1 When I teach critical writing I stress four habits: 1 strong thesis 2 define key terms 3 support with evidence 4 anticipate objections.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 20162 It is commonplace to talk about a "strong thesis" in terms of being able to answer the so-called "so what?" question.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 20163 I personally consider this an unhelpful, even harmful way to frame the task of a thesis. I say this because…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 20164 ...you have to be confident to assume your argument won't provoke a "so what?" Teaching to instill confidence, shouldn't assume it.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 20165 I define a strong thesis as one for which one can imagine an intelligent opposition. This act of imagination is the heart of criticism.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 20166 If you can't imagine an intelligent opposition to your argument, it is not likely to hold the attention of a reader… or even the writer.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 20167 Once you grasp that any worthy argument will have intelligent opposition, imagined interlocutors will shape the case you make.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 20168 "Organizational" problems (digressions, muddled ordering of evidence, loss of focus) often vanish once you are addressing opposition.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 20169 In my teaching, all four habits of argumentative writing are transformed by this emphasis on the ongoing imagination of opposition.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201610 Since you can't define every term you use, imagining opposition forces you to grasp the terms on which your case most depends.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201611 So too imagining opposition changes the selectivity with which you adduce evidence or select and edit textual support.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201612 Obviously, my fourth habit, "anticipating objections" is entirely about the relation of the critical temper to imagining interlocutors.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201613 But a point I make in teaching this habit is that taking the time and space to anticipate, respond or circumvent salient objections…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201614 …is often more convincing in making a case than offering up one or even more positive pieces of evidence for that case.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201615 This feels counterintuitive to newcomers to rhetoric, but often observing a response to objections most clarifies the stakes of argument.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201616 I am always struck by those who seem to think an ideal argument resembles a logical or mathematical proof, as if one is all alone…
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201617 …making an argument addressing itself to the Universe rather than to living stakeholders with whom one shares the world.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201618 There is in fact an inherent recognition and investment in the living community of fellow-sharers, fellow-sufferers in critical thinking.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201619 Criticism is worldly, political, democratic even when not democratizing, pragmatic even when denouncing pragmatism.
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 201620 The Four Habits of Argumentative Writing Handout I have given every student in twenty years of teaching: https://t.co/UU69xLuVX7
— Dale Carrico (@dalecarrico) January 30, 2016
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