instruction is perhaps open to question.
Notice this writer’s uncertainty about how far ‘this instruction’ to ‘have a central thread’ is actually followed. Sometimes tutors may give their students advice that they do not follow themselves. This is partly because often an argument does not present itself fully formed to the reader or even to the writer but has to be built up in the course of writing. It may also be because writers may be doing other things in the course of their writing. In the case of history, for example, they can spend time recounting, constructing a story of ‘what happened’.
History/Philosophy
Constructing an argument for a historical piece of work is somewhat dif- ferent from an argument for a philosophical piece. Let’s say that an argument in both disciplines is logically derived from a premise and the same goes for a negation of the thesis. However, history is confined to the available sources whereas philosophy rather depends on the logical representation.
This student compares their experience of writing history and philosophy and suggests that ‘supporting a premise’ may be quite different in the two disciplines. They suggest that philosophy relies on reasoning and logic, history more on what is known already.
Biological physics
In my subject, argument means the ability to create a believable theory, which is supported by hard data. I imagine this is easier than other discip- lines because it is easier to defend yourself when you are backed up by quantifiable repeatable results. It can also be more difficult as you have to place your argument in the context of previous work and results, which may contradict those which you find. Argument is never directly personal.
Argument is purely a process of translating specific data into a reasonable scenario (consistent with known phenomena).
This student compares the ‘evidence’ of science with other subjects and also stresses how the subject is meant to be impersonal.
Law
An argument is an answer to a question – in law it often concerns a nor- mative opinion that one must agree or disagree with (or a part thereof) and
justify that agreement or otherwise. It involves typically an analysis of an area of law that says what it is, how it is. At the end you have to state your opinion but never develop an original position.
The statement that you must ‘never develop an original position’ is interesting and might come as a surprise to students working in some other disciplines.
Sciences
Summarizing the diversity of corroborating or opposing theories or experimental data on a particular topic; discussing which author agrees with who, and if they disagree, on what grounds – data or interpretation.
You need to be as balanced as possible in your presentation of the two or more sides before probably summing up the essence of the argument (or main points of contention) and declaring which you find most convincing. In science, you need to be balanced but not in law.
Note that this student claims to be able to speak for sciences in general and to compare sciences with law. However, this view is different from that of the law student, above, who writes about the academic study of law. This science student seems to refer to a court of law where a barrister has to try to persuade a jury by using a mix of fact and persuasion. This view of argument as making and trying to win a case through persuasive argument is nearer to our everyday meaning of ‘having an argument’, as well as what goes on in courts of justice. Although the idea of making a strong case also often underlies academic writing requirements, the writer is always expected to be ‘balanced’
in presenting different viewpoints even when she or he ends up on one side.
This student went on to introduce a sense of argument that is more like a
‘story’ (as we suggest in Chapter 6):
Presenting your material in a particular sequence – perhaps in a historical piece detailing the development of a theory or resolution of a controversy, e.g. Darwinian selection in 1860s to 1880s.
Another science student wrote about argument as ‘the journey of your essay’, with a ‘logical flow’ and a ‘thread of a sort between parts’. Yet another wrote in an amusing way about how scientists are supposed to build on others’
work to make a new claim:
I would say that an ‘argument’ in science has to reflect both sides: while Vile and Calumny 1996 say that so and so happens, Veracity and Truth 1998 say that this and that happens. Our results agree with Veracity and Truth but extend the boundaries of their supposition. In the Ideal World, the scientific argument would be an evidence-based rationale, MAKING AN ARGUMENT AND PERSUADING YOUR READER 95
i.e. ‘. . . from what we have found out and from what we already know, then we think that the following is happening.’
However, argument is now driven by hypothesis, and so has become more subjective, i.e. ‘ . . . from what we already know we have the follow- ing idea. We will perform a series of experiments that we believe will give evidence to the support of that idea.’
Finally, there is the popular definition of argument – an altercation.
This is usually conducted via publications, utilizing refutations and counter-refutations (a lengthy process but polite), or at meetings (which is usually a shorter and more brutish process).
Here we see the familiar statement that a student writer needs a strong idea with supporting evidence. This statement ends by referring back to the
‘popular’ idea of argument as a ‘quarrel’, mockingly suggesting that academics also engage in this kind of argument.
English
The argument of an essay in English Literature need not necessarily make or rehearse an argument for or against a particular position or inter- pretation, though it might do this – it might attempt to make a case for a new reading, or demolish an existing piece of criticism. Very good literary- critical essays can be primarily analytical and descriptive, demonstrating how a particular piece of writing works, or how a writer thinks or feels;
but an essay of this type would still need a coherent structure, a clear connection of its materials and a consequentiality (one thing following another) in the remarks made about them. This discursive movement might be called an argument, although it would not necessarily be argu- mentative; so that ‘argument’ is perhaps just the word conventionally used about a critical essay where one would use ‘form’ about a literary work. From another angle, and on the analogy of the prose ‘Arguments’
prefixed to each book of Paradise Lost, one might say that the argument of an essay is a statement of its paraphrasable content, a summary or abstract, a narrative reduction. To answer the question ‘What is your argument?’ would thus entail telling a little story about the material you proposed to discuss and the position you took towards it.
This English student points to his belief that writing about literature is quite different from other disciplinary writing. Yet, the need to make a case is still strongly present. The idea of argument as ‘story’ makes an appearance here too.
Linguistics
The term argument I feel is used very briefly in linguistics for a very broad range. For example, each paragraph in an essay needs to be its own argument in the whole essay, which is an argument itself. Within an argument evidence from other linguists is needed, often empirical evidence or citations from other linguists is needed but both sides need to be presented.
Critically an argument must give both sides of the coin and argue for which you believe using empirical evidence. In linguistics you must be able to show the various ideas people have about certain subjects such as morphosyntax and morphology and be able to explain and critique both, arguing within the explanation for and against the ideas. Argument is a very complex idea.
The linguistics student notes the complexity of the idea of argument. At the same time, for this student both writing and building up an argument is a very systematic process with the observation that each paragraph can, in itself, be a mini argument.
Activity Twenty
Now that you have read these comments, look back at what you have written for Activity Nineteen about an argument in your own subject (or one of the subjects you are studying) and then compare your own thinking with what these students have to say. You may now want to add to your own thoughts.