The Bedford Researcher- Chapter 12

Chapter 12 of The Bedford Researcher is about how to successfully develop your argument within your research project.  According to the book, the components for developing a valid argument include: Identifying reasons to accept your thesis statement, selecting evidence to support your reasoning, and deciding how you’ll appeal to your readers. While you come up with a strategy to support your thesis, it is always important to not only keep you purpose and role in mind, but also to keep the needs, interest, values, and beliefs of your readers in mind. Choosing reasons to support your argument is an import step of the writing process. For an argumentative paper, such as the one assigned to us in this class, TBR suggests to add a series of claims relevant to your topic in order to persuade your readers to accept your argument. For every reason you include, you will, of course, need evidence to back it up.  Evidence can include details, facts, personal observations, and expert opinions. Finally, you will need to decide how to appeal to your readers. You can do this in a variety of ways such as using appeals to authority, emotion, principals, values, and beliefs, character, and logic. You can use these appeals individually, or mix them. For example, you can mix emotional appeals with character appeals. Section B of chapter 12 discusses assessing the integrity of your argument. TBR suggest you do this by making sure your argument does not include common fallacies such as fallacies based on distraction, questionable assumptions, misrepresentation, and careless reasoning.