Wednesday, October 14

Today, we began by emphasizing the advantage that defining relative terms gives a speaker or writer when he or she is trying to be understood, or to win an argument. We returned to the idea of "home field advantage," and several of you gave examples of ways that defining terms can pay off: by "steering" your audience towards particular areas of strength (and away from areas of comparative weakness), by making your thinking clear to others, and so forth.

We then looked at three different set of criteria to define the relative term in the claim "Berkeley is a better city than San Francisco." The handout (complete with criteria) is below:

Berkeley vs. SF

You agreed that Criteria Set #1 was not effective because it was too vague, and could apply to almost any city-to-city comparison; you also agreed that Criteria Set #3 was too specific, and only applied to this specific claim, which would make your argument less convincing. We established that Criteria Set #2 was the most effective because it matched people's experience of reality, applied to both cities, but was slightly advantageous for Berkeley. We also agreed that Criteria Set #3 would actually be good evidence to prove this claim, and that's an important point: overly specific criteria are often better used as evidence.

Next, we discussed the evidence rankings from yesterday. Although there was a great deal of debate, a narrow majority of you thought that Evidence "E" was the most effective, and a large majority thought that Evidence "F" was the least effective. We then choose the piece of evidence about which there was the greatest difference of opinion - Evidence "H" - and you then began discussing its relative strengths and weaknesses.

No homework was assigned tonight, save for the next Animal Farm assignment, which is due Monday.