Thinking with Toulmin’s Method

A CHECKLIST FOR USING THE TOULMIN METHOD

Have I asked the following questions?

  • What claim does the argument make?

  • What grounds are offered for the claim?

  • What warrants the inferences from the grounds to the claim?

  • What backing supports the claim?

  • With what modalities are the claim and grounds asserted?

  • To what rebuttals are the claim, grounds, and backing vulnerable?

Remember to make use of the checklist above as you work to find the claim(s), grounds, and warrant(s) that McWilliams puts forward in this short essay.

McWilliams really gives away his game in his title, even though he opens the essay itself in a way that might make the reader think he is about to launch into a defense of the locavore movement. He even goes out of his way to praise its members (“To their credit . . .”). The signal that his claim really appears already in the title and that he is not going to defend the locavore movement is the way he begins the fourth sentence. Notice that although you may have been told that starting a sentence with But isn’t the best way to write, McWilliams here does so to good effect. Not only does he dramatically counter what he said just prior to that; he also sets up the final sentence of the paragraph, which turns out to be crucial. In this way, he draws sharp attention to his claim. How would you state his claim?

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As it turns out, McWilliams spells out only one example as evidence for his claim. What is it? Is it convincing? Should he have provided more evidence or reasons at this point? It turns out that he does have other grounds to offer — but he mentions them only later. What are those other pieces of evidence?

The essence of the Toulmin method lies in these three elements: the claim(s), the grounds, and the warrant(s). If you have extracted these from McWilliams’s essay, you are well on the way to being able to identify the argument he is putting forward. So far, so good. Further probing, however — looking for the other three elements of the Toulmin method (the backing, the modal qualifiers and quantifiers, and the rebuttal) — is essential before you are in a position to actually evaluate the argument. So let’s go on.

Just how good an argument has McWilliams made? Is he convincing? If you identified weak points in his argument, what are they? Can you help strengthen the argument? If so, how?