LibGuides: Argumentative Writing: Books & eBooks

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Can I Change Your Mind? The Craft and Art of Persuasive Writing These days, we all need the ability to argue a case effectively in writing. Drawing on his long experience as a leading copywriter, Lindsay Camp shows how it's done-whether the 'end product' is a glossy magazine ad, anew business proposal, a page for the company website, or just a hasty email to your boss. Engaging, entertaining and-as you'd expect-highly persuasive,Can I Change Your Mind? will change the way you think about the words you use for ever. 'This is a cunning, masterly and hugely readable book. You'll learn at least as much from how he writes as from what he writes about-and that's saying a great deal.'Jeremy Bullmore (columnist for Campaign, Management Today and The Guardian) 'I hope it's read by every marketing manager, sales director, customer relations officer and chief executive in the land.'Jeremy Bullmore 'A masterpiece in persuasive writing.' Management Today, (September 2007)
Critical Inquiry : The Process of Argument This informative book is a necessary companion for anyone seeking to uncover the secret of successful persuasion: to organize, construct, and communicate arguments. It is at once comprehensive and accessible, an authoritative guide to logical thinking and effective communication. First, the text defines the nature and uses of argument, explaining how to read argument carefully. Such analysis then requires the student to reconstruct arguments in his or her own words. Finally, the reader is taught how to create a critical, reasoned response, thus constructing his or her own argument. To increase its accessibility and expand its range of application, Critical Inquiry uses (in addition to textual examples) advertisements from print media as "texts" for applying its principles to subjects outside the traditional mode of academic presentation. Throughout, carefully selected reading questions and exercises pace the reader and ensure that the material is securely grasped and successfully applied.
Elements of Rhetoric: Comprising an Analysis of the Laws of Moral Evidence and of Persuasion, with Rules for Argumentative Composition and Elocution Direct, comprehensive, well organized, simple in statement, Elements of Rhetoric is in all respects well fitted to fulfill its assigned role as a textbook. The remarks on practical problems and the examples and analogies confirm contemporary reports that Whately was himself a talented and stimulating teacher.             The modern field of speech was born near the beginning of the twentieth century, some seventy years after Whately wrote. But influential leaders in the new field endorsed Whately's judgments, and courses and textbooks in public address have remained strongly influenced by his ideas. Whately's views on a number of major questions in rhetoric have proved sound and fruitful during many decades of practice, and his book remains one of the most influential works on the subject.
Influencing Through Argument This text introduces readers to the basic types of arguments and how to criticize and engage them, including induction, deduction, and causation. Readers will also encounter how to prepare for argumentative situations and how to conduct themselves within them, including debates, panel discussions, public speeches and informal settings.
Persuasion and Rhetoric This translation of Carlo Michelstaedter’s Persuasion and Rhetoric brings the powerful and original work of a seminal cultural figure to English-language readers for the first time. Ostensibly a commentary on Plato’s and Aristotle’s relation to the pre-Socratic philosophers, Michelstaedter’s deeply personal book is an extraordinary rhetorical feat that reflects the author’s struggle to make sense of modern life. This edition includes an introduction discussing his life and work, an extensive bibliography, notes to introduce each chapter, and critical notes illuminating the text. Within hours of completing Persuasion and Rhetoric, his doctoral thesis, 23-year-old Michelstaedter shot himself to death. The text he left behind has proved to be one of the most trenchant and influential studies in modern rhetoric, a work that develops Nietzschean themes and anticipates the conclusions of, among others, Martin Heidegger. Publication of the book in English is an event of great magnitude for students of Italian philosophy, rhetoric, and literature as well as the culture of Mitteleuropa.
Resistance and Persuasion This book will focus on the important role of resistance in the persuasion process. It will be of interest to persuasion professors, researchers, graduate students, and practitioners in the fields of social psychology, marketing, and communications.
The Rhetoric of Reason : Writing and the Attractions of Argument This work argues that the core of a college education should be learning to write a reasoned argument. The author challenges his readers - teachers of writing and communication, philosophers, critical theorists and educational administrators - to reestablish the importance of rhetoric in education.

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Academic Research and Writing This text shows that research is important beyond the classroom and is a necessary component in any career. Beginning with coverage of skills and techniques, this comprehensive text then moves into specific kinds of academic research tasks, showing the generic features and constraints of academic writing. The main issues necessary for understanding how to read and construct research projects are discussed, including plagiarism, copyright and patents, conventions used by different discourse communities, and how writers use sources in different ways.
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing: A Brief Guide to Argument Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing is a compact but complete guide to critical thinking and argumentation. Comprising the text portion of the widely adopted Current Issues and Enduring Questions, it draws on the authors’ dual expertise in effective persuasive writing and comprehensive rhetorical strategies to help students move from critical thinking to argumentative and researched writing. With comprehensive coverage of classic and contemporary approaches to argument, including Aristotle, Toulmin, and a range of alternative views, as well as 35 readings and a casebook on the state and the individual, it is an extraordinarily versatile text. This affordable guide can stand alone or supplement a larger anthology of readings.
Encyclopedia of Rhetoric The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric is a comprehensive survey of the latest research--as well as the foundational teachings--in this broad field. Featuring 150 original, signed articles by leading scholars from many different fields of study it brings together knowledge from classics, philosophy,literature, literary theory, cultural studies, speech and communications. The Encyclopedia surveys basic concepts (speaker, style and audience); elements; genres; terms (fallacies, figures of speech); and the rhetoric of non-Western cultures and cultural movements. It covers rhetoric as the art of proof and persuasion; as the language of public speech andcommunication; and as a theoretical approach and critical tool used in the study of literature, art, and culture at large, including new forms of communication such as the internet. The Encyclopedia is the most wide ranging reference work of its kind, combining theory, history, and practice, with a special emphasis on public speaking, performance and communication. Cross-references, bibliographies after each article, and synoptic and topical indexes further enhance the work.Written for students, teachers, scholars and writers the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric is the definitive reference work on this powerful discipline.
Everyday Arguments: A Guide to Reading & Writing Effective Arguments Everyday Arguments combines highly practical and student-oriented argument rhetoric with an anthology of illustrative readings drawn from arguments of everyday life. The practical rhetoric section is based upon a single and sensible four-part taxonomy of argument derived from the various purposes of arguments. Students are led step-by-step through the processes of generating, drafting, composing, and revising written arguments in all four categories. The anthology of readings is closely tied to the principles and practices introduced in the rhetoric section. The overarching philosophy of the reading selections (and of the book as a whole) is that written argument--in all its variety--is the most common form of writing and that much can be learned about its practice from the texts we encounter on a daily basis.
Good Reasons: Designing and Writing Effective Arguments Engaging and accessible to all students, Good Reasons is a brief, very readable introduction to argument by two of the country's foremost rhetoricians. By stressing the rhetorical situation and audience, this rhetoric avoids complicated schemes and terminology in favor of providing students with the practical means to find good reasons for the positions they want to advocate to their audiences. Good Reasons helps students write and understand various types of arguments, including visual as well as verbal arguments. Supporting the authors' instruction are numerous readings by professional and student writers and over 50 photographs. Good Reasons is distinctive in providing the most thorough coverage of rhetorical analysis and visual analysis. It has a new emphasis on visual argument throughout that responds to the need for greater visual literacy in a media-saturated culture. Good Reasons is also distinctive in beginning with why people write arguments.
How to Write Persuasively Today This book is a step-by-step guide to harnessing the power to persuade in a variety of forms of writing. * A wealth of original documents provides examples of solid persuasive writing, from essays, articles, sermons, advertising, and other sources * Includes an annotated bibliography of print and electronic resources
The Imaginative Argument More than merely a writing text, The Imaginative Argument offers writers instruction on how to use their imaginations to improve their prose. Cioffi shows writers how they can enliven argument--the organizing rubric of all persuasive writing--by drawing on emotion, soul, and creativity, the wellsprings of imagination. While Cioffi suggests that argument should become a natural habit of mind for writers, he goes still further, inspiring writers to adopt as their gold standard the imaginative argument: the surprising yet strikingly apt insight that organizes disparate noises into music, that makes out of chaos, chaos theory. Rather than offering a model of writing based on established formulas or templates, Cioffi urges writers to envision argument as an active parsing of experience that imaginatively reinvents the world. Cioffi's manifesto asserts that successful argument also requires writers to explore their own deep-seated feelings, to exploit the fuzzy but often profoundly insightful logic of the imagination. But expression is not all that matters: Cioffi's work anchors itself in the actual. Drawing on Louis Kahn's notion that a good architect never has all the answers to a building's problems before its physical construction, Cioffi maintains that in argument, too, answers must be forged along the way, as the writer inventively deals with emergent problems and unforeseen complexities. Indeed, discovery, imagination, and invention suffuse all stages of the process. The Imaginative Argument offers all the intellectual kindling that writers need to ignite this creativity, from insights on developing ideas to avoiding bland assertions or logical leaps. It cites exemplary nonfiction prose stylists, including William James, Ruth Benedict, and Erving Goffman, as well as literary sources to demonstrate the dynamic of persuasive writing. Provocative and lively, it will prove not only essential reading but also inspiration for all those interested in arguing more imaginatively more successfully.
Thank You for Arguing : What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach us About the Art of Persuasion Thank You for Arguing is your master class in the art of persuasion, taught by professors ranging from Bart Simpson to Winston Churchill. The time-tested secrets the book discloses include Cicero’s three-step strategy for moving an audience to actionÑas well as Honest Abe’s Shameless Trick of lowering an audience’s expectations by pretending to be unpolished. But it’s also replete with contemporary techniques such as politicians’ use of “code” language to appeal to specific groups and an eye-opening assortment of popular-culture dodges, including: The Eddie Haskell Ploy Eminem’s Rules of Decorum The Belushi Paradigm Stalin’s Timing Secret The Yoda Technique Whether you’re an inveterate lover of language books or just want to win a lot more anger-free arguments on the page, at the podium, or over a beer, Thank You for Arguing is for you. Written by one of today’s most popular online language mavens, it’s warm, witty, erudite, and truly enlightening. It not only teaches you how to recognize a paralipsis and a chiasmus when you hear them, but also how to wield such handy and persuasive weapons the next time you really, really want to get your own way.
Words that Work : It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear The nation's premier communications expert shares his wisdom on how the words we choose can change the course of business, of politics, and of life in this country In Words That Work, Luntz offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the tactical use of words and phrases affects what we buy, who we vote for, and even what we believe in. With chapters like "The Ten Rules of Successful Communication" and "The 21 Words and Phrases for the 21st Century," he examines how choosing the right words is essential. Nobody is in a better position to explain than Frank Luntz: He has used his knowledge of words to help more than two dozen Fortune 500 companies grow. Hell tell us why Rupert Murdoch's six-billion-dollar decision to buy DirectTV was smart because satellite was more cutting edge than "digital cable," and why pharmaceutical companies transitioned their message from "treatment" to "prevention" and "wellness." If you ever wanted to learn how to talk your way out of a traffic ticket or talk your way into a raise, this book's for you.