Building Block #2 Assignment Description: Write 2 Paragraphs for 25 points due March 3
For your first paragraph, you will write your claim or thesis in which you support, refute, or complicate the claim that losing weight and keeping it off is the domain of the rich.
For your second paragraph, you will develop a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph in which you present an opposing view to your argument and give this opposing view, a counterargument, and a rebuttal.
To earn credibility in an argument, good writers anticipate how opponents will disagree with their claim, so they actually provide an anticipated disagreement with their own thesis. Often they will write this counterargument-rebuttal section after their supporting paragraphs (and before their conclusion).
Instructions for This Assignment
One. To write an effective counterargument-rebuttal
- Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
- Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.
- It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter argue by observing that ___________________.
- I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________.
Using the Above Templates Is Not Plagiarism
I strongly suggest you use these templates. Using them is not a form of plagiarism. You are taking structures that are commonly used by professional writers and filling in the blanks for your own purposes.
Be sure to provide compelling and accurate counterarguments.
Do not use weak or misrepresented arguments to make your rebuttal easier. The stronger the counterargument, the stronger your rebuttal, and the strength of your rebuttal determines how persuasive your argumentative essay is.
Be sure to have sufficient detail for your counterargument-rebuttal paragraph. Aim for 150-200 words.
List of Requirements for This Assignment
- Your counterargument-rebuttal has a suitable sentence structure that conforms to one of the templates I’ve provided.
- Your counterargument-rebuttal addresses a legitimate concern that your opponents reasonably have.
- Your rebuttal diminishes or outright refutes your opponent’s counterargument.
- Your paragraph has sufficient detail evidenced by a length of about 150-200.
- Your paragraph should be uploaded as an attachment to Canvas.
Learning Objectives
- Write a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph before your conclusion paragraph to gain credibility with your readers by showing them you have considered opposing views to your thesis or claim.
- Use the correct counterargument-rebuttal sentence structures available to effectively present such a paragraph.
- Use your rebuttal of your opponents to strengthen the persuasiveness of your thesis.
***
Thesis That Supports Self-Agency Argument
The systemic injustice argument is that because life is unfair with golden-paved roads leading to the land of milk and honey for the rich and thorny briar patches leading to the land of agonizing forlorn decrepitude for the working classes, the working classes should, when faced with the prospect of healthy eating and weight management, curl up into a ball and die. This impulse to give up because everything for the rich is easier is both self-destructive and morally repulsive. Firstly, waiting for institutions to balance the scales of justice while we languish with morbid obesity, high blood pressure, and other conditions signaling our premature death is a fool’s errand. Secondly, when we play the role of helpless victims, we only serve to accelerate our demise while losing our dignity in the process. And finally, when we look to history’s heroes of self-agency and determination, such as Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass, we are morally compelled to stop our pathetic sniveling and find the tools to empower ourselves without the privileges and advantages of the rich.
Thesis That Supports the Systemic Injustice Argument
It appears our champion of self-agency would like a round of applause for his rousing call for the working-class poor to take responsibility for their health and weight management. Clearly, he is a cheerleader for “history’s heroes of self-agency and determination,” and he feels empowered giving us a lecture on self-determination and free-will in regard to making “healthy life choices.” But I’m afraid to say that as much as I admire the effulgent tone of his rhetoric, his argument that the working-class poor can compete with the rich when it comes to healthy eating collapses under close scrutiny. Firstly, the schedule for a single mother working three jobs to feed her children precludes a daily two-hour workout at the gym, a daily ritual of “mindful” meditation, and an hour practice of sweat-inducing Ashtanga yoga followed by a two-hour cortisol-reducing aromatherapy massage. Secondly, the cost of wholesome foods is well beyond her budget. Organic grass-fed, hormone-free protein and local pesticide-free produce costs ten times the amount of frozen fries and chicken nuggets so that her attempt to “eat organic” will send her into quick bankruptcy and render her and her children homeless. Third, a working-class single mother who is highly disciplined and scrupulous in her time management will still lack the time to prepare her and her family the kind of healthy meals the self-agency cheerleader champions. In other words, the self-agency cheerleader is full of hot-air rhetoric and short on specific facts to bolster his argument. In the final analysis, this self-agency avatar sounds more like an aspiring social-media influencer high on his own empty bromides and short on real facts.
Thesis That Refutes the “Avatar of Doom and Gloom”
The avatar of doom and gloom who used a single mother’s daily struggles as an example of why the working class cannot embrace healthy lifestyle changes is an imbecilic argument rife with grotesque exaggeration and Straw Man arguments, and collapses under the weight of its own hyperbolic description of the type of health treatments required for self-improvement. It is no matter that I never required the working poor to embrace “a daily two-hour workout at the gym, a daily ritual of ‘mindful’ meditation, and an hour practice of sweat-inducing Ashtanga yoga followed by a two-hour cortisol-reducing aromatherapy massage." The writer rejoices in such distortions in order to argue against my reasonable argument that we all have some self-agency to make self-improvements regardless of our hardships. To distort my argument is called a Straw Man fallacy, a fake weapon used by subpar hack writers who don’t have the knowledge or skills to engage in legit debate, so I’m afraid we must dismiss Mr. Gloom and Doom’s exaggerated refutation of my argument and sweep it into the dustbin where it belongs.
Rebuttal Against Mr. Self-Agency
Mr. Self-Agency has accused me of engaging in hyperbole and exaggeration to make my points about the contrast of a daily exercise practice of a rich person vs. that of a working-class person. Clearly, Mr. Self-Agency has never had a closeup view of the rich, for nothing I wrote regarding the rich’s “daily two-hour workout at the gym, a daily ritual of ‘mindful’ meditation, and an hour practice of sweat-inducing Ashtanga yoga followed by a two-hour cortisol-reducing aromatherapy massage” smacks of hyperbole. In fact, I probably understated the advantages and excesses of “self-care” that the wealthy enjoy while the working class languish throughout the day and night with part-time jobs, “gig economy” hustles, and sleep deprivation. My assertion that the rich have astronomical advantages over the working class is neither hyperbole or a Straw Man argument, but a dose of reality that Mr. Self-Agency’s Pollyannaish, saccharine worldview cannot digest. He should be ashamed of holding the poor to standards that are not realistic and not acknowledging that when it comes to healthy lifestyles, we have two tiers with the haves and the have-nots. Failure to acknowledge this fact renders Mr. Self-Agency’s thesis to be a cheap self-help homily that is not supported by reality. We are therefore wise to ignore and dismiss his spectacular imbecilities.
Thesis Refutes All of the Above
All of the above thesis statements fail to meet the standards of critical thinking by failing to address nuance and subtlety in regards to the writing assignment. First, a healthy lifestyle is neither the product of wealth nor poverty. It’s the product of health literacy, which requires time and commitment regardless of economic status. Second, the above theses fail to address wealth and poverty on a spectrum with nuance. Extreme wealth and extreme poverty can cause derangement resulting in self-destructive behavior. Third, the advantages of the rich can actually turn into disadvantages. For example, a rich person can hire a personal doctor who will kill him with a drug overdose. Fourth, a poor person can be so discouraged that it is possible for him to exaggerate his victimization and get mired into a cycle of learned helplessness. All of these scenarios result from complexity and therefore deftly simple arguments about self-agency and systemic injustice.
Thesis Modeled After the Philosophy of Frederick Douglass
McMahon has assigned us an argumentative essay in which we address either social injustice or self-agency as the appropriate method for improving our healthy weight management. McMahon’s topic is an important and relevant one because owning our health is essential to being full members of society and pursuing the American dream of freedom and happiness, but let us discard the either/or fallacy implicit in his assignment. Just as we can walk and chew gum at the same time, we can champion both social justice and self-agency simultaneously. We can look to the model that embraces systemic injustice and self-agency by emulating the greatest American in history--Frederick Douglass. A freed slave and eloquent writer whose works were translated into hundreds of languages during his lifetime, Douglass became the greatest American critic of America’s systemic injustice. He stood in Abraham Lincoln’s face and told Lincoln to stop blaming the slaves for the Civil War and by persuading Lincoln of committing folly by blaming the victims, Lincoln reworded his Emancipation Proclamation. At the same time, Frederick Douglass was an advocate of self-agency. At age thirteen, Douglass purchased a book “teaching principles of eloquence and oratory” and an “antislavery message,” The Columbian Orator, which he read over and over. This book alone taught Douglass an important lesson: A powerful book can transform a person’s life. One passage in particular, a dialogue between a master and his slave, addressed the dehumanization of the slave by denying the slave the full attributes of free-will and self-agency. Developing literacy and the powers of reason were essential to being fully human and being unshackled by physical oppressors and mental ones alike. Flourishing as a free human and eloquent speaker, Frederick Douglass became an international champion of human rights and “the greatest abolitionist voice in American history.” In addition to fighting actual slavery, Douglass argued for the freedom from an unstructured life through education. Rosen writes: “In his ‘Self-made Men’ speech, Douglass distilled the principles that he first encountered in The Columbian Orator to make the case that the purpose of liberty is to allow all human beings to educate themselves.” Only through a structured life of self-education can we be free and whole. We must clear the mind of clutter and learn how to focus on what matters. As Rosen writes: “He embraces the central tenet of faculty psychology that the mind is its own place, responsible for its own happiness through virtuous self-control: ‘Nothing can bring to man so much of happiness or so much of misery as man himself,’ Douglass writes.” Looking at Douglass’ life committed to attacking systemic injustice and the folly that erodes our self-agency, I will use Douglass’ heroic life to argue that we can pursue healthy weight management only by incorporating both the pursuit of social justice and at the same time assert our free will and self-discipline to achieve a life of health literacy and optimal physical fitness.
Is Thinking About Food a Waste of Time?
Some people might object to writing an essay about food and what we eat. Why should I care about what I eat? What I eat is a product of habit, circumstance, and environment. Thinking about eating is a waste of time because no thoughts will change the habits that have been instilled inside of me all of my life. Thinking about eating is also a waste of time because what I eat bears no relevance to the quality of my life.
While I concede it’s possible to spend too much time thinking about what we eat to the point that overthinking eating, like overthinking anything, can be a self-destructive neurosis, I disagree with the claim that thinking about eating is a waste of time.
Critical thinking means questioning habits rather than mindlessly accepting the habits and routines we engage in that define our existence. If we are eating inferior food, we are likely suffering in terms of mental and physical performance, success goals, and personal identity. A life of fast food, Funyuns, and Fanta is a life of depression, destitution, and crapulence.
To blindly succumb to mindless eating and to “get punk fed” is a form of debasement and humiliation.
In contrast, to question one’s eating habits and replace any bad habits by embracing food literacy is to fight back against the current of mindless eating.
Fighting back with the knowledge of food literacy is a form of self-preservation and self-agency that is a predictor of success and high self-confidence.
Resisting food nihilism, the belief that it doesn’t matter what we eat because we’re all doomed to being imprisoned by our Set-Point, is to express the kind of critical thinking that we don’t just merely apply to eating but to all endeavors. Therefore, to reject mindless eating and to critically think about what kind of food we put into our bodies is a crucial part of a healthy self-identity, success, and confidence.
Is the following sample essay, which takes some rather strident aim at Harriet Brown, fair?
Selective Despair
Harriet Brown laments that dieting is so confusing with so many conflicting theories from supposed experts and that the human body is inclined to not lose weight but rebel against all weight-loss programs. Further, she complains that the diet and medical industry are rife with grifters and charlatans who are profit-centered and could care less about our health. To add to our despair, Brown includes a diatribe on unrealistic media images of the human body, which inevitably lead to low self-esteem and body dysmorphia. Brown’s lamentation is, I’m sad to say, a smokescreen for learned helplessness and dietary nihilism. In fact, living a strong, healthy life requires hard work, getting the right facts, and having realistic expectations. Rather than point us in the direction of common sense and struggling for our health, Brown pushes us toward dietary despair.
Just as Chris Rock points out the inconsistency of cowardly anger in his Netflix comedy special “Selective Outrage,” I would like to point out Harriet Brown’s inconsistency in an essay titled “Selective Despair.” Why would anyone choose to despair when it comes to dieting? Is not such despair a rationale for throwing care to the wind and eating everything? It seems Brown is doing just that. However, Brown doesn’t choose despair in other areas of her life. She has a college degree. Yet going to college is fraught with challenges--the cost, the lack of certainty of majoring in the “right” major; the lack of any certainty that the college graduate will land a job that will pay for the student debt. Nevertheless, in spite of these obstacles, Brown did not despair. She struggled through college and found success as a journalism professor and as a magazine writer.
Take marriage. Brown is married, yet the statistics for divorce are terrifying. Almost half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce, which eviscerates people emotionally and financially. The risk is so high. The cost is even higher. Yet Brown forged ahead and got married and seems to be doing fine.
The point is that Brown worked hard in college to make her education give her rewards. The same is true of her marriage. She works at making her marriage work and by all accounts, she and her husband are in a loving functional marriage.
Why does she reserve “being confused,” lost, and overwhelmed when it comes to dieting but not when it comes to education and marriage? Could it be that she chooses to be confused and overwhelmed by dieting because she doesn’t want eating boundaries, yet she is content exercising discipline and free agency in her career and marriage?
It seems we play the Despair Card when we want to play it. If our agenda is to eat as we please, then perhaps we’ll argue that dieting in pursuit of health is a fool’s errand. But the real fool’s errand is selective despair.
Ethos, Logos, Pathos: The 3 Pillars of Argument
Adapted from Diana Hacker's Rules for Writers, Eighth Edition (99)
Ethos
Ethos is an ethical appeal based on the writer's character, knowledge, authority, savvy, book smarts, and street smarts. The latter is evidenced by the author's savvy in using appropriate, not pretentious language to appeal to her readers.
Ethos is further achieved through confidence, humility, and command of language and subject.
Confidence without humility is not confidence; it is bluster, bombast, and braggadocio, elements that diminish logos.
Real confidence is mastery, detailed, granular, in-depth knowledge of the topic at hand and acknowledgment of possible limitations and errors in one's conclusions.
Ethos is further established by using credible sources that are peer-reviewed.
Logos
Logos is establishing a reasonable, logical argument, appealing to the reader's sense of logic, relying on credible evidence, using inductive and deductive reasoning, and exposing logical fallacies.
Logos is further achieved by using sources that are timely, up-to-date, current, and relevant.
To strengthen logos, the writer considers opposing views, concedes where those opposing views might diminish the claim, and make appropriate rebuttals to counterarguments.
Pathos
Pathos is achieved by appealing to the reader's emotions, moral sense, and moral beliefs.
Pathos gets away from the brain and toward the gut. It makes a visceral appeal.
Appropriate pathos uses emotion in a way that supports and reinforces the evidence. It does not manipulate and use smokescreens that depart from the evidence.
Common signal phrases
We read in Author X’s essay that:
We read in Corbin Smith’s essay “Alan Ritchson’s ‘Reacher” Is a Gigantic, Unstoppable Force” that Jack Reacher embodies “The four virtues of Stoicism.”
According to Author X, and As Author X writes:
According to Corbin Smith, the Stoical Hero balances his passion with his powers of reason. As Smith writes: “You are passionate, but not completely driven by your baser instincts.”
Author X argues that and As Author X observes:
Corbin Smith argues that Reacher’s appeal rests largely in the sheer physicality of its star Alan Ritchson. As Smith observes: Ritchson “is a slab of rock-hard marbled beef with an unnerving square jaw and blue eyes that cut holes through steel.”
When you write an argumentative essay, most likely you will be required to write a counterargument-rebuttal section in which you address your opponents’ objections to your argument. The following are templates for counterarguments followed by rebuttals:
- Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
- Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.
- It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter-argue by observing that ___________________.
- I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________.
Sample Thesis Statements
Defining a thesis:
A thesis is a meaningful claim or argument that is the central focus of your essay, that you can defend with credible information, that will outline an essay of 1,200 words or more, that is challenging enough to be appropriate for college-level writing, that has high stakes, and that defies simple analysis.
- The thesis or claim is the central focus of your essay. It is the reason you are writing your essay. To stray from your thesis is to betray your original intention.
- The thesis is based on an informed opinion based on credible research. Your research has been peer reviewed and is rooted in reality. To look to “research” based on a fever swamp of unproven conspiracies and misinformation is to present an essay that is disconnected from reality. We live in an age where even facts and reality itself are disputed. This is a very specific crisis called the epistemic crisis. You can read about this crisis in Jonathan Rauch’s book The Constitution of Knowledge.
- A strong thesis may have reasons contained in the sentence. These reasons are also called mapping components. They outline your essay’s body paragraphs. Observe the following example: Working from the home is more viable for most companies because working from the home saves your workers from commute time, doesn’t expose workers to illnesses resulting in lost work time, reduces work theft opportunities, reduces company expenses such as heat, AC, lighting, etc., and takes advantage of the technology that’s cheaply available to make your employees’ home office an efficient business office.
- The thesis can generate an essay that is 1,200 words or more means the thesis is demonstrable: You can defend the thesis with reasoning, logic, examples, and research.
- Your thesis has high stakes. You present an argument and the listener or reader doesn’t feel compelled to say “So what?” Rather, you have chosen a topic that is relevant, vital, and urgent to the human condition.
- Your thesis defies simple analysis. You are avoiding the obvious and factual such as “What the world needs now is love.” Rather, you are focusing on debatable topics.
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1 offers no mapping components and may or may not be demonstrable:
Suppose your Western Diet, an endless buffet of sugar, processed food, and sodium, is presenting you with various health afflictions that are so extreme that you have a variety of morbidity factors. In that case, you have to push Harriet Brown’s pessimism aside and manipulate your eating environment and recalibrate your eating habits in such a way that your diet is not a fool’s errand but a necessary step in saving your life.
Sample #2 with mapping components
If you’re discouraged by your lackluster build and pudgy contours and aspire to look like a chiseled Instagram model, you will most likely find that your austere dietary program will give you short-term results, but in the long run, your diet will be a fool’s errand because willpower can only last so long, environmental and social pressures to indulge will break you, high-density-calorie foods are in abundance, and sugary, fatty foods are an irresistible drug that provides an escape from the stresses of modern life.
Sample #3 with mapping components
While it’s true that long-term adherence to a proper diet is difficult and that sugary, fatty foods can indeed become an irresistible drug from the stresses of modern life, I propose that a healthy whole food diet over the long haul is more viable than the self-destructive Western Diet because a healthy whole food diet can be adopted through habit, economic wellbeing and prove to be necessary for the fight against depression, diabetes, and other comorbidity factors.
Sample #4 with mapping components
While Harriet Brown in “The Weight of the Evidence” makes many compelling and persuasive points, her essay suffers from a lack of persuasion because of problems in ethos, logos, and pathos.
Sample #5 without mapping components is probably demonstrable.
While Harriet Brown’s “The Weight of the Evidence” suffers problems in ethos, logos, and pathos, her main argument about the futility of dieting remains insightful, compelling, and persuasive.
Sample #6 with mapping components
While Harriet Brown’s tone is a bit glum and some of her studies seem cherry-picked, she nonetheless demonstrates persuasively that dieting is a fool’s errand because of unrealistic societal expectations, money-driven skinny aesthetics of a fraudulent dieting industry, the inevitable failure of willpower, and biological impediments.
Sample #7 with mapping components
While Harriet Brown makes many insightful and irrefutable points, I find her essay offensive and harmful because she cherry-picks studies to support her claim that being fat is not a health risk, she doesn’t leave nuance in the realm of healthy eating as an alternative to throwing care to the wind and eating “whatever,” she doesn’t offer any success stories to provide a counterbalance to her doom and gloom, and she offers no encouragement for at least eating healthy whole foods so that as a whole her essay leaves a sour and putrid taste in my mouth.
Sample Counterarguments and Rebuttals for Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand Essay
Typically, when we write argumentation essays, we devote a section of our essay, usually before our conclusion, that addresses our opponents’ disagreement with our central argument or the way we anticipate how our opponents will object to our essay’s claim.
We want to make a clear presentation of how and why our imagined opponents might disagree with us. This is called the counterargument.
We then examine the counterargument and offer a rebuttal or refutation of that counterargument.
Here are some examples for the essay that addresses the claim that losing weight is such a futile endeavor that dieting surely is a fool’s errand.
Example of a Counterargument and Rebuttal for Essay That Supports Idea That Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand
I can anticipate my opponents taking my claim that dieting is a fool’s errand as bait for accusing me of “dietary nihilism,” the notion that we should throw care to the wind and engage in reckless disregard when it comes to our bodies, indulging in gluttony, and being both beholden and addicted to the food industry’s myriad of fat-, salt-, and sugar-laden foods. On the contrary, I am no dietary nihilist. I am a dietary realist or pragmatist. My approach is not to focus on weight loss but on health by cultivating a love for cooking whole foods, avoiding processed foods, and having the food literacy to know the difference.
Example of a Counterargument and Rebuttal for Essay That Refutes Idea That Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand
I am a staunch defender of the idea that we should not let the majority of dieters, doomed to fail for a myriad of reasons too many to list here, be an excuse for our own individual aspirations to manage our weight and live a healthy lifestyle. My opponents will point out, correctly, that many lack the time and resources to buy and prepare healthy foods. I concede their point. For many hard-working Americans, time and budget constraints impede them from devoting the kind of time and resources necessary for a permanent weight-loss plan. But my fellow Americans’ dietary failures, however legitimate, do not excuse me for taking personal responsibility for my own dietary success. The truth of the matter is I have the familial, financial, and environmental support to succeed at my dietary goals, and my particular situation is such that dieting is not a fool’s errand. Rather, dieting and keeping excess weight off is a moral imperative.
Example of Counterargument and Rebuttal for Essay That Supports Idea That Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand
Since the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the time and resources to devote to full-time dieting, I stand by my argument that dieting for the most part is a fool’s errand. My opponents will point out that there are some Americans who enjoy enough financial comfort and discretionary time to devote to their weight-loss plan. But this amount of Americans is too minuscule to make a drop in the bucket, so to speak, when it comes to successful dieting because we cannot really talk about dieting as a fool’s errand, or not unless we talk about viability and sustainability for most people. If we can’t scale successful dieting for the masses, then dieting indeed is a fool’s errand with the exception of a very elite and specialized class of people who can meet all the caveats and conditions for succeeding at permanent weight loss. And I would remind the elite class that even they have a strong probability of failing, so my contention that dieting is a fool’s errand stands.
Authorial Presence
After 35 years of teaching college writing, I am convinced that the highest compliment I can put on students’ essays is that they wrote with authorial presence, which I would define as a confident writing voice that curates the argument, narrative, or any other kind of exposition with a distinctive point of view. This point of view rests on five major pillars: The student writes from a philosophical position that developing an essay as an academic exercise is morally repugnant; rather, writing an essay attempts to create a greater understanding of a murky issue that is relevant to the human condition.
Secondly, the authorial presence is generated from an informed opinion in which the writer did her due diligence, studying credible sources, and exploring opposite sides of a position before reaching her conclusion. Third, her authorial presence, or writing voice, makes it clear that living in the world of ideas is not an austere, boring place but rather one of the highest realms of human existence, the privilege of being engaged in the Cafe Society of the Mind. This Cafe Society of the Mind is not a place for smug complacency and mutual praise. Rather, we challenge each other. As such, we arrive at the fourth pillar of authorial presence: The writer disrupts our assumptions about life and ourselves by challenging us with contrarian ideas, or to use Kafka’s words, her writing “is the ax that breaks the frozen ocean.”
Finally, over time her authorial presence melds with her personality so that her speaking persona and her writing persona both come from the core of her being. In other words, her intellectual life has replaced the embryonic person she was before starting her intellectual journey. Her authorial presence reflects the different person she has become and this different person, unlike her previous iteration, is strongly defined, distinctive, and stamps her signature in everything she does.
The strength of her persona reminds us of Oscar Wilde’s famous, often misinterpreted adage. “The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second one is, no one has yet discovered.” I would argue this “pose” is an authorial presence. But it is not the hollow pose of a dandy. Rather, it is a distinctive persona built with blood, sweat, and tears.
In Your Thesis, Be Sure to Address One of the Assigned Readings with a Signal Phrase
A lot of you are writing that dieting can be done with hard work and professional guidance (a sound, demonstrable thesis) and a lot of you are writing that dieting can often be a fool’s errand because of the physical and mental problems that result (also a sound, demonstrable thesis), but your thesis doesn’t have sufficient context nor does it address the assignment unless you use a signal phrase in which you respond to one of the authors in our assignment. Let me give you two examples:
Example of a Student Using a Signal Phrase to Disagree with One of the Authors
While Harriet Brown makes many compelling points in her essay “The Weight of the Evidence,” I would counter her point that dieting is a futile quest because a healthy approach to dieting can work if we take the focus off the Hot Instagram Bod and instead strive for health, if we increase our protein to stave off our appetites, if we develop a baseline of nutritional literacy, and if we can enjoy the health benefits from our weight loss.
Example of a Student Using a Signal Phrase to Agree with One of the Authors
While I’ll concede that a healthy approach to dieting can work for some people, I find that Harriet Brown makes a convincing case in “The Weight of the Evidence” that dieting is rooted in an unrealistic body image, fueled by the greedy weight-loss industry, doomed to wreak disappointment, failure, and low self-esteem on us, and to be responsible for an array of metabolic and hormonal disruptions so that we’re worse off than before our dieting quests.
What Students Have Taught Me
Do You Want to be a Brawler or a Peacemaker in Your Argumentative Tone?
In argumentation, we decide upon a rhetorical voice. We can be aggressive brawlers who take no prisoners in our argumentation or we can be peacemakers who try to arrive at a point of common understanding. One style is not better than the other. They are different, and both have good and bad points. The aggressive style can come off as being brash and arrogant, but it is very powerful writing when done well. The more polite style can show more decorum and show humility, but it may come across as being too tepid and boring.
Example of a Counterargument-Rebuttal That Is Aggressive and Forceful
Striving to eat a clean diet of whole foods, mostly plant-based, while eating 150 grams of protein a day and abstaining from sugar and alcohol is by no means a fool’s errand. Such a nutritional regimen could very well save one’s life. Opponents of my call for healthy eating are too focused on the folly and self-destruction of what I call Social Media Fad Dieters, those misguided souls who starve themselves, look for gimmicks and silver bullets and get hustled into buying supplements they don’t need, and gaining all their weight back after finding they cannot adhere to their crash course in weight loss. But these nay-sayers such as Harriet Brown make the fatal mistake of making the claim that just because 95% of aspiring dieters don’t do their due diligence and find a way to enjoy healthy eating that we should surrender a life of good health and happiness and resign ourselves to a life of slovenliness and gluttony. Harriet Brown and her ilk seem to be making the logical fallacy of Two Rights Make a Wrong: Since crash dieters are wrong in their approach and fail miserably, then it’s somehow okay to give up on a healthy approach to eating. Harriet Brown can give us several reasons for why diets fail, but she doesn’t give a hint at eating healthy. To be sure, I agree with her that unrealistic expectations and crash diets are bad, but there are joys, pleasures, and good health that we can enjoy when we can learn to eat clean whole foods rather than sob and feast on the pity party of learned helplessness.
Counterargument-Rebuttal with a Peacemaker Tone
I would like to first make it clear that I agree with my opponents such as Harriet Brown that fad dieting doesn’t work and that the diet industry makes profits by pounding us over the head with messages that we are never skinny enough. I would also like to make it clear that I agree with my opponents that losing weight and keeping it off permanently on any kind of diet is most likely futile and what could be called a “fool’s errand.” Where I’d like to differ with my opponents, though, is that I don’t think we should throw away the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. What is the baby? Healthy eating. And what is healthy eating? Consuming whole foods, 150 grams of protein a day, and abstaining from sugar and alcohol. Will such a regimen guarantee the kind of weight loss that will make us worthy of being Instagram models? Likely not. But will such a dietary regimen make us look and feel better? Indeed, it will, which is why I am not so mired in despair as my adversaries who seem so discouraged by the fad diets that they may have been over-eager to dismiss the healthy-eating diets as well.
For the last few semesters, my critical thinking students have been grappling with the argument: Is losing weight a fool’s errand?
Here’s what I’ve learned:
- Most students themselves have dieted or they know friends and family who have dieted for the purposes of gaining self-esteem, conforming to an unrealistic body aesthetic, improving their health, or taking orders from a doctor who has warned them that they are dangerously obese.
- Many students have horrid tales of aspiring dieters getting exploited and manipulated by the profiteering diet industry, which promises fast, unrealistic results and tries to make their clients dependent on their products.
- Most students know someone who tried the Single Food diet: eating nothing but bananas, potatoes, cabbage soup, etc., which surely is not sustainable.
- Most students find the losing-weight quest to be a Shame and Anxiety Dungeon where failure to adhere to some Strict Eating Orthodoxy banishes them to a life of shame and misery so acute that the diet cannot be sustained for long before people suffer a nervous breakdown.
- Some students have identified a Pathological Diet Culture based on neurosis, paranoia, narcissism, and addiction.
- Some students have smartly distinguished this Pathological Diet Culture from a Healthy Whole Foods Culture in which people emphasize eating whole foods over processed foods, but they don’t freak out when they have an occasional cheat meal.
- Some students have smartly rejected both extremes of dieting: Strict Orthodox Dieting on one hand and Nihilistic Throw-Care-to-the-Wind Gluttony Diet on the other and in rejecting both extremes, these students have embraced a common sense emphasis on whole and healthy foods with more emphasis on health than body weight.
Comments