The Toulmin Model of Argumentation
[0:03] [NARRATOR] Welcome to the tutorial on using the Toulmin Model or argumentation to analyze and create arguments in discussion and writing.
[0:08] The Toulmin Model is named for the British logician and philosopher, Stephen Toulmin, who created this organizational scheme to use for understanding and creating arguments that can be applied to real world situations, instead of the syllogistic, black and white scenarios usually presented in philosophy classes. 
[0:25] His most famous work, where he put forward the Toulmin Model, is a book called The Uses of Argument.
[0:32] The Toulmin model breaks arguments down into six essential parts, which all interact and depend on each other to form a complete argument. 
[0:39] To understand this model as a system of argumentation, it is important to have a good understanding of each component part on its own. 
[0:46] First, the claim is the main point you hope to put forth in your argument; it is ultimately what you’re trying to convince your audience to think or agree with. 
[0:54] Second, the evidence is the information that you use to support and explain your claim. The evidence tells us why the claim is valid. 
[1:03] Third, is the warrant, which is one of the most important contributions of Toulmin’s scheme to our conception of argumentation; the warrant helps us draw connections between the claim and the evidence. The warrant identifies assumptions that not everyone may share and that often go unspoken in arguments. 
[1:21] Similar to the evidence, the backing provides support for the warrant; it tells us why our warrant is a rational assumption. 
[1:28] Fifth, rebuttals are potential objections to your claim, which are necessary to include, according to Toulmin, because they make your argument more nuanced and complete, as they demonstrate that you are aware of and have considered oppositions to your perspective. 
[1:41] Finally, qualifiers allow you to adjust and add specificity and nuance to your claim, thereby making it more stable and less susceptible to further rebuttals. 
[1:52] The first three parts—the claim, evidence, and warrant—are the primary components of the model, and the second three parts—the backing, rebuttal, and qualifier—are the secondary components because they supplement the primary ones.
[2:07] The Toulmin Model is often represented visually in this way in order to illustrate how each of the six elements relates to and depends on each other. 
[2:13] As you can see, the warrant sits between the evidence and the claim, but is put in parentheses because the warrant in many arguments is often left as an unstated assumption instead of being explicitly drawn out.
[2:27] Here we have a sample argument put into the scheme. 
[2:30] You can see that our claim is that cars over 20 years old shouldn’t be allowed on the road, and our evidence for why this is the case is because older cars pollute more and are less safe than new cars. 
[2:42] The warrant, or assumption that ties our claim and evidence together is that removing older cars would result in a cleaner environment and fewer accident-related injuries and deaths. 
[2:53] While this warrant may be pretty obvious, and thus not necessary to spell out in this argument, this is not the case with every other argument or warrant. 
[3:01] In this example, our rebuttal is that not all older cars bear the same responsibility for pollution and danger, so we can qualify our claim to take this rebuttal into account by allowing that some older cars may be acceptable and that putting limitations on the use of old cars may be more reasonable than completely disallowing their use. 
[3:25] Notice especially that if this were an argument being made for an academic essay, the warrant and the backing would be the primary source of the discussion because these are the parts of the model that most depend on factual, “hard” data, so these would be the places where researched information could be used to support this argument.
[3:44] Essentially, these are the aspects of the Toulmin Model that “make” your argument for you in that they hold up your claim and evidence against scrutiny. 
[3:51] Without these aspects, you force your audience to connect these dots for you.
[3:57] The Toulmin Model helps in the composition of arguments for these reasons: it asks you to think beyond, above, below, and against your own argument. 
[4:06] That is, you cannot have completely employed the Toulmin model for your argument without putting your own claims to the test first. 
[4:12] Furthermore, since the scheme is built upon an inherently logical structure of rational questioning, you can be sure that your argument uses reason—if sometimes even to analyze irrational situations.
[4:24] The Toulmin Model is just as useful for analyzing arguments made by others as it is for creating them yourself. 
[4:31] For instance, look at the advertisement here for a 1967 Ford Mustang. 
[4:37] If we can determine the answers to these six questions—that is, if we can fill in the Toulmin Model—we will know a lot about how this argument has been built, both in terms of its successes and its faults. 
[4:47] In this example, where would the boxing glove image and phrase “strike a blow” fall into the Toulmin scheme? 
[4:54] If it is evidence, what warrant connects it to the primary claim of the ad, which we can assume is “Buy a Mustang” or at least “Think about buying a Mustang”? 
[5:03] Is there not some kind of implied violence in the use of the boxing glove image? Do you think this warrant is intentional? 
[5:11] Also notice the subtle qualifier in the text at the bottom or the ad, which reads: ”Still the original and lowest-priced car of its kind with bucket seats.” 
[5:20] We can probably assume this was a necessary qualifier because there were probably cheaper cars of the Mustang’s “kind” that came with bench seats only instead of bucket seats. 
[5:30] So while they can’t say “cheapest car overall,” they can say, “Cheapest car of its kind with bucket seats.”
[5:40] Nonetheless, there are limitations to what the Toulmin Model can do for you in the creation and analyzation of arguments.
[5:46] Largest among these limitations is the fact that this a model or outline of a possibly complete argument. 
[5:54] That is, you could not simply take the text produced in a Toulmin Model example and put them into paragraph form and have a good academic essay. 
[6:02] Instead, think of the model as a heuristic or problem-solving tool to help you work toward a complete essay, not the method for writing the essay itself.
[6:11] Thank you for watching this Toulmin tutorial, and I hope you find it helpful in analyzing and composing future arguments.