TYPES OF EVIDENCE FOR DEFINITION ARGUMENTS

For evidence, you could use…• Examples• Analogies• Scenarios• Allusions• Testimony• Appeals to logic• Appeals to value• Negative definitions: explaining what it is

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•Use Examplese.g. “In Orange County, Calif., the probation department’s “supervised electronic confinement program,” which monitors the movements of low-risk offenders, has been outsourced to a private company, Sentinel Offender Services. The company, by its own account, oversees case management, including breath alcohol and drug-testing services, “all at no cost to county taxpayers.” Sentinel makes its money by getting the offenders on probation to pay for the company’s services. Charges can range from $35 to $100 a month. The company boasts of having contracts with more than 200 government agencies, and it takes pride in the “development of offender funded programs where any of our services can be provided at no cost to the agency.” Sentinel is a part of the expanding universe of poverty capitalism. In this unique sector of the economy, costs of essential government services are shifted to the poor.” (from Thomas Edsall, “The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism”)

e.g.” During the days of slavery one could identify a person analogous to the swine-drover in the meat market. This person — we might call him a man-drover — rather than ushering pigs to market to be sold as a transferable commodity, did so with blacks. It goes without question that this treatment was inhumane. It made blacks into something less than human, things to be traded as objects to fuel economic necessity.

You may think that these days are long past but consider the case of Ferguson, Mo., — a city of 21,135 people, predominantly black, that served 32,975 arrest warrants for nonviolent offenses in 2013. This remarkable level of surveillance and interdiction incidentally generated for Ferguson more than $2.5 million in revenue from fines and court fees — the city’s second largest source of revenue.”

(“What, to the Black American, Is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day?”

•Use Analogies

e.g. “The idea of the solitary creator is such a common feature of our cultural landscape (as with Newton and the falling apple) that we easily forget it’s an idea in the first place.”(“The End of ‘Genius’”)

•Use Allusions

•Use Scenariose.g. “Think back to your first childhood crush. Maybe it was a classmate or a friend next door. Most likely, through school and into adulthood, your affections continued to focus on others in your approximate age group. But imagine if they did not.” (from “Pedophilia: A Disorder, Not a Crime”)

•Use Testimonye.g. “The Virtuous Pedophiles website is full of testimonials of people who vow never to touch a child and yet live in terror. They must hide their disorder from everyone they know — or risk losing educational and job opportunities, and face the prospect of harassment and even violence. Many feel isolated; some contemplate suicide.”

(indirect testimonial, from “Pedophilia: A Disorder or a Crime?”

•Use appeals to logice.g. “A second misconception is that pedophilia is a choice. Recent research, while often limited to sex offenders — because of the stigma of pedophilia — suggests that the disorder may have neurological origins. Pedophilia could result from a failure in the brain to identify which environmental stimuli should provoke a sexual response. M.R.I.s of sex offenders with pedophilia show fewer of the neural pathways known as white matter in their brains. Men with pedophilia are three times more likely to be left-handed or ambidextrous, a finding that strongly suggests a neurological cause. Some findings also suggest that disturbances in neurodevelopment in utero or early childhood increase the risk of pedophilia. Studies have also shown that men with pedophilia have, on average, lower scores on tests of visual-spatial ability and verbal memory.”

(“Pedophilia: A Disorder, Not a Crime”)

•Use appeals to values“It takes courage for the Supreme Court to stand up for the powerless and the despised. Sometimes it has risen to the challenge and sometimes it has not. With the Roberts court, what we see is a self-referential worldview, which leads the court to enhance the rights of insiders and deny protection to outsiders. On Monday, the justices will begin another term with the question of whether their commitment to the protection of human dignity will be universal or limited to “persons” just like them.”

(“Who Are ‘We the People’?”)

•Use negative examples “My purpose is to challenge the common belief that honoring of Martin Luther King Jr. means the same thing to all Americans. Recalling the sense of disconnect expressed by Frederick Douglass in his speech “What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?” — between himself as a former slave and his white audience — I want to say there is also some distance between black and white Americans today, between “you” and “I,” as it were, and that this day has increasingly become “yours,” not mine.”

(“What, to the Black American, Is Martin Luther King Jr., Day?”)