When you're writing an essay, especially an argumentative essay, or if you're
dealing with let's say a public debate, then it's really good to be aware of the
three levels or layers of the typical argument. And there are names for these.
We call these the claim (that's the first level), then we have what's often called
the evidence, or the reason (sometimes the proof), and then the third level has kind
of a strange name. This is called the Warrant ... and maybe an
easy way to think about this is to refer to this as an assumption, a kind of
general implied assumption that is often not publicly stated, but which you can
figure out or if you look closely at the statements you can see what
the underlying assumption is. So the assumption is what connects these first
two things. You make a claim, you have some evidence, and then there's something --
some kind of underlying logic -- that connects these two points. Let's see how
this plays out with an example here. So in our example we start with "John is
untrustworthy." There is our claim. We're going to call this our claim. And then
we want to back that up with a reason or with some evidence The reason comes next:
"because he always forgets to do his homework." And maybe we disagree with this
logic, but there is our evidence or our reason. The last level then is the
warrant. As you can see it's not stated here, so we have to figure out
what it is. Well, in this case there is some kind of logic behind the scenes
here. The logic goes as follows ... so the warrant is this idea that
forgetful people are untrustworthy. You just can't trust
forgetful people. And, as you can see, as soon as you figure
out what the warrant is then you can start discussing that as well.
A lot of debate, a lot of essay writing, is really about digging down ...
trying to figure out what the warrant is so that you can really get at the core
issue, the core problem which needs to be debated. Sometimes as you get to that
that level you find that there are assumptions underneath that as well, and
you can dig even deeper. Let's have a look at one more example just to show
how this works in practice. In this example we have something that's a
little bit more complicated. We have a number of reasons. Let's take a closer
look here. We start again with a claim: "I think we should ban handguns in this
country (whichever country that is)." There is our claim. Then we have our
first reason, and our first reason says "There is no practical necessity to own a
handgun." Then there are a few references to opposing arguments and
then we get this: "if you need to defend yourself you can just as well use a
shotgun." So, in in this argument the idea here is
that there's no practical necessity. You can easily use a shotgun [and] you don't need
a handgun. Okay, fair enough. So that is the first piece of evidence. We could
call this "Evidence 1." Then we have the second thing here: it is too easy to
conceal a handgun. You can see that this is the second piece of evidence or
the second reason: it's easy to conceal a handgun and as a result it can be a
dangerous weapon. You can see that this doesn't have quite so much to do with
practical necessity. It's actually a separate argument. Then we come back
to our initial claim at the end here: that's why "we should ban them."
These are or this is the claim, and these are the pieces of evidence. What
about the warrant then? What do we do for the warrant? Well, in this case we
actually have multiple warrants. Let me just point out a few
of the possible warrants that are in this passage. First of all, if you use a
gun for self-defense, that is a practical purpose. That's a practical
necessity. Secondly, sport is not a practical necessity. You you can use a
gun for that perhaps but it's not considered a practical necessity. Third,
the government can ban dangerous things. It's allowed to do so. It's within its
mandate. Fourth, a handgun is more dangerous than a shotgun. You might
not agree with that, but that's the underlying logic here. Finally, small
weapons which can be concealed are more dangerous than bigger weapons which are
harder to conceal. So you can see we came up very easily with five warrants that
are part of this passage, but they're not actually stated. Once we have figured
out what these warrants are then we can talk about them as well. And that's
really what good essay-writing, what good public debate is about -- to figure out
what is the underlying logic and then get at those issues as well. Otherwise
you end up often just dealing with the symptoms, with peripheral issues instead
of getting to the core of the matter. Hopefully that helps you then to figure
out how you can split up an argument very easily in terms of these three
layers, and I think that should help you both with research and analysis and also
with writing.