At the time I did an extensive amount of rhetorical prep work in compiling my letter, but I didn’t identify a strategy for this kind of work until I read the Unit 2 assigned reading. I knew that to be heard by his office about this strictly non-partisan affair, I would need to plan my argument with an appeal to our shared values. I began by crafting a list of assumptions in my head about values that Speaker Bohner and I share and hold in high esteem such as the Office of the Speaker of the House, the Office of the President, and the promotion of civil discourse. I could be wrong about these assumptions but it would be somewhat embarrassing for the reader of the letter if we were so I stuck with this.
Letters to Congressional offices are typically read by staffers so I knew my message would need to be short, sweet, and on point to be effective with the initial reader. It did end up going on for an entire page. Right away I asked myself “what’s your beef with Speaker Bohner” in order to frame my argument most succinctly. In the text I discovered the “enthymeme”, or the core of an argument. The enthymeme is a general claim of an argument and the reason the claim should be supported, but the reader must be in accord with the underlying assumptions (Ramage, 74) like our shared appreciation of civil discourse. Though the core of the argument may seem like the obvious ingredient, logical appeal can be overrun with emotional appeals for a purpose. Crafting the logos, or reasoning for my argument, can be managed with the enthymeme. My enthymeme consisted of a claim that House members stop referring to health care reform parts as “Obamacare” because it would promote a more civil public discourse. The underlying assumption the reader/audience supplied in this case was that promoting more civil public discourse is an important part of healthy democracy.
In order to fully develop an argument for a reader/audience that doesn’t already agree with me, the Toulmin System asks a writer/speaker to identify the audience’s buy in to certain grounds or “warrants”, (Ramage, 76). To convince Speaker Bohner to back costly legislation I might provide grounds such as statistics and data or testimony from an expert about why he must act. My cause is on the cheap side but could cost him political capital so I kept my grounds limited to giving a personal narrative which included three declarations: use of the term “Obamacare” was disrespectful and dismissive of actual reforms needed to bring down the high cost of health care and make actual budget and deficit impacts; I did not always support some of the foreign and fiscal policies of past Congress and President George W. Bush, but as a soldier demonstrated a professional image; my opinion that promoting civil discourse was important to the relationship between the State and those who consent to be governed. I was sure Speaker Bohner would accept my grounds, so accepting my argument shouldn’t be far off. Identifying myself as a veteran and civic minded were shared in order spark Speaker Bohner’s beliefs and (profound) emotions about our civic responsibility. This layer of pathos is a legitimate appeal to “deepen response to an issue” (Ramage, 112).
The Rhetorical context of my letter to the Office of the Speaker required little hard evidence to be representative of typical moderate voters and get my patriotic point across. Though I never presented any data or testimony, I did identify the use of the Fulkerson’s STAR criteria after the fact to evaluate whether or not evidence I supplied was sufficient, typical, accurate, and relevant (Ramage, 90). My personal experience as a veteran and a voter familiar with current health care reforms might be sufficient evidence for a personal appeal, but generally personal experiences are considered to be unverifiable and subject to hasty generalizations (Ramage, 91). Data from field or observational research enhances the credibility of the author but could be criticized as atypical or insufficient (Ramage, 92). Data from interviews or surveys expand experiences and give a lot more credibility to an argument, and interviews might add to pathos with personal stories but critics will always point out that methodology and design could be flawed in survey type evidence (Ramage, 92). Testimony from experts would be applicable to my letter if I could find an expert that could provide some context for the negative impact of pejorative language on civil discourse, but critics will always question an “expert” credentials. Statistical data probably doesn’t exist for my case-scenario, but numbers that demonstrated an increase in domestic political violence would provide a snapshot of cause-effect relationship between speech and violence – which is weakened by subjective interpretation (Ramage, 93). Hypothetical arguments or case-scenarios have a strong imaginative appeal. It would be easy to narrate a situation like the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords, however, conveying in “inevitability” of violence or using hyperbole would be counter to the core of my argument: a call to civility in speech. Skeptics of hypotheticals will always have a counter scenario argument so this is among the weaker types of evidence.
Framing the evidence to support a claim requires an ethical balance of the necessary evidence to prove a claim and persuade and audience based on their potential pre-existing assumptions and values (Ramage, 97). Logical appeal and the appropriate evidence to support claims of the author/speaker and to persuade the audience is housed here in the “angle of vision” (Ramage, 94). All of these considerations helped me to craft an effective letter, but I can’t helping thinking I could have presented more evidence and in a more effective manner after absorbing the text.
Works Cited
Ramage, John D., et al. Writing Arguments: Rhetoric with Readings. New York. Pearson, 2010. Print.
