Chapter 28. DISAGREEMENT
Introduction
Basics
Advanced
Samples
Activities
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Advanced Methods of
Disagreement ---
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Introduction
These advanced ideas and/or applications can help
you understand and use this paper's type of thinking better. For
additional information, check the chapter's
Grammar Book
Links
in the right column.
What is the difference between a good
disagreement and an excellent one? An adequate disagreement clearly
presents an opposing viewpoint, step by step. An excellent one goes beyond
merely presenting an alternative. It also has the following elements:
AN
EXCELLENT DISAGREEMENT
(1) offers a
deeper explanation of the text's point of view,
(2) uses
evidence not available to the text's author, and
(3) works to
speak to the audience's own positive and negative biases.
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PROVIDING DEEPER EXPLANATION
First, as
you know from reading the "Basics" section, a
good disagreement summarizes what is said in the text with which it
disagrees. It does so in the body of the paper itself, point by point, and
it may also do so in a brief summary of the text. However, there is a
level that is deeper than the points made by the text itself. If you
can explore this deeper level, you can not only discover a richer understanding
of the topic but also provide better support of what you are saying to your
audience. This deeper level is simply the rich, varied, and complex
background of the text's author and how he or she perceives the topic.
It is this background--of the issue and of the author's understanding of
it--that you can explore and on which you can speculate.
For example, in 2003, the citizens of Alabama, with
the state in dire financial straits, voted on a tax bill to raise badly needed
money for state services. The bill was voted down, and Alabama had to look
to service cuts to handle its debts. Some newspaper editorials pointed out
that Alabama has one of the lowest levels of state taxes and state services in
the nation, and therefore the failure of the people of Alabama to raise their
taxes a level like that of other states demonstrated foolish ignorance.
However, if these editorialists had investigated the issue more deeply, they
would have discovered that the tax bill was regressive--that is, lower and
middle class people would have paid significantly higher amounts of tax
proportionate to their income than would have the rich. In addition, the
governor had promised in the previous year to fix serious financial inequities
in state government, and he had not done so. There were other issues, too.
The result was that one reasonable argument for the people's vote against new
taxes was that they were, in actuality, protesting several other, related
issues.
Whether ultimately the people of Alabama were right
or wrong in refusing to raise taxes, the fact of the matter is that many
editorialists--quite a few of which were in
Northern states--did not fully investigate the issues in Alabama's vote.
They jumped to conclusions about the people of Alabama. In doing so, these
editorialists missed the opportunity to further their own understanding--and
their readers'--of the complexities of tax reform in Alabama. Perhaps
the editorialists would have come to the same conclusion; however, their failure
to fully explore the tax and related political issues led them to false
assumptions and false conclusions. In short, their disagreement with the
people of Alabama fell short of being balanced, fully informed, and logical.
How do you investigate the deeper background of a
text's point of view? It takes, at the least, good thinking and
questioning, and sometimes it may require research. Here are some
questions to ask. The answers can be added to your disagreement at any
point in which you are explaining the author's beliefs. The appropriate
pattern is to provide a quotation from the text, explain what it means, if
necessary, and then to provide deeper background by speculating logically on
likely facts (do not speculate wildly) concerning the author's background and
resulting beliefs:
QUESTIONS TO ASK
What was the author of your text thinking, feeling, and
experiencing when choosing his or her viewpoint?
What is the author's background, experiences, knowledge, personal
history, social surroundings, age, etc.?
To whom is the author writing, and what does he or she assume
about this audience?
To what kind of intellectual and cultural circle or group does the
author belong, and how might this group perceive the issue, past,
present, and future?
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OFFERING NEW EVIDENCE
The next
step is to consider your own point of view--for you are the person
disagreeing--and how your own experiences and knowledge might differ
significantly from the author's. In doing so, ask yourself what it is that
you happen to know--through experience or knowledge--that the author of the text
has failed to consider. Many quite intelligent disagreements are
based on personal experience alone, as the sample paper "Divorce Not
Harmful to Children" in the "Samples"
part of this chapter demonstrates. If you have had important experiences
that the author probably has not, this is worth noting in your disagreement as a
logical reason for your opposing viewpoint.
Another
natural method of developing new evidence--evidence not available to or ignored
by the text's author--is to find it through research. This is
particularly useful and necessary if you are writing a disagreement research
paper. Your personal experience may be helpful in such a paper, but the
emphasis should be on academic and professional resources that the author seems
to have not used. Again, it is useful to try to view the sources you find
through the eyes of the author to see whether he or she might have seen them and
rejected them and, if so, whether her reasons for doing so were valid. All
of this--the tracking of the author's mindset, background, and experience--is
valid and usually very helpful information to give readers in presenting why the
author may erroneously have arrived at his or her position, or why you are in a
different and possibly better position to comment on the issue. You do not
need to dwell on such background information; rather, present it simply and
efficiently--e.g., tell a brief story of your own or someone else's experience,
or simply state something like "The author did not have access to this
research at the time she wrote her essay," and then use your sources or
experience to explain your own point of view.
WORKING WITH AUDIENCE BIAS
Bias
mean a person's tendency to favor one side against another. The word does
not mean prejudice, which is defined as an unreasonable belief for or
against something. Rather, bias simply means that a person happens to
favor a side, and this person may well have strong, logical reasons for doing
so.
The issue
of bias has been addressed in a simple way in the "Basics" section at
several points. However, in terms of this present discussion, when you
write an excellent disagreement, you must consider not only the text's deeper
background to your own, but also your audience's background. For starters,
given the fact that if you are writing a disagreement in an academic setting,
your primary audience probably is your instructor. Many an instructor has
found fault with student papers that disagree strongly with his or her own point
of view. The reason for this is not just tha the instructor is biased
toward his own point of view (which does sometimes happen) but, more
importantly, that if the instructor knows quite a bit about the subject, he may
have much more information available to him than you do. For this reason,
you must seriously consider the subject you choose, what you will say about it,
and what your instructor knows and believes about it, unless an instructor
states otherwise. Secondly, you can expect the professional world of work
to be even more so this way: your work supervisors generally will expect you to
support their ideas and initiatives or, at the least, to not actively oppose
them.
Must you,
then, curry the favor of your instructors and present ideas in which you
personally do not believe? First, many instructors in beginning college
composition courses allow a wide range of ideas--as long as students provide
strong support for their beliefs. If an instructor clearly has storng
beliefs of his or her own with which you feel you should not disagree, usually,
with his or her help, it is possible to find an issue on which the two of you
can agree, or one about which the instructor knows little and would like to hear
more.
Even a worse-case scenario--when you must argue for
or against something in such a way that you are going against your own
beliefs--is a cloud with a silver lining. In fact, doing so can make you a
much stronger communicator and critical thinker, for one of the greatest
challenges in learning to argue well is to be able to perceive the opposing
side's viewpoint so thoroughly that you could present it yourself, as would your
opponents. If you can do that, you not only will have mastered the ability
to see from another perspective and to summarize it, but also you will be even
more deeply aware of the background issues and competing arguments. In
addition, it is not all unusual for your mind to be changed--a minor or
occasionally a major shift in your thinking. Such is one of the great
benefits of a college education: the opportunity and ability to change your mind
based on new information.
All three of
these issues--deeper understanding, new evidence, and audience bias--are
necessary to understand in writing an excellent disagreement. Each is
another step to be used in further development of your paper. You may use
these steps in any order and begin them at any time that seems appropriate in
your beginning or progress in writing this type of paper.
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Three Common "Disagreement" Types of Writing
WRITING EDITORIALS
Writing an editorial in a newspaper or some other source is not always just
another form of thesis writing (see "Advanced
Methods" in the chapter called "Writing
a Thesis Essay"). Additionally, it often is a journalistic form
of disagreement. When an editorial is a disagreement, an editorialist
first must briefly summarize an issue and the stance that a person or group has
taken, and then the editorialist offers a response with several points.
Some of these points may be positive responses; indeed, some editorials are
largely or completely in agreement with the people about which they are
writing. However, the world of journalism thrives on opposing ideas,
problems, and disasters, and newspaper readers who like editorials usually are
more interested in seeing these opposing ideas rather than simple
agreement. Even in well written editorials that agree, there is a strong
oppositional element (if they are well written): the editorialists explain why
whatever they are supporting is better than the opposing idea or event.
As an editorial disagrees (or agrees) with someone or something, it must offer
intelligent support for its reasons. Often this intelligent support
consists of any one or more of these three types, the first of which is a form
of negative evidence, and the last two, positive evidence: (1)
analysis of the faulty logic used by the opposing party, (2) accepted statistics
about and/or real experiences of affected individuals, including examples, and
(3) quotations from experts the readers will respect.
As in typical editorial writing, the tone or voice can be somewhat stronger than
in academic writing. Even so, there should be, equally or more so, a tone
of balance, , and logic. Again, for more on editorial writing, see "Advanced
Methods" in the thesis essay chapter.
DISAGREEING AT WORK: A "Position Paper" vs. a
Negative Job or Performance Review
Sometimes
people believe that offering a negative job review or performance review of
someone at work is a form of disagreement with them. It really is
not. No matter how much you disagree with someone at work, there must be
an objective list of items by which every employee, including you, can be
evaluated (see "Rubrics"
in the "Help" section, and the
"Writing an Evaluation"
chapter). Then you simply (and logically, without bias) use this list of
evaluative items to judge the quality of the person's work.
However,
if you truly disagree with someone else's vision or policy in a professional
situation, this calls for a different type of paper: a "position
paper." A position paper simply is a paper in which you develop your
own position on a subject and, as in an editorial, if helpful, one of the forms
of evidence you an use---in addition to the positive ones explained
above--you
can use the negative form of analyzing the faulty logic used in the opposing
policy. However, you should analyze the problem with this opposing
position, not the people who hold it. (If your issue is with a person's
behavior, rather than their position, then you should complain to the
appropriate coordinator about the behavior.) You can prepare a position
paper either as a letter, as an essay, or even, sometimes, as a proposal (see
"Writing a Proposal").
However, you should remember that any document like this has the potential to be
dangerous to you and/or others. For this reason, you should be sure to
assess whether such a document will be welcome before you send it, who will read
it (usually it will be seen by many more people than the immediate recipient),
and whether the document is ethical (and if not, how you can make it so).
LETTER OF COMPLAINT
Yet another type of disagreement is a complaint
letter. Such letters generally should follow the following pattern and
points:
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Start with a clear summary of what happened and how you want it rectified.
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Describe the problem in detail.
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Show that you understand the point of view of the person(s) to whom you
are writing.
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If possible, offer several possible solutions.
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If you have someplace at a higher level to which you can complain, and
that is the next logical step, offer this information gently but clearly.
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Avoid using a tone of complaint, unhappiness, or anger. Rather, use
a businesslike tone which shows logic, consideration, balance, and
experience with what you are discussing.
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Close with a polite request for action, obvious or implied, such as
saying, "I would appreciate hearing from you within two weeks."
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See "Rhetorical Modes"
in the "Advanced Section" of the "Thesis Essay" chapter.
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Writing Theory
for Students: Writing an Analysis |
Disagreement is part of a dialogical process. For more about
dialogical argument, go to "Theory"
in the "Advanced" part of the "Dialogic/Dialectic Writing"
chapter.
For a discussion of the value of writing about readings in composition courses, please go to
this major section's "Theory
and Pedagogy for Instructors" page.
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