I chose to reflect on chapter 12 about argumentation in law. When reading this chapter, I found that it
was a culmination of almost everything we have learned this semester. There is a lot of talk about the burden of
proof and how when arguing in court both parties need to have enough evidence
to prove that they are innocent/have been wronged. It is up to the judge and/or jury at that
point to decide what the appropriate decision is. This chapter really focused on a specific
case about discriminatory pay. It was
interesting to read about the different perspectives that were taken. It was a good reminder that, when making an
argument, it is incredibly important to be aware of who is going to be most
important when making the decision. In
this chapter, I got a sense of the importance to always fight for what is
right. So, while we learned all of these
things in about argumentation, remember that you need to make things work for
you. For hundreds of years, people have
been manipulating the rules and working around common places to be sure that
they got what they wanted. Today, while
the rules are important, use them to do good, and don’t let other people use
the same rules to stop you.
In Chapter 9, the authors of the text discuss credibility. The text remarks that credibility is not only able to serve as a claim in argumentation, but it also plays a significant role as a means to support a claim (Rieke, Sillars, & Peterson, 142). The text then goes into detail about characteristics and forms of credibility but finally goes over the general principle the authors suggest for the use of credibility. Credibility can be incredibly subjective, but there are still some general principles of credibility that can apply to most situations. The principle I found to stand out the most in the group of principles the authors presented was the principle of developing credibility from reputation. Reputation is the credibility someone possesses with decision makers before they argue (Rieke, Sillars, & Peterson, 147). When I think of reputation in argument, I always manage to think of the polarized reputation of Donald Trump. There is a significant amount of people who hat
Hey Kelly!
ReplyDeleteI also wrote about Chapter 12, I thought it was a very interesting chapter because like you stated right away it basically incorporated many important terms that we've previously discussed and did a great job of connecting these terms for us! There was a lot of talk about burden of proof , because I think this is an important term for us in the field of argumentation. Burden of proof is known as the "the obligation to prove one's assertion." This is basically defending your point, your views regarding the issue at hand, and that you must supply proof for your audience to just accept and embrace all of your points. Another key term that you mentioned was commonplaces, I feel like this is important to consider because everyone comes from a different place, and has different feelings towards certain issues.