Chapter 1 Activity

 

Directions

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

 

Directions:

Get into the group you are assigned and answer the following questions. When you've concluded your discussion, you will share your work with the class.

Part 1

If everything's an argument, that includes newspaper headlines. For each of the following online newspapers, choose three different headlines (along with their brief accompanying teasers) and state what exactly those headlines are aruging.

 

Part 2

Using the online newspapers listed above, find an example of an epideictic argument, a deliberative argument, and a forensic argument. Then, explain why you classify each example as you did.

 

Part 3 (Take-home activity)

Stasis theory helps rhetoricians systematically discover a point of disagreement. You can also classify arguments by considering their stasis or the point of contention. Your text identifies four common types of arguments and then suggests how statis theory can help you understand them. They are:

  • Arguments of Fact: Did something happen?
  • Arguments of Definition: What is the nature of the thing?
  • Arguments of Evaluation: What is the quality of the thing?
  • Proposal arguments: What actions should be taken?

Find two very different examples of one of these types of arguments in any of the online newspapers listed above. Then, explain why, despite their differences, your two examples still qualify as the same type of argument.

 

Activity adapted from Everything's an Argument, pg. 19, and M.W. Zoetewey

 

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