Teaching Toulmin and Recognizing Warrants

During the last month we have taught the students in Communication 3050 (Survey of Communication Theory) the Toulmin Method for analyzing arguments. They had a homework exercise in which they had to read a news article and label the claim, data, and warrant, and also find the reservation, qualifier, and backing. What quickly became clear is that they found it much easier to label the claim and the data than to articulate the warrant. They also had a hard time distinguishing the data that supported the warrant (the backing) from the data that supported the primary claim.

Being able to articulate the warrant, it seems to me, is crucial to understanding an argument, and also to being able to listen generously to someone else’s argument. If part of our goal is to argue differently, to be able to, in Aikido fashion, move alongside someone else who may differ from us, it seems to me that doing so means being able to name the warrant in our own position, and in the other person’s position. The warrants may be diametrically opposed (as in the abortion debate), but they may just be implicit and not well understood, even by the one holding the position.

One of the reasons I enjoy philosophy (and particularly philosophy of language) so much is that good philosophical investigation, it seems to me, asks us to step back and examine the warrants in our arguments. How does this connect with that? What assumptions are we making to connect that data to that claim? Do we really have a warrant for using this example to support our position? Could we grant that someone else’s position is, in fact, based on the same data, but seeing it through the lens of a different warrant?