Aim for FiveEnglish Language

Unit 9 · Topic 9.1

9.1 Joining an ongoing conversation

Most issues were being argued long before you arrived, so a strong argument responds to positions people have already taken. As you gather sources, sort them by whether they support your thesis, complement it by adding something new, or contradict it. That map of the conversation tells you where your own argument fits.

Key terms

  • conversation
  • discourse
  • position
  • support
  • complement
  • contradict

Arguments are part of a conversation

Think of an issue as a long conversation at a crowded table. People have already made claims, offered evidence and answered each other. If you walk up and repeat what someone said an hour ago, or ignore what everyone's been saying, no one will take you seriously. To join well, you listen first, then respond to what's actually been said.

In writing, that means showing readers which positions already exist and how yours relates to them. Do you agree with one side and add a new reason? Do you think both sides are missing something? Do you accept a common view but limit where it applies? Your thesis is more interesting when readers can see what it's responding to.

Support, complement, contradict

Every piece of evidence or source relates to your thesis in one of three ways:

RelationshipWhat it meansHow you use it
SupportsBacks up your claim directlyAs evidence in a body paragraph
ComplementsAdds a different angle, reason or example that fits with your claim without repeating itTo broaden your line of reasoning or add a new kind of evidence
ContradictsPushes against your claimTo concede, rebut or refute (9.2, 9.3), or as a reason to revise your thesis (6.5)

Mapping the conversation

Before you write, especially on the synthesis essay, make a quick map. For each source, jot its position and a word or two about its perspective (6.3). Then group the sources: which ones agree, which add new dimensions, which disagree? You'll often find that the disagreement isn't really "for" versus "against," but about a specific point: cost, fairness, who benefits.

That specific point of disagreement is where your argument can do the most work. A thesis that takes a position on the real point of tension, instead of the broad yes-or-no question, shows you understand the conversation. Exploring those tensions across the sources is one of the ways to earn the sophistication point.

Joining the conversation on the argument essay

The argument essay doesn't give you sources, but the conversation still exists. You can bring it in through what you know: how people have commonly argued about the issue, a historical debate, a well-known example. Briefly showing the usual positions, then explaining where yours fits, makes even a short timed essay feel like it's responding to something real.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

  1. Example 1

    Sorting sources and entering the conversation

    Practice sources (written for this practice set; all invented), on whether a city should close part of its downtown to cars on weekends. Your working thesis: The city should close Main Street to cars on weekends. Source A: A survey of downtown shop owners after a trial car-free weekend found most reported higher sales. Source B: A public health researcher notes that people walk more when streets are pleasant and safe. Source C: A disability rights group warns that closures make it hard for people who can't walk far to reach downtown businesses. Source D: A city traffic study finds that weekend traffic on Main Street is light compared with weekdays. Label each source as supporting, complementing or contradicting the thesis. Then write two sentences that enter the conversation.

    Show the solution
    1. Step 1: A directly supports the thesis: businesses benefit, which answers a common worry.
    2. Step 2: B complements it: it adds a different reason, health, that the business argument doesn't cover.
    3. Step 3: D supports it in a narrower way: weekends are the time a closure would disrupt the least traffic.
    4. Step 4: C contradicts it, at least in its current form. It raises a fairness issue the thesis ignores.
    5. Step 5: Find the real point of tension: not "cars versus no cars" but access for everyone. Use C to sharpen the thesis rather than ignore it.
    6. Step 6: Write an opening that names the usual debate and shows where your position fits.

    Answer: A supports, B complements, C contradicts, D supports. Model sentences: "Debates over car-free streets usually pit shop owners against drivers, but the trial weekend suggests that businesses gain more than they lose (Source A), and the more pressing question is who can still get downtown. The city should close Main Street to cars on weekends, as long as it keeps drop-off zones and shuttle access at each end, so that people who cannot walk long distances can still reach the businesses they rely on (Source C)."

Common mistakes

  • Writing as if your position is the first anyone has thought of. Show what others have said, then respond.
  • Treating every source as simply "for" or "against." Many sources complement your thesis by adding a new angle.
  • Leaving contradicting sources out of your essay. On the synthesis essay, a contradicting source is often your best chance to show complex thinking.

On the exam

  • On the synthesis essay, a thesis that responds to the specific point of tension among the sources usually leads to a more nuanced line of reasoning.
  • Reading questions may ask how a source or paragraph relates to the writer's claim: does it support, extend or challenge it? Check the logical relationship, not just the topic.

Connected topics

Videos

Check yourself

4 questions on 9.1 Joining an ongoing conversation. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

Paragraph 1
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the state of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being. The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!
Paragraph 2
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that, while we are reading, writing, and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men—digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and, above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave—we are called upon to prove that we are men!
Paragraph 3
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
Paragraph 4
What! am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow-men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system, thus marked with blood and stained with pollution, is wrong? No; I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

Frederick Douglass, formerly enslaved abolitionist, from an oration delivered at Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, the day after the Fourth of July; as printed in his book My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Earlier in the speech, Douglass harshly condemned American slavery.

Question 1 of 4

The opening sentence of the passage ("But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say...") primarily serves to

Question 2 of 4

Douglass's handling of the objection most strengthens his overall argument by

Paragraph 1
Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the common objections. But, some one may say, "Let them be taught the grounds of their opinions. It does not follow that opinions must be merely parroted because they are never heard controverted. Persons who learn geometry do not simply commit the theorems to memory, but understand and learn likewise the demonstrations; and it would be absurd to say that they remain ignorant of the grounds of geometrical truths, because they never hear any one deny, and attempt to disprove them." Undoubtedly: and such teaching suffices on a subject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all to be said on the wrong side of the question. The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths is, that all the argument is on one side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons. Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be shown why that other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary's case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination.
Paragraph 2
[. . .] To abate the force of these considerations, an enemy of free discussion may be supposed to say, that there is no necessity for mankind in general to know and understand all that can be said against or for their opinions by philosophers and theologians. That it is not needful for common men to be able to expose all the misstatements or fallacies of an ingenious opponent. That it is enough if there is always somebody capable of answering them, so that nothing likely to mislead uninstructed persons remains unrefuted. That simple minds, having been taught the obvious grounds of the truths inculcated on them, may trust to authority for the rest, and being aware that they have neither knowledge nor talent to resolve every difficulty which can be raised, may repose in the assurance that all those which have been raised have been or can be answered, by those who are specially trained to the task.
Paragraph 3
Conceding to this view of the subject the utmost that can be claimed for it by those most easily satisfied with the amount of understanding of truth which ought to accompany the belief of it; even so, the argument for free discussion is no way weakened. For even this doctrine acknowledges that mankind ought to have a rational assurance that all objections have been satisfactorily answered; and how are they to be answered if that which requires to be answered is not spoken? or how can the answer be known to be satisfactory, if the objectors have no opportunity of showing that it is unsatisfactory? If not the public, at least the philosophers and theologians who are to resolve the difficulties, must make themselves familiar with those difficulties in their most puzzling form; and this cannot be accomplished unless they are freely stated, and placed in the most advantageous light which they admit of.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), from Chapter II, "Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion." The bracketed ellipsis marks omitted text.

Question 3 of 4

Mill's reference to "the greatest orator, save one, of antiquity" (Cicero) mainly serves to

Question 4 of 4

Which choice best restates Mill's claim "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that"?

0 of 4 answered