The Toulmin Schema

Now comes the naming of the parts. There may be any number of ways to account for all the elements you need to have in order to construct a complete argument, but one of the most widely regarded systems was developed by the British philosopher Stephen Toulmin (1922-2009). He based his system, or schema, on a kind of courtroom model also grounded in the “reasonable person” assumption we have been using. While his schema is closely related to the ideas of organization, please note that it is not an outline of the essay. The exact contours of your essay will be determined by your rhetorical goals and audience needs, but the Toulmin Schema will help ensure you have all the pieces, regardless of where they are placed.

As you already read in Section IV, the first element is called the claim, and this is the point you are making. The claim is your statement about the nature of the world. A claim is always supported by a reason – often several reasons, in fact. Together, the claim and reasons form the thesis of your argument.

Only one reason is exemplified here for reasons of clarity and space, but please remember that good arguments will have multiple reasons, which create branching obligations all along the Toulmin schema.

The next step is called the grounds. In an argument, the grounds are the evidence, the support, the specifics, the research that proves your reasons are true. You must have evidence because, as Christopher Hitchens put it, “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”  So here you cite examples of dogs who follow their masters around the house, sleep in their beds, ride in their cars, and basically never part if they can help it. You quote a veterinarian who confirms these examples are typical. You reference a Dog Behaviorist who explains why dogs do this.

The readers must be convinced that your reasons are just as you say – you will need to choose evidence from sources your skeptical audience will accept, so getting all of your grounds from The International Society for Dog Propaganda is not going to do it.

You have made your claim, you have supported it with reasons and evidence, so your argument is basically done, right? No. Let us imagine that a member of your skeptical audience says to you, “I agree that dogs do love being with their owners, but so what? Why does that make a good pet?”

The next element in the Toulmin Schema is called the warrant. A warrant is the assumption that allows your claim and reason to make sense together. Often in “casual” argument the warrant is unstated and merely implicit. The trouble with such assumptions is that if your audience does not already share them, your claim will fail. In the formal argument you will be doing this semester, your assumptions/warrant need to be addressed explicitly and directly. It is a feature of natural language logic that any time you link a claim and reason, no matter how strange, a warrant will inevitably be created. For example:

Non-sensical.

But your theses do have to make sense together, so you will articulate your warrant and make it apparent to the reader. As noted previously, any claim and reason will create a warrant, so if your argument has three reasons, it will therefore have three warrants, and so on, and all the warrants must be clear and supported

Does it look to you like a warrant is just another claim about the nature of the world? Now you are getting it.

Given that the warrant is used in the service of your initial claim, the warrant is very much like the reasons, and just as the reasons are supported by the grounds, the warrant is supported by the backing. Whereas your grounds prove your reasons are true, the backing proves your warrant(s) is true or good. You will find that warrants are often moral or value judgements (this thing is good or bad, for example), so it may not always be a matter of proving their veracity through statistics or simple facts, but you can still use various appeals to support the warrants. The backing for our sample argument must explain why loving to be around its owner makes a good pet, so you would have to argue the virtue of companionship, affection, loyalty, and you would have to prove dogs have all those things. You would prove that through examples, testimony, etc. Just as with the grounds, those examples, testimony, etc., must be from or through sources the audience will believe or accept.

Please note that the grounds and the backing are both evidence, support, examples, etc., but they are fulfilling different functions – they are not doing the same thing. Make sure you have the distinction clear so you will adequately support both your reasons and your warrants. The grounds will always be specific to your claim, but the backing might be broader and is about the assumptions at work.

At this point, you have argued the positive, or confirmatio, portion of your essay. The grounds and the backing are obviously going to be the bulk of your argument because that is where all the support comes in. If your essay is just you asserting a claim and then repeating it in various forms for 1500 words, your argument will be a failure.

But your argument is not through yet, and the next term in the Toulmin Schema addresses the negative, or confutatio, portion of the essay. The Conditions of Rebuttal bring in the opposition views. Remember that in the classical argument model, a good writer will always directly deal with contrary claims, and now is the time.

If you go back and review Section VI on essay organization, you will note that the Rebuttal part of your essay also has several sub-parts, and that need reflects the fact that you have multiple tasks to accomplish here. Before we go on, though, maybe just a word on why you need to bother with rebuttal. Some students – or writers generally – do not like to bring up the opposition because they feel it might give legitimacy or credence to those views. If you do it badly, it might make the opposition look stronger, yes, but dealing with rebuttal will not have that effect if done well. Why do it at all? Because to your audience, your ethos, your authority, will be greater if you appear like a neutral arbiter who has appeared on the scene, weighed, measured, and counted the various arguments, and come to a rational decision based on the evidence. The more you look like some biased partisan hack, the less effective you will be for audiences along that spectrum discussed above. Your target audience will shrink, and you will be more and more confined to the echo chamber of those who already think as you do; your chance to effect the result you seek is diminished by ignoring the opposition.

You, then, will deal with contrary views. Further, you will initially deal with them in a neutral and fair way. Bringing up ideas just to mock them does little to help your ethos. It makes you look unhinged. So, in rebuttal, you will first introduce an opposition claim, you will summarize it fairly, and you will address it as your argument requires. Sometimes, that means recognizing when the opposition has gotten something right. Imagine a situation wherein an opponent makes a good point you cannot rationally deny. Admitting this does not weaken your argument; it strengthens your argument. At the same time, do not “invent” things to praise in the opposition; remember your argument is not a pro-con debate. If something is there, and it would be perverse to ignore or deny it, then acknowledge it.

You acknowledge the correctness of some element of the opposition argument, and then you counter it or explain why it does not obtain. Do not just bring up the opposition point and leave it there; that rhetorical construction would, in fact, have the effect of leaving the strong point unanswered and it would look stronger. You bring it up, and you explain why it is not conclusive. Maybe the evidence is questionable; maybe the cost of the action is too high; there could be dozens of reasons why this otherwise true thing is not enough. Be sure to explain those reason to your audience.

Having dealt with the opposition strengths, assuming there are some, you are ready to take on the flaws in the opposition argument. Presumably, there are several of these, although it is possible your disagreement is centered on one large issue. Regardless, once you have fairly summarized the contrary position, you proceed to point out the errors. This is the stage wherein you can indulge in all those objections, questions, or doubts you shunted aside earlier during your empathetic reading. Now you are to read as a skeptic.

You are going to look for errors called fallacies, which will be discussed in more detail in Section VIII, as well as other problems with logic, evidence, or emotion. There are several time-tested approaches for degrading the quality of the contrary arguments:

It is also good form to review your work honestly and admit to any lapses or flaws you may have. Again, when done well, this makes your argument easier to accept, not harder. Like with acceding contrary points, the important thing is not to say “Oh, some of my sources may be a bit old. Moving on . . .“ Do not leave the reader with a weakness as a last impression. If some of your sources are a bit older, explain why in a way that is likely to make sense to your audience. If, after all, you are writing an argument about a Shakespeare play, using a source from 2008 is likely not really a problem at all. Explain that. It may be that your research on Topic X comes from 2015, but that is the most recent year for which data are available. Explain that.  You also want to be able to read your argument skeptically to pre-empt or inoculate against counter-argument. Are your sources largely unbiased? Is their methodology sound? Have you relied too much on any one source? Have you relied too much on emotion? Be aware of your weaknesses, and you can minimize their impact.

In looking at your own argument as a skeptic might, the rebuttal is likely to focus on the grounds and backing since those are the supports for the other claims that make up your argument. Your opposition might question your good dog examples, might question the authority of the vet you quoted, might question the scientific basis of the dog whisperer you cited. You can preempt these objections as you go along giving your evidence (in other words, intermingling your grounds and rebuttal) or you can address them separately, depending on your needs and goals. Your opposition might also question or dispute your backing by suggesting a different definition of a good pet; maybe ease of care is the most important thing in a pet, so a cat or snake is preferable to a dog – no one needs to take a snake out for a walk. The opposition might raise additional negative points, like about dogs’ barking. Again, you can deal with those sorts of questions as they arise, or you can deal with them later, but you should deal with them.

It is very unlikely – unless you are engaged in some sort of class activity that might produce it – that your opposition will call into doubt the specific claims you make (doubting the vet, for instance, in the above example) because, after all, you have just made them. It is more likely that you will find contrary argument in your research phase, and there you will discover Author C who has made the claims about “ease of care” as the most important purpose of a pet. You then work C into your Conditions of Rebuttal, fairly summarizing the argument, noting any valid points (“It is true that for people in very small apartments, a dog might be a lot of pet, but . . .”), and then explaining why your argument is still the most correct. You may have to extrapolate rebuttal from other arguments; what you ought not do is simply “make up” opposition argument by writing vague phrases like “some may say” or “other people might argue,” etc. Find out what others do say and deal with that. Nodding toward some imaginary rebuttal runs the risk of the Straw Man fallacy and demonstrates a lack of thoroughness.

To sum up the Toulmin Schema so far, then, your argument has two large pieces (and keeping in mind sophisticated arguments will have more than one reason, which means more grounds, and which creates more warrants, which means more backing, etc.):

This section is the positive, or confirmatio, part of your argument.

The other approximately half of will be the negative, or confutatio:

There is one last potential term in the Toulmin Schema, the Qualifier. A qualifier limits the scope of the claim and is a kind of anticipatory preempting of potential rebuttal. Not all arguments will need or have a qualifier, so consider whether it would strengthen your argument to include one. “Limiting the scope” of the claim means that you reduce the number of situations to which your claim would apply. If you write “dogs make good pets” your argument applies as broadly as possible: you mean all dogs in every pet variation. St. Bernards, Chihuahuas, Pit Bulls, in houses, apartments, yurts, owned by young and old, busy and not busy. You can probably see that as soon as you make such a claim, some wiseacre will point out the likely exceptions or problems. To head off such quibbling, you could “qualify” your claim by revising it to write “Depending on the size of the dog, dogs are good pets for most people.” You will still have to explain about the sizes and explain what you mean by “most” people, but that is the trade-off you get for less exposure to rebuttal. It is possible, of course, that you do not want to limit your argument; in that case, leave the qualifier at home. Please note that the qualifier is not some entirely separate new piece – it becomes part of the claim.