Support: Reasoning and Persuasion

Being a student means writing a considerable amount of papers for many classes. This includes me in a discourse community with other students and, consequently, with other writers. When writing, I need to find methods and attractions to interest my readers to read, to finish reading, and to be convinced with my proposal. I usually tend to be very logical in my proposals and analysis. My ideal thinking is when something makes sense to me; it should make sense to many others. Yet, this way of thinking doesn’t always work because humans are driven by many other things beside their thinking and understanding. People in general, and my audience in specific, might be driven by emotions, illogical thinking, or biased thinking due to external factors. Using logical approach helps me create credibility and authority. I usually follow Toulmin logic by creating a claim, grounds of data, warrants, backing, modal qualifiers, and rebuttals. This logic flows in order to establish my proposal with support to convince my readers. I am familiar with most of the forms mentioned in Laib’s capter 15 in page 294-297. Some fo these forms are new and interesting to know, such as arguing from history or from standard practices, arguing from relative advantage, and arguing from laws principles and ideology. I can use these forms arguing about my research about immigration. These forms can be implemented to argue, reasonably, about the immigration trends to the United States.

Readers need to be persuaded to follow the array of my argument in order for me to reach my goal of writing to them and convincing them. Persuasion plays a major role in rhetorical writing. Persuasion supports the writer’s proposal and provides evident and examples. Yet, the writer should be smart and cautious when choosing these examples. The support for an article should be derived from respectful and trusted sources, such as organizations, respected citizens, and experts in subject matter. Laib mentions these strategies in chapter 15. Some of these tactics are recognizable to me throughout my writings. Some of them are new and quite interesting, such as citing analogies and using representations in place of arguments. I was never introduced to such tactics in persuasion and I believe they can be very useful in my research paper about immigration. The immigration issue is a sensitive, emotional issue for many people and my audience for such paper is rather broad. Using these strategies will help me prove my points and associate them with real life, respected examples. Although I tend to use logic in my arguments, I believe using a persuasive style can be very effective in this research. I specifically enjoyed the “ideal cases and ironies as support” because I like to draw attention to ironies as a breaker of every rule.