Worksheet 6: Argumentation

1.This week we are looking at how people make certain claims about the world and how they support them. We´ll use an article from a textbook and apply a very popular and useful model of argumentation as proposed by S. Toulmin. Our task will be to find the stages of argumentation and see, how an argument is built. Even though it was proposed by a philosopher, the model is usable in daily life as well (and naturally also in ELT textbooks). The stages are:

The model is presented in this video. Watch it, note down the stages and their description:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-YPPQztuOY

2. On the reverse side, find the text for analysis. As usual, note down the most salient (non)linguistic resources which are used to make what it is – a (good?) piece of argumentative writing. Focus on the few central themes that we´ve observed so far: verb and noun morphology and its complexity (tense-aspect forms, m, modality), complexity of sentence structure (levels of embedding). Include the notion of multimodality (as paralanguage). Find stages of argumetation within the Discourse column.Do not forget – the purpose of this analysis is to understand the text as it is used to perform a certain function, and of all resources prticipating in its fulfillment.

While completing the worksheet, ask yourself:

Do I understand what the function of the text is (register)? Do I see the role of linguistic resources at all levels used to achieve it - when I look at whatever word, do I know WHY it is there and am I ready to explain it to

whoever is interested? Can I see the interplay of all linguistic and other resources which convey the meaning jointly? What is it that makes it one piece of text? Is it well-composed? Is it a good example of its type?

If you aare able to answer these questions to your satisfaction, then you understand the text, and that is the point. Congratulations.