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.
First and foremost, what claim is the author making? Is it in his title? The opening sentence? Or is it buried in the first paragraph?
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?
Second, what are the grounds, the evidence or reasons, that the author advances in support of his claim?
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?
Third, what warrants does McWilliams offer to show why we should accept his grounds? What authority does he cite? How effective and convincing is this way of trying to get us to accept the grounds he offered in support of his claim?
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.
Fourth, what backing does McWilliams provide? What reasons does he give that might persuade us to accept his argument? Look for what he claimed came out of the analysis that was his basic warrant. He certainly seems to be using factual information — but what if you challenged him? Has he provided adequate reasons for us to believe him? What could he (or would he have to) be able to tell us if we challenged him with questions like “How do you know . . . ?” or “Why do you believe . . . ?” In other words, has he provided adequate backing? Or does he want us to just accept his statement of the facts?
Fifth, does McWilliams use modal qualifiers? Can you find phrases like “in most cases” or “generally it is true that . . . ”? Or does he write so boldly — with little in the way of qualifiers or quantifiers — that readers are left uncertain about whether to accept his position? Where might he have effectively used qualifiers?
Finally, does McWilliams use rebuttals, the reasons given in anticipation of someone rejecting the author’s claim, or conceding the claim but rejecting the grounds? Does McWilliams anticipate rejections and prepare rebuttals? Does he offer anything to forestall criticisms? If so, what is it that he does? If not, what could or should he have done?
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?