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 cuz 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! 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 wa nted 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 sub stitute 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 ove r 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, cuz 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 qui te 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, cuz 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 Joy!