Essay III: Health & Safety
Defend a position in which the key issue turns on a definition and falls within the general theme of Health & Safety. As discussed in Everything's an Argument, your claim must be an issue of definition, rather than any of the other stases, and it must be controversial (or a borderline case).
Finding a Topic
For a definitional claim to be worth arguing, it must involve or raise a controversy. The controversy may arise because including some new instance into a category might change the way people think about the category. For example, suppose someone argued that an animal that was used in combat should be given membership in a veteran's organization. Or the controversy may arise because the category itself is not well established--you may be creating a new category through your argument.
Developing Your Content
As you write your definition argument, be sure to work on doing each of the following:
- ESTABLISH THE PURPOSE AND VALUE OF THE ARGUMENT. Why is your argument important? Why is it controversial? What is at stake? Make sure your readers care about the topic and give them enough information to understand your position.
- CREATE A WORKABLE DEFINITIONAL CLAIM. Be sure your claim is an arguable proposition. The case you choose shouldn't be so obvious that an argument is unnecessary. Including your case might even have consequences on people's feelings about the category.
- DESCRIBE AND DEFEND A SET OF CRITERIA FOR YOUR CATEGORY TERM that any instance must normally meet to be included. Your goal is to persuade readers on any side of the issue that you have included all the sufficient and/or necessary criteria. Only after you have argued the criteria for your category will you actually match your case to these criteria.
- MATCH YOUR CASE AGAINST THE CRITERIA. How well does your case match the criteria? In most cases, your case will match some but not all criteria. Then you may argue that certain criteria are more important than others or that this case warrants adding some new criteria or making some optional.
- TAKE THE EXTRA STEP OF EVALUATION. This is an optional step of taking your argument to the evaluation stasis by making an evaluation of where your case fits into the category. One would expect to see the evaluation section towards the end of your paper, after you have finished the definition part.
Additional Requirements
SOURCES: You must use 3 or more sources and include a Works Cited page. Your source material adds authority to your argument, so you must use reliable sources. Source material should contribute something to your paper that you cannot: specific facts, clarification or emphasis of a point, a voice with authority in a specific area, illustration of the controversy or complexity around your issue.
FORMAT: Your final draft should be 4-6 pages long, typed, double-spaced, and carefully proofread. Be sure to provide solid introductory and concluding paragraphs, organize the essay coherently, and avoid errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
SUBMIT: To submit your assignment, you need to upload the MSWord file to our blog and post an entry with a link to that file.
Grading Criteria
I will evaluate your essay according to these criteria:
- Careful exposition of the significance and rhetorical context of your argument.
- Demonstrated ability to recognize argumentative strategies.
- Demonstrated ability to use principles of argument to construct a persuasive, coherent, well-supported definition argument.
- Acknowledgement and consideration of alternative claims and conditions for rebuttal.
- Effective essay organization.
- Clear and precise sentence-level rhetoric (grammar and style).