LINKING: THE KEY PROCESS IN REASONING 33Remember, what matters most here is correctly identifying the claims—and
claims may not be written out as 'neatly' as you would like.
a. I should not buy a car at the moment. I have just lost my driver's licence,
and besides, I can't afford it.
b. Nicole Kidman is an international movie star, and I know that, as a general
rule, international movie stars get paid a lot of money. Therefore, it is
obvious that Nicole Kidman is well paid.
c. I have not got a university education, whereas several of my colleagues do.
All of them have recently received promotions, but I did not receive one.
Given that we are all roughly equal in our job performance, I would have
to conclude that a university education really helps one to get ahead in a
career.
d. What was the explanation for Sydney beating Beijing for the 2000
Olympics? There were two main reasons. The Sydney organisers did a
better job of lobbying the International Olympic Committee delegates and,
because of political crises in China at the time and perceived doubts about
Beijing's quality of services and venues, Sydney offered a much safer
venue for a successful Olympic games.
If you have checked the answers to these four problems, you will realise that
there is a lot more to learn about exactly how reasoning works in linking claims
together. It is not simply a matter of working out which claims are the premises and
which are the conclusions. You should also realise that casting is not an exact
science—it is a tool to help you unpick the reasoning of others and, for our
purposes, is mainly designed to help you get better at your own use of analytical
structures.
Using the analytical structure for planning
Communication involves much more than just reasoning, and that is why we do
not usually communicate via diagrams and lists of claims. But, that said, when we
want to express our arguments and explanations clearly and effectively, we need to
think carefully about the analytical structure that lies behind the narrative ex-
pression of reasoning. It is hard to recover this structure precisely from what you
read because authors themselves are often not in control of their reasoning. It is also
tricky simultaneously to write a narrative flow and reason analytically. So, before we
write, we should plan our work on the basis of the reasoning that we wish to
'embed' within our written expression. A very effective way to do this planning is
to use the analytical structure format. And, by properly planning our work, we will
dramatically improve the quality and readability of our written and oral com-
munication.
How do we develop an analytical structure format? First of all, start thinking
about structure and the logical connections between your ideas, rather than how
you will actually write them.