Toulmin Notes
Remember! The warrant has to hold up. The language used here is for
the exercise only. It should not be maintained in your writing.
Ex. #1
Because it is raining, therefore I should take my umbrella since it will
keep me dry.
Data: It is raining
The “support” (data)
evidence, grounds, reasons
for the claim
Claim: I should take my umbrella
Warrant Assumption
Qualifier: Probably (restricts terms of
claim) shared by audience/speaker
It will keep me dry
Reservation: unless it has a hole in it
*Reservation explains qualifier
Backing (further assurances)
Umbrella is made of waterproof material
Ex.
Because the Toulmin model can help bring students a clear
understanding of rhetoric and argument, we should use the Toulmin
model in the AP Language classroom, since those are crucial subjects
within the AP English Language and Composition course.
DATA: The Toulmin model is logical.
It establishes a connection between the data and the claim.
It reveals assumptions.
It helps students to analyze and write arguments.
Warrant: Logical thinking, increased close-reading ability, and cogent
writing are desirable qualities of learning.
We share the same values. AP English Language is important! (Hugs!)
Ex. From Michael Rock’s essay on the increased visual nature of our
print media, including textbooks:
DATA: Textbook authors are filling their books with charts, graphs, and
pictures.
CLAIM: Education is declining in this country
WARRANT: Less written information = less learning.
Learning comes from reading written text.
Backing: Traditionally, students have learned from written text.
QUALIFIER: Unless visuals are a supplement to, not a replacement for,
written text
Ex.
Because organic food contains fewer pesticides, chemicals, and
hormones, we should eat organic food whenever possible, since it is
important for our health.
Warrants:
Nutrients are at higher levels in organic food.
Certain chemicals and hormones are dangerous to living things.
Qualifier: Whenever possible. In most cases…excluding certain fruit like
bananas…unless the pesticides would have killed off dangerous bacteria
like
E. Coli (I am making this up)
Because (Data) I drove last time, therefore (Claim) you should drive this
time.
Implicit is the Warrant that we value fairness, i.e. quid pro quo.
I tried it with Percy:
Data: Because every experience in life has been packaged (travel,
education)
Claim: The learner-as-discoverer has been lost; learners are merely
consumers
Warrant: Original discovery is the only authentic experience
Backing: Original discovery is a longer lasting learning experience; it has
a more permanent effect.
Qualifier: Percy himself says that the rare man can recover the
experience if he knows that he has a struggle on his hands.
Gitlin’s Essay:
Because students are bombarded with uncensored information,
therefore students urgently need a Liberal Arts education since it will
offset or counterbalance the ‘info-glut.’
Data:
…photography, movies, magazines, radio, television, computers – a
flood of information and images surrounds everyday life.
Awash in images
“unprecedented glut of images” – statistics on page 463.
The Internet
Student are immersed in high-tech media
Warrants:
Liberal Arts education will provide the ability to understand information
Liberal Arts encompass subjects that have endured: philosophy,
literature, history, foreign languages, art,
Subjects that withstand the test of time offer an anti-dote to trends.
“Continuities counteract vertigo” (464)
Students have “information” at their fingertips, but they don’t know
how to contextualize it. (Is that true?)
Backing:
Mozart, Melville, Douglass, Rembrandt, Jane Austen (464).
Qualifier:
Gitlin’s qualifier is, “We experience most of the messages minimally, as
sensations of the moment (463).
“Few can write cogently” which means that some can.
Reservation:
Some students are taking Humanities classes in high school by choice,
meaning that not all students are as deficient as he claims.
Francine Prose
Data:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Sons’ reading lists & experiences
100 Best Novels of the 20th Century List
80+ reading lists she procured
Ten Most Frequently Required Authors List
Dodson’s Teaching Values Through Teaching Literature (Book
w/lesson plans)
6. San Francisco School District 1998 Motion
7. Alano’s Teaching the Novel (Book)
8. McGowen’s Teaching Lit by Women Authors
9. Her own memory of reading King Lear
10. Books themselves – summaries of books (good and bad)
11. Amazon book review
12. A friend’s daughter’s English teacher who gave an assignment…
13. Her own students who are “handicapped” by how little literature
they have read & by their utter inability to read it.
Claim: Students are learning to loathe literature/students are incapable
of reading complex literature/we need to change what books we assign
and how we teach them.
Warrant: Reading complex literature is the only way to get good at
reading complex texts.
Doing line-by-line readings are worthwhile. You share her values.
In simplifying what a book is allowed to tell us, we are dumbing down
the experience.
Making personal connections with the books reduces our respect for
imagination, beauty, art, thought…
Qualifier/reservation: “No one is suggesting that every existing syllabus
be shredded; many books on the current lists are great works of art.”
“What I came away with may not be a scientifically accurate survey…”
Data: If we make a career of being unaccountable, we have lost
something essential to our humanity and we become a burden or threat
to those around us.
Claim: The individual needs to take part in the “common life” and dwell
in a “web of relationships” for the betterment of society.
Without individuals who care about those around them, the community
becomes vulnerable.
The greater the number of people in a community who are withdrawn,
the more vulnerable the community.
Warrant Assumption
Qualifier: Most of the time
We share the same values
We all need seasons of
w/d
We don’t want a vulnerable community
Vulnerable communities break down eventually
Passers-through don’t care about other’s needs
Anonymity = not caring
Ex: neighborhoods are safer when everyone is looking out for other
people’s property, feelings of isolation, schools, workplaces…