Proposal Arguments

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Proposal Arguments WACE, Chapter 14
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Proposal Argument

• A Proposal Argument is in essence a call for
  action. The audience is enjoined to make a
  decision and to act on it.
• Sometimes built around We should do X or We
  ought to do X.
• It is useful to distinguish two kinds of proposal
  arguments
• -Practical Proposals, which propose actions to
  solve local or immediate problems.
• -Policy Proposals, which offer a broader plan of
  action to solve major social, economic, or
  political problems.
• Many proposal arguments can be a combination of
  the two or somewhere in between your term papers
  will probably have both policy and practical
  aspects.

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General Structure for Proposal Arguments

• 3 part structure
• Description of the problem
• Proposed solution
• Justification for the proposed solution.
• This general structure is seen in all types of
  proposal arguments (e.g., proposals for changes
  in public or company policy, grant proposals or
  proposals for funding) and even in some arguments
  that dont seem at first glance to be proposal
  arguments (e.g., research papers)

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Concerns for Proposal Arguments

• The Need for PresenceAppeals to pathos engaging
  the audience emotionally as well as
  intellectually and thus providing the final spur
  to action.
• The Need to Overcome Natural ConservatismThere
  is a natural law of inertia with respect to
  taking action to change things from the status
  quo the if it aint broke, dont fix it
  reaction.
• -Often proposal arguments have difficulty
  overcoming this inertia because they cant argue
  that the way things are is bad, but rather must
  assert that the proposed solution would make
  things better arguments of lost potential that
  can be more abstract and hard to quantify

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Concerns for Proposal Arguments

• The Difficulty of Predicting Future
  Consequencesto be complete most proposal
  arguments must predict the results of their
  proposed actions. This can be inherently hard to
  do and vulnerable to counter-arguments (since
  neither side is proceeding from hard facts).
• -What to do? One possibility is to make an
  argument by analogy, looking at carefully chosen
  precedents (similar cases from the past and how
  they turned out).
• The Problem of Evaluating Consequencesif future
  consequences are hard to predict, they are also
  hard to evaluate. What are the costs? What are
  the benefits?
• -One could set up a cost-benefit calculation,
  reducing every consequence to a single scale
  (e.g., monetary value) for the purpose of
  comparison. But this is hard and sometimes
  impossible to do or may be wildly inappropriate.

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Developing a Proposal Argument

• Convince Your Readers That a Problem
  Exists--often we have to awake the reader to the
  problem. Giving the problem presence through
  specific examples likely to be of interest to the
  reader, persuasive statistics, or key references
  could be used here.
• -Avoid the supposition that just because you see
  the importance of a problem, everybody does.
• Show the Specifics of Your Proposal--lay out the
  relevant details for some proposals, a
  step-by-step method of implementation may be
  important. Is it feasible can it be done?
• Justification Convince the Reader that Your
  Proposal Should be Enacted. What if costs of
  enactment are high? What if it would just be hard
  to do? What if there are moral, ethical, or other
  concerns.

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Claim-Type Strategies

• This can be a powerful idea generating strategy.
• Basically the strategy is built around
• We should do X (proposal claim) because

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Stock Issues Strategy

• The writer considers stock ways (common, usual,
  frequently effective ways) to build arguments
• Is there really a problem that needs to be
  solved?
• Will the proposed solution really solve this
  problem?
• Can the problem be solved more simply without
  disturbing the status quo?
• Is the proposed solution really practical? Does
  it stand a chance of actually being enacted?
• What will be the unforeseen positive and negative
  consequences of the proposal?
• And an extra stock issue--What are the
  counterarguments to the proposal point of view?
  Whats the other side?