Sometimes, the warrant is implicit not directly stated , but the warrant can be stated directly as well.
As a writer, you are making assumptions about what your audience already believes, so you have to think about how clear your warrant is and if you need to state it directly for your audience. You must also think about whether or not a warrant is actually an unproven claim. Being distracted by texting on a cell phone while driving a car is dangerous and causes accidents.
Backing The backing gives additional support for the claim by addressing different questions related to your claim. With greater fines and more education about the consequences, people might think twice about texting and driving.
Qualifier The qualifier is essentially the limits to the claim or an understanding that the claim is not true in all situations. Qualifiers add strength to claims because they help the audience understand the author does not expect her or his opinion to be true all of the time or for her or his ideas to work all of the time. There should be more laws to regulate texting while driving in order to cut down on some of the dangerous car accidents that happen each year.
Rebuttal The rebuttal is when the author addresses the opposing views. The author can use a rebuttal to pre-empt counter arguments, making the original argument stronger. Although police officers are busy already, making anti-texting laws a priority saves time, money, and lives.
Local departments could add extra staff to address this important priority. Attributions [Stephen Toulmin photograph]. Forgot your password? Lost your password? For example, eating too much sugar is the cause of numerous health conditions. Warrant Based on Authority: An indication that something is true because an authority or group of authorities affirms it. Warrant Based on Principle: An agreed-upon value or rule applied to a specific scenario.
For example, parents should love their children is a widely-shared value. Backing or refuting that this value should apply to a specific parent in question might be the goal of an attorney in a criminal trial. Warrants are important because if your audience does not accept your warrant, they are not likely to accept your argument. Warrants can be questioned, which is why they often require backing.
Support for the warrant. It might take the form of a well-reasoned argument or sub-argument that directly strengthens the warrant. To strengthen your warrant, you might give additional evidence that shows that the causal relationship is not really just a simple correlation.
Counterarguments to your claim. Situations where your claim does not hold true. This may also include your response to the counterargument. The degree of certainty in your argument. I spend much more time and money to maintain a lawn in Fort Collins than I did in Ohio--and my lawn here is only one-third of my Ohio lawn. If I could afford it, I could hire this service done. So let's add that up: the chemical pesticides and herbicides; the fertilizer; the water; the cost of a mower, gas, and its maintenance; and hoses which constantly sprout leaks, get chewed up by the dog, or run over by the mower or factor in the more expensive irrigation system.
Consider this:. I can think of plenty of other things I'd rather do with this money and time. I am probably not alone in thinking there has to be a better way. It is well past time that Coloradoans gave up their old-fashioned Eastern lawns for landscaping that makes sense in the West.
So why aren't we hearing about alternatives from the lawn care industry? Because they have a lot to lose--billions of our dollars. Since the cost of maintaining an alternative is so low, lawn care experts have no stake in keeping us informed about more appropriate species or in making them easy to obtain. We get most of our information about lawn care and gardening from the lawn care industry itself.
This is a conflict of interest. Most of the varieties of plants stocked in local nurseries require a lot of care and water to thrive. However, low-maintenance varieties are available and we can get the information we need to make good choices. We would do better to call our county extension office for information on species suitable to our area. In Fort Collins, an agent, referred to as a master gardener, can be reached at They have been advocating alternative landscaping for some time.
The most impartial information comes from sources that do not stand to gain monetarily from our choice. The Coloradoan 's real estate section reprinted an article on landscaping from Popular Mechanics that stated, "Turf grasses are the foundation of every landscape plan, even when part of the plan is to reduce the percentage of grass in your yard.
The only worthwhile suggestion here is to avoid traditional, short-root bluegrass varieties. These traditional turf grasses are notorious for their susceptibility to diseases and their reliance on huge quantities of water. If Fort Collins nurseries do not stock alternative types of seeds, they can be ordered and are comparable in price to other lawn seeds.
To spare the expense of putting in a whole new lawn, these seeds can be used to overseed and to repair bare patches. In this way, they will gradually fill in and reseed themselves. Hardy trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and flowers that require almost no attention once they are established can be a beautiful alternative to turf, or a lovely compliment to smaller areas of an appropriate variety of turf.
Flowers and shrubs that thrive in desertlike conditions and still produce beautiful foliage and blooms are available in local garden stores. The key is to plan, get good information, and choose plants appropriate to our region. A hardy groundcover like Snow-on-the-Mountain will take over an area in a season or two and requires no maintenance to achieve a carpet of variegated green foliage. Flowers like cosmos and dianthus thrive on poor soil and dry conditions to produce their delicate and colorful blooms throughout the spring and summer growing season.
There are many beautiful wildflower mixes that do well in the Rocky Mountain West. The cost of switching to less hungry and thirsty landscaping can quickly be made up in the cost saved on water and maintenance. Initial costs can be kept to a minimum by overseeding with these new types of grass seeds, seeding bare patches with them, and letting them take hold gradually. Lawn space can gradually be shrunk and given over to heat and drought-resistant varieties of flowers, trees, shrubs, and groundcovers.
These new plants can be bought with the money saved from not having to buy chemicals and water. Choosing varieties that are perennial or that reseed themselves will also keep cost and maintenance to a minimum. With a little thought, planning, and creativity, we who live in Fort Collins can have beautiful landscapes that serve as restful retreats for ourselves and our families without the cost and the effort of trying to maintain an Eastern water-hungry lawn in the arid West.
Bormann, Herbert F. Redesigning the American Lawn. Bucks, Christine. Meyer, Scott. Our first step in the Toulmin Method is to identify the claim. In the case of this argument, the claim is stated in a very general way, then is elaborated on throughout the essay. Therefore, there is no particular point in the essay where the writer states her claim in full.
However, the general statement of the claim could be said to come at the beginning of paragraph 2, where the writer argues, "It is time for us to rethink our landscaping practices. Having identified and paraphrased the claim in paragraph 2 as, "It is time for us to rethink our landscaping practices," the next step in the Toulmin Method is to examine this claim to see if the writer uses any qualifiers--words like "some," "many," "most of the time," etc.
In this case, there are no such qualifiers. It can sometimes be damaging to an argument to omit qualifiers, particularly if there are also no exceptions provided. It is up to you as a reader to determine whether the writer's unqualified claim is damaging to this particular argument. After looking for qualifying words in the claim, the next step is to determine what the writer considers to be the situations in which her claim doesn't apply.
In other words, it is necessary to identify any exceptions she makes to her claim. In her argument, although she does not mention explicitly any exceptional situations, her claim implies one. Collins, Colorado perhaps who are interested in landscaping. Then if we look at the introductory paragraph of the essay, we see that she has described two landscaping situations: one in her home state of Ohio, and one in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she now lives.
From all of this, we can assume that the writer intends for her argument to apply primarily to lawns in the West, and that by implication she excludes from her argument lawns in other parts of the country, where conditions are different.
Once you have identified and examined the claim for qualifiers and exceptions , the next step in the Toulmin Method is to identify and examine the reasons which support this claim. In the case of this essay, two of the reasons are given in the same breath as the general claim "It is time for us to rethink our landscaping practices" in the second paragraph. The sentence which follows this claim is, "In our arid Western climate and poor soil, the traditional lawn takes too much water, time, and harmful chemicals to maintain," and it implies two of the three reasons that the writer will address in the essay.
The third reason the writer will address is this: Maintaining the traditional lawn is unnecessary, since varieties of grass that are more appropriate to the West and "less hungry and thirsty," as the writer says in paragraph 14 are readily available.
Click on the reasons below to see where they occur in the example argument. In reading on from paragraph 2 to paragraph 3 of the essay, we see that the first reason the writer addresses is the question of harm. At the beginning of paragraph 3, she broaches this question in the following way: "In Fort Collins, we must use herbicides when growing these foreign turfs. We have identified Reason One as "In Fort Collins, we must use herbicides [which, by implication, are harmful] when growing these foreign turfs [like Kentucky bluegrass].
When examining this reason, it is first necessary to ask the question, "Is it relevant to the claim it attempts to support? After determining that Reason One is indeed relevant to the argument's claim, we may go on to determine whether or not it is effective or "good". In other words, does the reason invoke a value that most people most importantly, you as a reader can believe in and accept? In this case, the reason, having to do with the danger of herbicides to the environment and to people, invokes the reader's fear and distaste of such harm.
This may or may not seem like an effective reason to you, and if it doesn't, then this is something to remember when you complete your analysis of this argument. However, we might predict that most readers would probably feel some kind of fear or distaste for the kinds of harm that the writer refers to, thus making this an effective reason.
In providing a bridge from Reason One to Reason Two, the writer draws on what we will here call Reason Three, paraphrasable as follows: Maintaining the traditional lawn is unnecessary, since varieties of grass that are more appropriate to the West are readily available. After she demonstrates that herbicides are dangerous, the writer shows that this danger is unnecessary, given the existence of buffalo grass and other varieties "that are more resistant to pests, disease, and weeds and better suited to the West" paragraph 5.
She then lists some of the merits of buffalo grass, which are 1 its appropriateness to our region and 2 the fact that it is almost maintenance-free, and therefore economical. This leads the writer directly into her second reason, which has to do with cost.
The writer's second reason, having to do with the cost of traditional landscaping in terms of money and time, is developed in paragraphs For the sake of simplicity, we will paraphrase Reason Two in the following way: "Traditional landscaping is costly in terms of both time and money.
With the exception of these two sentences, the majority of the argument in paragraphs is given to providing evidence to support these statements, as well as in paragraph 8 mentioning the cost of having one's lawn professionally cared for.
We have identified Reason Two as in paraphrased form "Traditional landscaping is costly in terms of both time and money. After determining that Reason Two is indeed relevant to the argument's claim, we may go on to determine whether or not it is effective or "good". In this case, the reason, having to do with the cost in terms of both money and time of maintaining traditional landscaping, invokes the value the reader places on money and time.
However, we might predict that most readers would probably be compelled by an argument that proposes economy of both money and time.
We could argue, therefore, that this is an effective reason. In providing a bridge from Reason Two having to do with various costs of traditional landscaping to Reason Three having to do with the availability of alternative varieties of grasses which are more suited to the West , the writer decides to deal with an objection she anticipates from her audience: "So how come we never hear about these alternative varieties of grasses and their benefits?
As mentioned previously, we might paraphrase the writer's third reason in the following way: Maintaining the traditional lawn is unnecessary, since varieties of grass that are more appropriate to the West are readily available. Although she directly addresses the "availability" question only toward the end of her essay in paragraphs , she refers to alternative varieties of grasses in several areas of the essay. For example, In Paragraph 5: "Varieties of grass that are more resistant to pests, disease, and weeds and better suited to the West make this risk unnecessary.
In paragraphs , however, the writer claims that these alternative varieties do exist and are available to Fort Collins residents, and she offers evidence to back this up. We have identified Reason Three as in paraphrased form "Maintaining the traditional lawn is unnecessary, since varieties of grass that are more appropriate to the West are readily available.
After determining that Reason Three is indeed relevant to the argument's claim, we may go on to determine whether or not it is effective or "good". In this case, the reason, which challenges the necessity of traditional landscaping methods and grasses when alternative ones more appropriate to the West are readily available, invokes the value the reader places on convenience and common sense. However, we might predict that most readers would probably be motivated by a desire to do something that "makes sense" if it is convenient to do so.
Therefore, we might judge this to be an effective reason. Once you have identified and examined the reasons supporting the claim in an argument, your next step is to examine the evidence which, in turn, supports those reasons.
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