Critical writing: Critical reading

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Elements of an argument

A piece of academic writing is made up of a series of arguments. Authors will make claims that they support with evidence/reasons and they will try to persuade the reader that these claims are correct or significant in some way.

An academic argument is made up of three components:

Each component is looked at in more detail below:

Claim

The claim is the point that the author is trying to make. They are asserting something that they are then going to try and back up in the rest of the argument.

Premise

Premises are the reasons and evidence the author is using to justify a claim. A premise is something that the author believes to be true - either because they suggest it is uncontested knowledge or because it is contested yet persuasive knowledge. This is important because at university you are often looking at papers that are pushing the boundaries of knowledge and a lot of that is contested.

Example 1 (uncontested):

When knowledge is uncontested, the claims made can be more definite. Take the following premise:

This is a known fact and can therefore be used to support a claim as shown:

Example 2 (contested knowledge)

The following premise involves contested knowledge and therefore uses less definite language:

It is the phrase 'have been associated with' rather than 'cause' which acknowledges that this is potentially contested.

This premise can still be used to support a claim, but the claim must include an element of caution:

The caution is added by using the phrase 'could be' rather than 'are'.

When a premise is contested knowledge, it can be useful to use more than one premise. Here, the claim is further bolstered by a second premise about the gender discrepancy for violent crime in prisons:

Premises are the parts of the argument that need backing up with references to appropriate sources.

Attempt to persuade

Without attempting to persuade the reader of something, the author is not completing an argument. The simplest way an author can do this is to show exactly why the premise leads to the claim:

For a really strong argument, authors must also answer the 'so what' question. They must explain why the claim is significant in furthering their overall argument:

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Analysing and evaluating arguments

Analysing claims

When you are analysing claims, you are mainly deciding if the claim is justified by the premise(s). This involves a number of different subquestions:

• Are the premises believable? (How does the author back them up?)
• Is the author making any assumptions that weaken the premises?
• Is the claim a logical one given the premises?

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Evaluating arguments

When you are evaluating arguments, you are deciding if you have been persuaded by the arguments. Analysing the claim is the first step, but even justified claims can fail to persuade you if you have read other counter-arguments. When evaluating arguments you are bringing in your wider reading of the literature.

 

Critical questions

Critical questioning goes beyond identifying the argument. The following critical questions are adapted from the University of Plymouth (2010). Every question won’t apply to every paper you read, but you should find them applicable to most situations: