Chapter 12 | Developing Your Argument

Developing your argument, Bedford’s focus for chapter 12, is geared towards helping the student articulate and provide relevant evidence to support their thesis.  “Developing your argument involves identifying reasons to accept your thesis statement, selecting evidence to support your reasoning, and deciding how you’ll appeal to your readers” (210).

Supporting your thesis can be done through a series of appeals.  Various appeals include:  appeals to authority, appeals to emotion, appeals to principles, values, and beliefs, appeals to character, and appeal to logic.  When writing an academic argumentative paper, such as we are writing in this class, it is important to appeal to logic.  This is why I am researching the neuroscience – my hope is this will be a logical appeal.  I hope to appeal to character and emotions through use of examples in my own life, and lastly appeal to authority by quoting various experts in the fields relevant to my paper.

On the contrary, it is important to not fall victim to fallacies.  These can include:  generalizations, straw-man attacks (oversimplifying an argument), citing inappropriate authorities, and jumping on a bandwagon.  Fallacies can also be based on misrepresentation and careless reasoning.  For me, I think making sweeping generalizations is something I need to be cautious of because I think there are so many wonderful yet also broad statements relating to play I want to make.