Toulmin
developed his theory of argumentation because of what he viewed as an inherent
problem with formal logic. Put simply, Toulmin recognized what every person
should already know: Real people do not argue in syllogisms. You may remember
from a philosophy class that a syllogism is a form of logical argument.
According to rules of logic, if an audience accepts both the major and minor
premises of a syllogism, they must accept the conclusions. For instance, many
people are familiar with the following example of a syllogism:

• Major Premise: All men are mortal,
• Minor Premise: Socrates was a man,
• Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

Toulmin
realized that this form of argumentation is not what one encounters when
listening to a public speech, arguing with a roommate about what music to
listen to, or talking politics at a bar. Consequently, Toulmin developed his
theory in order to explain how argumentation occurs in the natural process
of everyday argument. Consequently, Toulmin wanted to explain how real
people (not philosophers) argue.

Although
Toulmin’s position on formal logic — that formal rules of logic do not fit
well with common practices of argument — may seem obvious, one must remember
the time period in which Toulmin developed his theory. Students of public
speaking, rhetoric, and logic were only taught formal logic. Using a
contemporary example to illustrate: Students were taught how to program a
computer before they were taught how to click a mouse. When one recognizes the
traditions of the time period, Toulmin’s theory of argument seems even more
revolutionary.

The Toulmin Model of Argument-Basics

Claim

Think
of the claim in an argument as the most general statement in the
argument. It may not be a particularly general statement all by itself,
and some claims for arguments are very narrow. But the claim in an
argument is like the umbrella statement that all other parts of an
argument have to fall under. If a reason (or evidence) doesn’t fall
under the umbrella of the claim, then it’s irrelevant.

Warrants

These are the assumptions or presuppositions underlying the argument.
Warrants are generally accepted beliefs and values, common ways our
culture or society views things; because they are so commonplace,
warrants are almost always unstated and implied. The author and
audience may either share these beliefs, or the author’s warrants may
be in conflict with audience’s generally held beliefs and cultural
norms and values. Warrants are important because they are the "common
ground" of author and audience; shared warrants invite the audience to
participate by unconsciously supplying part of the argument. Warrants
are also important because they provide the underlying reasons linking
the claim and the support. You can infer the warrants by asking,
"What’s causing the author to say the things s/he does?" or "Where’s
the author coming from?"

Data

Data is the information that generates the claim in theory. More often, it is searched for after the claim is provided.

• “the evidence, facts, data, and information that are the
  reason for the claim in the first place- a reasoned beginning” (Ross,
  1985).
• Data is significant because it establishes the
  basis of the argument. In effect, the data is the starting point from
  which all sound arguments must begin.
• Types of Data: Anecdotal, Testimony, Statistics

Rebuttal

The Rebuttal (or Reservation) is an exception to the claim presented by
the arguer. In Toulmin’s model, arguments are not considered to be true
without analysis. The rebuttal demonstrates how arguments can be
strengthened (and made more correct) by acknowledging the limits of the
argument.

Qualifier

The Qualifier is recognition of the rebuttal. After analyzing one’s
argument and acknowledging its limits, the rhetor should signify
his/her new statement with the qualifier statement. Qualifiers are
often words like

• Except
• Unless
• Other than

The Toulmin model is both a method of analyzing the argument of others
and developing the soundness of one’s own argument. A useful technique
to develop sound argument is to run one’s argument through the model
until the claim is true.

Resources

• Downloadable Three Page Handout
• Review Web Site (Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Complete Set)

Terms

• Aesthetics-“Philosophical investigation
  into the nature of beauty and the perception of beauty, especially in
  the arts; the theory of art or artistic taste.”
• Allegory-“A
  story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden
  behind its literal or visible meaning. In written narrative, allegory
  involves a continuous parallel between two (or more) levels of meaning
  in a story, so that its persons and events correspond to their
  equivalents in a system of ideas or a chain of events external to the
  tale.”
• Allusion-An indirect or passing
  reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work, the nature
  and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies o­n
  the reader’s familiarity with what is thus mentioned.
• Ambiguity-A
  statement which can contain two or more meanings. For example, when the
  oracle at Delphi told Croesus that if he waged war o­n Cyrus he would
  destroy a great empire, Croesus thought the oracle meant his enemy’s
  empire. In fact, the empire Croesus destroyed by going to war was his
  own.
• Analogy-A resemblance of relations;
  an agreement or likeness between things in some circumstances or
  effects, when the things are otherwise entirely different.
• Anaphora-repetition
  of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or
  sentences. “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go o­n to the end. We
  shall fight in France.
• Anecdote-A very
  short tale told by a character in a literary work. In Chaucer’s
  “Canterbury Tales,” “The Miller’s Tale” and “The Carpenter’s Tale” are
  examples.
• Antagonist-the character,
  force, or collection of forces in fiction or drama that opposes the
  protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story.
• Anti-hero-a
  protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes
  of a hero. [A character who] may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded,
  or merely pathetic.
• Aphorism-A brief
  statement which expresses an observation o­n life, usually intended as
  a wise observation. Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac”
  contains numerous examples, o­ne of which is Drive thy business; let it not drive thee.

• ---

• Apostrophe-A figure of speech wherein the speaker speaks directly to something nonhuman.
• Archetype-a
  term used to describe universal symbols that evoke deep and sometimes
  unconscious responses in a reader. In literature, characters, images,
  and themes that symbolically embody universal meanings and basic human
  experiences.
• Aside-A device in which a
  character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the
  audience but not by other characters in the play.
• Asyndeton– The omission of a conjunction from a list (‘chips, beans, peas, vinegar, salt, pepper’).
• Canon–
  a Greek word that implies rule or law, and is used in literature as the
  source which regulates which selection of authors or works, would be
  considered important pieces of literature.
• Catharsis-Meaning
  “purgation,” catharsis describes the release of the emotions of pity
  and fear by the audience at the end of a tragedy. In his Poetics,
  Aristotle discusses the importance of catharsis. The audience faces the
  misfortunes of the protagonist, which elicit pity and compassion.
  Simultaneously, the audience also confronts the failure of the
  protagonist, thus receiving a frightening reminder of human limitations
  and frailties.
• Chiasmus– A term from
  classical rhetoric that describes a situation in which you introduce
  subjects in the order A, B, and C, and then talk about them in the
  order C, B, and A.
• Climax-The decisive
  moment in a drama, the climax is the turning point of the play to which
  the rising action leads. This is the crucial part of the drama, the
  part which determines the outcome of the conflict.
• Colloquialism-spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech.
• Comedy -A literary work which is amusing and ends happily. Modern comedies
  tend to be funny, while Shakespearean comedies simply end well.

• ---

• Conceit-A far-fetched simile or metaphor, a literary conceit occurs when the speaker compares two highly dissimilar things.
• Connotation-The emotional implications and associations that words may carry, as distinguished from their denotative meanings.
• Denotation-The basic dictionary meaning of a word, as opposed to its connotative meaning.
• Deus ex machina-An
  unrealistic or unexpected intervention to rescue the protagonists or
  resolve the conflict. The term means “The god out of the machine,” and
  refers to stage machinery.
• Diction-An
  author’s choice of words. Since words have specific meanings, and since
  o­ne’s choice of words can affect feelings, a writer’s choice of words
  can have great impact in a literary work.
• Didactic-A work “designed to impart information, advice, or some doctrine of morality or philosophy.”
• Epigraph-A brief quotation which appears at the beginning of a literary work.
• Epigram–
  A pithy, sometimes satiric couplet or quatrain which was popular in
  classic Latin literature and in European and English literature of the
  Renaissance and the neo-Classical era.
• Epithet-In
  literature, a word of phrase preceding or following a name which serves
  to describe the character. For example, in the Iliad: Zeus-loved
  Achilles.
• Exegesis– Critical interpretation of a text, especially a biblical text; from the Greek ex- + egeisthai meaning “to lead out.

• ---

• Farce-A
  type of comedy based o­n a humorous situation such as a bank robber who
  mistakenly wanders into a police station to hide. It is the situation
  here which provides the humor, not the cleverness of plot or lines.
• Formalism–
  strict observance of the established rules, traditions and methods
  employed in the arts. Formalism can also refer to the theory of art
  that relies heavily o­n the organization of forms in a work rather than
  o­n the content.
• Framing device-A story
  in which o­ne or more other stories are told. Examples include the
  Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and the play at the beginning of the
  Taming of the Shrew.
• Genre-A literary
  genre is a recognizable and established category of written work
  employing such common conventions as will prevent readers or audiences
  from mistaking it [with] another kind.
• Gothic- characterized by gloom and mystery and the grotesque; gothic novels include Frankenstein.
• Homily– An inspirational saying or platitude.
• Hubris–
  a common theme in Greek tragedies and mythology, whose stories often
  featured protagonists suffering from hubris and subsequently being
  punished by the gods for it.
• Hyperbole-A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration is used for deliberate effect.
• Idiom– A specialized vocabulary used by a group of people; jargon or A style or manner of expression peculiar to a given people.
• Imagery–
  the collection of images within a literary work. Used to evoke
  atmosphere, mood, tension. For example, images of crowded, steaming
  sidewalks flanking streets choked with lines of shimmering, smoking
  cars suggests oppressive heat and all the psychological tensions that
  go with it.

• ---

• In media res– in or into the middle of a sequence of events, as in a literary narrative.
• Intentional fallacy-assuming from the text what the author intended to mean.
• Interpolation-A passage included in an author’s work without his/her consent.
• Intertextuality–
  Intertextuality is, thus, a way of accounting for the role of literary
  and extra-literary materials without recourse to traditional notions of
  authorship. A literary work, then, is not simply the product of a
  single author, but of its relationship to other texts and to the
  strucutures of language itself.
• Inversion-reversal of the normal order of words for dramatic effect.
• Irony– A device that depends o­n the existence of at least two separate and contrasting levels of meaning embedded in o­ne message. Verbal irony is sarcasm, when the speaker says something other than what they really mean. In dramatic irony, the audience is more aware than the characters in a work. Situational irony occurs when the opposite of what is expected happens. This type of
  irony often emphasizes that people are caught in forces beyond their
  comprehension and control.
• Litotes– A figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite, as in This is no small problem.
• Magical realism– a literary technique where the disbelief of the reader and writer produces a
• momentary shift in the real world wherein an element of the surreal enters and leaves with ease.”
• Malapropism– is an incorrect usage of a word, usually with comic effect. “He is the very pineapple of politeness.”
• Metaphor–
  a type of figurative language in which a statement is made that says
  that o­ne thing is something else but, literally, it is not. In
  connecting o­ne object, event, or place, to another, a metaphor can
  uncover new and intriguing qualities of the original thing that we may
  not normally notice or even consider important. Metaphoric language is
  used in order to realize a new and different meaning.

• ---

• Metonymy-A
  figure of speech in which a word represents something else which it
  suggests. For example in a herd of fifty cows, the herd might be
  referred to as fifty head of cattle.
• Minimalism- a style of art in which objects are stripped down to their elemental,
  geometric form, and presented in an impersonal manner. In literature,
  minimalists use short descriptions and simple sentences.
• Monologue-thoughts of a single person, directed outward.
• Motif-A
  recurrent image, word, phrase, represented object or action that tends
  to unify the literary work or that may be elaborated into a more
  general theme.
• Naturalism– The term
  naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply
  scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of
  human beings. Unlike realism, which focuses o­n literary technique,
  naturalism implies a philosophical position.
• Nemesis–
  a villain who has a particular interest in defeating a hero or group of
  heroes, and who is often of particular interest to the hero(es) in
  return.
• Oxymoron-A combination of contradictory terms, like compassionate conservative.
• Parallelism– the repetition of words, phrases, sentences that have the same grammatical structure or that restate a similar idea. Restatement is repetition of an entire idea in different words. Structuralism Parallelism is the repetition of a word or entire sentence pattern. Antithesis is connecting ideas that are opposite, rather than similar.
• Parable- a brief and often simple narrative that illustrates a moral or
  religious lesson. Some of the best-known parables are in the Bible,
  where Jesus uses them to teach his disciples.
• Parody– a literary form in which the style of an author or particular work is mocked in its style for the sake of comic effect.

• ---

• Pathetic fallacy–
  The attribution of human emotions or characteristics to inanimate
  objects or to nature; for example, angry clouds; a cruel wind.
• Pastoral– Of, relating to, or being a literary or other artistic work that portrays or evokes rural life, usually in an idealized way.
• Persona–
  In literature, the persona is the narrator, or the storyteller, of a
  literary work created by the author. As Literature: An Introduction to
  Fiction, Poetry, and Drama puts it, the persona is not the author, but
  the author’s creation–the voice “through which the author speaks.”
• Personification–
  A figure of speech where animals, ideas or inorganic objects are given
  human characteristics. o­ne example of this is James Stephens’s poem
  “The Wind” in which wind preforms several actions. In the poem Stephens
  writes, “The wind stood up and gave a shout. He whistled o­n his two
  fingers.”
• Point of view– a way the
  events of a story are conveyed to the reader, it is the “vantage point”
  from which the narrative is passed from author to the reader. In the omniscient point of view, the person telling the story, or narrator, knows everything that’s going o­n in the story. In the first- person point of view, the narrator is a character in the story. Using the
  pronoun “I” the anrrator tells us his or her own experiences but cannot
  reveal with certainty any other character’s private thoughts. In the limited third-person point of view, the narrator is outside the story- like an omniscient
  narrator- but tells the story from the vantage point of o­ne character.
• Polemic– A controversial argument, especially o­ne refuting or attacking a specific opinion or doctrine.
• Protagonist-the central character of a literary work.
• Realism–
  Broadly defined as “the faithful representation of reality” or
  “verisimilitude,” realism is a literary technique practiced by many
  schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique,
  it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the
  representation of middle-class life.
• Rhetoric– The art of persuasive argument through writing or speech–the art of eloquence and charismatic language.
• Roman a clef– a novel in which actual persons and events are disguised as fictional characters.

• ---

• Romance–
  The mythos of literature concerned primarily with an idealized world. A
  form of prose fiction practised by Scott, Hawthorne, William Morris,
  etc., distinguishable from the novel.
• Romanticism–
  Romanticism, which was a reaction to the classicism of the early 18th
  century, favored feeling over reason and placed great emphasis o­n the
  subjective, or personal, experience of the individual. Nature was also
  a major theme.
• Satire- A literary work
  which exposes and ridicules human vices or folly. Historically
  perceived as tending toward didacticism, it is usually intended as a
  moral criticism directed against the injustice of social wrongs.
• Scansion–
  The analysis of a poem’s meter. This is usually done by marking the
  stressed and unstressed syllables in each line and then, based o­n the
  pattern of the stresses, dividing the line into feet.
• Semantics-the study of the meaning of language, as opposed to its form.
• Semiotics– theories regarding symbolism and how people glean meaning from words, sounds, and pictures.
• Stock character–
  a fictional character that relies heavily o­n cultural types or
  stereotypes for its personality, manner of speech, and other
  characteristics. Stock characters are instantly recognizable to members
  of a given culture.
• Stream of consciousness–
  technique that records the multifarious thoughts and feelings of a
  character without regard to logical argument or narrative sequence. The
  writer attempts by the stream of consciousness to reflect all the
  forces, external and internal, influencing the psychology of a
  character at a single moment.
• Subtext-the hidden meaning lying behind the overt.
• Synecdoche–
  A figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole or
  the whole for a part, as wheels for automobile or society for high
  society.

• ---

• Syntax– The way in which linguistic elements (words and phrases) are arranged to form grammatical structure.
• Soliloquy–
  A dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to
  himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts without addressing a
  listener.
• Tone– the writer’s attitude
  toward the material and/or readers. Tone may be playful, formal,
  intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, baffled, tender, serene,
  depressed or combinations.
• Theme– (1) the
  abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring
  ideas, such as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful
  element in a work, such as references to sight, vision, and blindness
  in Oedipus Rex.
• Tragedy– A serious play
  in which the chief figures, by some peculiarity of character, pass
  through a series of misfortunes leading to a final, devastating
  catastrophe.
• Tragic flaw (hamartia)-the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall).
• Trope–
  The intentional use of a word or expression figuratively, i.e., used in
  a different sense from its original significance in order to give
  vividness or emphasis to an idea. Some important types of trope are:
  antonomasia, irony, metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche.
• Utopia/Dystopia-a
  utopia is an imaginary and indefinitely remote place of ideal
  perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions. A dystopia is an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful
  lives; an imaginary place or state where everything is as bad as it
  possibly can be: or a description of such a place.
• Vernacular– the everyday speech of the people (as distinguished from literary language).
• Vignette– a small illustrative sketch.
• Voice-in writing, a metaphor drawn from the spoken, encompassing the writer’s tone, style, and manner.