What Toulmin Teaches
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As Tannen’s essay demonstrates, few arguments you read have perfectly sequenced claims or clear warrants, so you might not think of Toulmin’s terms in building your own arguments. Once you’re into your subject, it’s easy to forget about qualifying a claim or finessing a warrant. But remembering what Toulmin teaches will always help you strengthen your arguments:
Claims should be clear, reasonable, and carefully qualified.
Claims should be supported with good reasons and evidence. Remember that a Toulmin structure provides the framework of an argument, which you fill out with all kinds of data, including facts, statistics, precedents, photographs, and even stories.
Claims and reasons should be based on assumptions your audience will likely accept. Toulmin’s focus on warrants can be confusing because it asks us to look at the assumptions that underlie our arguments — something many would rather not do. Toulmin pushes us to probe the values that support any argument and to think of how those values relate to particular audiences.
Effective arguments respectfully anticipate objections readers might offer. Toulmin argument acknowledges that any claim can crumble under certain conditions, so it encourages a complex view that doesn’t demand absolute or unqualified positions.
It takes considerable experience to write arguments that meet all these conditions. Using Toulmin’s framework brings them into play automatically. If you learn it well enough, constructing good arguments can become a habit.