In-Class for 8/25

Do you agree that everything is an argument?

I do agree that everything is an argument for SOMETHING. Sometimes it's a little bit more unclear what that something is. Nobody would write a table of statistics and numbers that look like they could be another language if they didn't mean something, explain something, or do something. Every research paper that I mope my way through feels like it will be scanned over once, given an arbitrary letter grade, and deleted forever. If nothing else, turning in that paper make the argument that I put forth enough effort to earn a grade at all. I made an argument that I care about that given document. At base level, I argued that I can use a word processing tool competently (a skill not to be taken for granted after attempting to use number processing tools like Excel.) I think advertisements and opinon pieces are much more ouvert about their argument than choosing an outfit for the three hours of class I attended today, but all three make an argument for something like what you should buy, what you should think, and what kind of respect you deserve (respectively.) The first chapter of the book makes the point that everything is an argument, and there are several different cetegories of arguments. Once you label something like an my empirical research article as "academic argument," it has a more defined purpose for persuasion.