Source: Bagdikian, Ben H. The Media Monopoly 6th ed. 1983. Boston: Beacon Press (2000). Print. Linn, Susan. Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood. New York: The New Press (2004). Print. Schor, Juliet B. Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.
Hi. My name is Katie, and today we'll discuss types of support-- counterarguments. We'll begin today's lesson by providing a definition of counterarguments, and then we'll talk about how to use these in an argumentative research essay. Finally, we'll look at a model essay and talk about elements of well-employed counterarguments.
Let's begin with the definition. In an argumentative research essay, it's often important to address viewpoints or arguments that run counter to your own. This is a very important part of the classical argumentation model. But I think that you might find it handy for other models of argumentation as well, because it's very effective for demonstrating your knowledge about your own topic and the strength of your own claims.
Here's a sample paragraph that incorporates a counterargument. In shorter essays, it's standard to devote maybe just one or two paragraphs to a counterargument, but I actually pulled this paragraph from a much longer essay that devotes a significant amount of exposition to addressing and refuting claims which run counter to my own. While I could just use a sentence like this one here to briefly gloss over the fact that I'm aware of arguments that run counter to my own claims, I found it pertinent, in this circumstance, to devote a little bit more explanation in order to convince the readers of the validity of my own conclusions.
You can use direct quotes, like this one, as well as paraphrases and summaries to represent your counterarguments. And I find this handy, because it contributes to your credibility by demonstrating that you understand that there can be more than one argument and more than one counterargument within the context of the discussion which your essay addresses. Even though it's important to demonstrate that you understand there are multiple arguments, I also advise that you select only the best and most relevant arguments for your thesis. Otherwise, you're going to bog your reader down with too much information.
When you're selecting which argument is the best to use for your essay, you should steer away from the tendency to pick the one that is easiest to refute. If you address a more challenging argument, you'll demonstrate how thoughtful you are, how complete your research is, and how confident you are in your own claims. And this will be convincing to your reader, both logically and in terms of establishing your credibility.
Before we get into an analysis of how I employ this counterargument within the context of my entire essay, I want to talk about certain considerations for introducing and refuting counterarguments. There are three main mistakes that people make most often when incorporating counterarguments into their argumentative research essays. The first is oversimplification. This addresses the straw man logical fallacy, in which you misconstrue the counterargument in order to refute it. Instead of oversimplifying an argument, a better way to deal with it is to identify elements of the opposing viewpoint that would agree with your position, even if they disagree with your ultimate conclusions.
Another common mistake for addressing counterarguments is aggression. You don't want to attack any person who holds viewpoints which counter your own. This is called the ad hominem logical fallacy, where you refute an argument based on the character of the person, not their argument itself. This actually undermines your own argumentative approach, because you want to focus on the ideas, not the person or people who hold them.
Finally, you need to make sure to avoid distraction when you're addressing counterarguments. If you concentrate so much on explaining a counterargument that you forget to address how this fits into your claims, then you're forgetting that the main goal of your essay is to verify your thesis. So you always want to keep your purpose in mind when you incorporate counterarguments into your essay.
Let's look at some examples by pulling up that previous paragraph within the context of the entire essay. The topic sentence for this portion of my essay is that, "When facing an industry as large as global media marketing, families alone cannot be expected to affect the scope and impact of media representations in modern American life for their children." I incorporate a quote from a credible source, and then I provide some supporting evidence for why I believe that my argument is stronger than the one that runs counter to it.
The problem with this, however, is that this is part of a larger essay on the role of educators in America, and I haven't really mentioned that in this paragraph. So my readers don't have context for how this counterargument applies to my essay in the big picture. Therefore, I want to insert a sentence, something like, "because of these conditions, American educators need to provide critical media literacy instruction for their children." Now my readers can see how this counterargument ties into the thesis of my essay itself.
This paragraph here provides further exposition regarding why I feel that this counterargument is not valid. You see that, again, I employed a quote from a credible source, which is a good strategy. However, I'm committing one of the common mistakes that people make when incorporating counterarguments into their essays. In this case, the ad hominem logical fallacy. You see that in introducing this quoted information, I call these marketers enthusiastically malicious.
This is a problem on two accounts. On the one hand, it misconstrues the contents of the source that I quote, because it sort of insinuates that this person is calling marketers enthusiastically malicious. Although I believe that Bagdikian would call marketers that, it's not done within the context of this essay, so I shouldn't construe it in that form. This is an ad hominem logical fallacy because it attacks the marketers, rather than their actions.
It reduces the credibility of my claims, because it's sort of like mud throwing contest, where I'm just trying to make the other side look bad. And it takes the emphasis off of the actions. And also because it alienates marketers who might be reading my essay from associating themselves with my position. My claim is just as effective if I take out these qualifiers and just leave the sentence like this.
The final example of addressing a counterargument that this tutorial will discuss can be found in this paragraph here. While the previous paragraph introduced the counterargument, the supporting evidence provided by this paragraph fairly and logically addresses why this counterargument is invalid. You can see that I employ multiple credible sources to back up my own claims, and I provide my audiences with specific advertising terms that are relevant to understanding the validity of my own argument.
This sentence here wraps up the way that I've used logos to address the claims which run counter to my own and to validate my own claims using reliable, credible evidence. In today's lesson, we discussed counterarguments as types of support for your argumentative research essay.
We began by providing a definition of the counterargument and talking about its role in your essay. And then we took a look at some common mistakes made when incorporating counterarguments into your own. Finally, we took a look at a sample essay and talked about some editing strategies for improving the way that counterarguments are employed in your argument. I hope that this tutorial was helpful. Thank you very much for joining me today.