What is argument?

I never really thought about argument before I took this class. I have argued. I have come across the various forms of argument listed in Essentials of Argument. Nancy Wood has defined argument, stating that "the goal of argument is to bring about a change in an audience's initial position on a controversial issue" (4). She goes on to explain the two types of argument that she will explain later in the chapter. Although I never really considered mediation to be an actual argument type, Wood classifies it as such (8). I always thought mediation was pursued instead of an argument, but the way that argument is defined in this text includes negotiation and mediation with respect to the way the ends are achieved; with pursuasion. The ultimate goal is to cause someone to think about an issue the same way that you do, so each of these methods make sense. Actually, I think that it is funny how we learn this from such a young age. I think that my children might have been born with the ability to be pursuasive. Babies are able to communicate with adults by crying. If the baby is hungry, he cries. If the baby is tired, she cries. Crying is the only means of communication that an infant has, but every parent soon realizes that the crying will stop if the problem is corrected. Feed the hungry baby and he soon is content and falls asleep. Even with the limited communication, parents soon learn to recognize different cries for different problems. Infants learn that varying sounds will help a problem to be taken care of more efficiently. That is the dance of parenthood. By the time my daughter had turned three, she had already learned effective means of getting what she wanted from her Dad. She would beg and cry. She also learned that these tactics did not work on Mommy. She knows that she will not win an argument as easily with Mom, so she tries to pursuade her most vulnerable audience first. If it does not work on Daddy, it will not work on Mommy. I believe that we are born understanding how argument works, and that life is a negotiation.

I chose the October 2007 issue of Mother Jones for my magazine. There are three reasons that I chose this magazine and all of my reasons are circumstancial. The first reason is that I went to two stores and was offered a selection of three magazines from the list. Thus, the selection was quite limited. Reason number two arrived with the limited selection as well. I do not read sports magazines of any kind. I have before, but for this assignment I would have to choose something that I would spend a great amount of time with for the remainder of the semester and I could not bring myself to choose that magazine. I was left with two choices. Athough there was a really good looking guy on the cover of one of the magazines, I could not bring myself to use that fact as my primary means for choice in this case. The third reason and deciding factor in my magazine dilemma were the cover stories. I thought that School of Shock sounded much more interesting than anything that I could find in a music magazine. These decisions, of course, were based on my opinion and not on any other fact whatsoever. I am happy with the choice and I think that I might even learn something useful.