Rhetorical Strategy #2: Refutation

The Basic Idea:

For as long as there has been argumentation and human conversation, there has been Refutation. Refutation goes by many different names (rebuttal, counter-argument, acknowledgement/accomodation, opposition), but its purpose has invariably remained the same: to offer and account for the views of those who will/who do disagree with your views.

The key with any argument, as some of you will note in your personal lives, is to beat your opponent "to the punch." If you can speak more quickly than they can; if you can speak more loudly than them; if you can speak more fluently and without getting flustered, you will likely win your argument.

Argumentation of the written type is not exactly the same thing as a personal spat or fight, but the premises are often a similar, particularly in the category of "not getting flustered."  The best way not to get flustered, of course, is not to let your opponent catch you off-guard, and the best way not to get caught off-guard is preparation and anticipation.

When, for example, your opponent gets right up in your face and says something horrible, hateful, mean-spirited, you will not be surprised or hurt or frustrated, because you will have expected him/her to say this, and you will have prepared a well-spoken, even-tempered reply to his/her assertion.

Refutation is a two-part mechanism, then, starting first with the anticipation of the opposition (Prolepsis) and, second, with the actual dismantling of that viewpoint.

No matter how much you disagree or find ridiculous this alternative view point that opposes yours, you will want to honor it, treat it fairly and evenly, show its best side, its best characteristics. Doing this only makes the second part of Refutation (the actual refutation) that much stronger. If you can treat my viewpoint fairly and honestly, I might be willing to see how you challenge my viewpoint; and if you can systematically show me where and in what ways my viewpoint is misinformed, you might actually start to convince me (this is the rhetorical strategy of Refutation) that I have something to learn from you.

 So, let's take a closer look at the two parts of Refutation:

1) Prolepsis: the anticipation of alternative viewpoints

Typically, you set-up an alternative viewpoint with a prompt or trigger phrase. You might start by saying something like, "There are plenty of critics who disagree with this..." or you might say, "Some critics have claimed that..." or you might say, "Popular knowledge would seem to dispell this premise..." The role of the prompt is simply to get the ball rolling in an alternative direction--a direction that your dubious readers will be excited to see, because they have been thinking this direction all along.

Once you have your prompt, you are ready to represent and establish that viewpoint to show honesty, fairness, eveness, clarity on your part. To represent and establish the alternative viewpoint, you will utilize the skills of summary and paraphrase. You will move from the the idea that "some" people contend the opposite of what you're saying to an example of precisely this viewpoint. As with any summary or paraphrase, you will need to integrate unknown (for your reader) bibliographic data, a nutshell of the text, a few sentences of supporting structure, and the conclusion of the text.

When all is said and done in the Prolepsis step of Refutation, you might have a paragraph that looks something like this:

Loyal Democrats often take issue with this position (that taxation is the root of all financial evils). They seem to think that backing off taxes means backing off concern and awareness. One of the most commonly cited deomocrats on this issue is Tom Daschele. While discussing taxes last fall on NBC's Meet the Press, Dashele claimed that taxes were the only way Americans could be aware that their government cared about them. He compared taxes to the concept of a parents' exercising of "tough love." He said at one point that the only time he knew his parents ever cared about him was "when they whipped him into shape a little bit." Dashele concluded his thoughts on this issue by apologizing, claiming that the did not in fact "associate taxes with punishment" but that there was "something" to the argument that taxes might be the only measurement we have of our national trust and confidence in itself and its people...

See, no big deal. Prolepsis is really the simple marriage of anticipation and summary--anticipate a camp (Paper 3, remember?) and summarize one particularly good example of that camp. Once you do this, you're ready to "refute" and "rebut."

 

2)The formal/actual refutation: the refuting of the anticipated viewpoint.

We start an actual refutation of a viewpont much as we did with Prolepsis: a simple prompt or trigger phrase: "But" "However" "What is missing" "Where so-and-so has gone wrong" etc.

The purpose of the trigger phrase, which is often the start of an entirely new paragraph, is to make clear your separation from the ideas that you have just represented. From your prompt, you move into two other skills you've already practiced: Analysis and Response. You will manipulate these two entities for your rhetorical (persuasive) purposes, but the general principles from Paper 2 remain steadfast.

Perhaps this is best shown through an example:


[continuing from the Prolepsis above]...Dashele concluded his thoughts on this issue by apologizing, claiming that the did not in fact "associate taxes with punishment" but that there was "something" to the argument that taxes might be the only measurement we have of our national trust and confidence in itself and its people.

Daschele's sentiments are quaint and charming, but he--like most democrats--fails to address the larger concern that the American governemnt is not an incorruptible machine. His overwhelming assumption (and it is an assumption of many politicians, historically) is that our government works like a set of indifferent agents that simply process the factual data their constituents have provided them; our appointed governing officials simply pull a lever on the yes/no ballots that their constituents have voted for. But this assumption is very much flawed.  Lest we forget it, the American government is a breathing, living monster, ever evolving and changing at the whims of the people who give it life--people who are themselves helpless victims of their own personal lives and interests, people who are themselves endlessly trying to keep up with the Joneses in their own neighborhoods. This is painfully true when we note, for example, some of the taxes that our state governments have been proposing of late.  Many states seem very clearly to be showing an alarming focus on the personal lives of its citizens. The new liquor tax proposal currently being entertained in five separate states is perhaps our most prominent example right now. In her December 12, 2003 Milwaukee Sentinal article "Boose for losers tax," Jennifer Capson discusses the rationale of her senator, one of three state senators pushing for a new tax on alcohol...

From our Prolepsis paragraph, you will notice the that we have "Responded" to the assumption of the text (Daschele's answer to an interviewer) and have gone on to show how and where this is an invalid assumption on the part of the many who would disagree with us. We do this, of course, to stregthen our own position and case:  the democratic disagreement with taxation is flawed, and here is a very clear reason (or set of reasons) why it is flawed.  Furthermore, if Dashele is incorrect, and these are the reasons he's incorrect, there must be a better truth out there--and it will be ours.

When/How often should we use Refutation?

The question innevitably arises about where and how often to utilize Refutation. The answer is not easily given, as there is no text-book correct answer to this. Primarily, however, you could do worse than introducing a refutation for each of the claims that you make; at the very least, you will want to offer a refutation for each of the major sections of your paper.  The key here is to bear in mind that you are proposing alternative views in Refutation, showing fairness, strengthening your sections of a paper, not necessarily saying here is what we believe, here's ten pages of it, and then these are the people who disagree, and they get about one page. No.  Refutation is a more localized and centralized endeavor, a series of smaller "battles," not one enormous Us/Them situation.

So, if you were to claim, as we did in the claim lecture, that automobiles are the slaves of the 20th century, we might first flesh this claim out a bit, show us how and where it is prominent and true.  We might even relate it to our larger purpose:  the problem that has brought us to this proposal in the first place. 

And then, we might submit our Refutation (Prolepsis and Refution), as seen below:

While Americans may abuse the privilege of their automobiles, plenty of critics in Detroit and American pop culture would contend that the relationship between cars and their owners is hardly one of slave and owner.  They will contend instead that the times dictate necessity and that, in our culture of fast-paced, instantaneous communication, one cannot function without a car or a vehicle.  In this respect, the car is less a slave and more of an breathing aparatus, a tool that aides our modern lungs, a service that we would likely suffocate or whither away without. 

This is a point that Jimmy Howard indirectly argues in his December 2002 Harper's article, "Where have all the good guys gone?"  Life no longer exists as it did ten years ago, Howard contends, and only the foolish would wish that it did.  Howard claims that people live and die in so far as they are able to adjust to the viccissitudes of their respective eras.  To this end, he makes particular mention of such American "heroes" as Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Theresa--people, he claims, who showed the world how to adjust and cope with outstanding and unprecidented circumstances.  Howard concludes his reflections on contemporary American life and its changes by suggesting that, if America is to remain the singular superpower of the world, it needs to stop tearing itself down from the inside--it needs to separate its nostalgia from its present time.  For Howard, and for the many who fail to see the influence of automobiles in our modern lives as oppressive, slavery does not exist--and to claim that it does exist is misguided and foolhearty (45 - 65). 

But Howard, and others of his school of thought, are mistaken about a great many things in claiming this.  For starters, slaves of the turn-of-the-century were considered by many, many people to be an indispensible necessity for life.  Countless were the owners of slaves who would replace slaves daily because they feared that a slave might begin to shirk his/her work, and therefore risk the life and blood of the owner's family in the process.  A slave who disobeyed did not simply "undermine" the demands of his owner; they undermined the owner's right to life.  Slaves, it is true, were always seen as "replaceable," but the concept of the slave was as vital to the life of a southerner in the 1800's as a car seems now to the life of a new-millenium yuppie. 

More importantly, of course, is the innability and denial of most slave owners to see their reliance upon cars.  Were there any slave owners in literature who carried a self-consciousness about their activity?  Indeed, no.  Most literature recording this time period (Uncle Tom's Cabin being the most notorious) reflects, at best, a socially progressive slave owners who has concerns and worries for a specific slave--perhaps they have an inclination toward liberation because of this single slave that they have met and made friends with.  Hardly can we interpret this as a healthy self-awareness on the part of the slave owner, however. It is not their personal reliance on some (any) "agent of burden" that is being questioned--only the inhumanity of the institution.  You can hear the echoes, in fact, of Beecher Stowe in the dismissive words of our Jimmy Howard:  "If you don't like the way life is, don't live it."  As if it were so simple.
 

You get the idea--right?  Good luck!