Chapter 9: Including Counterarguments (Concession, Refutation, and Rebuttal)

In this chapter, you will learn:

the differences between concession, refutation, and rebuttal

how to invent counterarguments and persuasively respond to opposing viewpoints

strategic and ethical dimensions of counterarguments

a variety of “rhetorically flawed” topics of argumentation

Football coaches like to repeat the maxim, “The best defense is a good offense.” By this, of course, they mean that the best way to defend against opponents who score touchdowns is to score touchdowns yourself. We can say something similar about argumentation: The most convincing argument is a good counterargument.

In Chapter 8, we offer advice about inventing arguments. Invention is argumentative offense, coming up with reasons to convince your audience. In this chapter, we teach you argumentative defense. You will invent counterarguments to show your audience that other viewpoints aren’t as convincing as yours. The best argument is a good counterargument because it’s difficult to convince an audience that knows the opposing viewpoints. As the audience listens to the argument, they’ll wonder, “What about those who disagree? Don’t they have good evidence and persuasive reasons? Why should I accept your viewpoint over theirs?” The slightest doubt will stall persuasion, even if you make a convincing case.

Before we teach you how to invent counterarguments, allow us to explain why you should learn to invent counterarguments. To begin with, as we explain above, countering the opposition has a strategic value. If you can show your audience that your viewpoint is not just persuasive but the most persuasive, then you will have a better chance at convincing them.

Furthermore, countering the opposition also has a practical value. If you can build an argument that fairly represents and counters your opponents’ arguments, then you will likely make the best argument possible. When you refuse to acknowledge or address other viewpoints, you miss the opportunity to improve by honestly debating. Here’s an analogy to prove our claim: A boxer who never steps into the ring is not as good as one who spars regularly. And a speaker who never addresses an opposing viewpoint is not as good as a seasoned debater.

Finally, countering the opposition has ethical value. To prove this claim, we offer a causal argument: Fairly representing yet refuting others leads to disagreement without disagreeable behavior. To have productive public disagreement, people must defend their viewpoints without alienating those who think differently. When we argue without upsetting one another, we ensure that the conversation will continue. When we dispute without enraging one another, we keep dissent from turning into violence. Current political debate features many people who disagree while being disagreeable, to the detriment of citizens and public debate.

Choosing a Good Opponent

The first step toward writing a good refutation is choosing a good opponent. Once your audience sees that you’ve chosen to counter a reasonable and persuasive opponent, they will think more highly of you. Speakers who pick on flimsy or foolish claims are bullying the weak. But bullies don’t challenge the strong. When you choose a good opponent, you give your audience a reason to trust you as an intelligent, informed, and capable speaker. If you can counter a worthy opponent, you must be worthy of respect yourself.

The next step toward writing a good counterargument is to represent the opposing argument fairly. It’s common to find speakers unfairly representing those who think differently. Such unfair or oversimplified representation is called making a straw person out of your opposition. You’re not contending with a real, flesh-and-blood adversary. Rather, you’re fighting a dummy that’s much easier to defeat. If your audience knows the opposition or their viewpoints, then your straw-person representation will look duplicitous, and you will look untrustworthy. Furthermore, your straw-person representation will poison the conversation. No one will want to read your argument or speak with you because no one will want to be misrepresented. For all these reasons, we encourage you to pick a good opponent, someone you find convincing, even difficult to completely disagree with. Fairly represent the opposing viewpoint without simplifying or distorting. Then make your best effort at showing why this viewpoint is not as persuasive as yours. If you have questions about how to represent your opposition fairly, we encourage you to revisit Chapter 2 of this textbook. Everything we say about fairly summarizing sources applies to fairly representing your argumentative antagonist.

Brief Exercise: Write down all of the claims you want to make for your next argument. Then ask one of your classmates (or your roommate, or anyone else) to help you clarify your claims by rearticulating them until you are satisfied that what they say is what you meant. Here’s an example:

Student 1: People should eat only organic food because it is always better for their health and for the environment.

Student 2: So are you saying that all people should eat only organic food because it’s better for their health and for the environment?

S1: Yes.

S2: Okay, if I understand you, even people who cannot afford organic food should eat only organic food because it is better to starve in a developing country than to eat nonorganic food.

S1: No, that’s not what I’m saying. Let me try again. People in the United States who can afford organic food should eat only organic food because it is better for their health and for the environment.

S2: Okay, so what you’re saying is that if people can afford to eat organic food, they should eat only organic food because it is always healthier and better for the environment, even if it takes lots of fossil fuels to transport it to your supermarket.

S1: No, that’s not what I meant. What I was trying to say was that if you can afford it, organic food produced locally in the U.S. is better for your health and the environment than nonorganic food.

S2: So it sounds to me like what you are claiming is that if Americans can afford it, they should buy locally grown organic food because it’s better for their health and for the environment.

S1: Yes, that is what I’m claiming.

You can use this same technique to scrutinize the opposition’s claims. Not only will the exercise clarify the opposing claim, but it may help you discover places where you can reasonably challenge parts of that opposing claim.

Conceding to Good Arguments

If you pick the best opposing viewpoint, then you may find yourself unable to refute everything your rival says. You may even find yourself agreeing with some of your rival’s reasons, even as you disagree with his principal claim. But just because you can’t counter every bit of evidence and every reason does not mean you’ve lost the argument. In fact, you can make your argument more persuasive by admitting that you agree with some of your opponent’s claims, some of his evidence, even a few of his reasons. This is called concession: the willing and open admission that you cannot or do not want to argue about certain things. Too much concession will make it seem like you don’t disagree at all. But confessing that you agree somewhat with your opponent will give your audience reason to trust you as a reasonable person who doesn’t throw out good ideas.

The trouble with concession, as we’ve mentioned, is that it can make your position seem weak. The audience might think, “Why should we believe this speaker if they keep admitting that their opponent is right all the time? Why not believe the opponent instead?” To prevent this reaction, we suggest a few common tactics:

Explain that the points to which you’ve conceded don’t matter. This strategy requires that you show why your concession in no way undercuts your argument. For instance: “Climatologists have shown that the earth is getting warmer. I cannot deny that. But just because the earth is getting warmer doesn’t mean that people are the primary cause. Nor do climate scientists’ conclusions about increasing temperatures prove that we can reduce carbon emissions without crippling the economy.”
Explain that the points to which you’ve conceded actually support your argument. This strategy requires that you turn your concession into a reason or a bit of evidence to support your principal claim. For instance: “Jennings admits that changing eligibility requirements for Medicaid will boost enrollment. He’s right: More people will have healthcare if we expand Medicaid. But, if we expand Medicaid, then more people will depend on government-funded healthcare. That’s exactly why we cannot change the eligibility requirements for Medicaid. We need to wean people off government support.”
Explain that the concessions form a common ground on which you can build a new consensus. This strategy is especially effective when writing to an audience that already agrees with your opponent. By showing the audience that you also agree with your opponent but that you arrive at different conclusions, you can convince your audience that they can also agree about the common ground while disagreeing about the conclusion. For instance: “Since, as we agree, the university shouldn’t impose its secular version of diversity on any religious organization, the university should not sponsor any Christian student organization. The freedom to meet, worship, and believe will be protected. The university cannot impose secular beliefs or practices on religious organizations as long as they remain voluntary societies supported by member contributions and not university resources.”

Refuting the Evidence

While concession is a powerful tool, sometimes you want to reject your opponent’s argument. Moreover, concession and refutation can work together. You can admit that some of your opponent’s arguments have merit while showing that others are simply wrong. The most common strategy for refuting the opposition is to counter the evidence. The analytic tools we present in Chapter 4 help you to identify the evidence in an argument. Once you’ve located your opponent’s key pieces of evidence, you can counter in a number of ways. Here are just a few:

Offer counterevidence of exactly the same kind. This strategy pits one example against another, one bit of testimony against another, one maxim against its opposite. For instance: “Lu says that the example of his grandparents’ successful long-distance relationship proves that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Jenny and Geraldine’s struggle to stay together while living in different countries proves something very different: out of sight, out of mind.”
Present a different kind of evidence that leads to a different conclusion. This strategy aims to shift the debate away from the evidence that favors your opponent’s conclusions. For instance: “Silverman piles up the statistics about income inequality and social mobility to show that poor people in America cannot expect better lives than those their parents enjoyed. All these numbers, however, seem hollow when we hear Joaquin Castañeda tell his story of growing up in East Austin, learning to cook, and ultimately starting his own successful restaurant chain.”
Question the quality or the source of the evidence. This strategy gives the audience a reason not to trust the information or the speaker. “When we look closely at Republican examples of people hurt by the Affordable Care Act, we see people who claim that they can’t find affordable healthcare but who haven’t really looked for it. When we ask detailed questions, we learn that few policies were canceled this year, and the people whose premiums increased will pay a little more money for much better healthcare.”

Refuting the Inference

Refuting evidence counters your opponent’s arguments. But, as we point out in Chapter 6, sometimes an argument relies mostly or entirely on reasons that people invent. In these cases, you must address the inference—the manner of reasoning—rather than the evidence.

Nowadays, students often learn to refute inferences by studying argumentative fallacies, under the assumption that certain kinds of arguments are always wrong (i.e., fallacious), regardless of the audience or situation. Such arguments can never be trusted because they’re logically flawed. We prefer to avoid the term fallacy, however, because it suggests something that we know isn’t true. You can’t decide how persuasive an argument will be without considering the situation and the audience. Since most arguments can convince some people, no argument is rhetorically fallacious, though many arguments are rhetorically flawed. All of the topics that we discuss in Chapter 8 can lead either to rhetorically persuasive or rhetorically flawed arguments.

Before we get into the specific types of flawed arguments, allow us to demonstrate the difference between a reasonable and a flawed inference with a brief example. Refutations often conclude that an argument is wrong because the speaker cannot be trusted. The flawed version of this inference is called an ad hominem argument (ad hominem means “with respect to the person” in Latin). An ad hominem argument inappropriately attacks the speaker’s credibility. But as we’ve noted at several points, questioning and attacking a speaker’s credibility is often entirely appropriate. Imagine that a speaker makes an argument about the effects of late-term abortion on a mother’s health, claiming that we should believe him based on his credentials as a doctor. In this case, it would be wholly reasonable and appropriate to point out that the speaker is not a gynecologist (a doctor who specializes in women’s reproductive health) but instead an ophthalmologist (a doctor who specializes in eye care). And we shouldn’t trust what an ophthalmologist says about women’s reproductive health. In this case, the argument is premised on the speaker’s authority. If the speaker’s authority is not acceptable, then the argument is not reasonable. The audience might not think it appropriate, on the other hand, to question the speaker’s authority because he cheated on his wife. According to such an audience, marital fidelity does not make anyone a qualified medical professional, so it’s irrelevant to the argument about abortion and women’s health.

Our point is that the same inference (deciding not to believe an argument because you don’t trust the speaker) can be either persuasive or flawed. Only the audience can decide what they will accept as a reasonable conclusion and what they will dismiss as a flawed inference. Knowing the difference between the reasonable and the flawed versions of each argument will help you to invent refutations. But you must not forget the audience, for, ultimately, the audience will distinguish between an ad hominem argument and an appropriate attack on someone’s credibility. Below we explore other flawed versions of common argumentative topics. We encourage you to review them. When you are reading your opponent’s arguments, try to identify the topics used, and ask yourself, “Can I convince my audience that my opponent offers a flawed argument rather than a reasonable inference?”

Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization is the flawed version of the argument at the topic of induction. When an audience refuses to abstract a pattern based on an example or a group of examples, they feel that the speaker too quickly jumps to a general conclusion. For example, if an audience has known many people who have overcome poverty, then they will be skeptical of a statistical study claiming that people generally have little social mobility in the U.S. And similarly, if the audience is familiar with the statistical study demonstrating that few people escape poverty, they will refuse to conclude that social mobility is common based on a few anecdotes about people who pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Both skeptical audiences will call these arguments “overgeneralizations.”

Saying that your opponent’s argument is an overgeneralization will not refute the claim. You will have to prove that your opponent overgeneralizes. You can do this in a number of ways:

Show an exception to the rule. If, in one important instance, the pattern doesn’t hold, then the generalization may not be warranted.
Show another contradictory pattern. Your audience will doubt the pattern asserted by your opponent if you can show them the exact opposite pattern.
Show how many possible examples there are. If your audience sees that your opponent relies upon one or even one hundred examples, but the number of possible examples is much larger (one thousand or one hundred thousand), then they will wonder if such a small sample should lead them to a general conclusion about such a large group.
Show that the examples chosen by your opponent are not representative. If an argument at the topic of induction relies upon examples that are notably different from what your audience commonly sees, then they will not draw general conclusions based on your opponent’s peculiar examples.

False Analogy

False analogy is the flawed version of an argument at the topic of analogy. An analogy will seem false to an audience who believe that two things do not sufficiently resemble one another to warrant a comparison. Often, an audience’s familiarity with one of the elements in an analogy will interrupt their willingness to accept the comparison. For example, an audience that is very familiar with the Watergate scandal (because of having studied American history or having lived during the 1960s) may refuse to accept any comparison to a recent congressional investigation. Such an audience will quickly point out all the differences: “Watergate involved criminal activity that a sitting president knew about, sanctioned, and then tried to cover up. When responding to the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not break any laws or cover up any wrongdoing.” Therefore, you probably won’t convince this audience to use the term, “Benghazi-gate.” They will think the analogy is hopelessly false.

When trying to refute your opponent’s arguments at the topic of analogy, you should point out all the differences between the things being compared. Even if you concede that the two things are similar in the important ways that your opponent contends, you can still call the analogy into question by pointing to all the differences. To return to our earlier example, the man skeptical of the Watergate-Benghazi analogy may say, “Nixon changed his story about what happened at the Watergate hotel, just as Secretary Clinton changed her mind about whether to call the attack on the Benghazi embassy an act of ‘terror.’ But the similarities end there. Nixon’s campaign organization paid men to break into a hotel room and steal information from the Democratic National Committee. Then Nixon broke the law by destroying evidence that would tie the Watergate burglary to him. Clinton didn’t break any laws, nor did she destroy any evidence to cover her activities.”

Faulty Comparison

Faulty comparison is a flawed version of the argument at the topic of difference. An audience refusing to see the differences will also refuse to accept the speaker’s comparison. Such an audience will retort that a more thorough comparison will reveal that these two things are not so different after all. And if these things are not so different after all, then they do not merit opposite reactions. To refute an argument at the topic of difference, you should point out all the similarities between the two things being compared.

Imagine, for instance, that your opponent has claimed: European-style socialism has led to generous welfare programs, massive public debt, and a stagnant economy; meanwhile, American-style capitalism has led to small government, little deficit spending, and a vibrant economy; therefore, we should pursue American-style capitalism by cutting unemployment benefits. To refute their evidence, you can point out the similarities between U.S. and European economic policies: Many European countries, like the U.S., have public welfare, public retirement, and public healthcare systems in place. Many European countries carry as much or even less public debt per capita than the U.S. And the European economy, in recent years, has experienced only slightly less growth than the U.S. economy. If the two economies are not that different, then we shouldn’t cut public benefits to avoid “European-style socialism.” After all, European-style socialism and American-style capitalism look a lot alike and have similar results.

Mistaking Correlation for Causation

Mistaking correlation for causation is the flawed version of the argument at the topic of correlation. The sports fanatic mistakes correlation for causation when insisting that the Longhorns’ success depends on his game-day attire because the UT football team wins every time he wears his lucky jersey. Superstitions, we can all admit, are silly. But very serious arguments persisting for many years have been similarly flawed. For centuries, people believed that bad smells caused disease when, in fact, bad smells simply accompany widespread sickness and death. During centuries-past, European plague epidemics, people wore fragrant flowers (“a pocket full of posies”) to keep themselves from catching a deadly ailment whose first symptom was a circular red sore (“a ring around the rosie”).

The best way to refute an argument at the topic of correlation is to give evidence showing that another cause can be tied directly to this effect. We have seen the plague bacterium under microscopes; we know that fleas who live on rats carry the bacterium in their guts; we can scientifically verify that such fleas infect people. But sometimes, such irrefutable evidence is not available. If you don’t have irrefutable evidence of causation to challenge a claim at the topic of correlation, then you will have to give your audience reasons to doubt the supposed causal connection. You can do this in a number of ways:

Point out that there are other, equally plausible causes. How does your friend know it’s his jersey causing the Longhorns to win? Maybe your gym socks are really the cause. Or maybe it’s the new head coach.
Note that sometimes the effect appears without the presumed cause. If your friend’s jersey causes the Longhorns to win, then why did they lose last week? And why were they losing during the first half of the game two weeks ago, only to win in overtime? Did he take his jersey off for the first half of the game?
Explain that there’s no reason for these things to cause one another, so the more likely explanation is coincidence. How on earth could wearing a dingy football jersey in a cramped college apartment affect the outcome of a football game hundreds of miles away?

Essentialization

Essentialization is a flawed version of argumentation at the topic of definition. When a speaker essentializes, they assume that their definition captures the most important qualities (the essence) of something. An anthropologist familiar with the variety of human cultures and beliefs will think that the following definition essentializes humankind: People are rational animals. Our skeptical anthropologist will demand, “What do you mean by ‘rational’?” They might add, “I’ve seen plenty of people who don’t know what a syllogism is and who can’t manage complicated arithmetic, but they’re no less ‘people’ because they lack this essential quality.” Since definitions always focus on certain qualities (or on a single quality), they always run the risk of essentializing. And essentializing definitions always run the risk of excluding or deriding someone or something. Once you define people as “rational animals,” you have to say all those nonrational, bipedal hominids are not people. And if they’re not people, they don’t deserve to be treated as people. Definitions excluding some from the category of people have apologized for slavery, invasion, and genocide. But essentializing definitions also run the risk of inappropriately admitting something or someone into a category. Once you define democracy as “any government built upon popular sovereignty,” then you have to accept that monarchies without popular elections are democracies, since the people have given sovereignty to the monarch (a consent that the people demonstrate when they refrain from revolution). Broad essentializing definitions of democracy have apologized for dictatorships, oligarchies, and monarchies alike.

To refute an essentializing definition, you must show that the definition either excludes something the audience would rather include in the category or admits something they would rather exclude from the category. Let’s illustrate with an example that reflects a somewhat recent event: Imagine that the U.S. federal government has attempted to seize the cattle belonging to a rancher who let his herd graze on public lands without paying for the privilege. Your friend defines this as “government overreach.” To refute that definition, you will have to point out that your friend’s definition either admits things he would rather not define as “government overreach” or excludes things he would prefer to define as “government overreach”:

“If seizing cattle because someone owes the government leasing fees for the privilege of using federal land is an example of ‘government overreach,’ then so is the IRS’s seizing assets or garnishing wages from people who refuse to pay their taxes.”
“If government overreach pertains only to cases that involve armed federal officers, then laws requiring affirmative action, healthcare reform, and environmental regulation are not ‘government overreach’ until citizens are forced to hire minorities, buy health insurance, or drive fuel-efficient cars at gunpoint.”

Both of these imagined refutations claim that the following definitions essentialize the notion of “government overreach”: (1) any effort to confiscate private property as a penalty for refusing payment to the federal government; (2) any law enforced by armed officers. Our refutations aim to convince the audience that the first definition includes too many things and the second excludes too many.

Reification

Reification is another flawed version of the argument at the topic of definition. A reified definition mistakenly assumes that words correspond to the audience’s experience of real things. The word itself, reification, derives from the Latin word for “thing”: res. Literally, reification means, “thingification.” Consider a commonly reified term: “intelligence quotient” (IQ). We typically assume that a person’s IQ is a thing that exists in the mind. Just as you measure the length of your foot, you measure the size of your IQ. Yet psychologists have argued for decades over whether anything like IQ really exists. Many allege that IQ is simply a made-up definition, a score earned on a test, correlating to no specific innate ability or quality. Like “spiritual energy,” they say that “IQ” is a reified term with no relation to actual things in the world. Likewise, biologists occasionally argue about whether definitions of species are reifications with no correspondence to the real animals in the world. Earlier, when discussing the definition of mammal, we admitted that the duck-billed platypus calls this definition into question. So does the spiny anteater. Maybe there are no mammals per se, just animals on an evolutionary spectrum.

To refute a reified definition, you should point out that the speaker’s preferred words have no relation to what people actually experience every day. This refutation depends upon your audience’s specific experiences. Once the audience sees that the definition does not represent anything in their lived experiences, they will begin to question the argument.

Equivocation

Equivocation is a third flawed argument at the topic of definition. Equivocation happens when a speaker uses a definition in two completely different ways to mean two completely different things. For example, someone might argue that the right to free speech includes both the ability to express ideas without fear of legal punishment and the right to say anything in a public setting: “I have a right to free speech. The U.S. government can’t punish me for criticizing the president. My neighbor can’t sue me for saying I don’t like him. And you can’t stop me from speaking my mind at this PTA meeting.” Such an argument suggests that right means two things: (1) a person’s ability to do something without fear of legal retribution, and (2) a person’s freedom to do something whenever she wants. The best way to refute an equivocating argument is to point out the different meanings assigned to the same word. To our imaginary equivocator, for instance, you could say, “You’re talking about two things: rights and privileges. You have a right to speak your mind. No one will sue you or put you in jail for criticizing the school board’s decision. But you don’t have the privilege of interrupting this PTA meeting.”

Slippery Slope

A slippery slope argument is a flawed inference that happens at the topic of causation. The speaker asserts that one action will start things down on a slippery slope that leads to all sorts of terrible effects. In an earlier chapter, we mentioned the claim that legalizing gay marriage will lead to legalizing polygamy. An audience might be persuaded to oppose gay marriage because it will lead to legalized polygamy, but this same audience might not be convinced to oppose gay marriage because it will lead to legalized bestiality. The difference between a persuasive and a flawed argument about causation is determined by the audience’s willingness to believe that the effects are likely. Here’s another example to illustrate: During the recent financial crisis, many people argued that the U.S. government had to rescue failing banks and insurance firms, for if such a rescue didn’t happen, then financial and economic depression would result. Many people did not believe that such a result was likely. They pointed to investment firms that were allowed to fail—such as Bear Stearns and Lehmann Brothers—claiming that the predicted financial collapse did not follow from these firms’ collapse. In sum, these people refused to believe that there was a slippery slope from failed investment firms to global financial crisis. But enough people did think that global financial collapse could result from a series of bank failures, so the U.S. government bailed out the banks.

To refute a slippery-slope argument, you must show your audience that the predicted results will not likely happen. If a giant pipeline is built to move oil from Canadian wells to U.S. refineries, why won’t drilling destroy Canada’s boreal forest? If tenure is abolished, why won’t talented young people refuse to become teachers?

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is Latin for “after this, and therefore as a result of this.” It refers to another flawed argument at the topic of causation. We tend to assume, quite reasonably, that sequence is a sign of causation. If one thing consistently follows another thing, then we assume that the two are causally related. But often that assumption is simply wrong-headed. Many Democrats said that the economic boom that came after Bill Clinton became president was a result of Clinton’s presidency. And these same Democrats claimed that the recession that followed George W. Bush’s election was a result of Bush’s presidency. A skeptical audience might say that the president’s actions have little direct effect on economic growth during the first few years in office. For this skeptical audience, saying that an election in 2001 caused an economic recession in 2002 is a classic example of post hoc ergo propter hoc argumentation.

Whether or not an audience will accept an argument at the topic of causation depends on that audience’s presuppositions and the evidence that they require. If they’re already willing to associate good economic performance with Democratic leadership, then they may take the sequence of events (first a Democrat wins the presidency, and then the economy gets better) as proof of causation. But if they’re skeptical of that connection, then they will want more evidence. To refute a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, you can point out that more evidence is needed to prove causation. Sequence, in this case, is not enough to prove causation.

Brief Exercise: Argue against yourself to improve your work. Return to the arguments that you invented to support your claims, and pretend that you’re writing as someone who opposes your viewpoint. If you’ve written the short writing assignment at the end of Chapter 8, simply open that file to revisit the reasons you invented. After reading each reason, try to refute it. If you invented an argument at the topic of definition, explain why it’s really an instance of reification or equivocation. If you invented an argument at the topic of causation, explain why it’s really a slippery-slope argument. After you’ve thoroughly refuted yourself, revise your initial arguments so that an opponent will not be able to refute them so easily.

Rebuttal

Our discussion of the different flawed arguments and the ways to refute them comes back to the same point over and over again: The quality of an argument depends on how an audience receives it. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then reason is in the ear of the listener. The same argument at the topic of causation will seem perfectly sound to some people and post hoc ergo propter hoc to others. The same definition will seem like an equivocation to some audience members and a sensible claim to others. Your job is to show the audience why they should question your opponent’s claims. Simply saying, “that’s reification” won’t convince anyone to reject an argument. But explaining to your audience why a definition does not match their specific lived experience will lead them to question your opponent’s viewpoint. Ultimately, that’s all refutation can do. It can lead your audience to question arguments that they might otherwise have believed. To complete the effort, you need to rebut your opponent’s arguments. After you’ve explained why your opponent’s position is flawed, you should reiterate what your position is and why it’s right.

Brief Exercise: Letters to the editor in newspapers and comments attached to online articles offer audience members an opportunity to practice concession, refutation, and rebuttal. Pick an article that you find interesting or convincing, something relevant to the controversy you’ve chosen to research this semester. Read the letters to the editor in response to this article. Letters to the editor typically get printed 3–7 days after the article appears. If the argument has been published online, read the comments people have posted. (If it’s only been published online, then just read the comments.) Try to classify each sentence in these letters and/or comments as an instance of concession, refutation, or rebuttal. What general conclusions can you draw about how people in this venue typically oppose one another? Do they tend to go straight for rebuttal? Do they spend most of their time refuting? Do they ever concede? Evaluate the typical manner of opposing a viewpoint. Do you think more concession, refutation, or rebuttal would make these letters/comments more persuasive?

Rebuttal is the return to argumentative offense. You’ve conceded that some of your opponent’s ideas are reasonable. You’ve shown, where you could, that these reasonable ideas should support your principal claim. You’ve also shown that some of your opponent’s arguments are flawed. Your audience, after these concessions and refutations, trusts you and doubts your opponent. Now, remind your audience of your viewpoint, and give additional reasons to convince them. This combination of concession, refutation, and rebuttal can be very effective. You don’t have to do all three, and you don’t have to do them in the order we prescribe. But mixing concession, refutation, and rebuttal into a long argument will make for a convincing claim.

Chapter Assignment: Locating Strategies

Look back at the controversy-related sources you’ve been using all semester for this assignment. Try to find examples of the following kinds of strategies in the sources you’ve been looking at. With a partner or on your own, ask: Which sources do these things well? Which sources do these things not so well? What is the difference between the two? How can you adapt what other authors have done for your own purposes?

Direct Address to Audience Members Who Oppose: The speaker identifies and tries to speak to people in the audience whom they know oppose them. For example: “Some conservatives worry about divorce rates. Many conservatives believe that we should do everything we can to keep families together. To them I say, you’re right. And the best way to keep families together is to keep them financially stable. That’s why extending unemployment benefits is the right thing to do. A family with unemployed parents is more likely to shatter under the stress of financial hardship.”
Concession: The speaker admits something the audience believes to be true and uses it to establish common ground. For example: “Some liberals believe that the government should not tell us who we can love. And I agree that the government should be kept out of our bedrooms and out of our hearts. But adoption is not just about love. It’s about parenthood and families. When we have adoption laws that favor married couples, we’re not telling people that they cannot love one another. We’re telling people that we want our children to grow up in stable families where they are likely to prosper.”
Refutation: The speaker fairly represents an opponent’s viewpoint and then tries to explain why the opponent is mistaken. For example: “Environmentalists worry that hydrofracking will result in polluted water supplies. This can happen if we are not careful. But technological developments and strict regulations have all but removed the threat of water pollution due to hydrofracking.”