AnAlyzIng ARgumEnTs 67depended on their individual ability to afford and purchase this kind of
insurance. You would have to anticipate how readers would respond to
your proposal, especially readers who do not feel that the federal govern-
ment should ever play a role in what has heretofore been an individual
responsibility.
Anticipating readers’ objections demonstrates that you understand the
complexity of the issue and are willing at least to entertain different and
conflicting opinions.
In the excerpt from “Hidden Lessons,” the Sadkers describe the initial
response of Dateline staffers to what they observed in the classroom they
were videotaping: “This is a fair teacher.... [T]here’s no gender bias in this
teacher’s class.” Two women whom the Sadkers describe as “intelligent”
and “concerned about fair treatment in school” agreed: “We’ve been play-
ing this over and over. The teacher is terrific. There’s no bias in her teach-
ing. Come watch” (para. 9).
Notice the Sadkers’ acknowledgment that even intelligent, concerned
people may not see the problems that the Sadkers spent more than twenty
years studying. In addressing the counterargument — that sexism does not
exist — the authors are both empathetic to and respectful of what any rea-
sonable person might or might not see. This is in keeping with what we
would call a conversational argument: that writers listen to different points
of view, that they respect arguments that diverge from their own, and that
they be willing to exchange ideas and revise their own points of view.
In an argument that is more conversational than confrontational,
writers establish areas of common ground, both to convey different views
that are understood and to acknowledge the conditions under which those
different views are valid. Writers do this by making concessions and antici-
pating and responding to counterarguments.
This conversational approach is what many people call a Rogerian
approach to argument, based on psychologist Carl Rogers’s approach to
psychotherapy. The objective of a Rogerian strategy is to reduce listeners’
sense of threat so that they are open to alternatives. For academic writers,
it involves four steps:- Conveying to readers that their different views are understood.
- Acknowledging conditions under which readers’ views are valid.
- Helping readers see that the writer shares common ground with them.
- Creating mutually acceptable solutions to agreed-on problems.
The structure of an argument, according to the Rogerian approach,
grows out of the give-and-take of conversation between two people and
the topic under discussion. In a written conversation, the give-and-
take of face-to-face conversation takes the form of anticipating readers’
counterarguments and uses language that is both empathetic and respect-
ful, to put the readers at ease.03_GRE_5344_Ch3_055_079.indd 67 11/19/14 11:06 AM