Considering Types

In this post I will reflect on the information provided in the "Five Basic Types of Public Argument" portion of Writing Public Lives, in order to decide which types of argument seem like the best and worst ones for my own Public Argument project.

sweetenough, "I can't get no... contradiction." 10/22/2010 via Flickr. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

I feel like the type of argument that will be the most effective for my public argument is the refutation argument. In my opinion, the best way to show the many benefits of legalization to my audience, whether or not they were supporters of lifting the ban on cannabis prior to seeing my argument, is to disprove the claims that are currently being made against legalizing marijuana in America.

I feel that any of the other types of arguments mentioned in Writing Public Lives, like the proposal argument, would be ineffective for my topic, due to the fact that people could still be resistant to the idea of legalization based on their own preconceived ideas, no matter how convincing my newly proposed ideas or solutions regarding legalization are. Thus, by directly discrediting the claims of opposers of legalization and painting marijuana in a new light, by employing a refutation argument, I will improve the potential for my audience to be more accepting of the idea of lifting the ban on marijuana.

Reflection:
I commented on both Lauren's and Annelise's "Considering Types" posts, but my comments also related to what my peers said within their "My Rhetorical Action Plan" posts. Here are the links to my peers blog posts.

Lauren:
My Rhetorical Action Plan
Considering Types

Annelise:
My Rhetorical Action Plan
Considering Types

After reading Lauren's and Annelise's posts I am still confident in the argument type that I have chosen for my form of public speech. After exploring my peers' plans for this project it became apparent to me how greatly argument types, possible genres, and target audiences can change drastically depending on the topic that an author is addressing. Thus, even though my peers and myself all decided on different argument types that is okay based on the fact that we are all discussing different controversies and have different goals in mind for our audiences. One very interesting thing that I discovered during this reflection process was the great potential of success for the genre of a listicle. I feel like a listicle, based on Annelise's explanation, could be a very good genre for me to compose my argument within, because it will enable me to explicitly address the 5 or so major illogical arguments that people make against legalization. Thus, I will have to strongly consider making a listicle in addition to my other proposed genre types before making a final decision on how I will construct my argument.