Color-Coded Sample Arguments

Relate the following sample arguments to the Toulmin model. Identify the author's claim, evidence, warrant (usually implied), and backing if it is present in the argument. List any reservations to the claim if they are also present in the argument. Decide what additional information is needed to make the argument stronger.

1. You will learn a lot from professor Jones. His students all provide glowing evaluations of his lectures.To learn a lot means to remember topics from a lecture and to see connections among ideas, develop critical questions at appropriate times, discern valuable information from "entertainment."
2. Epidemiological studies look for statistical correlations between exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) and certain diseases and physical disorders.Of 77 such studies between 2001 and 2008, slightly over 70 percent suggest that EMF exposure increases the incidence the following conditions: cancer, especially leukemia and brain tumors; miscarriage; stress and depression; and learning disabilities (Lee et al. 12-28; Pinsky 155-215).
3. We should not legalize recreational drugs such as marijuana and ecstasy. Such illegal recreational drugs are strongly correlated with violence and other crimes.Public safety is more important than freedom of choice.
4. All immigrants should be allowed to come into the United States because immigration has benefited the U.S. economy in the past. Now, as in the past, immigrants are willing to perform necessary low-paying jobs that American citizens do not want, particularly in-service areas.Census statistics demonstrate that over 40 percent of service and routine production jobs in large urban areas are held by recent immigrants.
5. Sub-Saharan Africa has just over 10% of the world's population, but is home to more than 60% of all people living with HIV.We need to increase U.S. funding of AIDs education of people in sub-Saharan Africa. If we do so, it will greatly reduce the number of AIDs casesunless those infected and high-risk groups are not willing and able to respond correctly to AIDs education.

Now it's your turn!

Instructions

Type your answers in the spaces below. Don't just copy and paste the parts of the argument; instead, summarize the information your own words. NOTE: Some arguments do not contain all parts of the Toulmin model. At minimum, each argument contains a claim, evidence, and a warrant. It's your job to find them!

1. The government should prohibit the manufacture and sale of cigarettes. Substantial medical evidence has demonstrated that smoking has harmful effects on the health of both the smoker and those exposed to smoking.

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2. We should support affirmative action policies to promote hiring of women engineering faculty. Women comprise 6.9 percent, which is a very tiny proportion of the engineering faculty. Students still have to go a long ways to see a woman teaching in the engineer department. Most all of the engineering students at this university never, ever have a woman professor, a woman associate professor, or even a woman assistant professor teaching them.

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3. A CBC student should be allowed to choose his or her own courses without pre-requisite restrictions or advisement from counselors or parents because such freedom of choice would encourage a student's growth of personal responsibility.

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4. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of Negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system. (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 487-496, May 17, 1954)

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5. One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer I can give to the query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists dedicated to the maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friend, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr[1] has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. ("Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr.)

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