Chapter 28. DISAGREEMENT      Introduction   Basics   Advanced   Samples   Activities --- Advanced Methods of Disagreement --- Other Processes Additional Types of Papers     Rhetorical Modes Writing Theory for Students --- 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.                          Other Processes in an Xxx    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.                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?               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. --- Return to top.             Additional Types of Xxxxxxxxx Papers   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: Start with a clear summary of what happened and how you want it rectified. Describe the problem in detail. Show that you understand the point of view of the person(s) to whom you are writing. If possible, offer several possible solutions. 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. 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. Close with a polite request for action, obvious or implied, such as saying, "I would appreciate hearing from you within two weeks." --- Return to top.              Rhetorical Modes    Also see the Rhetorical Modes page in the "Starting" section.    See "Rhetorical Modes" in the "Advanced Section" of the "Thesis Essay" chapter. --- Return to top.           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. --- Return to top.

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