Page 51 - 2023-bfw-TLC-4e

In essays you’ll write for this course, the reader is typically your teacher, so you can
2
assume you are writing for an audience that will question not only your claims and your
evidence but also the soundness of your reasoning. Your reader will evaluate the partic-
ular details and specific evidence that support your argument — that is, saying some-
thing is so does not make it so. Overly general, unsupported assertions are at the heart
Argument
of many unsuccessful arguments because they tend to be oversimplified; specific evi-
dence that incorporates particular details, on the other hand, can be quite effective. The
difference, for instance, between terms like car and Subaru; classes and chemistry and
U.S. history; books and Outliers or The Things They Carried; late and four hours late to a
noon lunch is vast. Such differences in word choice clarify statements of fact and can
even suggest distinct tones.

Analyzing Assumptions
As we know, arguments consist of claims and the evidence used to support it. Often,
what lies between a claim and its evidence are assumptions. An assumption is the
understanding that exists between the speaker and the audience. Some assumptions
don’t require explanation or support. For example, if you claim that you should take an
umbrella with you because it is raining, you don’t need to explain that an umbrella will
keep you dry — unless you’re talking to a young child, perhaps. Recall our example of
the umbrella on page 79. If you claim that you should take your jacket with you because
it is raining, you may need to provide the information (also called “backing”) that your
jacket is made of waterproof material.
Let’s look at how assumptions can become arguable claims in a more complex exam-
ple: a 1905 speech by Florence Kelley, an American labor activist and social reformer.

Speech on Child Labor

Florence Kelley

We have, in this country, two million children period (both by percent and by count of heads),
under the age of sixteen years who are earning as does the contingent of girls between twelve
their bread. They vary in age from six and seven and twenty years of age. They are in commerce,
years (in the cotton mills of Georgia) and eight, in offices, in manufacturing.
nine and ten years (in the coal-breakers of Tonight while we sleep, several thousand lit-
Pennsylvania), to fourteen, fifteen and sixteen tle girls will be working in textile mills, all the
years in more enlightened states. No other por- night through, in the deafening noise of the
tion of the wage earning class increased so rap- spindles and the looms spinning and weaving
idly from decade to decade as the young girls cotton and wool, silks and ribbons for us to buy.
from fourteen to twenty years. Men increase, In Alabama the law provides that a child
women increase, youth increase, boys increase under sixteen years of age shall not work in a
in the ranks of the breadwinners; but no contin- cotton mill at night longer than eight hours, and
gent so doubles from census period to census Alabama does better in this respect than any
108

Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample. Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.
03_sheatlc4e_40925_ch02_058_111_4pp.indd 108 8/9/22 2:54 PM