Readings about Rhetoric & Argumentation
31 “On the Other Hand: The Role of Antithetical Writing in First Year Composition Courses”
Steven Krause
In this essay, Steven Krause invites writers to engage in a somewhat unconventional planning exercise: to explore the antithesis in their writing projects. Krause explains how doing so tests out the strength of an argument and creates an opportunity to generate content for the essay. An antithesis is a counter-perspective, a counter argument. When we draft arguments, we sometimes get so caught up in checking off all of the boxes of what we need—a claim at the end of the intro paragraph, reasons, a counterargument—that we do not pay enough attention to what persuasion actually means, and how persuasion is audience-centered. Read this essay to find strategies for developing counterargument and response.
Keywords from this chapter in Writing Spaces
debate, antithesis, thesis, audience
Author Bio
Steven D. Krause is Professor of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Most of his teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels explores the connections between writing and technology. Some of his recent scholarship has appeared in the journals College Composition and Communication, Kairos, Computers and Composition, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as in the edited collections Designing Web-Based Applications for 21st Century Writing Classrooms and Writing Spaces (Invasion of the MOOCS).
This article was originally published on WritingSpaces.org, an Open Textbook Project. The site features many articles about writing and composition that may be useful to you.
a discussion in which reasons are advanced for and against some proposition or proposal
Figure of balance in which two contrasting ideas are intentionally juxtaposed, usually through parallel structure; a contrasting of opposing ideas in adjacent phrases, clauses, or sentences
the author’s central or main claim
a component of the rhetorical situation; any person or group who is the intended recipient of a message conveyed through text, speech, audio; the person/people the author is trying to influence
