On Using the Toulmin Model

The Toulmin model of argumentation has been around for a long time. When I taught my first class in argument in the ‘80s, the manual I was using gave it as much emphasis as it gave to Aristotle, and certainly more than it gave to Rogerian argument.

The British philosopher Stephen Toulmin authored it. The theory behind it and instructions on how to use it effectively have proliferated online, and though I am more aware than ever of some criticisms of it, I have decided I might use it again, but not directly for writing instruction.

The reason I am thinking of using it again is because of a discussion I had in a class last week about the importance of feeling in writing. Most of my class “felt” that they like a certain approach to writing because it values feelings rather than reason.

I’ve tried to challenge this in classes before. This time, I’ve decided that what might help is to look at their reasoning about feeling.


Examing Arguments
The trouble some have found with teaching the Toulmin model of argument is that it can turn argument into an exercise in expressing what one already believes. It is not considered a useful tool for inventing new arguments.

It is also too easy to treat it as a formula. I don’t teach it mainly because it becomes an exercise in proving what a writer already knows. Yet I’ve decided that it might have some value as an exercise in looking at other arguments and really examining how and why we are persuaded by them. It also might help for my students to look at their own argument about feeling.

Here’s how I might do this. The Toulmin model focuses on claim, data (or evidence), and warrant. The first two items are what they appear to be in other models of argument. But the warrant is the more implicit, not always evident part of an argument that somehow links the data and the evidence, even giving the evidence an authority.

This could work with my students and with me. For my students, their claim is that feelings are a better basis for writing. The evidence is that they feel this way. The warrant? Feelings are better than reason.

That last part, the warrant, might get a few of them thinking. It might get them thinking the way that writers think: Feelings are better than reason? Always? In every case?

If we can understand that feelings matter sometimes, but it is important to know when they are and aren’t appropriate, I’ll have moved them toward Aristotle’s views on things. I'll have moved them toward being writers.

Toulmin’s model can work well with reading, I think, more than with writing.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you about your use of the Toulmin model. Have you found it to be effective? Are the critics wrong?