AnAlyzIng ARgumEnTs 63touchstones”; they will also expect you to cite recent evidence, evidence
published within five years of when you are writing.
Of course, older research can be valuable. For example, in a paper
about molecular biology, you might very well cite James Watson and
Francis Crick’s groundbreaking 1953 study in which they describe the
structure of DNA. That study is an intellectual touchstone that changed
the life sciences in a fundamental way.
Or if you were writing about educational reform, you might very well
mention E. D. Hirsch’s 1987 book Cultural Literacy. Hirsch’s book did not
change the way people think about curricular reform as profoundly as
Watson and Crick’s study changed the way scientists think about biology,
but his term cultural literacy continues to serve as useful shorthand for a
particular way of thinking about curricular reform that remains influen-
tial to this day.
Although citing Hirsch is an effective way to suggest you have studied
the history of an educational problem, it will not convince your readers
that there is a crisis in education today. To establish that, you would need
to use as evidence studies published over the past few years to show, for
example, that there has been a steady decline in test scores since Hirsch
wrote his book. And you would need to support your claim that curricu-
lar reform is the one sure way to bring an end to illiteracy and poverty
with data that are much more current than those available to Hirsch in the
1980s. No one would accept the judgment that our schools are in crisis if
your most recent citation is more than twenty years old.Is the source relevant? Evidence that is relevant must have real bearing
on your issue. It also depends greatly on what your readers expect. For
example, suppose two of your friends complain that they were unable to
sell their condominiums for the price they asked. You can claim there is a
crisis in the housing market, but your argument won’t convince most read-
ers if your only evidence is personal anecdote.
Such anecdotal evidence may alert you to a possible topic and help
you connect with your readers, but you will need to test the relevance
of your friends’ experience — Is it pertinent? Is it typical of a larger situ-
ation or condition? — if you want your readers to take your argument
seriously. For example, you might scan real estate listings to see what the
asking prices are for properties comparable to your friends’ properties.
By comparing listings, you are defining the grounds for your argument.
If your friends are disappointed that their one-bedroom condominiums
sold for less than a three-bedroom condominium with deeded park-
ing in the same neighborhood, it may well be that their expectations
were too high.
In other words, if you aren’t comparing like things, your argument is
going to be seriously flawed. If your friends’ definition of what constitutes
a “reasonable price” differs dramatically from everyone else’s, their expe-
rience is probably irrelevant to the larger question of whether the local
housing market is depressed.03_GRE_5344_Ch3_055_079.indd 63 11/19/14 11:06 AM