Evaluative Argument

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Awash in ubiquitous information taking diverse forms, readers and writers are faced with rhetorical choices, which present themselves at a high frequency. Evaluative arguments are useful for making decisions and helping others make decisions.

Practice this. You might, for example, make an evaluative argument about a song, or collection of songs, persuading a friend or classmate to give a close listen. Or you may instead make the case that you should receive your money back because the beats were tired, the raps cliche, and the overall tone unpleasant. Your friend will likely ask for more details, and a convincing argument from you would include a claim and a set of reasons to support the claim.

One good way to make an evaluative argument is to think about the ways you might alter the object or event being evaluated, as in "the balance and eq were close, but the bass was over the top" In this case, you imply that you would have turned the bass down.

Assignment: Choose a film (or a film trailer) and evaluate it, providing readers with a claim such as "the Grey Album is an interesting concept, but does not hold up under repeated listening" or "the Grey Album] provides infinite rewards." Then provide a set of reasons to justify the claim, such as "From the top, the album welcomes listeners into a labyrinth of compelling juxtapositions in timbre, and at once marks a shift in the technology and legal implications of sound production."

Note that an evaluative argument is often a causal argument in disguise: "the album's first cut causes me to become fascinated..." Filling out this argument would entail breaking down the aspects of the sound, such as timbre and vocal delivery, that cause joy and insight, or, if the evaluation takes the tack of a "diss," a sequence of reasoning that explains why the music in question rendered little or no effect. We can kickstart an evaluative process with a little bit of description, just as we did with our narratives. For example, you can list, and then describe the attributes of a piece of music or an artist's oeuvre. Evaluation sequences often resolve in suggestions: the writer offers recipes for improvement and refinement. Evaluations set the stage for proposal-writing.

Remember that any evaluative argument is, like any other argument, tuned to the preferences and inclinations of particular audiences, even if you seek to transform the preferences and actions of your audiences.

Assignment:

Choose a film, song, play, museum installation, policy related to homelessness, an assigned reading, or any text whatsoever that in some way relates to an ongoing project on this wiki, and make an evaluative argument about it. Establish this relationship with an analogy or a definitional argument, then, turn all of your attention to evalution. And be as specific as possible about segments of the song of film in your discussion. Online films abound - try the Prelinger archives. Try legal torrents for free music, movies, and more. Or you could evaluate a classmate's freesound composition, or your own.

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