Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Warrants; a case for shared ideas

Warrants describe what someone believes and generally assumes the reader will understand and hopefully agree with when reading a piece of rhetorical writing. They are not normally written in words, but are implied in the writing. It can be advantageous to the author to let the reader fill in these assumptions themselves because often the reader will agree with the writing more. The warrent is what makes or breaks the claim in a paper because if the value system is not shared, the claim may not even make sense to the reader. Warrants are formed by the way that people are raised and experiences that they may have had. "Shared warrants are crucial to the success of an argument because they are the most significant way to establish common ground between the reader and writer in an argument (Wood 103). If I were trying to write a paper that assumed people agreed with the decisions of the president because of his office and no other reason and my audience was a group of hostile president haters my warrant would fall short of the common ground that I am trying to establish. The more common ground that I establish, the more likely I will be able to convince the reader to agree with my point. Going back to the president, if my warrant was that the government was responsible for making sure that the president made good decisions and my audience was the government officers involved in the decision making process in the U.S. I might have better luck because they might have pride in their jobs and they may very well beileve just that. This just explains why you would want the audience to share some common ground with you when you write. The warrant, especially the unspoken warrant, gives that little extra power you just might need to convince your audience.

1 comment:

Paul Muhlhauser said...

A question for you:

What is the difference between a warrant and a literacy?