Are you arguing with me??

Blog – Reading Assignment

            After reading the book Writing Arguments it became very clear I was not in fact arguing, I was only engaging in  “heated disagreements” (2). I can only think of a handful of times that I was in fact in an actual argument. I can see why people confuse arguing with what is actually only a heated disagreement. Not everyone is aware of how an argument is actually developed. Most people do not think of an argument as being creative, productive and absolutely not a pleasurable experience. When I think of an argument, I think of a lot of pissed off people yelling at each other and both parties trying to persuade the other to see and believe in their point of view.

            I would never have thought to link arguments to being explicit or implicit. “An explicit argument directly states its controversial claim and supports it with reasons and evidence” (3). “An implicit argument, in contrast, may not look like an argument at all. It may be a bumper sticker, a billboard, a poster, a photograph, a cartoon, a vanity license plate, a slogan on a T-shirt, an advertisement, a poem, or a song lyric” (3). Both of these are trying to convince everyone toward their point of view. I would think implicit arguments would be harder to spot because there are so many things that could start an argument such as what I listed above.

            Everyone ultimately wants to win an argument. That becomes a problem. Do they just want to win the argument to win it, or is there truth behind what they are arguing? Whether they are true or false, their beliefs on a topic may be so strong they just want the other person to see it from their point of view and make them believe in the topic just as much as they do. If a person is stubborn, much like I am, they may argue a point even if they are not 100% committed to the topic. This goes back to people just wanting to win an argument to win it.

            That takes me back to my childhood, let me start with, I have an older brother, many of you just sighed “oh, I know exactly what you mean”, well you would be correct, we did not get along very well at all. He is 4 years older than me and I often thought he would use that against me for being able to win an argument. After reading Writing Arguments I realize we were really just engaging in heavily heated disagreements that happen between a brother and sister. It boiled down to both of us just wanting to win the argument regardless if what we were arguing about was legitimate.

Now that I know what an argument actually consists of, I will think before I start one or even a heavily disagreement, is what I am talking about worth the disagreement or not? After reading the assigned chapters I feel they were very beneficial to knowing the “ins and outs” of an argument.  

                                                              Works Cited

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean and June Johnson. Writing Arguments:  A Rhetoric with Readings. New York:  Longman, 2010.