So far, we've looked at the language of argument in some detail.
because we've separated the reason markers from conclusion markers.
And we've talked about assuring and guarding and discounting and evaluative
words. So we've picked out a lot of different
words in language that play distinct roles in arguments.
But what we need to do for a real argument is to bring it all together and
show how these types of words can work together in a single passage.
And to do that, we're going to learn a method called close analysis.
And what you do with close analysis is you simply take a passage and you mark
the words in that passage that play those roles.
so a reason maker you can mark an R and a conclusion marker you can mark with a C,
assuring term you mark with an A a guarding term you mark with G, a
discounting term you mark with D, an evaluative term you mark with E.
And if it's clear, you put a plus or a minus to indicate whether it's positive
evaluation or negative evaluation. Now, these marks will just be scratching
the surface. There's obviously a lot more that you can
do, and need to do, in order to fully understand the passage.
So, when it's a discounting term, you ought to think about which objection is
being discounted. And you also ought to think about the
rhetorical moves, the metaphors and irony.
We'll look at rhetorical questions. And we'll basically go through the
passage very carefully word by word in order to figure out what's going on in
that passage. So, how do you learn the technique?
The answer is very simple. You practice, and then you practice
again. And then you practice, and practice, and
practice and practice. Practice won't make perfect, because
nothing's perfect. But practice will surely help a lot, and
we'll get better and better the more we practice.
So in this lecture, what we're going to do is go through one example in a lot of
detail and mark it up very carefully in order to practice the method of close
analysis. The particular example we chose for this
lecture is by Robert Redford. It's an opiad that was written for the
Washington Post. We chose it because it's an interesting
issue. It's about the environment.
But it's not an issue that people will necessarily have very strong emotions
about. Because you might not even know the
particular part of the environment that he's talking about.
We also choose it because it's a really good argument.
You learn how to analyze arguments, and how to formulate your own arguments by
looking at good examples. Of course it's fun to tear down bad
examples, but we need a nice model of a good argument in order to see what's
lacking in the arguments that are bad. So we're going to go through an example
partly because it's actually a pretty good argument.
We're also going to go through this passage because it's really thick with
these argument words. So, you'll see that we're marking a lot
of different things, and we'll have to go through it paragraph by paragraph, and
sentence by sentence, and word by word, in great detail.
This lecture will seem like it's looking at the passage with a microscope.
and that's the point, to learn to analyze with a microscope, the passages where
people give arguments. Okay.
So the first sentence is, just over a year ago, President Clinton created the
Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument to protect once and for all some
of Utah's extraordinary red rock canyon country.
Word number one, just. Well, justice is a good thing, right?
So that must be an evaluative word. No.
One of the first lessons in close analysis, is that simply because you have
the word just, doesn't mean you're talking about justice.
When he says, just over a year ago, he means slightly over a year ago, or
somewhat over a year ago, or sometime over a year ago.
So maybe he's guarding. You might want to mark this one as a
guarding term by putting a G out there. But.
He's not using an evaluation. To say, just over a year ago.
Well, why would he guard? Because, he's not very precise.
He's not going to say, seventeen days over a year ago.
He's saying, just over a year ago, so that nobody will raise a question at this
point. He does not want people raising questions
this early in the op-ed. So let's keep going.
Just over a year ago, President Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument to protect once and for all, some of the extraordinary red rock
country. Okay.
What about the word, to. Might seem like not much because it's
such a short word. But it's actually doing a lot of work
there if you think about it. We actually I think should market as a,
an argument marker of some sort. Is it a reason marker or is it a
conclusion marker? We'll come back to that.
But first let's get clear that it's an argument marker of some sort.
When he says that he created the monument to protect once and for all, he means in
order to protect, because he wanted to protect, once and for all, some of that
country. It's an explanation of why he created it.
It's giving you the teleological explanation, which tells you the purpose
for which he created it. So,
the bit that comes out protect once and for all some of the country, is the
reason why he created it. It explains the conclusion that he did
create it. So this is a reason marker.
Now the next word, protect. Well you might think that protect is a
neutral word because after all, protectionism is criticized by some
people. But actually to protect something is to
keep it safe. To keep it safe from harm to keep it safe
from bad things happening to it. So, to explain what counts a protection
and what doesn't count as protection you have to cite what's good or bad and that
makes it an evaluative word. And, in this case protecting is a good
thing so, it get's marked as E plus. Okay, the next words are once and for
all. What is once and for all do.
Nothing. Some of these words are going to get
marked as nothing whatsoever. Because once and for all doesn't guard.
It says, once and for all, its the absolute limit, but the next word.
Some, what does that do? That guards.
It's saying that what's protected is not all of Utah's red rock country,
it's only some of it and it's important for him to guard that, because he wants
to say later on, as we'll see, that there's lots of it outside the monument
that's not getting protected. So he wants to guard it and say it's not
all that's going to be important to his argument.
Now, Utah's pretty neutral, unless you're from
that state, then you love it, and you might say that's an evaluative word, but
let's skip that group of people right now.
Extraordinary. What about extraordinary?
Is that an evaluative word? Might seem to be an evaluative word,
because clearly, what Redford means is extraordinarily beautiful or
extraordinarily good, red rock country. But the word extraordinary, doesn't say
extraordinarily good. You can have things that are
extraordinarily bad. To say it's extraordinary is to say it's
out of the ordinary. And the red rock country might be
extraordinarily ugly. So the word extraordinary, itself, is not
by itself, an evaluative word, so it should be marked as nothing.
And red rock country, also, is going to be neutral.
It's beautiful stuff, but simply to describe it, as made out of red rock
doesn't say that it's beautiful, even though, we all know that it is.
Just look at the picture. So, now we've finished a whole sentence.
Isn't that great? A whole sentence!
All right! [LAUGH] And all we did was find six
things to mark in that sentence. Well, four were marked and two were
nothing, but it shows you that you can go through a single sentence and do a lot of
analysis to figure out what's going on, and we're just getting started.
Now let's move on to the second sentence. So it's in response to plans, of the
Dutch company to mine coal, President Clinton used his authority, to
establish the new monument. And so on.
Let's go to, in response to. What does that tell you?
It tells you, that what's coming after it, explains why President Clinton used
his authority. It was a response to the plans of the
Dutch Company. Which means that, it's an explanation.
Notice that the previous explanation says, why Clinton wanted to do it, in
general. This explanation tells you why President
Clinton did it at that particular time rather than earlier or later.
It's because he was responding to particular plans by a particular company.
So the end response to, is an argument marker.
Now, is it a reason marker or a conclusion marker?
Well, the conclusion, the thing that's getting explained, is that Clinton used
his authority. So this must be a reason or a premise
marker. You can also put P for premise marker, or
R for reason marker. Now, in response to plans of the Dutch
Company, Andalex to mine coal on the Kaiparowits Plateau, President Clinton
used his authority under the Antiquities Act to establish the new monument.
Now this is actually a pretty tricky one. We know that, the plans of the company
are the premise that explains the conclusion that Clinton used his
authority. But what's the word,
underdoing. Well under means is the Antiquities Act
that gave him that authority. That explains why he had that authority
and justified him in doing what he was doing namely establishing the monument.
So, the word under suggests that there is another argument in the background here
that the Antiquities Act gives the president the authority to establish
monuments and President Clinton used that authority.
So, the Antiquities Act is again a premise or as I said you can call it a
reason marker for the premise that the Antiquities Act gives the President that
authority and that justifies Clinton in using his authority, or explains why he
was able to establish the monument. And the word to also indicates that what
comes after it is, establishing the new monument, that's what he was trying to
do. That also is an argument that explains
why he did it. He had the authority.
But you don't always exercise your authority.
Right? And so, the point of exercising the
authority, the reason why he exercise his authority was to establish the new
monument. Again, it might seem tricky to keep
siting the word to as an argument marker but think about it, you can substitute in
order to. He uses authority in order to establish
the new monument. Or, because he wanted to establish the
new monument. And we learned a few lectures ago, that
if you can substitute another argument marker for this particular word, then
that shows that in this case, the word to is getting used as an argument marker.
In this case the premise, because it's his wanting to establish the monument
that explains why he used his authority. Okay?
Here's a tricky one. What about the word authority?
Well that's a really trick word and sometimes it's not completely clear how
you want to mark it. Right, you might think that this word is
getting used as a discounting word, namely answering a potential objection.
Some people might say he didn't have the authority to do that but you might think
it's a positive evaluation, having authority is a good thing.
And you might think that it's an argument marker because is a reason why he would
have the ability to set up the monument namely that he had the authority.
But he doesn't actually say openly any of those things so, I would probably mark
that as a nothing but I think it's better just to put a question mark.
Because sometimes, words are not going to have one clear function or another.
You know, we're doing our best to put them into these little bins of the
different types of words, but sometimes, they're not going to fall neatly into one
or the other, and you just have to recognize that.
Of course, when it comes to the quizzes, we're not going to ask you about those
kinds of words, but it's worth knowing that they're there.
Okay? Now.
Let's move on. Setting aside for protection, what he
described as some of the most remarkable land in the world.
Again, what is that telling you? Setting aside for protection that it
tells you why he used his authority to establish the monument.
So again, we've got an implicit reason here but, notice there's just a space
there's no actual word. There could be marked as an argument
marker but still there's a separate argument here he set it aside for the
protection. That was why he established the monument.
That's why he used his authority to establish the monument.
If you want to include that part of the argument as well.
Okay? For protection.
Protection again, that's going to be evaluative, right?
Because to protect something is to keep it safe from harm.
Harm is bad. So protecting it must be good.
When you explain what protection is, you're going to need to use the words
good and bad, as we saw in the first sentence.
What about these little quotation marks. I love quotation marks you gotta watch
out for them. What he described as some of the most
remarkable land in the world. Why is Robert Redford quoting President
Clinton and saying how Clinton described this land?
Because if you're trying to convince Clinton and trying to convince the
general public to try to convince Clinton, there's nothing better than
quoting Clinton himself. I mean, after all, Clinton can't say, I'm
not an authority. Right?
So, those quotation marks and saying that he described it, that all amounts to
assuring. He's assuring Clinton that, that has to
be true because after all, you said it yourself.
And then he says, I couldn't agree more. Well that's a different type of assuring.
Remember when we saw that some assuring terms were authoritative.
And other assuring terms were reflexive. Well quoting President Clinton is an
authoritative assurance, it's citing an authority.
I couldn't agree more says how much he agrees.
Or how much certainty he has. It certainly suggests.
And so he seems to be assuring you but on a different basis,
Clinton and I both agree. We might disagree about other things, but
we agree about this which gives you some reason to be sure that it must be true.
Okay. We're through with two sentences.
All right. Next.
For over two decades. The word for is sometimes an argument
here. Is it an argument marker here?
No. How can you tell that?
It's actually nothing here. But how can you tell that?
Try substituting an argument marker. You can't say, because over two decades,
many have fought battle over battle. It's not because.
It's just saying, during that period. The term for, and the words after it,
over two decades, are simply being used to indicate time.
Not to indicate any kind of reason, in this case.
So it should be marked as nothing. Many have fought battle after battle.
Is that a guarding term? Sometimes many is a guarding term.
Instead of saying all, you say many. But here you say many have fought battle
after battle. Nobody thinks all have fought battle
after battle to keep the mining conglomerates from despoiling the
country. After all, the mining conglomerates
themselves didn't, so, it can't be all. So, nobody would expect the word all.
So in this case, the word many is not functioning to guard the term by
weakening it, because it never started out as the strong claim all.
There was nothing to weaken. They fought battle after battle.
Well, you might think that battles are a bad thing.
So you might mark that as e minus. Because, after all, conflict is a bad
thing and in battles people get hurt and try to hurt each other.
So to explain what a battle is you need to introduce an evaluative word.
And what did they fight those battles for?
To keep mining conglomerates from despoiling the treasures.
Right? Again, to can be seen as, in order to.
That's why they fought the battle. It explains the battle.
Or because they wanted to keep the mining conglomerates from despoiling the
countries. So, it looks like to there is indicating
the premise in an argument that explains why they fought battle after battle.
'Kay? Mining conglomerates, is mining bad?
No. Are conglomerates bad?
Not necessarily. You can explain what a conglomerate is
without talking about good or bad. From despoiling, now wait a minute, now
we've got an evaluative term. It's an evaluative negative term.
Despoiling means, spoiling things or making them bad.
And what about treasures? Treasures is going to be an evaluative
plus term because treasures are good things.
And stunning. Well, stunning is not quite so clear.
Stunning means it stuns you. You react to it in a certain way.
You're stunned. You look at it, and you feel, huh, and
you stop still again. Just look at the pictures of this
country. It is stunning.
But to call it stunning. Is that evaluative?
Well, you can get stunned by how bad something is.
And so, it's not clear that stunning in itself is evaluation.
Clearly, Redford, in using the word stunning, is talking about it being
stunningly good. But the word stunning by itself doesn't
seem to be evaluative. Now,
the next word of the last sentence in this paragraph.
Just a temporal indicator, so that's nothing.
We thought, okay? Thought means it's not really true.
He's just guarding it. It's not really true that some of it was
safe. We thought it was.
Some of it was safe, or even at least some of it was safe.
Now that's going to be a guarding term, because it's not saying all of it was
safe. It's just a little part of it and that'll
become important later in the argument. Whoa!
Look at this diagram! It's got letters all over the place and
they're running into each other. That shows you what close analysis does.
When you start looking in detail, a lot of the different words are doing things
that you can find out by trying to put them into these different categories.
So, we've finished the first paragraph. An entire paragraph.
Oh my God. Oh [LAUGH] Joy!