About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators · Rogerian Argument Essay Outline with Thesis Statement and proposed Compromise/Solution. Before you begin: Complete your reading/research for the Rogerian Argument so that you are informed about your issue and understand the main claim and subclaims of each perspective. Instructions The Best Rogerian Topics on Students Should students have mobile phones in school? Should students wear school uniforms? Is it possible to curb cheating among students? Are boarding schools the best option for students? Is bullying among students a parent or teacher problem? Are homework and
Rogerian Rhetoric: An Alternative to Traditional Argumentation
As the Introduction to this volume points out, all of the approaches to argumentation collected here offer some form of alternative to the "argument as war" metaphor. In each approach, "argument" is redefined as one or another form of negotiated inquiry into common grounds for belief.
Rogerian rhetoric also moves away from a combative stance, but is distinct from other models of argumentation in three ways. First, it goes even farther than most other models in rogerian outline an adversarial approach, rogerian outline.
Second, it offers specific strategies based on nondirective therapy for building the rogerian outline bridges necessary rogerian outline noncombative inquiry. Third, and in my opinion most important, it has the potential to offer students an opportunity for long-term cognitive and ethical growth.
Ever since Young, Becker and Pike introduced the discipline of composition to Rogerian rhetoric inrogerian outline, our profession has remained deeply divided over whether such a rhetoric is conceptually sound, useful in practice, or even possible.
Some have argued that it is nothing but warmed- over Aristotelian rhetoric Lunsford ; others, that it is untrue to Carl Rogers' principles Maderrogerian outline that it is a cumbersome welding-together of persuasion and non-directive therapy, two fundamentally incompatible processes Ede All of these criticisms point to real problems with the model, problems which often reflect the way it has been conceptualized by its proponents.
Nonetheless, the literature of composition studies reflects a continuing fascination with Rogerian principles. Textbooks continue to suggest these principles as alternative methods of persuasion Coe ; Flowerand a recent collection edited rogerian outline Nathaniel Teich a presents a wide variety of both philosophical and pedagogical investigations into Rogerian outline perspectives.
In this chapter I will try to account for this continuing fascination with Rogerian rhetoric and explain what it can offer that no other approach to argumentation can quite match. To do so I will briefly survey the history of Rogerian rhetoric and outline its basic principles. Then I will discuss some of the ways in which Rogerian principles can be used in practice to teach both a technique of inquiry and an ethic of inquiry.
Carl Rogers is more familiar to many as a therapist than as a rhetorician. However, the goal of therapy, like the goal of rhetoric, can be broadly described as "attitude change. Rogerian outline, he aims for a broader change in the way the client interacts with the world. Nonetheless, the essence of both arts is to induce change through verbal means--Plato's rogerian outline of influencing the soul through words" Rogerian therapy informs rhetoric by offering a new way of thinking about the means of inducing change.
Rogers describes how, as a young practitioner, he quickly discovered that he could not change the attitudes or behavior of his clients by rational argument. The ideal rhetorical situation as described by Plato involves an audience which, like his hero Socrates, is "not less happy to be refuted than to refute" Alas, this attitude is rare among real, vulnerable human beings who are not characters in a Platonic dialogue, rogerian outline.
Clients in therapy, at the peak of their vulnerability, rogerian outline, are particularly unhappy to be refuted. When Rogers began to explain how unreasonable his clients' rogerian outline fears were, how self-destructive their self-destructive behavior was, rogerian outline, he met a blank wall of resistance.
The problem, rogerian outline, he decided, rogerian outline, was that rational argument of this type always implies a form of evaluation. Argument may convince a person to buy this kind of car or to vote for that politician, rogerian outline, but the closer the subject of argument comes to the beliefs that constitute the core of a person's sense of self, of identity, the more any attempt to change beliefs is perceived as a threat and met with walls of defence, rogerian outline.
The way around these walls, Rogers discovered, was to change the role of the therapist. The therapist, in Roger's view, is not a healer, rogerian outline, but rather a facilitator of healing.
She does not explain her point of view to the client, but instead listens actively to the client as he gets in touch with his own thoughts and emotions and does his own healing. For the art of rhetoric, the most immediately useful aspect of Rogerian therapy is the specific technique that Rogers developed to facilitate this self-healing process. This technique is called "restatement" or "saying back, rogerian outline. The therapist continually repeats back her understanding of the client's words in summary form in order to check her understanding of the client's mental state, rogerian outline.
Thus the therapist might say, "It sounds as though what you are really saying is that you hate your father. As a therapeutic tool, Rogerian reflection is both difficult--it can quickly degenerate into an irritating echo-chamber of voices--and breathtakingly successful when done well. In this "pure" form, Rogerian therapy is not "argument. However, Rogers himself speculated on how his principles could be applied in rhetorical situations, though always under the rubric of "communication" rather than "rhetoric.
His formula is simple: "Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker, and to that speaker's satisfaction" In later articles he details Rogerian-style negotiation sessions that have produced astonishing results, including the Camp David negotiations conducted by Jimmy Carter, a conference involving health care providers and impoverished and embittered health care consumers, and even opposing sides in Northern Ireland Rogers and Ryback It is this power rogerian outline create an atmosphere of co-operation that led Young, Becker and Pike to rogerian outline an alternative form of rhetoric based on Rogerian principles Young, Becker and Pike recommend that, rather than trying immediately to present arguments for her point of view and to refute her opponent's, rogerian outline, the writer should first undertake a task similar to that of the Rogerian psychotherapist.
She should try to reduce the reader's sense of threat by showing that the writer has genuinely listened to the reader's position, rogerian outline. This reduction of threat will in turn rogerian outline an "assumption of similarity": the reader will see the writer as a human being more or less like herself and therefore be more rogerian outline to listen to what the writer has to say. Although they argue that it should not be reduced to a mechanical formula, rogerian outline, Young, Becker and Pike outline four basic stages through which a Rogerian argument should pass:.
An introduction to the problem and a demonstration that the opponent's position is understood. A statement of how the opponent's position would benefit if he were to adopt elements of the writer's position.
If the writer can show that the positions complement each other, that each supplies what the other lacks, so much the better. Not every version of Rogerian rhetoric emphasises exactly these stages, but the common denominator among all versions is that the writer must state the opposing viewpoint first, before stating her own, and do so honestly, with understanding, and without either overt or covert evaluation.
Beginning with Rogerian outline Hairston's seminal articlea number of writers have recommended Rogerian rhetoric as an alternative form of argument to be used, as Young, Becker and Pike originally recommended, when emotions and a sense rogerian outline threat preclude direct debate in the classical mode Bator; Coe, Lunsford rogerian outline Ederogerian outline, Gage this volume and others have argued that those who view classical rhetoric as inherently combative have been misled both by later misreadings of Aristotle and his contemporaries and by an incomplete understanding of the role of the enthymeme.
They argue that the enthymeme, rogerian outline, the heart of Aristotle's structure of argumentation, differs from the logical syllogism rogerian outline in that it involves the rhetor in the building an argument from the opinions of the audience. Classical rhetoric can therefore be seen as co-operative, not combative. This in fact is the basis for Lunsford's argument that a Rogerian "alternative" to traditional rhetoric is unnecessary Regardless of the merits of these arguments, the traditional conception of rhetoric still poses limitations.
Traditional rhetoric as envisioned rogerian outline Aristotle and by most modern textbooks on argument is typically triadic; that is, it is aimed at a third party who will judge the case on the basis of the arguments presented by competing advocates, rogerian outline, politicians, researchers, advertisers, or other partisan arguers. In this case it matters little if one arguer threatens the beliefs and self-esteem of the other, rogerian outline, for it is not the opponent he is trying to convince, but the audience as third party.
The process of inquiry claimed for rogerian outline enthymeme creates co-operation between rhetor and audience, not between rhetor and opponent. But what about the instances--far more common in everyday life--in which two parties are directly trying to convince each other?
In these "dyadic" situations, standard persuasive strategies will usually do more harm than good, tending to harden rather than soften positions. In such cases of dyadic argument, a technique is required that will create the grounds for reasonable discussion that classical rhetoric presupposes. Rogerian rhetoric offers such a technique Coe The challenge for the composition teacher, of course, is how to teach students to put Rogerian principles into practice.
Rogerian rhetoric is often tried and dismissed as impractical, too difficult for students to use, too difficult to teach, or too easy for students to misinterpret as a particularly sly form of manipulation.
I believe that some of these problems stem from a failure to recognize just what Rogerian rhetoric really is. The basic model of Rogerian argument, particularly when abstracted from the rich context of heuristic techniques in which Young, Becker and Pike originally embedded it, looks like a form of arrangement: a recipe for what rogerian outline say first.
But arrangement is only part of the business of any rhetorical system. Logically prior to arrangement--and as I will argue, embedded in the process of arrangement, not separate from it--is the process of invention. In Rogerian terms, this means exploring an opposing point of view in sufficiently rich complexity that it is possible to reflect it back convincingly to an audience. The problem of invention is accentuated by the written medium. A writer is in a much worse position than the therapist, for writing does not allow the back-and-forth movement of face to face conversation that makes possible the continual readjustment of rogerian outline discourse.
But if we are content to relax our standards somewhat, it is still possible for students to learn how to apply a form of Rogerian principles in writing. To do so, they must learn how to imagine with empathy and how to read with empathy. By "imagining with empathy," I mean more than teaching students to imagine another's views, rogerian outline.
This would be little different from classical audience analysis. I mean teaching students to think carefully about how another person could hold views that are different from one's own. This is what Young, Becker and Pike mean by finding the "contexts in which the opposing viewpoint is valid. By "reading with empathy," I mean teaching students to use the printed words of another as a guide to this imagining process. In a rogerian outline, this is no more than what is usually known as "research.
But whereas students often associate "research" with the mere looking-up of "facts," research in a Rogerian context emphasises the looking-up of facts in the context of the arguments that support them, and looking at those arguments in the context of other worldviews, rogerian outline, other ways of seeing, rogerian outline.
This kind of imaginative reconstruction does not come easily. In terms of actual classroom practice, it usually does very little good simply to explain these points.
Rather, rogerian outline, the teacher must set up situations in which the students can practice Rogerian reflection and rogerian outline Rogerian attitude long enough that it can sink in.
For instance, the teacher can set up a dialectical situation in which they rogerian outline practice on real, present people in a context more like the original therapeutic situations for which Rogerian principles were originally designed. The oral, rogerian outline, face to face conversation serves as a bridge to the more difficult imaginative task of the distanced written conversation. Though these tasks are in one rogerian outline designed to serve rogerian outline preparation for another, they are in no sense mere warm-up drill or "prewriting" activities separate from the business of argument itself.
They are integral parts of what Rogerian rhetoric understands by "argument": a process of mutual exploration that may culminate in a written text but which may also take oral and other pathways.
As I argue throughout this chapter, Rogerian rhetoric is a broad rubric for a way of seeing, not rogerian outline a specific technique for structuring a text.
I will often begin rogerian outline a discussion of a controversial issue that students pick from a rogerian outline generated by the class. I get students to identify themselves with one side or the other. Then I will call on a volunteer from each side to engage in a rogerian outline Rogerian discussion since my disastrous first experience with this technique I am careful not to use rogerian outline word "debate". The discussion is organized according to Roger's own rules as suggested in "Communication: Its Blocking and its Facilitation" Neither person can mention his own views until he has restated the other person's to that person's satisfaction.
Thus the first "round" would consist of student A stating an argument, rogerian outline, student B restating that argument in summary form, and student A either agreeing that rogerian outline summary is rogerian outline or attempting to correct it.
This goes on until student A is happy with the summary; then student B gets a turn to state his own point of view not to refute A, rogerian outline.
The exercise often breaks down rogerian outline a traditional debate in which one person either tries to refute the other's views or restates them in a way that will make them easier to attack. Emotional hot buttons get pushed, rogerian outline, and more straw men begin flying about than in the monkey attack from The Wizard of Oz. Rogerian outline pair of students, John and Michael, picked the topic, "Should foreign students have to pay the entire cost of their education?
He stated his reasons, including basic principles of equity and the important contribution that foreign students make to the university. Michael opened his "restatement" along the lines of, "So, rogerian outline, you think it's okay to make our taxpayers pay for the education of a student from Singapore who won't even stay in this country? Obviously, this is hardly Rogerian reflection.
Example Outline - Rogerian Argument Essay
, time: 19:15Rogerian Argument // Purdue Writing Lab
About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators · Rogerian Argument Essay Outline with Thesis Statement and proposed Compromise/Solution. Before you begin: Complete your reading/research for the Rogerian Argument so that you are informed about your issue and understand the main claim and subclaims of each perspective. Instructions A Rogerian essay is meant to help students understand issues from two different perspectives to come up with an agreeable solution. According to Carl Roger’s effort in describing human traits, a Rogerian essay is based on the assumption that the writer needs to acknowledge other varied views by enabling readers to see some valid points about an opposing view
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