Evidence and
Reasoning
What are Content Premises?


Premises in Persuasion rely on: people’s ability
to think rationally and logically
Success or failure of any argument or claim
relies on: underlying premises believed by the
audience

Example: AIDS is deadly, criminals are undesirable,
etc.
Content Premises




Are logical patterns we have learned over time
Cause effect reasoning – We believe that events
have causes and when certain things happen,
other things will follow (consequences)
Problems also have causes, and when we remove
the cause, the problem is eliminated
Therefore, persuader needs to present evidence
as proof
Types of Evidence

Dramatic Evidence
Narratives – rely on the audience’s ability to project
themselves into the context or situation described by
the persuader
 Testimony – persuader might read eyewitness account
or share is or her personal experience
 Anecdotes – short narrative to make a point
 Participation or demonstration


Rational Evidence

Appeals to our logic in a non dramatic, intellectual way
Types of Reasoning





Cause to effect reasoning (because of this, then this)
Effect to cause reasoning – persuader cites known effects
and works back to the cause
Reasoning from symptoms – persuader identifies
symptom(s) and tries to conclude something from them.
Criteria to application reasoning – persuader presents
specific criteria (cell phone commercial)
Reasoning from analogy or comparison- persuader
compares or uses analogy (something familiar to
demonstrate something unfamiliar)
Types of Reasoning


Deductive Reasoning – reasoning from general
to specific conclusion
Inductive reasoning – from specific to general
conclusion
Common Fallacies




“Fallacy” – “deceptive apearance, false mistaken idea…
often plausible argument using false or invalid
inference”
Ad hominem: attacking the person instead of the
argument
Ad populum: (bandwagon): assumption that something
is popular therefore good
The undistributed middle: “guilt by association”, a
group, individual or philosophy shares one aspect or
attribute with another, so it shares all
Source: Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition
Common Fallacies


The straw man argument: setup a weak or
“straw” man case and defeat it
Post Hoc, ergo propter hoc (After this, therefore
because of this): because B followed A, A must
have caused B
The Toulmin Format

Stephen Toulmin develop format for everyday
logical persuasion saying any logical argument
has 3 parts:

Claim – What the persuader wants to prove (the
existence of a problem)
Claims of fact (can be verifiable)
 Claims of value (approval or disaproval)
 Claims of policy (we should, we ought to…)

Data – support (evidence)
 Warrant – relates/connect the claim and data

APA Style
In-text Citation

Provide the author’s last name and the date of
publication.
Similarly, Rogers’ (1995) diffusion theory shows that, without
successful policy initiatives, the existing socio economic status of
different segments of people will structure the diffusion of
technological innovations.
For example, in studying the Sesame Street effect, researchers
showed that children from higher socio-economic status achieve
more educationally than children from lower socio-economic status
even in similar educational settings (Attewell and Battle,1999).
In-text Citation

When there is no author / date
1. No author: mention the title of the document
According to a BBC article, chimpanzees at sites in West Africa, Tanzania,
and Uganda exhbit culture-specific patterns of behavior when grooming one
another (“Chimps,” 1999)
2. No date: use the abbreviation “n.d.”
Attempts to retrun sign-language-using apes to the wild have had mixed
results (Smith, n.d.)
Reference Style Guideline
1. Book, single author
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities. New York: Verso.
2. Book, multiple authors
Strunk, W. & White, E. B. (1979). The elements of style. New York:
Macmillan.
3. Book chapter, from edited book
Roll, W.P. (1976). ESP and memory. In J. M. Wheatly & H. L. Edge
(Eds.). Philosophical dimensions of parapsychology (pp. 154-184).
Springfield, IL: American Psychiatric Press.
Reference Style Guideline
4. Journal article
Bucy, E. & Gregson, K. (2001). Media participation: A legitimizing
mechanism of mass
democracy, New Media and Society, 3, 357-380.
5. Magazine Article
Shea, R. H. (2002, October 28). E-learning today. U.S. News & World
Report, 133, 54-56.
6. Articles from an online periodical (Internet articles based on a print
source)
Ways, J. (2000). Power elite. [Electronic version]. Social science research,
29, 535-555.
Reference Style Guideline
7. Articles from an Internet only journal
VandenBos, G. (2001). Trend in deliberation research. Journal of
Public Deliberation. Retrieved March 28,
2006, from http://www.osu.edu/~sj/~deliberation.
8. Non-periodical Internet document
Cain, A. P. (1999, April). Investigation of the use of mobile phones
while driving. Retrieved March
30, 2006, from http://www.cutr.eng.usf.edu/its/mobile.
9. Motion picture, television broadcasts, etc.
Soderbergh, S. (Director). (2000). Traffic [Motion picture]. United
States: Gramercy Pictures.
Participation Assignment

Find a source concerning one of your topics

E-mail me (beam.33@osu.edu) an example intext citation and the corresponding reference
line
Due before next class

Researching Online
Research Assignment

In one typed, single-spaced page:



List at least five sources in APA format presented in
Hacker
Under each source, write a one paragraph annotation
in which you briefly describe what information the
source contains and how it is relevant to your topic
(e.g., if it is relevant to developing the exigency
argument, explain what points in your argument are
supported by the source). In one sentence, indicate
why you think the source is credible, especially for
your audience.
One reference must be from an academic journal