How these components work in the real world

Time to step back and look at the big picture.

Before we end this lesson, it's worth taking a moment to step back and talking about the bigger picture.

There is a big difference between how an argument is structured and what we actually say to the audience

Everything we've covered here is a very logical, comprehensive way of constructing an argument.

It can help you build a strong foundation for your own argument or explore the foundations of somebody else's argument.

But we don't always show all of this foundational work when we're actually presenting an argument, or show it in the completely logical, hierarchical order that built it.

It's like giving someone a tour through a museum: you don't start in the basement and work your way up to the attic. You choose a route through the museum that will give your guest the best experience.

For instance, this snippet from Empireland isn't organised like any other argument snippet we've seen. but it's clear, logical, and easy to follow:

Indeed, the most serious and painful omission of my education was that during the years of being taught about world wars and sitting through endless remembrance services, no one cared to tell us, a racially diverse student body, that our people were there too. It is a form of amnesia in itself that our national story is built almost entirely around what this country did in two world wars, when, as Gideon Rachman has observed in the Financial Times, ‘for a Martian historian, the most interesting thing about modern British history would surely be that the country built a massive global empire.’ What a difference it would make if, within this story we endlessly tell ourselves, we acknowledged the truth of empire’s role. Which brings us to the imperial amnesia of our education system. It’s a challenging area to navigate because we all had an education, and the question of how much we were taught about empire quickly becomes one of competing biographies. Furthermore, it is difficult to discern exactly what, if anything, is taught to many children about empire today because academies, a fast-growing education sector, are not required to follow the national curriculum.

Empireland

Indeed, the most serious and painful omission of my education was that during the years of being taught about world wars and sitting through endless remembrance services, no one cared to tell us, a racially diverse student body, that our people were there too. It is a form of amnesia in itself that our national story is built almost entirely around what this country did in two world wars, when, as Gideon Rachman has observed in the Financial Times, ‘for a Martian historian, the most interesting thing about modern British history would surely be that the country built a massive global empire.’ What a difference it would make if, within this story we endlessly tell ourselves, we acknowledged the truth of empire’s role. Which brings us to the imperial amnesia of our education system. It’s a challenging area to navigate because we all had an education, and the question of how much we were taught about empire quickly becomes one of competing biographies. Furthermore, it is difficult to discern exactly what, if anything, is taught to many children about empire today because academies, a fast-growing education sector, are not required to follow the national curriculum.

Empireland

Indeed, the most serious and painful omission of my education was that during the years of being taught about world wars and sitting through endless remembrance services, no one cared to tell us, a racially diverse student body, that our people were there too. It is a form of amnesia in itself that our national story is built almost entirely around what this country did in two world wars, when, as Gideon Rachman has observed in the Financial Times, ‘for a Martian historian, the most interesting thing about modern British history would surely be that the country built a massive global empire.’ What a difference it would make if, within this story we endlessly tell ourselves, we acknowledged the truth of empire’s role. Which brings us to the imperial amnesia of our education system. It’s a challenging area to navigate because we all had an education, and the question of how much we were taught about empire quickly becomes one of competing biographies. Furthermore, it is difficult to discern exactly what, if anything, is taught to many children about empire today because academies, a fast-growing education sector, are not required to follow the national curriculum.

Empireland

There is a lot of flexibility in these components

Every argument has each of the components we've explored here, but there can be different numbers and arrangements of each component.
The components can be presented in any order. Sometimes they can seem very jumbled!
Entire components might never be presented at all in an argument.
And there are endless ways to organise the content inside any of these components.

A well-constructed argument can still be completely wrong

There are several ways in which an argument can use all of these components and still be completely wrong:

Evidence is wrong
Evidence is missing
Evidence is misinterpreted
Reasoning is faulty
Assumptions are flawed

These could be unintentional mistakes, wishful thinking, or deliberate deception.

Sometimes, it's just hard to know what's true!

Eight argument components

How these components work in the real world