Exciting! Secret! Thoughts!

Good Reasons with Contemporary Arguments: Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer

This book, as the preface indicates, is primarily concerned with giving students the skills necessary to become successful college writers. It does so by emphasizing the rhetorical nature of the argument, the staple of composition, and focuses on analyzing pathos/logos/ethos. To make it clear how to go from analyzing someone else’s argument to the formulation and presentation of one’s own, the book is divided into four parts: 1. “What do We Mean by Argument” 2. “Options for Arguments” 3. “Designing, Presenting, Documenting”, and 4.”Rhetorical Analysis”.

Part One begins by orienting students to pathos/logos/ethos with a scholarly reading selection. It requires students to consider the rhetorical tactics that the author used and discusses what it means to be a ‘critical reader’ (followed by a checklist of how to determine an argument’s validity in 5 steps).

After showing students how to read in terms of the rhetorical mechanics, they are instructed as to what an argument is. By defining an argument as something that makes a claim and must be supported with evidence, Good Reasons with Contemporary Arguments positions itself within an oppositional framework of criticism.

At this point, the text becomes process-oriented towards composition but, all the while, has guidelines about how a text can organically be composed. In conjunction, the student is instructed as to how to think about audience and writing a thesis. How to find and support good reasons is discussed in terms of logos and the student is introduced to different types of arguments and expands to include audience and evidence. As previously established, a checklist of how to analyze rhetorically and logical fallacies follows. Types of evidence are divided into categories, each representing a different rhetorical approach.

Having covered all the basics, the text moves from the discussion of rhetoric and expands the notion of the text by a chapter on visual arguments in which the student is taught to analyze claims made by photos, graphs, etc., ending with a check-off list.

The chapters in Part Two, “Putting Good Reasons into Action: Options for Arguments”, develop each of the evidence-based arguments that were listed briefly in Part One. These include: definition, causal, narrative, rebuttal, and proposal. Each chapter emphasizes the unique functions of its specific argumentation approach in realizing different communication goals. Thus by focusing on a single type, each argument is defined extensively and students are instructed in the nuts and bolts of how to accomplish it, with examples given of student and professional work in this argumentation style. Interestingly, Part Two ends by renewing a discussion of revision and reemphasizing the process aspect.

Now that the student knows how to do rhetorical analysis, find evidence and revise their papers, Part Three, “Making Effective Arguments: Designing, Presenting, and Documenting”, is focused on different presentation methods. Instead of presuming that all composition projects will be papers, this section also explores visual presentations and oral reports. Chapter 13 details basic visual design from font choice to web layout while Chapter 14 covers how to give a speech, field questions, and use visual aids in oral presentation. Chapter 15-17, more conventionally, give instruction as to MLA and APA style as well as research and citation tips. These chapters renew discussions about what makes evidence ‘good’, and expands traditional notions of sources to include web info and independent research while cautioning students as to how to determine validity.

Part Four, “Contemporary Arguments”, shifts its focus from rhetorical concerns to cultural studies/ critical pedagogy investigations and could be pertinent for any one of several agendas. Each chapter contains multiple readings on a chosen topic, topics include: the environment, sexuality, globalization, science, privacy, regulation, and media. These chapters consistently begin with brief overviews of the topic and a list of questions for students to think about when reading and/or places to go for additional information. After the essays, the student if given another list of questions designed to help them begin writing projects about the issue they’ve just read. However, the listing of additional information, writing projects and introductory questions is not consistent from topic to topic, some have all and some have only one or two.

The main focus, after instructing how to find and write good arguments (by good: rhetorically sound with appeals to logos, ethos and pathos), is to introduce students to a variety of culturally relevant topics in various styles. This is organized in two ways: according to topic and according to style. Thus, the book becomes adaptable to teaching style, whether focus be rhetoric or cultural/critical studies, an instructor is provided with a diverse number of readings.

However, the topics are the kind one would expect to find in a composition textbook and many of the assignments seem likely to produce clichéd or uninteresting results. Unless the focus of the course is a specific issue like the environment or evidence based arguments, it may be difficult to use this book over the course of the semester because of its emphasis on categorization and separation.

Though the book contains photographs and illustrations, they are all in grey-scale and not eye-catching. The usually uninterrupted writing may be disagreeable to students, nor do the step-by-step charts do much to break up the visual monotony. It does attempt to appeal to students with some pop culture references; these instances are scarce. The book makes no exciting pretenses, but rather presents itself as it is: a serious look at the serious nature of rhetorical composition with an emphasis on following rules, the pleasure of writing given very little room.